submitted without further comment

sometimes I post to technoknob when I run out of post-it notes

I'll just leave this here.



I'm given to understand it might have the old MTV promo with the lounge guy spoofing on Onyx's "Slam" with a song about ham. Ham sounds delightful this evening. Anyway, I'll be back later tonight to actually watch this and find out if the promo is included, because I loved it.
 

Jeanette Jacobs and The Cake

The Cake





I had to find out why Jeanette was just standing there, and this article explains it:

While Barbara and Eleanor skated, dipped and weaved to the rhythm, Jeanette stood stock still to their left, looking detached and aloof, holding her microphone down by her waist. When she did finally raise it to her mouth, she purposefully lip-synched the words rather than sing them.

Everyone assumed it was just part of their shtick. "Yeah, that was her gimmick," agrees Rodney Bingenheimer. Barbara recalls Greene and Stone also saying, "Yeah, it's different. Keep it!"

But Chelsea thinks there was another reason. "Everybody said, 'Why does she just stand there?' Most of the time Greene and Stone would have her mic turned off because she couldn't sing R&B. She felt left out. I didn't notice that was happening because I was overpowered by Charlie Greene."

Jeanette Jacobs, member of The Cake, close friend and lover of Jimi Hendrix, and wife of Chris Wood of Traffic has all but disappeared from rock history. Finding anything on her online that isn't incidental information from when she dated Hendrix or was married to Wood is almost impossible.




She had epilepsy -- one article online speculates that her "out of it" look in the performance is a result of her epilepsy medications -- and she died of a seizure at a young age. The date of death is listed 1980, 1981, and 1982 in various articles across the web, but this site about Chris Wood says she passed on January 1, 1982. Wood passed away in 1983.

That is a great article about The Cake at the first article linked, by the way. Highly recommended, although it is hard to read because the formatting screws up quotation marks in my browser, though.

Tura Satana at the Spiderpool

Pictures NSFW. A more detailed version is here at my other blog, though most of the pictures of Tura Satana are here.

This is such a long story, but I'll try to tell the short version: John McDermott, writer and director of silent films, cobbled together a crazy house in the 1920s. It was made of underground tunnels, tile samples and pilfered film sets, films such as "Song of Love," "Phantom of the Opera" and "Thief of Baghdad". The house held a lot of sexy Hollywood parties in the 1920s, not just because of its odd nature and slightly out of the way location -- way up in the hills of Hollywood -- but also because of the sexy sexy outdoor pool known now as the Spiderpool. Lots of gorgeous columns, a set or 2 of arches, a large round temple/hut, cement scallops, beautiful tile surrounded what must have been a featured area: A large tile spider (with a little wasp on its side "caught" in the web) which acted as a waterfall to the pool. No one knows where the spider tile came from, but it has been speculated it was a set piece for "The Spider and the Rose" which McDermott directed. (The plot of movie here.)

McDermott didn't make it after talkies came in. He died, some say from suicide, in the house in 1946. It was occupied by a friend of his until fire burned some of it in 1947, at which point McDermott's nephew inherited the estate. He never lived there but others did, mainly as caretakers. In 1950, almost as soon as McDermott died, the Spiderpool began to be used for nude photography. Harold Lloyd -- who probably knew of the McDermott estate back when it was a Hollywood party place in the 1920s -- is known to have taken the iconic photo of Tura at the Spiderpool below as well as other 3D cheesecake photos. I'm not sure if he took the other pictures I have below, but I assume he did and these are all from the same photo shoot.

In 1958, the house was bought and vandals who had been frequenting the place chased away, but the city building services essentially condemned the place and, as far as anyone knew, the entire house was torn town. The lots around it were divided in such a way that you cannot get to the McDermott estate without trespassing. The place was considered lost.

I've been reading about the Spiderpool for years, first on Usenet on alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.vintage, then from silent movie bloggers and colleagues. Several years ago, people who collect vintage nudes started to ask about the location they eventually called the Spiderpool. The columns, edges, and pool made the place easily recognizable even if you couldn't see the spider waterfall in the photos. These collectors pieced together the rough location from geographic clues in these old nudie pictures, and someone in 2004 found the location; pictures and notes from finding it here. While they found the pool, they couldn't find the house. In 2008, someone else found it and discovered some of the house is still standing.

More: Wiki and history here, archive.org capture of the old Spiderpool blog (defunct since 2006) here, and discussion of the original finding here.

And now, the pictures:

















 

Comments turned off as of 7/22/10 due to spammers. 2/26/13: The photos went missing when I changed hosting accounts. They have been restored, though are the victims of Blogger's new "improved" photo hosting issues.

Kwan Yin

This is an 11th or 12th century Chinese statue of Kwan-Yin, the Bodhisattva of the water and the moon, in the Kansas City Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Kwan-Yin is in a room that is my favorite place in the world, thus far at least. The entire room is filled with Asian artifacts, but the very far end of the room where Kwan-Yin sits is special. There is a large temple gateway that leads to a cold, quiet room where Kwan-Yin sits at the far end, in the center, with smaller statues to either side. (Those other statues seem to be gone in this photo; as the room was being renovated a few months ago, it has perhaps been re-lit and reorganized since I was last there.)

Behind Kwan-Yin is a painted mural wall from another temple, the mural known as Paradise of Tejraprabha Buddha (or Tejaprabha Buddha) and dates about 1279-1368. A similar mural is at the University of Pennsylvania. You can see the wall was cut into large chunks and reassembled later. It's so dark when you visit this part of the museum that you can't see the wall very well, which is what struck me about this photo. I hope this means the restoration is complete and the gallery is now open again.

However, I do have an old postcard, which always hangs on my wall because of my love of Kwan-Yin and of this room, and I scanned the postcard so you could see the detail in the painting:


But even if you're there in person, you can't see this detail well.

It's so beautiful, but it's also so sad, because I believe the wall and statue(s) were taken through some of the fabulously egocentric Western appropriation techniques that archaeology is so famous for.

Update 06/11/10 -- Comments turned off because of spammers. Sheesh.

everybody's doin' it

I can't really be online while I'm working, so I miss out on all the cool stuff. Like today when I missed Twitter exploding about the John Mayer interview. For the first several questions I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. Finally, I decided he was a moron. You'd think a big name songwriter could express himself more clearly, and his choice of words was beyond unfortunate. My husband said Mayer sounded like an megalomaniacal introvert, and I agree, but the more I read of the interview, the more Mayer sounded like an immature train wreck. He hit all the high notes: Racism, sexism, homophobia. It's a bigotry buffet. (That's a phrase I used tonight on the LA Times article linked below. No idea if my reply will even get approved, though.)

All that said, Playboy interviewer Rob Tannenbaum wins at life for his response to this exchange:

PLAYBOY: Do you do something different in bed than other guys?

MAYER: It’s all about geometry. I’m sort of a scientist; it’s about being obtuse with an angle. It’s sort of this weird up-and-over thing. You gotta think “up and over.”

PLAYBOY: Maybe that’s easier at your height.

I love you, Mr. Tannenbaum, and would post your picture here if one was available. No, a picture of Mayer won't do. Instead, here's an interview of the interviewer talking about the interview. Seriously.

vintage mug shots

May Russell, mug shot from Sydney, Australia, 1922.



Tons more of these fabulous mug shots and discussion about them can be found at Tracery here and SCAN Journal of Media Arts Culture here. These links are highly recommended, as is the Australian forensic photography website From The Loft.