All publicity is Vlad publicity

Fishing for compliments. #fatherofthenationbod

During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia this May, enjoy this honest and unbiased video in which ORDINARY CHINESE PEOPLE have DEFINITELY NOT BEEN COACHED OR COERCED into giving their opinions of Russia and particularly of its “handsome leader, like President Xi”: Vladimir Putin. Show solidarity to COMPLETELY UNPROBLEMATIC COMRADES WHO ARE IN FULL COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL LAWS AND TREATIES by eating bread, consuming dairy products, admiring Putin’s “big muscles” (not shown in these pictures), and repeatedly, SINCERELY expressing your desire to marry him. But REMEMBER to appreciate Putin’s big muscles only in a HETEROSEXUAL MANNER because he strictly forbids any reception upon his person of HOMOSEXUAL EYE BEAMS. Pity all countries which do not have handsome, shirtless, DEFINITELY HETEROSEXUAL leaders with big muscles. Presumably photos of Xi Jinping in his budgie smugglers are to follow shortly. You will ENJOY THEM and praise the MANLINESS of President Xi and announce SPONTANEOUSLY and VOLUNTARILY that you would like to marry him.

His Little Pony.

Hello Cat-headed Person from Suburbs of London

Over the past few days many bloggers and even newspapers have gushed that Hello Kitty is apparently a “girl” and not a cat, although for no adequately explained reason she has a cat head. Maybe I’m sheltered, but I don’t know any girls who love to bake and have cat heads. She’s officially and canonically got no mouth, so why or perhaps more cogently how is she so enthusiastic about baked goods anyway?

What none of them have done is behave like a real journalist and really look into Hello Kitty’s background. And while we’re on the subject, newspapers and so-called professional journalists, WTF? This blog here is explicitly dedicated to silly stuff, and I don’t get paid for doing it. Hello Kitty possibly not being a cat isn’t current affairs or headline news by any stretch of the most overcaffeinated imagination. Nor is the Great British Bake Off. Stop looking at Facebook and do some proper journalism. There’s an army of raving barbarians who hate everybody that isn’t them, better funded and organised than some official armies, squatting on large parts of the Middle East and almost within spitting distance of Turkey. I mean the country called Turkey, although they’d probably also spit on your turkey dinner. A new Cold War or even a mini WWIII is bubbling under in Eastern Europe with Russia vigorously stirring the pot. We’ve probably already reached the point where it’s too late to do anything about global environmental collapse, for fuck’s sake. Leave the Hello Kitty stuff to the non-professionals.

(Digression over.)

1

The character’s corporate Sanrio biography page mind-bendingly mentions that she has a pet cat called Charmmy Kitty. Given that Kitty’s parents are George and Mary Kitty, how is Charmmy Kitty (who looks exactly like Hello Kitty except with a cat body) not related to them? Is she some kind of throwback relative, cruelly debased and treated like a pet? Call the RSPCA and child protection services, I think they’ll both be required. There is some precedent for this in the warped relationship between Goofy and Pluto. Both are apparently canines, but the latter behaves like a domestic dog and is treated as a pet (i.e. as a kind of property) while Goofy autonomously wears clothes, attends work, drives cars, and so forth. How did this situation come about, and why do all the other characters refuse to discuss or even acknowledge the issue?

2

Furthermore, “Hello” is evidently the first name of Miss Kitty rather than “Hello Kitty” being a grammatically questionable greeting.

3

Sanrio informs us that Hello Kitty is from “the suburbs of London, England.” Candidates include a few posh places like Richmond or Kingston Upon Thames, which is probably what they were thinking of, but also such delightfully kawaii locales as Barking, Dagenham and Ealing. In my own personal Hello Kitty mythos, though, I’m going to imagine Hello living in the suburban concrete shit bucket and leading democratically appointed crap town of Croyden. She regularly shops at Lidl. “THE FIRST CAPITAL CONNECT SERVICE TO. LONDON VICTORIA. IS. CANCELLED. DUE TO… DELAYS CAUSED BY AN EARLIER DELAYED TRAIN. WE APOLOGISE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE CAUSED.” Hello waits over an hour for the next train, drinking shit coffee. Even though she doesn’t have a mouth.

Hello Croyden.

4

From the Sanrio site I also discovered that you can quite easily become the proud owner of an @hellokitty.com email address if you’re very, very sick. Terrify AROUSE dates when you reply to their flattering messages– they can’t wait to see all the stuffed animals and dolls on top of your bed either! Impress the potential employer when you apply for that dream job! Prove it’s quite normal for a grown man or woman to have their email end with @hellokitty.com! Oh, the possibilities.

Nazo, Emperor of the Universe

See the first post about Japanese kamishibai (paper theatre) in the 1930s and the previous post about WWII kamishibai for more information and commentary about the origins and context of these images.

A postwar ‘Golden Bat’ serial. Nazo, the Emperor of the Universe, is apparently an overweight heterochromial cat with a black bag over his head. Sort of like a cross between David Bowie, the Baader Meinhof gang, and Bagpuss. Actually this sounds fabulous, but who knew? The expression of Nazo’s captive says it all: OH REALLY?

‘Mystery Train’, late 1940s or early 1950s. Mystery Train? I’ll say. Why did somebody in a man-sized glove costume just get on? Quick, put your bag down so he doesn’t sit next to you.

Children, stupefied by cider

(Title refers to this post, BTW.)

Some inadvertent cross-cultural comedy thanks to Japan’s Tempura Kidz– seen previously in The Rite of Spring (Onions)– who are the terrifyingly talented group who started out as the child backing dancers for autotuned über-kawaii lunatic Kyary Pamyu Pamyu.

Yes, I am obsessed with J-pop. Thanks for asking. I’m so square that genuinely enjoying Japanese pop is what passes for a secret vice in my case.

Seriously, all joking and Japan-you-so-weird aside, the choreography by the surnameless Maiko for the group is great and the way the kids themselves snap through the moves is truly brilliant. You need to be really talented and work bloody hard to dance this well and still have it look like fun. Incidentally the dancer seen front and centre through most of the video below is P→★ (try pronouncing that, English speakers); he’s a boy, he definitely knows how to rock a wig and tutu, and let’s all hope he always stays that way. The girls are called (or at least go by the names of) Karin, NaNaHo, Yu-Ka and Ao.

This song is called Cider Cider and, as you could probably guess, it’s about how nice it is to have a wee drink of cider now and then. Which is true. Unfortunately cider to a British person like me is also probably best known as the illegal alcoholic drink of choice for adolescents about thirteen or fourteen years old, i.e. like the Tempura Kidz. Cider is also infamously favoured by Britain’s most abject alcoholics because super-strong, cheap ciders are easily available in large containers from supermarkets here. In Asia the beverage they call cider is an innocent soft drink that has nothing to do with sitting on the swings in the park and boozing until you’re suddenly, explosively sick on your own shoes. Nor does it conjure up to a Japanese person images of a man with hollow eyes and something you’d rather not identify stuck in his beard asking you if you’ve got 50 pence towards his so-called “bus fare”. If you’ve got as much time on your hands as some Wikipedians evidently have, you can read an extensive explanation of international differences between the various drinks that are labelled as cider.

So while you watch, please remember that the children in this video may be covered in fluorescent paint and they may be wearing the disembowelled remnants of stuffed toys like they’re in a depraved mashup of Monsters Inc and Mad Max 2, but they are not totally crunk.

Note also the total abandonment of any pretence that it matters what their voices sound like, or indeed whether they appear on the recording at all. It could be a totally synthetic vocal, like Hatsune Miku. Or a 45 year old man. Who knows?

“Barnaby’s Moon trip– 5p”

From Barnaby: Time for bed stories, a 1974 children’s book that belonged to me when I was an actual, genuine child. As opposed to the many stupid books I’ve bought since, as an adult. It’s still in my library, currently shelved between a book containing numerous photographs of Viking artefacts and a scientific textbook on human colour perception and cognition. QED.

Talking of colours, what a perfectly 70s palette the book’s cover has. And how hilariously gauche is the slogan “A Dean’s happy times book”.  “Dean’s happy times” sounds like some kind of Withnail & I euphemism, but Dean is the publishing company, not some fellow who just happened to be having a suspiciously happy time making books for children in the 1970s.

Star Wars fans should also have a good look at Barnaby. You think Carrie Fisher pioneered the infamous Princess Leia do? Wrong. Barnaby was rocking the Danish pastry earmuffs in 1974. George Lucas is such a hack.

Hello sailor

Illustrations from the Jno. J Mitchell Publishing Company’s The Sartorial Art Journal, intended to assist tailors in their consultations with clients about bespoke menswear. I’m assuming they weren’t intended to be but these look rather homoerotic to me, in their own splendidly buttoned-up fin de siécle kind of way. Check out this little cruise:

July 1900.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Adolf?

Bashful, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, and the worst little fella of them all, Nazi.

Two of Adolf Hitler’s favourite movies were Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and King Kong. He chattered nerdily and constantly about King Kong for days after it was screened for him at the Chancellery. He also enjoyed whistling the Disney tune Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Hitler was a bit obsessed with wolves, and was undoubtedly very well aware that whistling this tune was some creepy shit. “Adolf” derives from “Athal” (noble) and “Wolfa” (wolf). One of his early aliases was “Mr Wolf”, and he surrounded himself with Wolfshunde (Alsatians/German Shepherds). His French HQ was named Wolfsschlucht (Wolf’s Ravine), a Ukrainian one was Werwolf.

PS: While Hermann Göring was staying at the Ritz in occupied Paris, the corpulent Nazi asked Coco Chanel to design some women’s gowns in his very large size. This was to help him “relax”, apparently. Not that there’s anything wrong with men wearing dresses, of course, although some men (including other leading Nazis) were summarily murdered or sent to concentration camps for similar so-called “perversions”. But it’s certainly, shall we say, an arresting image: a big fat genocidal war criminal kicking back with the latest copy of Vogue and choosing couture dresses for himself while the world’s most destructive and total war ever rages around him. Sort of like a grisly mashup of Inglourious Basterds with Sex and the City.

Source: David J. Skal’s excellent book The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror.

Perhaps a bit TOO happy happy

I watched this on a loop until I went insane. Or I was insane, so I watched this on a loop. I still didn’t want to eat a Japanese custard pudding thing.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, where you from and what you on?

Bonus Japanese advertising campaign that probably counts as a form of torture or psychological warfare under the Geneva convention

I’ve been to Nara (at about 01.15) and the sacred deer as featured in the CM are bastards.

Lotte no Fit’s FIT’s. Lotte no Fit’s FIT’s. Lotte no Fit’s FIT’s. Lotte no Fit’s FIT’s. Lotte no Fit’s FIT’s. (Hai!) Lotte no Fit’s FIT’s. Lotte no Fit’s FIT’s. Lotte no Fit’s FIT’s.  Still not as bad as the USA’s contribution to the genre, the unfortunately unforgettable: HEAD ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD. HEAD ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD. HEAD ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD. HEAD ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD. HEAD ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD. HEAD ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD. HEAD ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD. HEAD ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD.

See also: Nihon brainwash, including the aforementioned Head On video (apply directly to the forehead.)

Friends of Dorothy

“SQUAD!… CAMP IT– UP!”

Randy Shilts’ books about the misery and deaths of early AIDS sufferers (And the Band Played On) and the persecution of homosexuals in the US military (Conduct Unbecoming) are for the most part pretty grim, as one might expect. Before “don’t ask, don’t tell” the policy was “don’t even think about it.” Many innocent men and women were made to suffer because bigots were allowed to waste taxpayers’ money on harassing people whose sexuality had absolutely no bearing upon their ability to do their jobs, or on the USA’s security. And then we discover (in Conduct Unbecoming) this nugget of hilarious and positively Pythonesque absurdity, from the late 1970s/early 1980s:

“In the course of their investigation, NIS [Naval Investigative Service] agents made a startling discovery– that homosexuals sometimes referred to themselves as “friends of Dorothy.” This code term had originated in the 1940s and 1950s and referred to Judy Garland’s character in the film The Wizard Of Oz. Ever since, gay men had identified themselves as “Friends of Dorothy.” The NIS, however, did not know the phrase’s history and so believed that a woman named Dorothy was the hub of an enormous ring of military homosexuals in the Chicago area. The NIS prepared to hunt Dorothy down and convince her to give them the names of homosexuals.

 …

[In gay bars frequented by military personnel] NIS agents were asking pointed questions about someone named Dorothy. When one unfortunate sailor acknowledged he was gay in order to get out of the Navy, NIS agents sat him down and told him that they knew all about Dorothy. What they wanted to know from him was how to find her. The sailor, who was too young to know the code, was baffled.”

This is the point where Graham Chapman should come in and tell them he’s ending the sketch because it got too silly. Rest assured that Shilts doesn’t miss his golden opportunity to use SURRENDER DOROTHY as a chapter title.

I’m pretty sure that even the most au fait user of gay slang would be baffled by somebody who seriously thought homosexuals were all in cahoots with each other merely by virtue of being gay, and that they were all receiving orders from some kind of underground lesbian linchpin of closet logistics. Presumably Dorothy would also be the chairwoman who ticked off items on the Gay Agenda, and set the exchange rate for the Pink Dollar, Pink Pound, etc. Not that this kind of ridiculous stupidity and ignorance has disappeared: far from it, as is proved by the continued prevalence of “you’d like her/him, s/he’s gay” and “you’re gay, what do gay people think?” type comments.

Right, now let’s see something decent and military. Some precision drilling.

Donna Summer: I feel…

Donna Summer, late 1970s.

… like a startled moose, about to be hit by a truck, in which there is a considerably more startled driver? … like a disco Nefertiti luchador? …. like somebody’s making a transgender blacksploitation biopic of Aleister Crowley? … like I really need to stop taking so much coke and agreeing to these completely mental photo shoots?

This ridiculous picture comes to you courtesy of the fact that I am still researching my disco show for next year. I will bus stop, hustle, YMCA, roller disco, etc. and so will you. Be afraid.

Semi-related note/semi-related eulogy

When Donna Summer died earlier this year, (Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch) Chaka Khan (… Chaka Khan… Chaka Khan) offered this non sequitur tribute to her late friend:

“She is one of the few black women I could speak German with…“

Tausend dank, Chaka! You should get yourself over to Germany, love. There’s loads of women who speak German over there, even with the weird stipulation that they have to be black. What about Boney M, why don’t you give them a call?

Semi-related Afrofuturist error of judgement made by the production team working on Doctor Who in 1979

Doctor What the Fuck?

I believe we were meant to take this look seriously. See also “Grandad, why was there a disco backlash?” In this story the Daleks take the “disco sucks” mentality to the Nth degree, devoting considerable effort to exterminating these Egyptian disco androids. Although the Movellans were armed only with spandex catsuits, a selection of dayglo sex toys and a limited repertoire of stilted dialogue, apparently they beat the Daleks in the end. Henceforth the Daleks grudgingly admitted that they’d been listening in secret to the Bee Gees, Sylvester and Gloria Gaynor all along and actually quite fancied having their head turrets refurbished to resemble disco balls.