TIDBITS - JAPANESE CANDY

I know Japan threw in the towel on normal decades ago, but letting your kids eat fake cat shit is the kind of idea only a mind softened by years of actual cat-shit eating could come up with. I mean, things like boogers as candy make sense because kids actually eat the real thing, and even human or dog poop can be kind of cute when you make it into a little spiral mound like this guy. The only thing cute about cat shit is when they've gotten into some Christmas tree tinsel and they've got a piece of it hanging out of their tuckus with a little turd dangling at the end. Even then, it's only a good time until you have to pull it out (which feels like you're using anal beads with your cat).

MUSIC - WHAT WE DO IS SECRET

We've been neglecting your ears a bit lately so to make it up to them we've gone through the current issue and picked out some songs by some bands we like. There's music by Black Mountain, Blood On The Wall, Lightspeed Champion, Ghostface Killah, Heartbreak, Talibam! and others. Listen here and read our record reviews here.
 

NEW YORK - JEFF JOHNSON AT THE KGB

Quick, what are you doing in an hour? Well, if you just said "Nothing, why?" to your computer, you should come see Jeff Johnson reading a smattering of his stuff at the KGB bar. We know, we know, the KGB. Reading. Still, it'll be a good time. At least better than pretending you're into that band Vampire Weekend. And plus it's Jeff! Come on... The thing starts at 7, but Jeff probably won't go on until 7:30 or 8. You know how those things go.

BOGOTA - EXPOSICION DE LOS HOMBRECITOS

Of course, leave it to somewhere like Colombia to take a premise like the Hunterian, divest it of every last shred of good taste, then throw in a healthy dollop of self-righteousness and plop the thing down in the middle of a hooker slum for good measure. This yawny little guy is one of the marquee features at Exposición El Hombre (Exposition of the Guy), a museum of pre-natal oopsies conveniently located next to a pediatric clinic in the heart of Bogota's bustling red-light district. (Sorry for the overload of Bizarre materials here on the blog today, but sometimes, as Prince wrote, it's just another Fetus Wednesday.)

LONDON - CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

To escape your dirty, miserable life as a Londoner in the 1800s you might have cheered yourself up by visiting the Hunterian Museum to gawp at the curiosities displayed there. You'd have seen the preserved skeletons of human oddities like dwarfs, giants, conjoined twins and still-born quintuplets (pictured). You'd also have seen hundreds of cases containing exotic zoological specimens like tiger tongue, vulture head, sloth fetus and gorilla penis. Over the past two hundred years the collection has been built up, then devastated by bombing during the war, and more recently renovated and upgraded. We went to have a poke around this little-known wonder room …

NOT FIT TO PRINT - MY DRAGON

This edition of NFTP comes to us courtesy of a tattoo artist who's friends with one of our ad girls. The woman to whom the pictured foot belongs came into his shop a couple years back to get some touch-up work done on her talons (she was still saving up to color them in at that point—wouldn't you kill to see the palette she decided on?). After choking back an earthquake of laughter, our bud asked her why she'd gotten a fucking dragon's foot tattooed across her real foot at which point she requested a pen and sheet of paper. Here's what she wrote them:

LITERARY - PUBLISHING LIVES

F.E.D.S.
Vol. 4 Issue 24

Wow, I can't believe they're still making this. And that they still haven't discovered spellcheck. The fact that a magazine whose primary revenue base consists of condom ads and prisoner subscriptions has been going strong for over a decade now really exposes the bullshit at the heart of all those "end of the printed word" scare-pieces they keep running everywhere. (PS: Don't you love how they try to pin that whole thing on the internet? As if people were perfectly happy reading re-typed press releases in magazines that looked like they'd been laid out by a Dadaist collage-maker as a joke and entire newspapers full of paraphrased AP stories and extended "local color" pieces on cancer survivors and fucking rhubarb pie before that darn internet came along and bamboozled all their loyal subscribers. Here's a thought for publishers: Instead of firing the two old guys left on your staff who actually know how to cover the news, maybe try scrapping the eight or nine "culture & lifestyle" sections weighing down the back of every paper? I think Cleveland can make it through its morning without some 40-year-old's account of the Magnetic Fields concert last Friday.)

LONDON - PSYCHIC CONNECTOR

You know how every once in a while you’ll meet someone so utterly perfect, so totally exciting and funny that you can’t help but feel that you’re destined to spend a lifetime together? Only one day they’ll turn around, look you gravely in the eye and say: “I’m sorry, this isn’t working.” You might be taken aback at first, incredulous even. But as time passes, you’ll end up wondering why you didn’t see it coming sooner. Well, sucks to be you because Diane Lazarus would’ve totally seen it a mile off. Diane is a psychic investigator, and as well as reading both the past and the future, she can see into your mind, commune with the spirit world and locate people wherever they might be. She claims to have made contact with thousands of spirits, and helped police inquiries in a number of high-profile cases. You might be thinking “Bullshit!” right now and yeah, I guess it is a bit far-fetched. But who are you going to complain to? Your girlfriend? She’s over you, buddy. Anyways, we caught up with Diane and asked her about her extra-sensory prowess.

MELBOURNE - SUBURBAN STORM TROOPERS EXHIBITION OPENING THIS THURSDAY

Those who are a fan of the darkside and remember the article we ran a few issues ago about the Suburban Storm Troopers should go check out Jonathan West's exhibition that opens at the Centre for Contemporary Photography this Thursday night. It runs for six weeks until the 15th of March so head down to CCP, 404 George Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne and check it out. There is also four other artists exhibiting work that looks well worth a gander. Check out the flyer attached or CCP.org.au for more info. See you there.

NEW YORK - FRIDAY NIGHT CHURCH FIGHT

Bryan Derballa is an occasional intern who gets around to fun stuff more than we do these days and documents it on a pretty photo blog called LoveBryan. He and that Australian party kid are pretty much the only young'uns preserving our faith in the scrappiness of the upcoming generation. Last Friday, Bryan went to a steel-cage match in the basement of a church in Bushwick and shot some pictures of the local kids going apeshit while a bunch of amateur wrasslers in an insane array of costumes fake-pounded each other into fake-bloody pulps. You can see the highlights on his site or just watch this tasteful slideshow he put together (we have no idea what possessed him to use Cat Power as the soundtrack).