Since there’s typically an overdose of testosterone on the Bloglin, I wanted to shout out some female blogs, and spread some love to the female fans of Mishka or the Bloglin!
- IS MENTAL: Amanda along with a few other ladies talk about everything from clothes, to technology, photography and beyond.
- Stagg Party: (NSFW) My good friend and amazing photographer shows off her porn photography.
- Brooke Nipar: Another good friend, showing off her great photo work.
- Things We Heart: Store Owner Jill Bradshaw of I Heart (where I work) shows you what’s new and what’s going on in fashion, and merchandise for the store.
- Worship Worthy: This one’s been around for a bit, it’s pretty tip top.
- Ephemeroi (Windchill): Not really a girl’s blog, but it is run by an awesome girl; Trudi Chan. Site has amazing listings for NYC events and happenings.
*I’m sure I’m missing some great ones. Hit em up in the comments section
This Spring 08 season we got together with the undisputed king of Thrash Metal art… Ed Repka to create the Lobotomizer graphic.
Ed, who is best known worldwide for his iconic work during the 80s and 90s with Megadeth and Vic Rattlehead, their roguishly evil skeletal mascot. It was truly an honor working with Ed now a few times actually! He is not only one of my favorite artists but a huge influence on not just us at Mishka but metal music in general.
So we’re beyond thrilled to present to you an in-depth interview we got to conduct with the self professed “connoisseur of grotesque”! We hope it sheds some light on probably Thrash Metal’s most overlooked influence as well as what it’s like being a successful working artist for so long
Repka has painted brutal covers for many other members of metal’s finest such as Death, Nuclear Assault, Violence, Possessed, Defiance and more recently, Municipal Waste and 3 Inches of Blood. And we’re thrilled that Lobotimizer, our lament to teenage brainwashing by the Man is now part of his illustrious career!
I discovered Trevor Paglen’s book I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World some time ago and picked it up because frankly it was awesome design inspiration. A collection of mysteriouso Black Ops military patches. Patches that looked so ridiculous I just assumed this was a design book that had a slew of artists invent these patches and try to pass them off as real but I didn’t really give it much thought and filed the book away on our office bookcase. Well how wrong I was!
After taking a nasty spill on my bike yesterday afternoon and being forced to spend the rest of the afternoon/evening indoors I comforted myself by flipping through whatever few cable channels I have. And of course at the most unexpected of channels, C-SPAN’s Book TV I found my evening’s entertainment. Trevor Paglen was discussing this very book at a very small reading (even though the book had little to read) at Brooklyn’s Melville House.
I was amazed to find out that all the patches were indeed real and he had been collecting them for quite sometime. Paglen makes his living as a military journalist specializing in reporting on all things that should be classified! So trying to decipher the clues of the symbols and iconography on these patches plays heavily into his reporting! Most of the talk was spent pointing out how certain graphics can easily now be related to recently declassified operations, programs or ships. While others were probably hinting to military programs or organizations still under wraps! It quickly started turning into some real X-Files level shit and was quite eye opening and amazing! If any of this remotely interests you (I know it does most of us at Mishka) then you should check out this book and see if you can catch a repeat of his talk on C-Span’s Book TV. Or better yet just frequent his excellent website for all sorts of details and updates!
So thanks to the lovely world of the Internet everything and anything now has a blog or forum where you’re either put on a pedestal or burned at the stake at blindingly fast rate! It’s a wonderful modern world we live in! And with Google Alerts everyone can keep tabs on their own Court of Public Opinion with minimal effort and maximum fun!
Here are some things that have brought joy to our hearts this week:
Both of our infamous Tom of Eternia shirts (which were masterfully illustrated by Robin Nishio) seem to now, almost 2 years after their release, gotten some attention on a Masters of the Universe forum! And the results are fucking awesome!!!! However this isn’t anywhere near as great as when the He’s A Whore T-shirt made it onto the forums of Electrical Audio which is Steve Albini’s Studio not once, but twice! Truly classic! And of course today we got to ride the Shark’s nutsack right onto DBTHB/Stachel of Gravel! Fuckin’ Finally! I was starting to think we didn’t matter :(
My desk is covered in Star Wars toys right now, which prompted a short discussion between the Crook and I in regards to the Imperial rankings of Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin. This is how we keep ourselves entertained when we’re not busy creating “dat crack.” Thank you Wikipedia for clearing up any misconceptions.
Organization of power
Emperor Palpatine rules the Empire with absolute power, with third-in-command Sate Pestage as Grand Vizier to run the Empire day to day. Vader is the Emperor’s second-in-command as well as the Military Executor and Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces.
Palpatine dissolves the Senate in A New Hope because the Empire discovers several seats in the Senate are actually taken by members of the Rebellion. Officially, the Imperial Senate is “suspended for the duration of the Galactic emergency”. Below the Emperor, real power is in the hands of sector governors (”moffs“) such as Grand Moff Tarkin. Eventually, the regional governors are granted direct control over their territories after Palpatine disbands the Imperial Senate.
In A New Hope, Tarkin explains the Empire’s philosophy as “rule through fear of force rather than force itself”. The instrument of this power is the military, which includes the Imperial Stormtroopers, Scout Troopers, Sandtroopers, SCUBA Troopers, Snowtroopers, and a large fleet of intimidating war vehicles such as the Imperial Navy’sStar Destroyers and the Imperial Army’sAll Terrain Armoured Transports (AT-ATs or imperial walkers) which are intended in part to spread fear as well as destroy the enemy. This policy reaches its zenith with the construction of the Death Star.
My girlfriend passed along to me this recent feature from New York Magazine’s fashion section about people who only wear one color every single day. Besides it being a real commitment, a serious shopping challenge it in some ways is probably some sort of form of OCD! I was delighted to find Stephan Merritt of the Magnetic Fields as one of the people featured and had no clue he only wore shades of Brown. But what made me happier was seeing our old neighbor Rebecca Turbow who runs her Safe Clothing Label across the hall from where our very first Mishka office was located. However when we used to see Rebecca regularly in the hallways she was still in her turquoise/teal/sea foam phase. It’s a pretty interesting and amusing feature!
Mishka contributor Robin Nishio gets an interview courtesy of our friends over at Inquiring Minds. Check it out for a glimpse of some unseen graphics from future Mishka releases.
Mishka contributors Dennis Chow, Alister Lee, and Robin Nishio get a check out in the newest issue of Lodown. Thanks go out to Sven, Alex, and the good people at Breadwinner.
Viceland.com has an amazing article on the oral history of Williamsburg’s long gone but never forgotten den of snortitude… Kokie’s! Seriously do yourself a favor and read it, haha!
This sparked Mr. Malta and myself to reminisce on just how sketchy and bombed out Williamsburg once was! I remember my mother looking at me with this look of “Are you fucking crazy?” when I mentioned I was going there at some point during high school to watch my friend’s band record. Even as early as 2000-2001 it was pretty sketchy to start venturing south Grand street, oh how times have changed.
Bumming around Pitchfork today I saw excerpts from a forthcoming book by one of their staff writers (Marc Masters) about the origins of No Wave. Hopefully this book is to No Wave what Please Kill Me was to NY Punk.
When I was 16 or so, while a lot of my friends were getting into either punk, hardcore or the rave scenes me and a few friends discovered the No Wave scene by passing around a copy of the book Confusion is Next amongst us. We were all enamored with the descriptions of the albums, shows and anecdotes about Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, James Chance, DNA, Mars, Ut, The Swans, Bush Tetras & a slew of others. But this was like 1995 and we were teenagers so actually hearing these bands posed a problem! Most of this shit was not out on CD and the stuff that was wasn’t easy to track down. We were on like 24k modem connections and music file-sharing hadn’t really caught on, especially not with really obscuro shit. And finally tracking down vinyl, even on the internet was tricky (since we had no credit cards) and would have taken some serious months of saving and only eating school lunch!
We all set out to start our own No Wave bands based on the descriptions of what we expected it to sound like. We were finally able to procure a live DNA album, some used Swans CDs and Mars, Bush Tetras and Teenage Jesus & the Jerks compilations along the way early on. No Wave music and just the overall philosophies behind it were and still remain a huge artistic influence on me. I’m really glad that so much of that music is finally getting re-released and garnering the kind of attention the scene has gotten in the last 5 or so years. Maybe if I can figure out how to rip from audio cassette I’ll make a Doombox from those old band demos, which listening back to now over a decade later really weren’t all that bad!
We all liked to get ’spaced out’ once in a while, get a lil’ ‘cosmic’ - see ’stars’ or what not. So this is a top 10 list of my astronomy photos of 2007 while ’space traveling’ YA HEARD!
10. A Comet Bursting Forth
Apparently comets are very hard for the naked eye to see. I say this is probably what Belushi and Farley saw before they took a permanent dirt nap. Pretty innit?
9. Black Hole on Mars
If I was a rapper and battling someone on Freestyle Friday on 106 & Park or some shit, I would carry a picture of this and claim that my guns could blow a hole as massive as this black hole on Mars. Science Thugzzz
8. A Giant Red Star Named Mira
I dunno if this shit is giant or red even, but I do think that ‘mira’ means come over here in spanish or something? Raekwon says it in ‘Ice Cream’
7. The Lover’s Embrace of ARP 87
Reminds me of British people saying, “The Lover’s Embrace of HARP 87″ I picture popping a few valiums to feel like how this looks.
6. Lightning at Weikerscheim Observatory
Doesn’t this look like one of those motivational posters you got as a kid at the book fair or something?
5. A Meeting of the Moons
You know it’s a gangsta party when Jupiter’s moons meet up like the after-party is just gettin’ started. There be some dusty mirror’s, solar system groupies, ice sparklin’ from light years away, COSMIC BALLIN’
4. Dark Matter Makes an Appearance
2 words, CHUCK ANDERSON
3. Chaos in Vela
This image shows the devastation wrought when a star explodes. The Vela Supernova Remnant formed when a massive star 800 light years away blew up 11,000 years ago. That’s some ‘Holy Shit’ action, son. Believe that.
2. Stereo Eclipse
When I was in highschool, the older kids would tell us how if you did more than three grams of shrooms, you would go to ‘the gate’- and how going there would change your life forever. I picture this before entering the gate, the eye of psychedelia saying, “You fucking think you are so awesome don’t you? Real proud that you got to the gate, you braindead fuck up”
1. The Beautiful Face of IC 342
This picture is pretty rad, but really, the real number 1 for ALL of my lists for 2007 would be this:
I was doing my daily blog browsing and peeped TMZ when I came across another passing of a legend
I may not know much about Ike aside from the fact that he was married to Tina Turner and had her on smash, but it’s sad to see him go. What’s the world gonna be with one less drug-addict/wife beater? Word is he died in his sleep which is better than dying from Tina receiving some payback, or did she?
MADBALLS were one of the things I would save up my pennies for as a kid growing up. Screemin’ Meemie was my personal fave, and when I copped him at the local drugstore, it changed my life!
Anyhow, before I digress, here is an interesting interview with MADBALLS illustrator, James Groman. He gives some insight into the redesign of the infamous MADBALLS toyline (DREAM JOB!) and has few words about his career as an illustrator and working in the toy biz. But, like they used to say on Reading Rainbow, don’t just take my word for it! Peep here.
Ever wonder how it would feel to die by drowning, heart attack, blood loss, burning, decapitation, electrocution, falling, hanging, lethal injection, and explosive decompression? Any of these would be pretty gnarly, but if you’re interested one of my favorite publications, New Scientist, has some insight as to how your last seconds of life might be. Read about your fate here!
I just finished reading Crooked Little Vein by first time novelist Warren Ellis, although I suppose it isn’t fair to look past Ellis’ brilliant career as a comic and television writer. It’s been awhile since I’ve managed to pick and actually finish a book, so when I found myself drawing near the end of this novel, it was quite clear that I had to suggest it.
Crooked Little Vein follows Detective Michael McGill, a self described “shit magnet,” as he traverses the seedy underworld of America in search of a secret tome reported to be a long lost alternate Constitution intended only for the founders of America. Backed up by half a million in the bank, McGill encounters things no one would’ve imagined if the internet was around.
Not since the earlier work of Chuck Palahniuk have I become so enthralled with a work of contemporary fiction. If you’re a fan of Fight Club or Survivor, check out Crooked Little Vein. You’ll find yourself being dragged through a gutter of filth and self-deprecation as you journey down the fucked up path paved by the story’s anti-hero.
