“Oh RATS! I Forgot My Purse…”

The expression takes on an entirely new meaning with Reid Pepard’s RP/ENCORE line of accessories…

Ah, but wait! Before you hit PETA on speed-dial, her website does provide the following disclaimer:

“Every effort has been made to see that the creatures used in RP/ENCORE are victims of road kill, pest control, or natural death.”

Controversy set aside for other ‘Great Debates,’ I’ll give her this: the prize ribbons from my collaboration with Jared Gold make a tame statement when juxtaposed with Pepard’s Swarovski-encrusted medallion:

a more detailed view…

While I’ll be the first to admit it’s a challenge to find killer* clothing and accessories designed for the gents, Peppard seems to earmark her creations evenly between the xy and the xx.  Here’s a bowtie certain to incite a response at—oh, just about any formal event:

*(double entendre un/intentional? a tricky thing, this ’subconscious’ we possess)

Based in London, Peppard keeps a personal blog, in which she chronicles her works-in-progress, road kill later to be fashioned into found art objects, et cetera. A detail you might find interesting? She’s vegetarian. About her company, she states:

“RP/ENCORE challenges our attitudes towards fur, leather and waste. In a world where leather is worn without question by most, and replaced by un-biodegradable plastics by the rest, it is ironic that the image of an animal preserved using taxidermy is still enough to cause widespread outrage and fist-banging. It is for this reason I taxidermy the prolific, consequential vermin result of London’s excess. A member of the UK’s Guild of Taxidermists, I use both traditional and alternative methods of taxidermy to preserve and embellish creatures that are widely thought disgusting and unnecessary. When they become sculptural headpieces, necklaces and cuff-links, the specimens cease to be waste and become objects to behold. RP/ENCORE makes use of the city’s leftovers.”

Read more

Review Of Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache — Flaunt Magazine

Issue 52, The “Spring Fashion Issue”

While the process of uploading/archiving/formatting my site to WordPress is—generally speaking—yawnsville territory, the occasional film strip I “re-visit” compensates for the pain-in-the-assery of it all : remembrances of whom was with me, where I was, the tilt-a-whirl of excitement I felt upon picking up the copy of Flaunt, in which this brief review (see: paragraph three) appeared…

Massive thanks and congratulations, B.B.:  In five sentences, you target the subject matter with a marksman’s precision. Not only is this excerpt testament to a well-honed sense of verbal dexterity, but the analysis also exhibits a sophistication—namely, your ability to exude charm despite a frugal economy of language.

And thank you, Flaunt Magazine, for the elation (however fleeting).  I don’t even have to close my eyes, and I’m there again:  a 7-11 in Eagle Rock, bona-fide literary groupie Mark Ewert waiting in my grandmacamry while I made this pit stop to wherever it is he was staying.  The A.C. in the store is cranked, my skin a menace of gooseflesh as I stand, feet planted so I’m facing the magazine rack.  There’s a large expanse of glass behind the titles—does one call it a “window” if it’s never meant to be opened?—and on the other side of the freshly-Windexed surface that’s filling my lungs with a mildly toxic freon blue scent, dusk spreads itself across the asphalt sky, immense and in gasoline hues—a Molotov cocktail tossed onto the L.A. skyline.  A thick copy of Flaunt is in my hands, Selma Blair on the trademark die-cut double cover, and it’s the moment just after I flipped past Omahyra’s “Quinceñara” editorial: the moment when my eyes landed on this review, confirming the validity of what I’d heard, and as I’m scanning the words, a feeling comes over me that’s an onslaught of stimuli: it’s like being on a float in a parade, the crowd cheering; it’s like tossing a fistful of lit firecrackers; it’s a warmth of validation crawling into me by the fingertips, a delirious warmth, a fix I hadn’t even known I was craving. It’s my own Sally Fields moment, an implicit understanding of the fickle undercurrent in her Oscar acceptance speech when she gushed: “You like me, right now, you like me!”

I grab the other two copies from the shelf and head towards the cashier, not giving a damn about the transitory nature of things.

I feel traces of it still: “You like me… You like me…”

“Right now, you like me!”

Two Bombshells With Cobalt-Colored Hair

First, I’m stoked to have social media superhero Miss Destructo

as the next ‘Consumer As Spokesmodel’ (despite how admittedly goober the title may be…)  ::  Keep sending in those glamour shots of you rockin’ product, kids… Whether it’s a book bag or a prize ribbon, I’d love to plaster your face up here for all the w.w.w. to see!

And next, a familiar face on this blog, as of late—

Zoetica Ebb, filling the role of “Check-Me-Out-Bitches; I’m In An Ad!”

Ahhh, YES:

I really love this “bounce-out.” (Is that what they’re called?) Whatever the nomenclature,

Massive thanks to graphics whiz Joanna Carr!

Till Later—

x o x o x

Read more

The Description Of An Absence

It was during that moment when my chest turns into an open space, an interminable length of time when it seems like a panel of chain-link fence gets peeled back, lies in wait for a surge of emotions to slip inside.

Then.  Just as my mouth rearranged itself around the poem’s final words— “A wad/of cold sheets/on my bed”—it was then, when I no longer recognized my voice but rather the blink of silence following.  That’s when I noticed him.

I’m sure I stood frozen in some exaggerated pose, arms akimbo or even more likely, right hand extended with a copy of Cottonmouth Kisses still perched in the air, armor to shield me from what would or wouldn’t happen next. Applause.  The immediacy of approval every performer yearns for, even and especially those who claim they don’t.

Then came the clamor of acclamation, the sounds of hands clapping, of slurred hurrahs and a high-pitched whistle.  My cue to step from the stage not really a stage in this home not exactly a “home” as I knew it, but a geodesic dome.

For a hot second, our eyes met.  His: dark, with a sparkle that followed when I looked away.  Not as in “tracers,” the stuff of flash-backs, symptoms from drugs with consonants for names.

More like: as I navigated my way to Pedro, Wash and Richard—the few people I knew at this hormone-charged salon with “Boys” as its motif—the text of my body was besieged with active verbs and question marks.

Would I dare to venture upstairs with him?

Despite its cred as the white-hot center of Where Art Lives, I recognized this dome from another context. Recently I’d seen The Hole, a skin flick in which the final scene culminates in a luscious free-for-all on the top floor.

I’d heard whispers of a similar scenario happening in medias res, and as much as I tried to listen to the performer who followed me, it was.  I was. Hard. With that beautiful boy, little more than an arm’s reach away.

My imagination is active; though my physique at the time?  Puffy, post-speed flab that rendered me uncomfortable in the flesh I inhabited.

And my skin?  Remained clothed, not “ho”ed out, as I wish it would’ve been.

I didn’t even introduce myself to that spiky-haired little number, let alone coax him into my own take on the Triple-X.

Thin and long-limbed: same as the memory I have of him, stretched-out. Three? Four? Has it been five years since then?

All this time, and I still see his caramel-hued complexion screened in my mind.  A story of me, a beautiful boy, and what might have been. Really not so much a story, as it is.

The description of an absence.

—Clint Catalyst

Read more

Envy: A New Fashion Magazine from The Creators of The Fashionably Independent

The Widget?  Pentegram, fully throwin’ down…

(That’d be five stars, in case my strand of Polari doesn’t translate well.)

Fully backin’ the ability to customize the size and lay-out options, as well as the international content contained therein.

To be honest, I’d rate the content in the current “issue” as a 4.5—meaning, of course, I know full well The Indie Fashion crew is capable of upping the ante beyond the established paradigm.

My request? Sprinkle in some content from Japanese men’s Vogue—as I’ve yet to see a single copy at any news stand (and I live in L.A., for F’s sake)… but the scant amount I’ve been fortunate to locate on-line?

Sleek as an Atsuko Kudo latex pencil skirt freshly polished. Sophisticated. Deliciously androgynous.

Of course, there’s also the occasional editorial in Imago ‘zine (Canada), Gazelleland (New York), Coilhouse (Los Angeles) and the slew of $40-and-over periodicals rife with opulence, editorial genius and consummate consumer lust that creep their way over from Europe…

Because these?

Of course, this is merely my opinion: but it’s when these truly independent flashes of serendipity—synonymous far too often with short print runs before the recently-launched creations belly-up…

It’s when these disparate elements get stirred into an already stellar sampling of aspirational imagery

that my mind melds &

corneas are left burning with a brilliance that feels so

alive alive
alive…

Here’s to
Cheers from
The Future—

(& With Great Anticipation)

Cx

:: Ah Yes… & For Abe Gurko’s Brilliant Commentary On The White-Hot Little Miss Lohan? :: CLICK HERE ::

Read more

ShowWX Presented by MicroVision at The Sundance Film Festival, 2010

So, I’m going to Sundance.

Remember that gorgeous independent film I’m in? You know, “Delphinium: A Childhood Portrait of Derek Jarman”?  The one I yammered about a while ago. Well, it’s screening at Sundance, and…yeah. As an Angeleno transplant, over the years I’ve acclimated to the freon-tinged climate shady people imbue this brightly-lit place.  To fair the “whether,” the most important reaction I could have is: act as if this news isn’t very important at all.

It’s a tricky thing, this More-Jaded-Than-The-Orient sense of feigned indifference—because if “reality” T.V. cameras are added to the equation?  Flip it. Be so real it’s Faux Real…and it will be: on film.

Semantics and human behavior are complicated.  But how I feel?  How I feel, for once, is pure and simple and precise. I’m so excited; I’m spinning around like tinsel on a majorette’s baton at half-time.

That being said, the vitals are:

Friday, 22nd January, and Saturday, 23rd January 2010, 2pm

ShowWX Presented by MicroVision at The Sundance Film Festival

Cinema Lounge at 333 Main Street, Park City, UT

Curated by Shade Rupe,

The program includes new work by

Floria Sigismondi, Sean Pecknold, Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, Rodrigo Gudiño

and

Matthew Mishory

More Info “Beneath The Jump”

Read more

Aural Fixation: 33 Tracks From The End Of The Aughts, My Heart To Your [Downloadable Device]*

✼—Limited Time Offer/”It’s A Lot Like Life”—✼

Alright you guys: Apart from a few tracks on which I had some creative involvement, I’ve never utilized Ye Olde Dot Com in the context of a public music share. Never until now, that is… With this: a veritable list of my 33 favorite songs from ‘09.

As stated on Fluxblog, Music For Robots, NME’s “Daily Download”, Music Is Art, Glorious Noise and a slew of other noteworthy locales among the internet ethers, any music posted is provided under a code of ethics ✼ [& Disclaimer] ✼

Though it should go without saying, if anything from this catalogue aux Catalottalisps moves your spirit, contributes to involuntary thrusts of elbows and hipbones, or just plain pleases your ear canal with good aural: give the musicians some much-deserved love and support. That’s “love” as in: the kind from your pocketbook—not Nature’s Little Pocket, and “support” that doesn’t involve an underwire or cup size.  Odds are, Pamela Des Barres has that Other territory covered, anyway—unless VH1’s Next Big Hit: a competitive “reality” series entitled Groupie: Go Ho or Go Home! is still in negotiations.

So, yes…here’s my first Em Pee Three Web Log

a play list intended as a means of promoting the artists as well as the art

for the sake of art itself:

The creative spirit is contagious

and these are the the lullabies that transmit inspiration
Lily Allen and Annie’s bubblegum pop with biting, cyanide-laced lyrics that
induced an emotional imprint, capture an essence:
the interrobang I experienced upon hearing the somber vocals of Fever Ray’s Karin Andersson
collide with boody-bass, a re-mix that shatters her glacial strip-tease & throws everything
off, like the crepuscular hour in which I was first infected by Demdike Stare:
hunched over at my desk, fist gripped around a sweat-slick black Ticonderoga, that
late night/early morning’s weapon of choice for my
battle with words—though what I fought more than anything was to stay awake
floating in and out of consciousness, when
suddenly and without warning, I was surrounded by an echoing incantation
that rose up, a miasma as mysterious as voodou yet synthetic, manufactured, cold

Wait…What the F was I rambling about?

:: never mind all that :: just ::

close your eyes :: inhale deeply, & :: listen

pictured above :: the big pink

Metric — “Help I’m Alive (Immuzikation B-Ting Like A Hammer Remix)”

The Big Pink — “Dominos”

Fever Ray — “When I Grow Old (Bassnectar Remix)”

The Joy Formidable — “The Greatest Light Is The Greatest Shade”

Twisted Wires — “One Night At The Raw Deal”

Yeah Yeah Yeahs — “Heads Will Roll (A-Trak Remix)”

Simian Mobile Disco (featuring Beth Ditto) — “Cruel Intentions”

As Tall As Lions — “You Can’t Take It With You”

Bat For Lashes — “Daniel (Death Metal Disco Scene Remix)”

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart — “Everything With You”

The xx — “Basic Space (Astronomer Remix)”

Lykke Li — “Knocked Up (Kings of Leon Cover: Death To The Throne Remix)”

Health — “Die Slow”

Veil Veil Vanish — “Anthem for a Doomed Youth”

Passion Pit — “The Reeling”

Hunz — “Draw The Line”

Read more