The Girl on the Magazine Cover

Posted By: Paul - Sun Mar 29, 2020 - Comments (3)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Business, Advertising, Magazines, 1940s

National Doughnut Queen 1952

Source.

Diane Scholen, left, and Pat Kizeminski, right (runners-up) place doughnut crown on Nancy Templeton, National Doughnut Queen

Posted By: Paul - Sun Mar 22, 2020 - Comments (4)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Food, 1950s

Johanna Went

Let us know when you bail.

Halfway through 1984’s Knife Boxing, Johanna Went interrupts her incessant frenzied bopping to thrust her hands into a crudely made body part—half-buttocks, half-vagina—suspended from the roof of Club Lingerie.1 A vicious viscous excremental substance seeps down her arm. She brings her face close and sucks the stuff into her mouth before hauling out a giant goo-covered tampon that she aggressively flings at the audience. Some cringe, others laugh. Quickly she pulls on a costume, a huge mask-headed apron covered in sex doll heads, all the while screaming her unique tongue, a babble from Hell channeled through Lolita-cum-Medea. Screeching tape loops accompany her, along with a blaring saxophone and a loud percussive racket emanating from a woman drumming on found objects.2 A monstrous vagina appears stage right. Went extracts more tampons, heaving each into the mesmerized mosh pit. Completely at one with her, the audience starts hurling these back in a game of volleyball gone mad. After all, this show was held to coincide with the Los Angeles Olympics. Much art programming accompanied that event, but Went was not part of the roster. Instead, she held her own celebration of sports, on the stage of a punk club, flanked by headless stockinette figures replete with genitalia parodying the elegant cast metal kouroi made by Robert Graham to decorate the official Olympic stadiums.

Source of quote, long essay.

Another essay on the creator, here.

Her Wikipedia page.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 13, 2020 - Comments (9)
Category: Ambiguity, Uncertainty and Deliberate Obscurity, Antisocial Activites, Armageddon and Apocalypses, Bad Habits, Neuroses and Psychoses, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Music, Avant Garde, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers, Twentieth Century

Ulay & Abramovic

Alas, Ulay is no more.

Marina is still with us.

Enjoy 2.5 hours of their art.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 05, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, Performance Art, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Body, Entertainment, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers

Hamlet, the Rock Musical

Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 03, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Costumes and Masks, Death, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Pranks and Revenge, Theater and Stage, Homages, Pastiches, Tributes and Borrowings, Pop Art, Foreign Customs, Seventeenth Century, Sixteenth Century, Brain Damage, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults

“Miss Wisconsin” Arrives for National October Cheese Week Festival, 1951

She's the one on your left.

Source.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Mar 01, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Food, 1950s

Boycycle

Salvatore Ganacci - Boycycle from BUSINESS CLUB ROYALE on Vimeo.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Feb 22, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Aliens, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Bicycles and Other Human-powered Vehicles, Body, Differently Abled, Handicapped, Challenged, and Otherwise Atypical, Cryptozoology, Family, Surrealism

DIY Bikini

Posted By: Paul - Mon Feb 17, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Contests, Races and Other Competitions, Fashion, 1960s

Bring Back the Bush

Posted By: Paul - Wed Jan 29, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Annoying Things, Antiques, Anachronisms and Throwbacks, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Customs, Hygiene, Genitals

Most Glamorous Chassis of 1957

I see Paul's Miss Brake Special of 1951, and raise him Most Glamorous Chassis of 1957, a title awarded to Hollywood star Debra Paget.

Actually, this seems to be another example of the weird thematic synchronicity that we've mentioned before. Having worked on this blog together now for over a decade, the minds of Paul and I seem to have achieved a state of spooky quantum entanglement, in which, without any coordination at all, and separated by a distance of over 3000 miles, we will independently focus on similar subjects at the same time. So, as Paul was preparing his post about Miss Brake Special, I was simultaneously researching a post about Most Glamorous Chassis. I almost posted it yesterday.

Opelousas Daily World - Apr 11, 1957

Anyway, wikipedia notes that in 1957 Paget was at the peak of her career, considered an A-list star, having appeared in The Ten Commandments and headlined Love Me Tender with Elvis Presley. But beginning in 1957 "Paget's career began to decline." Could it be mere coincidence that this was also the year she accepted the title of "Most Glamorous Chassis"?

Although what is arguably Paget's most famous performance was still before her — her snake dance scene in Fritz Lang's The Indian Tomb (1959). Wikipedia says that the scene was "risque (for the time)." I think it's still risque even for 2020.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Jan 25, 2020 - Comments (5)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, 1950s, Cars