oration or the sound and vision

Thanks to a sharp eye perusing a 1984 edition of some teen Tiger Beat magazine, the response to an inquiring reader’s question about the rumoured role of the Great Emancipator to be portrayed by none other than David Bowie, we learn about an unperformed but still immense spectacle that was to be played at one of the Olympic venues of the Los Angeles games that summer.
Far outstripping those cross-over, special guest-star sitcom episodes that kept my rapt attention (like when Fred and Ethel Mertz appeared as Darinn Stevens’—the second Darrin—parents or when the Harlem Globe-Trotters were shipwrecked on Gilligan’s Island or the angry ghost of Valerie Bertinelli haunted the Love Boat), an experimental, day-long bit of musical theatre was being orchestrated, called CIVIL warS, it was to feature the musical stylings of Mister David Byrne with libretto that included Mister Bowie as Abraham Lincoln, delivering the Gettysburg Address in Japanese. Corporate sponsors were a little anxious, and with the boycott of the American games by the polarised Communist world, the project was shelved. Read more about this amazing opera that would have perhaps been too grand and overwhelming for this Universe at Dangerous Minds. The closing ceremonies did include a UFO landing to the fanfare of Thus Spake Zarathustra and a giant grey alien that saluted humanity’s peaceful coming together.

case study house

An extensive gallery of familiar, homey images—as opposed to official photographs or appearances in film—of Mid-Century Modern and Modernist architecture is coming online that will make these iconic and inspiring structures available to everyone. Though many of these places have deservedly been afforded landmark status and thankful the protection and preservation efforts that accompany it, many of these marvels, commissioned as private residences of course are not regularly open to the public—if ever. Discover many more scenes of America’s answer to the Bauhaus movement at Hyperallergic and the vast collections of University of Southern California’s school of architecture.

oubliette or down in the underground

An artist by the name of Biancoshock is converting disused manholes in Milan into tiny luxury apartments. In an installation called Borderlife, meant to draw attention to the plight of immigrants and the vanishing ordinary residents priced out of affordable housing in urban centres over gentrification, a functionally decorated suite of rooms is sunk down a series of rabbit holes. Be sure to visit the artist’s gallery found at the source-link up top.

set phasers to stunning

From the ever brilliant Nag on the Lake comes news that MAC cosmetics will be honouring the five decades that have passed since the debut of the Star Trek franchise with a line of beauty products inspired by the fashionable and strong female characters of the franchise, including LT Uhura, Counselor Troi, Seven of Nine and (perhaps less of a role-model) Vina, the Orion slave girl. Make me up, Scotty, indeed!  Riker is a little jealous, I think, but I can envision a men’s line on offer real soon.

the usual suspects or noble-lie

The German press has been nursing a real scoop, patiently, in the emergent scandal of the so called Panama Papers—an unbelievably huge and historic cache of incriminating documents that perjures several prominent figures of public-trust. The implication and betrayal of, for example, the government of Iceland, whom were elevated on a mandate of reform and anti-corruption, is tragic and disappointing but hardly surprising, along with the broader clientele of this holding-company that manages hundreds of thousands of shell-businesses and front organisations globally in attested tax-oases and money-laundering schemes. Nearly every country is participating in one way or another, but the conspicuous absence (at least so far) of the US and Atlantis strikes me as singularly odd. One might reasonably suspect that Plato’s Republic might have indeed kept itself pristine by not confusing self-interest for the Good.

It seems that America is, however, an unlikely candidate for propagating this noble-lie (politically expedient fable) on such a scale without itself being taken in—especially one with the locus in one of the former client-states, itself. I wonder if such a revelation weren’t allowed to incubate for so long in order to selectively discredit dissenting voices. America, despite its outward stance and unique policy of universal-collection (only copied by Eritrea, a practise condemned by the US State Department as a way for dictatorships to ensure funding and punishing immigrants by dint of where they were born), is a tax-haven itself and far from above-board. What do you think? It’s a bit like New Zealand on the globe often being obscured by a geopolitical legend or countries being greyed out due to lack of data. Multi-national corporations have no allegiance, obviously, but are also not completely untethered from their homelands. Those with political power rarely exceed their expectations and are deigned worthy for doing their jobs without too much destructive moon-lighting, but if we are so easily satisfied, I wonder if we deserve better—having dubiously made disloyalty into a virtue. In this environment, everyone is pressured to be an entrepreneur and to supplement one’s income in one way or another: going to unethical and opaque lengths is bad enough, if only skirting the law as it’s been handed down, but hiding one’s questionable and subversive investments, as this legal firm facilitated as well, seems even worse.

vector construction

The always stunning Colossal features a beautiful wire mesh project of artist Edoardo Tresoldi, which recreates the frame—as suggested by the archaeological evidence—of an early church once located at this site in Puglia.
Though the structure appears rather gossamer, it is quite substantial and hosts the different architectural elements that would have supported the original building. Though in our minds’ eye, the tragic loss of the historic heritage in places like Palmyra at the brutal hands of the Cosplay Caliphate is cemented already as exquisite ruins and Tresoldi’s architecture, though true to form, is more inspired and interpretive rather than memorial, perhaps his talent could be deployed to showcase some of the other scars of warfare that weren’t captured in the spotlight of mindless infamy. Be sure to visit the artist’s profile at the link up top to see some more of his signature installations.

cheese it, the mads are calling!

Although never wholly out of sight and out of mind with projects like Cinematic Titanic and live-shows in the years since Mystery Science Theater 3000 went out of syndication, there has never been a reunion event to get the all the Mads and their hapless experimental subjects back together again. As Mental Floss happily reports, they’ll be on stage late this summer but tickets are going on sale shortly. In case you are curious, the name of this blog is an homage to players of MST3K.