Filet of bitch
I don’t know why the Daily Mail floated this story to the top yesterday — it’s a couple of years old — but I hadn’t heard it and we were talking murderers. This is one of the most famous.
Hawley Crippen was a henpecked American doctor living in London with his horrible wife. She disappeared in 1910. When questioned, he told the police she had run off with a man and he was too embarrassed to admit it to their friends.
Then he vanished with his mistress.
So Scotland Yard dug up his cellar and found…a big, amorphous mass of rotting belly skin and a hair curler wrapped in his pajama top.
At trial, the pathologist swore the skin belonged to his wife because it had a recognizable scar. He was hanged.
The case is famous for two things: it was Bernard Spilsbury‘s first major court appearance (if forensic pathologists had rock stars, he’d be the first and biggest). And it was the first case to involve the telegraph wireless, as Crippen was breathlessly followed across the Atlantic by the paper-reading public rather like an Edwardian white Bronco.
Welp, somebody recently dug out the microscope slide of the supposed scar and had some DNA testing done. Not only is the skin not that of Mrs Crippen, it’s not even a woman (the things they can tell from DNA these days).
If you’re interested, you can watch an hour-long PBS program about it online.
I’m not persuaded by the toxicologist’s explanation, but I truly don’t know what to think about the new evidence. One thing we certainly agree on, though — I’ve always thought it exceedingly strange that a man would successfully dispose of all the bones, organs and limbs of his victim and then give up and bury a big, nasty slab of belly skin wrapped in his own PJ’s under the floor next to the kitchen.
January 18, 2011 — 10:11 pm
Comments: 28
Gumby and Clokey
How did I miss this? Art Clokey died a year ago.
Yeah, you know — the man who gave us Gumby and Pokey. Among other psychedelic horrors.
After undergraduate work in geology and a stint in WWII, Clokey studied film under surreal filmmaker and master of the montage Slavko Vorkapich.
Cokey’s USC graduate project was a short clay animation called Gumbasia — a play on Fantasia. Watch it; it’s worth three minutes of your time.
The president of the Motion Pictures Producers Association saw Gumbasia and funded Clokey’s next project, which turned out to be Gumby.
Oh, and lest we forget, Art and his wife Gloria created the doll-based animations Davey and Goliath (admit it, the words, “oh, Davey” just went through your head in Goliath’s goofy-ass voice). Yeah. That’s weird, because Clokey was a Buddhist or some shit, and D&G was a product of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
I read that Davey appeared in a late Gumby cartoon acting like a dick, but I can’t find a copy of it online.
Gumby’s wonk-head was inspired by this picture of Clokey’s dad, who died in a car accident when Art was nine. As tributes go, that’s a weirdy.
I’m fascinated by Clokey’s work in particular and clay animation in general (the term “claymation” was trademarked by Will Vinton in 1978), mostly because it skeeves the hell out of me. In 1975, I sat through the Fantastic Animation Festival, like, seven times, mostly to see the short Closed Mondays over and over.
I tried my hand at stop-motion animation in my teens, but all I had available was a video camera. That’s no good at all — you get a little jump and snow whenever the heads start and stop, which is every frame. I soon gave up, so you’re spared that horror.
Anyhow, RIP Art Clokey. Here are some links:
The intro to Gumby Dharma, a documentary about Art Clokey. Mandala, another Clokey film for adults (really, really stoned ones). Clokey’s animated credits for Doctor Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965). A print interview of Art and Gloria from Omni. Part one of a six-part interview with Clokey. And finally, Marv Newland’s famous 1967 student animation Bambi Meets Godzilla — just because.
January 14, 2011 — 9:37 pm
Comments: 30
I’ll teach you people to talk about food on my blog
Somehow, in the run up to the holidays, I missed this heartwarming story: they have (more or less) positively identified the head of French king Henri IV. It’s been banging around in private collections for a years without proper identification. They couldn’t get a clean DNA sample, so they identified him from marks and scars.
Henri was a good and popular king who was stabbed to death by a nutter in 1610. He was decapitated in the Revolution almost 200 years later. Nothing personal; the mob desecrated all the dead royalty they could get their hands on. A sort of posthumous guillotinage.
Interesting to me, when I was Googling around about the story, the amount of outrage commenters expressed that anyone would keep a body part as a knick-knack. Now, there’s an area where Western attitudes have changed mightily in a hundred years or two.
In the early 19th C, they had to box up the royalty at Westminster Abbey because people were snapping bits off the monarchs for souvenirs (yep, some of their majesties had been out on display before then). The churches around here are full of dessicated bits of jerky certified to be the hearts of knights and other benefactors. Don’t get me started on the toe bones of saints.
People aren’t keen on taxidermy any more, either. The shabby antiques markets we used to haunt up in London were full of beautifully-worked Victorian silver-mounted deer hooves and rhino pizzles.
Well, me neither. I grew up in a house full of taxidermy and medical curiosities, though, so I can’t work up any outrage. Disgust born of familiarity, but not much outrage.
Oh, except for the kittens.
Welcome back to work, everyone!
January 3, 2011 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 21
Sweet dreams!
I find the best stuff searching for images. I was looking for a parchment texture to use as a background, and I discovered that the Museo de las Mumias has a slick new website. And, apparently, a slick new museo to go with.
You know these guys, right? If you’ve watched Believe it Or Not or owned a book about repulsive weirdnesses (and who does not?) you’ll have heard of the mummies of Guanajuato. Little silvermining town in Central Mexico.
Between 1865 and 1958, Guanajuato authorities dug up anyone whose family quit paying rent on a crypt and stored the bodies in a warehouse. Some of them were remarkably well preserved, which was put down to dry air circulating around the tombs (some reports say minerals in the soil, others are emphatic that the bodies were from above-ground tombs).
People, morbid shitbags that they are, came from all over to slip a few pesos under the table and take a tour. They eventually shrugged and officially made 111 of them into a museum.
Early pictures of the collection are skeevy as hell. Many of the mummies were just tied to the walls with twine. People could could feel free to poke fingers through or break bits off. Which — being shitbags — they often did.
Look like it’s all climate controlled glass cases and track lighting now. Though it’s still skeevy as hell.
More about the Museo here, here and here.
Or just skeeve yourself out and look at the pictures.
Good weekend!
November 12, 2010 — 10:49 pm
Comments: 11
Nice puss
This handsome feller is from the inside of the church of St Peter and St Paul, the Norman church next to Peasmarsh Place.
The village of Peasmarsh is a mile from the church. Legend blames the Black Death. Originally, homes were built all around the church, as usual. But when the Plague came, they burned the houses to the ground and rebuilt a mile off. The rector had three symbols carved into the church to keep death away: a stag to ward off rats from the drains, a unicorn to keep plague from the door, and a bird to keep plague from coming in the roof.
Or so they say.
This guy, however, is a leopard — one of two on either side of the arch leading to the altar. It was his job to protect from leprosy. There was a lot of it about.
Charming place.
I love exploring village churches. They are traditionally kept unlocked, and they’re chock full of Norman bits and weird pagan-y iconography.
Christianity came to Britain bass-ackwards — the early evangelists were told not to disparage pagan tradition, but to quietly absorb it. By, for example, building churches near sacred trees and groves.
The result is kind of Jesus meets Harry Potter. I honestly don’t know how else to describe it.
We recently watched a very interesting BBC program called Churches: How To Read Them on the history of British church imagery. Presented by a man with a seriously annoying lisp.
BBC loves doing that.
October 28, 2010 — 11:11 pm
Comments: 8
Long walk, meet short pier
Somebody torched Hastings Pier last night.
Bastards.
It was a great spindly thing with a ballroom at the end, like a Victorian lady hiking her skirts and wading out to sea. Designed by Eugenius Birch (who also designed Eastbourne Pier and West Pier in Brighton — which was itself torched a few years ago), it opened in 1872 on Britain’s first bank holiday.
Its fortunes — like those of all Britain’s pleasure piers — were up and down through the 20th C and into the 21st. In the Sixties and Seventies, Hastings Pier was a rock and roll venue, hosting concerts by The Rolling Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd.
They’ve already made arrests. I’m guessing it’s insurance money or something, but we may never get to the bottom of it.
There is no part of England that is farther than a hundred miles from the sea. When I was told this, I sat down with a map and a piece of string and worked it out. It’s true. The seaside holiday is deep down in the marrowbone of the Briton.
From the very beginning of the Nineteenth C — and really hotting up once railroads made travel easy — Brits built pleasure piers like this. Dozens of them. So they could visit the ocean even when the tide was out, without getting their pink satin slippers wet.
They’re like…long, thin state fairs stuck into the sea (the one at Southend-on-sea is almost a mile and a half long!). They had concerts and shows and shops and food running down the middle, railings on either side to look out over the water and at night they’re lit up like Rock City.
I love these things. I’m sure they make perfect sense to Brits.
October 5, 2010 — 7:03 pm
Comments: 17
Course correction
Some of y’all may remember how I was traumatized in 2006 when I was bullied into voting for Lincoln Fucking Chafee for Senate — after the party utterly shat upon and just squeaked a win over his conservative rival in the primaries. I HAD to vote for him because it was the most important election ever and the Northeast simply won’t support a conservative and what are you, some kinda whiny baby?
Oh, and puuuuuuurity tessssssst!
You know what happened: Chafee lost to a genuine Democrat, quit the party in a cloud of sulfur, and all the fingers on my voting hand turned black, shriveled up and fell off.
I swore my remaining hand would never pull the lever for a politician I hate and no amount of, “be reasonable, Wingnut” would change my mind. (John McCain doesn’t count — I voted for Sarah Palin and he happened to be on the ticket).
Others may come to other conclusions, and I understand their reasoning. I sure as shit don’t want any part of the red-on-red smashmouth slap-fest rolling around the right-o-sphere today.
But for me, I’ve decided that every election can’t be the most important win ever and moving the party to the right is more important than winning. More important even than a majority, with all the controls and committee chairmanships and other legislative goodies that go with.
But I still felt pretty uneasy about that conclusion until I read this excellent piece by Ben Domenech:
Conservatives should not tolerate the likes of Mike Castle because of the simple fact that a 51 member Senate with Mike Castle is a Senate where Mike Castle is the most important vote in the room. As Specter and others before him, that Senator will set the terms of policy debates, determining in advance what can succeed and fail. Those who advance the argument that a majority with Castle is better than being in the minority tend to place priorities on Senate committee chairmanships and staff ratios and lobbyist cash… a list which pales in comparison to the power they would wield as the broker for both sides.
Do read the whole thing.
September 15, 2010 — 6:05 pm
Comments: 40
Yow!
I was searching Google Images for a picture of a skull, and I found this. It’s a National
Geographic article from a year ago, so I’m late.
They are excavating on the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo, where plague victims were quarantined in the 15th Century (and so many, many of them buried). The same tombs were constantly opened to add fresh burials back in the day, and if they came upon a stiff whose shroud had tears around the mouth, that person was deemed a vampire.
Natural processes of decomposition actually account for the damage, but Medieval folks thought shroud-chewing vampires spread plague. Hence the brick in the mouth.
There’s a trick the Hammer films missed.
Reminds me of Mercy Brown, the last vampire in North America. She was a nice girl from Exeter, Rhode Island, who died of TB. Her mother and older sister had gone before her with the same disease and her brother Edwin had struggled with it for years.
When Edwin took a turn for the worse, his father — George Brown, a farmer — panicked. He’d lost his wife, both daughters and now his son was slipping away.
He had the lot of them dug up. And Mercy looked a leeeetle too fresh to those assembled. So they cut out her heart, burned it to ash on a nearby rock, reburied her and later fed the ashes to Edwin. Um, who died.
I visited her grave. And what I presume to be the burnin’ rock. It was just a plain stone in a pretty, modest country cemetery. Though there were the inevitable trinkets and offerings left around the site.
The drama around the exhumation of Mercy Brown caused quite a stir when it happened, as it all took place in 1892. A little late for that sort of thing, isn’t it?
April 22, 2010 — 10:08 pm
Comments: 30
A great sticky roiling tsunami of bland
Have y’all ever heard of the Great Molasses Disaster of 1919? On January 15, 1919 in Boston, Massachusetts a two-and-a-half million gallon tank of of crude molasses fifty feet above street level went bust, sending a 15-foot wall of goo down Commercial Street at 35 miles an hour. It utterly fucking flattened everything it passed over. Twenty-one dead, 150 wounded.
It’s true. It’s famous in Boston engineering circles. They’ve never really worked out what went wrong. (I’ll link to the story on this lady’s blog. She seems like a nice lady).
It came to mind because I’ve been browsing the Coffee Party USA‘s website tonight, and paddling around in their forums.
The Coffee Party — as I’m sure you know but I have to tell posterity — is the Obamanauts’ answer to the Tea Party movement. They’re trying to recapture the vague but thrilling sense of promise they got from the One’s candidacy, by letting loose a tsunami of meaningless rhetorical butterscotch. From their About Us page:
No lobbyists here. No pundits. And no hyper-partisan strategists calling the shots in this movement. We are a spontaneous and collective expression of our desire to forge a culture of civic engagement that is solution-oriented, not blame-oriented.
[…]
We want a society in which democracy is treated as sacrosanct and ordinary citizens participate out of a sense of civic duty, civic pride, and a desire to contribute to society. The Coffee Party is a call to action. Our Founding Fathers and Mothers gave us an enduring gift — Democracy — and we must use it to meet the challenges that we face as a nation.
They hope to revive Obama’s campaign promise of relentless niceness and post-partisan happy-clappy nothingness, and it’s failing beautifully. Hopenchange is like The Blair Witch Project — a brilliant gimmick, but only works once.
But it’s high-larious to watch them try (especially the rank-and-file lefties in the forums, who aren’t very good at the new vanilla-speak). It isn’t easy to talk about substantial issues without ever saying anything substantial, revealing a political bias, proposing a solution, getting passionate or sending out any negative vibes, man. In fact, it isn’t possible.
Go — watch them try!
March 5, 2010 — 10:54 pm
Comments: 28
Writ in sand
That there is an image by a man named Benjamin Zobel (1762-1831), made entirely out of sand. To create this one, he dribbled sand from little paper funnels onto a sticky surface, which is why it survives. Most sand paintings — duh — didn’t survive the night.
In the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries, European and British royalty employed artists as table deckers — before important feasts, these guys would be hired to make huge images out of sand and sugar and marble dust and whatever on top of the banqueting tables. Dishes of snacky foods would be laid on top. At the end of the night, it would all be swept away. Landscapes, religious pictures, portraits, hunting scenes, still lifes (yes, dammit, that is correct) — whatever was fashionable in painting was fashionable in sandpainting.
Which sounds at first like ghastly aristocratic extravagance, but I’m guessing these artists were paid considerably more than, say, the ones who make chalk pictures on pavement. Same difference.
I have a warm spot for ephemera. Making ephemera for a living teaches humility — not something you get a lot of in the art world. Nearly all the art I’ve made for money was intended to be used once, or a few times maybe, and then fade away. For most of it, that’s just as well.
Anyhow, table deckers and sandpainting — that’s what to Google if you want to know more.
February 16, 2010 — 7:21 pm
Comments: 10