Weirdo oddness found by accident (weird album cover)

I am constantly amazed and reminded of the seemingly Eternal and infinite amount of recorded media throughout the ages. I recall a couple years ago, not that long, when I was going through a seller's list of available items to add to an order for my wife, and I was astounded and the sheer amount of music having been released out there in physical format which I have never even heard of, nor had any idea that it existed. This of course made me realize that there is an almost infimite amount of "stuff" available ouot there, although in today's age of "straming is the future" and the nostalgia for everything, pricing on what was once worthless items has multipled exponentially.


In today's little improvised post, I stumbled across this by accident, and thought it would be a good place to start this voyage of madness, as we look into some of the weirder and unknown stuff having been put forth into this world throughout the ages... And alas, I can offer no additional information on this...

anyone remember Kimberly Patton? I thought so...

Kimberly Patton was an actress once. She also went under the stage name of Kim McKamy. She has appeared in low-budget horro films in the mid-late 80s such as Evil Laugh, Creepozoids, and Dreamaniac. In the 90s she appeared on such TV shows as The X Files and Millelium, for example. However most will remember her as an adult film performer under the name of Ashlyn Gere, where she appeared in hundreds of productions starting from 1990 until about 2002-2003. After that she has literally dropped off the face of the earth, and has lived a rather quiet life away from the internet and social media. In 2003 she popped up in a small role in the remake of "Willard", the man who has a certain connection with rats. Anyway, I just wanted to remember her here on this blog at this time because like so many other things out there which happened before the internet, these things existed and there is some merit and value even though there is no online trail.

great album covers: Lebenserinnerungen Eines Lepidopterologen (Christoph Heeman & Andreas martin)

Album: Lebenserinnerungen Eines Lepidopterologen                                    
Artists: Andreas Martin and Christoph Heemann
Album art: Christoph Heeman

A long time ago I used to say that Christoph Heemann was "god" - what I was expressing is that everything he touched in terms of music was simply incredible, and he could do no wrong. Of course musical tastes can change, but my respect and admiration for Heemann's work continues. While at times his material may proove to be a bit on the tediouos side, it more often than not remains quite interesting to say the least. Mr Heemann isn't just a great music Producer but also does very wonderful artwork as well, and many of his visual arrangements for album covers are exceptionally evocative, and in attempting to try to pick just one seems this side of impossible, so I decided to focus on the collaboration (one of many) he did with his guitarist brother Andreas Martin. While rather minimal in concept, this album cover is also quite effective in its's own right and hence why I decided to include it here as a great album cover. So this means, of course, that there will probably be more featured from this visual artist!

STEINZEIT (1992) a quick thought-review

For a while I always "labelled" the STEINZEIT album as F.M. Einheit's second solo album. It was not until a subsequent album from "Stein" (the band) that I realized that "Stein" here was in fact a band, and not in relation to F.M.'s debut solo album "Stein" (confused yet?). I decided to review this little release before the first F.M. solo album "Stein" because this is "Stein" (the band) 's debut album. Confused yet?

I first heard this record upon it's release (or maybe around 1993-1994) and I was highly impressed by the general non-musical or rather non-industrial/musical approach to the compositions. Yes there are a couple of "songs", and in most case, you can easily make out a "structure", but these are by no means easy radio-friendly jingles that your 19 year old "auntie" co-worker could get behind. If anything, Steinzeit sounds partially like a sound/noise exorcism, partially like a nightmare, and most deffinately like some kind of art performance and soundtrack album.

It came at a time when I was veering away (slowly) from the typical industrial of the time (Nine Inch Nails' "The Downward Spiral" was pretty much the final straw) and instead I found more interest in both the techno and the noise-drone-experimental "scènes". I did keep an eye out for Einstuerzende Neubauten material because for me they weren't stereotypical industrial, but much more experimental in their... well their experiments!

Perhaps the most representative of the entire album would be the introductory piece "Für Elfriede" which starts off with a bang and keeps you clinging on until the second movement "Claws", which borrows almost completely from an old Hammer Films soundtrack of a Christopher Lee Dracula film. It was in fact by sheer accident years later that I listened to a Hammers Films soundtrack album and discovered that "CLaws" was almost a complete reproduction of one of the pièces off the soundtrack.

Most of the pièces from the album mix percussive industrial sensibilities with a horror film atmosphere, something which actually works at a great effect, but may proove slightly old school and cliche in today's world of over-sampling for the same of not having the imagination of... ah, no, I won't ramble on about the state of modern music for the moment.

Anomally number one comes in the form of a Nina Simone cover song of a Kurt Weil piece called "Mr Smith", which is a very simple and stripped-down version which obviously does not fit in with the general thematic of what the rest of the album was (so far), but also doesn't feel out of place either. The second anomally comes later during the long final piece "Anna Fierling Gennant Courage" in the segment which I think may be "Wenn Solche Schneewind Wehen", but I can not confirm this as all the segments are glued together as one piece. This one feels much like "Mr Smith" although it is a shorter rendition lasting about a minute or so before we are brought back into the world of clanging stones and rattling metallic objects...

In general, "Steinzeit" may be judged as a dated album, something which when viewed Under the scrutiny of the modern age may not be up to the standards of the cleaner-than-thou digital recordings of today, and even the compositions may sound primitive compared to the works of laptop musicians. But "Steinzeit" is a unique album which is worthwhile in its uniqueness and should be taken out once in a while to be reminded that there was a time, not that long ago, when artists were still left to their own devices without too much studio meddling, and could come up with something completelly off the beaten path. Needless to say I highly recommend it!

They don't make videogames for males, right? (heavy sarcastica)

I have had many "feminist" discussions, mainly with my wife, about how even in 2019, after the post modern feminism movement has been soiled and tampered with by the media manipulation of the late 90s / early Y2K, and the subsequent seemingly "all-out" new-NEW (new neo? Neo new?) feminist movement of the 2010+ era (let's not get into that one just yet), there is still rather questionnable imagery being pushed forward in our media and images which seem to objectify women at every turn, and of course continuing the fakeness and low-brow cliches of what is considered "sexy" by the standards being imposed upon us by the culture industry (for décades upon décades). It is quite surprising that no one has ever questioned why so many seem to beleive that "cheapness" is sexy, that vulgary is beauty, etc., and that these images were in fact carefully manufactured in order to ensure maximum "exposure" (oh that's a doubled-pun) and influence the minds of those being exposed to it.

There is no need to objectify and sexualize everything involving what is considered Entertainment for the masses. However, look at the principal demographic that some of these media devices actually is, and you will understand why they keep on manufacturing these images and whatnot. It is indeed a vicious cycle and it has been going on for far too long, and it seems that no amount of public awareness or sensitivity campagning will change things anytime soon. And so I humbly ask you all simply to always remember that these images here are in fact like propaganga and are designed not just to capture your eye but also to manipulate you into thinking that this is what is considered "sexy". Just keep that in mind everytime you see an image being thrown at you.

Gilbert Hernandez' "Garden Of The Flesh" (a short thought & review)

OK so first off, I had already mentionned this one in a few earlier posts, and even made a detailed review on my other blog site (the one I can't really talk about!) so this here "review" (of sorts) won't bring anything new that hasn't already been talked about before, but I felt I needed to nail the point firmly across to make sure I have correctly, adequately, and extensively manifested my disapointment in the one-shot stand-alone "Garden Of The Flesh" by Gilbert "Beto" Hernandez, released by Fantagraphic Books.

First off, the basics. This is Beto's re-interpretation of some key stories/moments in the Old Testament of the catholic Bible, mainly Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel, and then Noah. The basic premises of the stories remain tru to the stories as we recall them, but he intermixes sex in the stories. As opposed to many cartoon artists who do graphic depictions of sexual acts in comic books, Beto has made a more "loving" approach to the carnal activities, in the sense that the people engaging in these acts love each other, enjoy each others' company, and aren't taking advantage of each other... except for one seen involving the devil in the garden of Eden, but even then it does come off as forceful or unwanted on the part of Eve's receptive ends...


"Garden of the Flesh" was something I had been waiting for well over two décades, after Beto's first and only forray in explicit sexual représentations in comics in the form of the mid-90s "Birdland" miniseries (and later slapped with a fourth "epilogue" issue and then expanded in the complete graphic novel version). Now I am sure that it is somewhat well documented that "Birdland" has remained my all-time favorite adults-only comic book, and it is what really opened my eyes to the Hernandez Brothers (Los Bros Hernandez) works, past and subsequent. There has been tons of comics before and after "Birdland" which all had their own ups and downs, but Nothing felt as compelling and engaging as "Birdland". I was slightly saddened that Beto had no aspirations of ever revisiting the adults-only form as, with "Birdland", he had "exorcised the demons" that needed to be expelled. He had expressed what he felt was needed and decided to move along forward.

Now "Garden of Flesh", as you can imagine, had some serious expectations attached to it, on my part at least (even though I am always trying to curb and restrain expectations at all costs, for these create disapointments). I thought that after well over 20 years away from the "format", Beto would have enjoyed re-licking his chops and getting back in the nitty and gritty of the adults-only format, but... well I was severly dissapointed. I knew there was no way and nothing could ever match what "Birdland" had accomplished back in the 90s, for I myself was a different person and had different sensibilities to the world at the time. It's been almost a half life since "Birdland" and so I knew that "Garden" simply could not fill the shoes of it's predecessor.


But what I ended up with was... well I can only say that I felt cheated, and that Beto was lazy and took quick shortcuts to do this little book. Since the late 90s or early Y2K or so, Beto's art has taken a less polished, more minimalist turn for the most part, and only rarely were we trated to the lush-ier and more "full" art he had explored in his earlier works such as "Love And Rockets" and the "Palomar" story arcs. It seemed as time progressed, Beto was spending less time on his drawing, possibly due to needing to release more quantity under stricter deadlines, and we got "more" Beto out there which just looked increasingly more like there was a "ghost drawer/artist" trying to imitate the Beto style.

And this is what "Garden" ultimately feels like: rushed, stripped down, and lazy. I feel as though Beto was offered a good amount of money from Fantagraphics to do a dirty sleezy comic book again, and he rushed through the panels as fast as possible in order to get his paycheque. Things feel incredibly two-dimentional artistic wise and even less in terms of characters, and the result is almost forgettable, or not an insult to a customer like myself. In "Birdland", you got a sense of depth and gravity, almost three-dimentional in terms of how he would showcase the acts his characters were engaged in, whereas "Garden" looks like a hastely done storyboard what was colorized but never refined.


And so I was very disapointed. I can see how fans of modern Beto work who "grew up" with his more minimalist work may find this book rather "revelatory", but it pales in comparison with his own earlier style. Plus let us not forget that in 2016-2017, most of the younger people following the comics trend have been exposed to adults-only sites on the internet and so Nothing in "Garden" will seem new or shocking in any way. In fact, some reviewers have mentioned the fact that anyone can get these types of kicks online at any time, so basically "Garden" feels more redundant than anything else. As for me well I tried to get as much data in before I ordered the book but maybe my enthusiasm prevented me from being able to foresee that it wasn't a work of carefully and lovingly crafted art. Being a fan of Beto and for the sheer fact that it is an adults-only offering, I would rate it a 3 stars out of 5, but that is being very generous.

Yep, another Hollywood crush: Kelly Hu

Most people discovered her thanks to 90s star vehicle The Scorpion King which was mostly a The Rock serving vehicle made to help him establish his Hollywood career. I am sure there wasn't one dry seat in any theater when Kelly Hu appeared in that film, wearing very revealing outfits and looking absolutely stunning (that goes without saying). However she was already moderately active in the circuit, mainly in Samo Hung's TV series "Martial Art", as well as guest starring in numerous other american TV series and appearing in such films as "Strange Days", "The Doors", and "Craddle 2 The Grave", amongst others. She is not just an absolutely stunning woman but is a decent actor in her own right, landing a recuring role in the unfortunately cancelled "Warehouse 13" TV series, easily one of the best offerings for TV format ever produced. Anyway, I just wanted to stop by and give this lady a little spot on my blog here just for kicks' sake!