Schnurruhr / Moustache Watch (1923)
Innovations in Entertainment
FILMS / ART / STUFF / REPEAT
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
Friday, 11 July 2025
DON'T LOOK BACK 3
John Martin (1789-1854) was a hugely popular English painter of vast, often apocalyptic scenes.
'The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah' dates from 1852 and is five feet high and nearly eight feet wide. In the foreground, Lot and his daughters hurriedly flee the swirling inferno of God's terrible wrath. Far behind them, still in poignantly recognisable human form, is the arrested and petrified figure of their fatally curious wife / mother.
In his short discussion paper 'The Chemical Death of Lot's Wife', published in the Royal Journal of Medicine in 1988, Professor Irving M. Klotz gives a detailed explanation of the environmental conditions that would led 'Mrs. Lot' to die instantly from rigor calcium carbonitis and turn into a rigid block of calcite, salted by moisture heavy crosswinds originating from the nearby Dead Sea. He includes chemical formulas and calculations, and clearly knows science stuff, so I am in no position to push back on any of it.
He concludes by writing 'Thus, once again, we see how modern science serves to corroborate and elucidate medical events described in the Bible', and, in this instance at least, I can't disagree with that either.
Finally, just to make this about me again rather than Professor Klotz, one of my first conceptual art objects was a poorly made facsimile Airfix box purporting to contain this cataclysmic scene in model form. No great message, I just thought it was a nice idea.
Wednesday, 9 July 2025
DON'T LOOK BACK 2
Landscape with the Destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah
Joachim Patinir, circa 1520
Two friendly angels lead Lot and his daughters to the safety of a nearby tent. In the background, the twin cities of Sodom & Gomorrah burn. In the foreground, a slightly bulbous pile of rocks are all that remains of Lot's nosey, disobedient wife.
Dutch master Patinir specialised in Biblical scenes, but this, with its elements of science fiction and horror, is perhaps his strangest work. There's something quite modern looking about it, despite it being painted over 500 years ago.
Monday, 7 July 2025
DON'T LOOK BACK
The Bible contains a lot of finger wagging, not surprisingly given that it is a control manual more than anything else. In it, we read that the people of Sodom were decadent and ungodly, so they needed to be destroyed (a common Old Testament theme - God makes an awful lot of mistakes for an omniscient, omnipotent being).
Good old Lot and his family, being righteous and reverent, were spared, but only on the condition that they didn't watch the destruction of their former home. Lot's wife (Ado, Idit, or Ildith, according to your source) couldn't resist a last glance so, for her disobedience, was turned instantly into a pillar of salt.
There is some evidence of a 'cosmic airburst event' in the southern Jordan Valley around 1650 BCE. This violent and sudden explosion devastated the ancient city of Tall el-Hammam and made that area largely uninhabitable for over 500 years. Theories include (in order of wackiness) the Tunguska-style airborne detonation of a meteoroid, a nuclear explosion following a spaceship crash, and alien invasion. Any of these could, apparently, have turned a human being into a column of minerals (I can't say I'm convinced, but this sort of extrapolation is interesting in what it says about the human obsession with sense making).
Whatever the cause, whatever the outcome, the Bible uses this garbled and unknowable story to reinforce its own underlying message, especially when it comes to wives: do what you are told. No wonder it's such a popular book with bigots. We'll come back to this tale, I have a thing for it.
Screenshots taken from John Huston's 1966 epic The Bible: In The Beginning, which takes three hours and a cast of thousands to recount the first 22 chapters of the good book to half-brilliant, half-boring effect.
Friday, 4 July 2025
FAMILIAR STATES
'A new and unbiased study of vigilance, fear, shock, guilt, shame, depression and other familiar states of mind...'
Cover design by Patrick McCreeth.
Tuesday, 1 July 2025
WHERE SCIENCE & THE OCULT CLASH!
Saturday, 31 May 2025
Thursday, 29 May 2025
FILE UNDER POST PUNK
Sunday, 25 May 2025
DANCE AWAY
The idea of adapting Edgar Allen Poe's short story 'The Black Cat' has occurred to a great many film makers, but very few of them set it in Texas with a cast of amateurs and a budget that was probably less than most movies lunch bills. The results are pretty poor, although some of the more frenetic elements did remind me of the pleasures and pains of an amphetamine based diet.
In the best scene, some youngish people become reasonably animated while listening to the worlds whitest band play a frat boy version of 'Bo Diddley' that doesn't come close to punching the gut and jerking the limbs like the superlative original.