Friday, June 30, 2006

Additions to Finnsleaze: June 2006

[Skip this entry if you are under 18 years old.]



The meaning of life is here!

It's been a while since any new additions to Finnsleaze, but after a hiatus of some time, some new old magazine covers have found their way to the site.

From the 1950s to mid-80s -- the busy-handed purveyors of hardcore porn may find themselves disappointed by the low onanie material content here, of especially these older magazine covers, but for the fans of vintage pin-ups these might provide some stylish and nostalgic eye candy.

Aikuisten Lukemisto:

No. 2: Halut heräävät

Cocktail:

24/72 | 21/73

Erotica:

6/84 | 3/85

Jallu:

Compared to the magazine of the same name published these days, these images of beauty queens in swimming suits are much more family mag fodder.

5/63 | 2/64 | 3/64 | 5/64 | some issues from '67 to '69

Kalle MK I:

1950s pin-up magazine with burlesque queens and showgirls -- you probably can see more provocative and raunchy material in family magazines these days, but these have their own undeniable nostalgia value.

9/53 | 11/53 | 1/54 | 7/54 | 10/54 | 11/54 | 15/54 | 17/54 | 18/54 | 19/54 | 20/54 | 21/54 | 22/54 | 23/54 | 6/55 | 7/55 | 14/55 | 18/55 | 21/55 | 2/56 | 3/56 | 16/56 | Christmas '56

Kalle MK II:

The new incarnation as the "modern style" skin mag which started in the early 1970s.

2/80 | 7/80 | 9/81 | 4/82 | 12/85

Nyrkkiposti:

1969 - various covers | 4/74 | 5/73 | 7/74 | 8/74 | 9/74 | 10/74 | 12/74

Onni:

1/77 | 2/78 | 1/79 | 2/79 | 1/80 | 4/80

Pelimies

No. 1: Äitiä, tytärtä ja pikkusiskoa | No. 3: Rinnat kuin revolverit | No. 5: Reittä pitkin kuolemaan | No. 6: Himon orjat

Ratto:

7/73 | 3/74 | 7/76 | 4/77 | 6/77 | 11/79 | 12/79 | 5/86

Seksi:

8/73 | 7/74 | 11/74 | 4/75 | 11/76 | 9/77 | 9/79

Suomi rakastaa - Raton sukupuolisanomat:

1/77

+

Seksisirkus

Ei mitään lisättävää

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Dream 28-29 June 2006: "The Brick Wall Man"




Last night I had a dream where I saw a peculiar man whose skin was made of red-brown bricks like old factories and their chimneys and smokestacks in my hometown. He looked like a man-shaped wall, eyes hidden behind some sort of dark peeping holes, so it seemed he could see and hear me quite well. I asked him why did he look like this, and he told me his story.

"Once I was just like you, a person of flesh and blood. Maybe it was the traumas of my childhood and youth that caused me to become like this. My family, teachers and other children who kept bullying me all the time made me this. Military service and my abusive employer made me this. My sarcastic professor at university made me this. My pathetic and desperate efforts with girls made me this. Gradually I saw my skin harden, die away and turn into this hard stone-like substance. It was like some metamorphosis in a story by Kafka, except in didn't turn into any cockroach, I turned into a brick wall of a man."

Still amazed by this sight, I kept asking the brick man questions as to why and how and other things like that. How did he eat, since his brick face didn't seem to have any place for a mouth; and what if he had to go to the bathroom?

"Well, that's the really peculiar thing here. I don't eat but I found I've got this powerplug in my armpit, so I can load myself and stay sustained with electric currency. And because I don't drink and eat, therefore I have no need to urinate or defecate either, which makes things considerably easier in my current form. Once I forgot to load myself and found myself getting extremely weak until I couldn't move anywhere. I already thought I was going to die but fortunately some friendly passerbys got a car battery with them through which they were able to resuscitate me. After that incident I've dutifully kept plugging myself in every night for a reload before going to sleep, like I was a mobile phone."

So, he was still able to sleep after all?

"Yes, and that's the weirdest thing here. I have to sleep like an ordinary person, and I do have dreams. Usually I dream about being in my former shape, where I can touch and feel and taste and smell things as a man of flesh and blood, and it's always great to have these dreams, walking there through meadows and forests in summer with their myriads of different odours and feeling the warmth of the sun and gentle breeze on my skin. Then suddenly, I wake up and find myself back in my cold and hard, lifeless stone form."

How did the other people react on seeing him?

"First they're amazed, of course, but quite soon they become used to it like they get used to the bums asking for money, so they know how to stay as far away from me as possible. On the street little children always point their fingers at me until their parents tell them that it's unpolite to stare. Teenagers are the worst, always shouting at me and making rude remarks. Every now and then someone wants to pick up a fight, but they will only get their knuckles hurt trying to hit me. Sometimes they try to kick me but seeing that my heavy stony mass won't let me fall down, they normally get bored soon and leave. Once a gang tried to pour gasoline on me and burn me but it was pretty useless too, since my body is basically like a firewall."

Had he tried to get any medical help to this condition of his?

"Once I went to see a doctor, a dermatologist, but he was totally helpless in front of me. They thought my case held some scientific interest, though, so I was thoroughly photographed by some medical students. Someone has allegedly written a paper about me in Korea, or so I hear. They also tried to get some skin samples (or whatever you can call them) of me, but their equipment only broke down since it was too hard. Obviously I'm impenetrable. The army experts say I probably could be able to take a nuclear attack and stay in one piece. Well, trying to get state pension based on my medical condition proved to be quite useless, too, there being no actual physical fault in me. So, now I live on unemployment benefits and try to get myself a job but I think no one wants to hire a guy who looks like their backyard fence."

Did he have any theory about why this had happened to him?

"Beats me, hell if I knew. Sometimes I think that this skin of bricks is not for my own protection, to keep me safe from the rest of the world, but to keep the others safe from me. Sometimes I'm afraid of my own thoughts, all the amount of hatred that is hidden inside of me. When I think about all the people who have hurt me or tried to... or who laughed at me, ridiculed me, thought I was next to nothing."

Then he told me about his hateful fantasies and dreams, some of which really filled me with disgust and put a fear in me.

"Yes, I think there's somewhere a real monster living inside this brick wall, and it's important that he stays inside and never gets out. Some really horribly things would happen if he ever did. Probably it's this armour of mine that also keeps me together; without it I would probably fall apart, unleash the hell inside of me which would destroy everyone and everything."

Speaking this, he had become very agitated, and suddenly I noticed a crack had appeared on his brick skin. At this moment I woke up.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Saul Bass Film Credits

Genius...

(If the links below don't work, click here)



Anatomy of a Murder



Casino



It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World



The Man With The Golden Arm



North By Northwest



Ocean's Eleven



Psycho



The Seven Year Itch



Spartacus



Vertigo

Beyond



More my little ponderings (or perhaps, more like it: repetitions) about the responsibility of an artist... to take un-granted those things that are usually taken for granted. To question people's perceptions and the ideas they might think are "true" and unchangeable.

It's true a visionary artist might have a perfect hold of his/her Zeitgeist, have "a finger on what's happening now", but I think this is not enough yet. One has to go and see beyond one's own time. Beyond what is deemed fashionable. To challenge people's tendency to hivemind thinking. And act accordingly, with one's best abilities to contain this vision of "what's beyond" in one's work. This is what I have previously described as "people who live on the edge", and what I have also considered potentially extremely dangerous.

First, because it might be socially awkward and even unacceptable, because it might not exactly be "politically correct", because one might appear behaving as if one has not received a proper house training. And it might even be not too clever, so don't get me wrong here. There is an honest endeavour beyond the limits or constraints of everyday thinking, and then there is honest stupidity. Finnish artist Teemu Mäki probably tried to make a sort of an artistic statement in 1988 when he created a work of video art called Sex and Death where he killed a cat with an axe and masturbated after this act. Consequently, Mäki was punished for this at court and this incident will probably shadow his artistic career to the end of his life. Did Mäki "go beyond" here, in the way I have described; was his act a visionary one, revealing some unseen aspects of society, did it contribute in some constructive way to our general understanding of it and our lives?

I'm not trying to defend any pathological behaviour here, and I have seen enough homegrown Nazis and other psychopath/sociopath characters who try to justify themselves with these sort of romantic ideas I have described above. I'm not telling anyone to throw their moral judgements away, since it might be me who gets his throat cut by these people next. All I'm trying to do, in my clumsy way, is to figure and outline some sort of vague model for the people who "don't fit" because their vision exceed those of so called normal people. Anyway, at its most harmless, one might be considered an eccentric freak, though tolerated by one's environment if one is lucky to live among people who are understanding in their attitudes. It can get gradually worse, though.

Of course, if our edge-dweller is extremely lucky, s/he may find a beneficial response to what s/he is doing, and even make a fortune with what s/he is doing -- the most banal example of this might be Salvador Dalí, a.k.a. Avida Dollars, an immaculate showman who turned his art and eccentricity into a big buck and got expulsed from the circle of Surrealists.

So, the prospects might look pretty grim: life as a struggling outsider artist, village idiot, lunatic, bully, substance abuser, suicide candidate -- or a sell-out.

This is all just some romantic, simpleminded and clichéd babble, isn't it?

Friday, June 23, 2006

Juhannus, Bloody Juhannus




A suggestion on how one should celebrate Midsummer in Finland too? Note a certain well-known music promoter inside the Wicker Man.

Oh well, it's again time for Juhannus, as the Midsummer weekend here in Finland is called, and also my annual jeremiad about the whole bloody thing. Like Vappu, this is another occasion for Finns to get out of their heads, whether it was rain or shine, freezing cold or warm. Heading to their lakeside cottages, camping sites and rock festivals, to get out of their gourds with liberal amounts of beer and Koskenkorva vodka, fighting, knifing each other and getting drowned (usually with their zippers open as the running Finnish joke goes -- a drunkard trying to take a pee standing in a rowing boat, with tragic consequences). Finland being the country of thousands of lakes, drowning at Juhannus is a popular national pastime; newspapers following each year with their headlines of the drowned people statistics. I find the whole Juhannus thing a bloody bore when the cities get deserted for the weekend and you can barely find an open bar where to drink your boredom away. Well, the good side of it that as a city dweller you can enjoy some rare peace and calm when the rowdy yobbos have left the town.

Another Finnish Juhannus tradition is burning bonfires by lakesides, in those white nights when you can barely detect any distinction between dusk and dawn (it's not as fun and exotic as it might sound to you non-Finns since it's damn hard to sleep when there's not any proper darkness). As a fan of Robin Hardy's 1973 film Wicker Man, I'd like to replace this with another ritual of pagan origin: the burning of a Celtic-style giant wicker man. In the film we saw how this ritual was connected with human sacrifice (in this case to restore the fertility of their fields). For example, I can think of certain Finnish politicians and even some music "business" personalities who could well prove their usefulness this way.

Will talk more shit to you after Juhannus: sadly all local Net cafés will be closed, too.

Performance (1970) and Psychedelic Decadence




"The only performance that makes it, that really makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness."

Woe on all you Finnish people who missed this one, shown last night on MTV3 channel.

This nasty and pervy cult flick grinds Jorge Luis Borges, Hassan-I-Sabbah (the mythical predecessor of Osama bin Laden and the founder of the sect of Assassins/Hashishins), the Kray Twins (the notorious gangsters of the 1960s London), magic mushrooms, mixing up of gender identities and psychedelic decadence into one ugly and beautiful cut-up carnival, à la William S. Burroughs. Alongside these references there are also visual tributes to such artists as Francis Bacon. A psycho-sexual mindfuck of the highest order, courtesy of the late Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg (who later on directed more cult movies: Walkabout, Don't Look Now and David Bowie's finest film moment, The Man Who Fell To Earth, among them).

Among those visually striking scenes there's one particularly disturbing where we see a bullet making its way through the brain, only to end up to a photograph depicting Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian master of literary labyrinths, whose works heavily influenced this movie.

The controversial Performance was originally filmed in 1968 but only released in 1970. It is said that the sex scenes between Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton got so heavy that the scenes cut from the theatre version were shown with great success at an adult film festival in Amsterdam.

Mick Jagger's own music video-like performance (sic) of 'Memo From Turner' is particularly memorable. (Hmmm, might this be one potential future cover version for Kompleksi...?)





Memo From Turner
(Jagger/Richards)

Didn't I see you down in San Antone on a hot and dusty night?
We were eating eggs in Sammy's when the black man there drew his knife.
Aw, you drowned that Jew in Rampton as he washed his sleeveless shirt.
You know, that Spanish-speaking gentlemen, the one we all call Kurt.

Come now, gentlemen, I know there's some mistake.
How forgetful I'm becoming, now you fixed your business straight.

I remember you in Hemlock Road in nineteen fifty-six.
You were a faggy little leather boy with a smaller piece of stick.
You're a lashing, smashing hunk of man;
Your sweat shines sweet and strong.
Your organs working perfectly, but there's a part that's not screwed on.

Weren't you at the Coke convention back in nineteen sixty-five?
You're the misbred, grey executive I've seen heavily advertised.
You're the great, grey man whose daughter licks policemen's buttons clean.
You're the man who squats behind the man who works the soft machine.

Come now, gentlemen, your love is all I crave.
You'll still be in the circus when I'm laughing, laughing in my grave.

When the old men do the fighting and the young men all look on.
And the young girls eat their mothers' meat from tubes of plasticon.
Be wary of these, my gentle friends, of all the skins you breed.
They have a tasty habit -- they eat the hands that bleed.

So remember who you say you are and keep your noses clean.
Boys will be boys and play with toys, so be strong with your beast.
Oh Rosie dear, doncha think it's queer, so stop me, if you please.
The baby is dead, my lady said, "You gentlemen, why you all work for me?"


More:
http://www.phinnweb.org/roeg/films/performance/

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Holiday in North Korea / Hercólubus, the Red Planet

Cool! Almost like here in Tampere!

And more spooky things for those of you whose brains are softened by the summer heat of the last days. Here in Tampere a non-Finnish man is handing out mysterious flyers advertising a book called Hercólubus, or the Red Planet. Hercólubus is supposedly a planet in the Barnard Star system, six light years from Earth. Some gnostics believe the planet, 600 hundred times the size of Earth, will affect our world by causing earthquakes, great floods and twisting Earth's axis. We can prevent this by developing our "extrapsychic" mental powers, as the book's late author V. M. Rabolú claims. Or something. [Cheers for the infos, Juri.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercolubus
http://home.earthlink.net/~gnosisla/March5.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~gnosisla/March4.html
http://www.hercolubus.cc/

Also watched the Richard Gere film on the "Mothman" phenomenon. Weird things are in the air -- or then, not.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Chicks on Speed Dragged Off The Stage At A Spain Festival



Read more about this incident at CoS Tour Diary. Some very grainy footage here, and Chicks on Speed explain here why they don't want them to play.

Chicks On Speed vs male chauvinist insurance pigs in Spain @ Blunderpop blog

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off-topic: György Ligeti R.I.P. (His music is heard among all in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Monday, June 05, 2006

Electrosynth Blog Reviews Kompleksi's Album



Electrosynth blog (London, UK) reviews our yet-to-be-released album, Sister Longlegs Dances In The Disco:

http://electrosynth.blogspot.com/2006/06/kompleksi-sister-longlegs-dances-in.html

"... A terrific overall feel to the album that will sound like no other album you have ever heard. Its hard and heavy at times and wonderfully dark -It has to be released!!"

Wow, I'm blushing now! Thanks for your kind words, Peter.

OK, but if you don't believe Peter here and want to form your opinion instead, we'll now give a chance to the selected people to have their own say on the album. Just send an e-mail to the address phinnweb [at] sci.fi and tell why exactly YOU should be the person to receive an advance copy of our unreleased album. Subject should be: "KOMPLEKSI ALBUM". We will send during the next month 5 CDR copies of the album to these chosen ones.

Friday, June 02, 2006

My Ongoing Search For Wild Kicks



My latest addiction has been the Vicks Red Energy drops, consisting of similar ingredients as there are in energy drinks: caffeine, taurine (familiar from Red Bull which was in fact banned in Finland until recent years) and guarana extract. They gave out free samples of those last winter and I was immediately hooked (talk about the gateway theory).

Since I tend to get tired so easily during daytime (I might have inherited it from my mother who had narcolepsy in her youth) and therefore may find myself totally unable to concentrate, I'm a sucker for all sorts of central nervous system stimulants (though so far I've used only those ones that are still legal). I've been a caffeine addict but my stomach can't bear any more those gargantuan amounts of coffee I consumed in the past, and I've also purchased from health stores guarana and ginkgo biloba extracts (those get quite expensive, though). Not to mention those oceans of cola drinks I've consumed during my lifetime.

I was also heavily into Red Bull for a while but as said, my large intestine problems two years ago forced me to reduce considerably those amounts of coffee, cola and energy drinks I had been taking in so far (these days I have those only occasionally), and turned me into a green tea drinker.

So this spring I've been a Red Energy addict, eating those drops like they were candy, but it seems I have to cut down even those now, since they are obviously not good for my heart, giving me a tingling sensation in my limbs, like a mild electric current running through them (never a good sign). Though I'm well aware of being in the risk group (because of my genes and my liking of all sorts of goods greasy, salty & sugary), I'm not quite ready for my first heart attack yet. Also causing similar uptightness, nervousness (and even mild paranoia) as I occasionally experienced during my heavy coffee-drinking days. It seems I need another new kick again (preferably a legal and over-the-counter one)!

Thursday, June 01, 2006

pHinnWeb Chart June 2006





Summer is here again, three long months to crawl through. Months filled with ugly bare flesh, screaming children with their exhausted parents and general braindeath filling the air. But have no fear, pHinnWeb Chart of June is here!