some seventies fads must stay dead

togas make me involuntarily shudder. with them they bring back a deluge of hideous memories of a decade of 70s meets 80s all mashed. my semi-naked parents [as pictured above] had & went to toga parties. lots & lots of them. they were consummate fantasy goers. i guess we have more in common than i like to admit.

inspired by the national lampoon's breakout film "animal house" which featured a not so risqué [but stll quite primevally arq-like] yet infamous fraternity toga party scene [with john belushi dead anting], pseudo-graeco roman decadence experienced some kind of renaissance when it crossed over from frat life & bombarded popular culture in the late seventies to coincide with late adopters jumping on the free-love and drug vibe. the toga became a symbol of debauchery. orgies & the sexual revolution are so much easier sans underwear, especially when you BYO bed linen.

first lady, eleanor roosevelt ironically got in on the act fairly early & hosted one of the first known toga parties ever in the white house. i can't work out whether i like that concept or not.

swingers parties do tend to be frequented by people you definitely don't want to see without their clothes. and then some swingers are still gatecrashing the presidential palace nowdays...

regardless of a modern conception of sexual orientation, greeks & romans often engaged in anal sex. the toga guaranteed the convenience of a quick fix. according to wiki the penetrated partner was known as "sperma suscipio" while the penetrator was referred to as the "eltonius".

secret documentation reveals that the roman catholic church has been suppressing the truth about the historical prevalence of anal sex for centuries. biblically endorsed sex for hetero couples was encouraged allegedly to retain the sacred bond between a priest and an altar boy separate. don't even get me started on monk porn. toga-like robes.

most women didn't even wear togas in the ancient world. only prostitutes donned such garb, which i guess works well with the pornification of the original intentions stemming out from initiation rites/celebrations in american colleges at the time.

for suburban explorers in the late 20th century, such clothing was probably an excellent excuse to exercise sexual curiosity in a still cloak & dagger environment where all types of experimentation including [but not limited to] homo-eroticism, were still something largely living in the mainstream closet. with the toga came a liberation of sorts.

these people were baby boomers raised under the shadow of cold war conservatism by parents born of the depression, so they ate everything on their plate and tried not to be too different. the free love generation had a slow trickle-down effect compounded by distance from the source but accelerated post vietnam outside of the states. there was no internet for fast free exchange of ideas or imagery. sheets & what they represented were wild!

theoretically it's all out now & we have the freedom to be who we are without having to make excuses or hide. theoretically.

mechanisms such as the toga could comfortably remain in the realms of extinction or dormancy like glenn close in the fatal attraction bath. still who am i to belittle with my victorianisms the love for dress-ups & extroversion?

#arkfail: DIY social media for noobs [now with monk porn]

as per my previous blog last week we [punk monk digital] launched this. a question of sorts:

and then in the wknd we gave some kind of answer:

overwhelmingly we have received loads of feedback. a thousand thanks. 99% was positive. if that was fat-free, you'd be buying it.

re: the fat.

if selling out is passing on the black lung and not being prepared to spend the rest of our lives in the coal mines then we will own that scurrilously spat title. whilst doing so we tried to do it with tenacity, humour, adherence to social issues we really care about: climate change, with just "a little nod" to popular culture & religion [in case you didn't notice]. we're not forgetting our socio political activism roots anytime soon. and yeah, we also paid attention to the product & the client's message whilst inserting some of our own unique brand. we're still legitimate artists/activists & make no apologies for commercial crossover. sorry if you prefer your guerrillas homeless & hungry.

there is a longstanding argument about corporations raping & exploiting artist talent in these style of competitions. i agree with the majority of the sentiment. they are exactly what they are. any hype filled rhetoric on rinse, recycle, repeat sheep's clothing delivered by such organisations must be rubbed into open wounds with more than a handful of salt. we know they lie. we know they don't give a shit about us. we know "sustainable" translated into corporate speak means units & profit margins.

you know those women getting "exploited" in porn movies? a lot of them are educated savvy streeet smart chicks making informed decisions about whether they want to be there or not. neither you or i have to agree with their chosen vehicle of expression or income generation but mostly they don't have a gun/or a raging coke addiction rammed against their head. mostly. either did we. sometimes exploitation can be two ways. a marriage of convenience. eyes wide shut.

the next question has to be: will it work? we have no idea. we're experimental filmmakers/culture jammers/projection bombers/social media amateurs making it up on the fly as we go along.

in the unlikely event that we seduce saatchi and saatchi with our voicemade bouncing animal sound effects & wa was inspired by 70s porn soundtracks combined with DIY animation skills & win: a chunk of the prize money pool goes back into our guerrilla film & art projects at punk monk propaganda. channeling struggling artist is highly overrated. we like to eat too. we're not going to be in the top fortune 500 anytime soon...

so far we've had over 2.5K views in five days which isn't exactly a viral success but we're still at the top of the clickthru/comment ladder after coming in on the last week of a six week long running competition.

thanks for helping us. tomorrow is the finish line. if you haven't already & would like to please just bounce along after the kangaroo, get your fluffer kit on and click here.

one greenish bottle...

left hanging on the wall.

one mysterious night last week i went out with two of my very dearest. there should be other photos here besides me loitering against this wall but sadly the photographic evidence which includes them cannot be posted on this blog because of traceability. they are afraid.

you see after that evening a one-off food poisoning-like plague occurred: there was a wave of sick days & late meetings which kicked in. paranoia set in & suddenly people are terrified of being either satirised by me or their work colleagues. or worse [if that can be imagined].

these days the internet is one big stalker factory & as we know is being used for a plethora of purposes. there's a trade-off between anonymity & publicity. not everyone are blatant media whores like myself with almost zero care factor. how much information is too much & once it's online should it be for everyone to use for whatever purpose they desire? will it come back to haunt you/me? ID fraud, vegetarian loving cannibals, an unlikely connection to the manson family, or mafia run organ harvesting could see me hijacked any second [just don't touch the liver or spine].

maybe someone searching for "monk porn" [my current SEO strategy] has already substituted my clothing with monastic robes in photoshop & is masturbating to this image of me now [in my wildest dreams], or keyword coding it so that this blog will come back to haunt me if i ever seek USA presidency or other... lucky i don't have a real job i can be fired from.

so yes. it was just me that got drunk & i actually drank water for half the night so managed to ward off the threatened 03:00 am karaoke club stint: "all by myself, i wanna be all by myself..."

monk [photoshopped] porn.

lunar industries letdown

'

something about: was i the only person on the planet who didn't fall desperately in love with moon & planned to? the wedding invitations had already been sent out before i hit the cinema dammit. district 9, you remain uncontested in my mind no matter how unfashionable my view as top film dog for the year [i will wait for you]. but still we have three months to go...

i was planning on writing something intelligent immersed in devil's advocate mode about the derivative yet overall disappointing nature of moon, although on the whole the positive outweighed the negative, but then i went out for lunch today & drank...

boxes ticked:

duncan jones: incredible first feature direction. the considered exploration into what is the human condition was heroic to the max without the cheesiness of some soft drink to pimp. we won't even bring up space oddity. the minatures, the minatures... kudos bill pearson [well what do you expect when you bring in the alien model sugar daddy from hell?] and also thanks for the non-reliance on all things CGI.

sam rockwell : yes in your designer made role you shone. congratulations, you sold me. nice work with what was essentially a 100 minute monologue.

bang for buck: awesome result for 5 million USD spend. nothing short of outstanding. production value: let me cum on my own tits. BTW. that's the highest possible accolade. the studio creation of that grimy unforgiving alien yet realistically human world of physical & mental corrosion was simply monk porn.

trudy styler -- the producer? those famous family connections certainly did not hurt, and why should they?

blank boxes:

is it alien. is sam ripley? or is it an unreleased cut of 2001... love a bit of homage love but could we please have something more original? this could easily have come from the cutting room floor of kubrick's studio which is high praise indeed but in the end it reads like a single B side. yes the retro vibe is fuck off cool but it was the first time round also. if you're going to borrow could you at least add or improve? please. even if you only have 5 million dollars.

the story: i'm sorry -- i got bored. i just thought that the issues which were broached could have been dealt with in a more interesting way. i dig clones too. it's not an incessant need to supplant that with bells & whistle aliens or apes whacking obelisks but i don't know... frugal austerity is nice. like oak. i fell asleep. there i said it. the last time i did that which i recall was independence day. in my mind a far inferior film with a squillion times more budget [so it's certainly not all bad].

ultimately it was a believable mysterious cold indifferent world outside & in. the film worked especially for a flatlining vacation accompaniment. it's just that i felt i'd already seen it before. perhaps the planned epilogue will redeem phase one? perhaps jones will come back to earth.