spot me up

Made in collaboration with Boston Dynamics, we learn courtesy of Laughing Squid, 1981 Mick Jagger and the rest of the Rolling Stones perform a Tik-Tok style duet with a trio of robot modules for a performance (previously) of their classic—the video produced as part of the fortieth anniversary celebration of the release of their Tattoo You album. What do you think? It’s fun and the tribute choreography is scarily brilliant but perhaps another example of normalisation and propaganda for the police state.

dia do saci

 Designated by an NGO calling themselves amigos of this trickster character of Brazilian folklore to coincide with Halloween as a way to counter American cultural hegemony, the holiday, even where backed with state-support, only enjoys limited recognition and celebration—despite familiarity and popularity of its mascot.

The monopod figure with an enchanted cap and always smoking a pipe, mostly active at night, can be dangerous and malicious—though most pranks are merely annoying—but will grant the wishes of those who trap him or free him, liable to caught in a bottle while disappearing and reappearing in the midst of a whirlwind. Reportedly Saci’s magic cap, according to those who’ve tried to steal it, has an indelibly foul smell and those who’ve handled it can never wash the stench away.  Saci can be propitiated with offerings of a libation of cachaça and a measure of tobacco for his pipe.

schweizer parlamentswahlen 1971

After passing in a national referendum earlier in the year (see also, see previously), women finally secured the right to vote and stand for office in federal elections in Switzerland, exercising their rights for the first time on this day a half a century ago. Lise Girardin (*1921 - †2010) of Geneva was nominated by her party (the Free, Freisinnig Democrats) to be the first female member of the Council of States, der Ständerat—the Upper House of the Swiss federal assembly.

nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

A prolific and popular salon painter in his own time—though figural portraits of classical subjects fell out of fashion until a revival in the 1980s, William-Adolphe Bourguereau of La Rochelle born this day in 1825 (†1905) counts as his most famous work in his 1879 La Naissance de Vénus.  This painting does not actually depict the birth of the goddess by her transported to Cyprus as a fully mature figure in a sea shell—first gained attention and notoriety after winning the 1850 grand prize in the Prix de Rome, submitting two entries for that year’s competition, triumphant with a rather pedestrian depiction of the rescue of Zenobia, half-drowned, by a group of shepherds. The more evocative alternate submission was the pictured Dante and his guide Virgil (where have you brought me?) in an encounter from Canto XXX of the Divine Comedy in the Circle of the Imposters (Falsifiers—perjurers, counterfeiters, etc.) with an alchemist called Capocchio forever condemned to be gnashed by a Florentine knight named Gianni Schicchi de’ Cavalcanti who forged the will of a wealthy merchant to leave a horse for him, whose punishment seems a little extreme. Aside from being immortalised in the epic and this painting, Giacomo Puccini produced an eponymous light-hearted opera in 1918.

8x8

the motion picture that pits steel weapons against steel nerves: Joan Crawford in Herman Cohen’s 1967 Berserk! plus a medley of other horror films 

phenaskistiscopic vinyl: animated record albums—see previously  

cop26: designer installs a sinking Monopoly style house on Putney Weir ahead of this crucial climate conference 

ghostly footsteps (with chains): in 1977, BBC’s foley artists (previously) released a best-selling record of spooky sound-effects  

cloaca maxima: Rome’s revered sewer-system—see also  

auchan daily mascarpone cheese: a decade of Russian music videos  

the high-handed enemy: director Denis Villeneuve storybooks the gom jabbar scene 

 kitchen witchery: a tarot deck to divine one’s dinner

the brain that wouldn’t die

First airing on this day in 1993 during the series’ fifth season, the lampoon of the Rex Carlton and Joseph Green 1962 collaboration from the crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000 helped elevate this film about a mad scientist who is working on methods of preserving dismembered bodily organs to allow for future viability who experiments on the his decapitated girlfriend whilst keeping a Frankenstein’s monster captive in a broom closet to the status of a cult classic. Because of an imperfect copyright notice, it entered into public domain upon theatrical release and was in 2018 the subject of one of the first fully machine produced movies. The episode was long-time writer Michael J. Nelson’s second appearance as host and features a segment with Mary Jo Pehl as Jan in the Pan, the actor to later replace Dr. Clayton Forrester in their secret underground lair, Deep 13.

season of the witch

Coincidentally on this day in 1390 the first tribunal within the jurisdiction of the court of Paris was held also saw across the centuries and continents the dissolution of the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692—a standing commission (charged to “hear and determine”) with a judge of assize first convened in May of the same year to adjudicate cases in the Salem Witch Trials in colonial Massachusetts, authorities displeased with their conduct and proceedings. During that later five month period, two hundred were accused and nineteen condemned to capital punishment, hanged by the neck until dead. The former, after fourteen months of deliberation and sentencing led to the execution of soothsayer Jeanne de Brigue, whom was allegedly able to summon the demon Haussibut and with his aid find lost objects and catch thieves—which sounds like more of a public service than a crime.

spirit halloween

Courtesy of Boing Boing, whilst the Horror GIF Necronomicon may not have an exhaustive selection of every spooky animation that was circulating during the nineties and naughties, there’s certainly an impressive amount to be found and the site (an original Neocities property) seems to be still undead and kicking.