Why the British produce the best follies in the world
by Harry Mount
The Telegraph
December 27th, 2011

There’s a sad report in today’s Telegraph on the state of Britain’s follies. According to the doyen of the folly world, Gwyn Headley, far too many of them are at risk of crumbling into neglect.

We may not match the Italians for grand art or architecture but, when it comes to follies, we reign supreme. Somewhere, buried deep in the British artistic mind, is the overpowering British desire to crack a joke. Follies are a punchline in stone – the little building on the horizon that takes the edge off the grandness of the great Palladian pile in the valley below.

There are follies all over the world, but Britain remains the international folly capital. Stowe, begun by the Temple-Grenville Whig dynasty in the 18th century, has more follies than anywhere else on the planet. Among the highlights are pavilions by Gibbs, Doric and Corinthian arches, a menagerie, Dido’s Cave, Vanbrugh’s Rotondo, Queen Caroline’s Monument, and temples to Venus, to Ancient and Modern Virtue, to Friendship and to British Worthies. (more…)

Submitted by Peter Markus: Woody Woodpecker had a higher aesthetic…

That Noisy Woodpecker Had an Animated Secret
by Michael Cieply
The New York Times
April 10, 2011

Los Angeles — Sixteen years ago Tom Klein was staring at a Woody Woodpecker cartoon, “The Loose Nut,” when he started seeing things.

Specifically, Mr. Klein watched that maniacal red-topped bird smash a steamroller through the door of a shed. The screen then exploded into images that looked less like the stuff of a Walter Lantz cartoon than like something Willem de Kooning might have hung on a wall.

“What was that?” Mr. Klein, now an animation professor at Loyola Marymount University, recalled thinking. Only later, after years of scholarly detective work, did he decide that he had been looking at genuine art that was cleverly concealed by an ambitious and slightly frustrated animation director named Shamus Culhane. Mr. Culhane died in 1996, a pioneer whose six decades in animation included the sequence of the dwarfs marching and singing “Heigh Ho” in the 1937 film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

In the March issue of Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Mr. Klein relates an intriguing theory. He says that Mr. Culhane broke the boundaries of his craft when he worked on the Woody Woodpecker cartoons in the 1940s, going well beyond the kind of commonplace puckishness that supposedly led later animators to stitch frames of a panty-less diva into “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” Mr. Culhane’s stunts, Mr. Klein posits, were of a higher order. He worked ultra-brief experimental art films into a handful of Woody Woodpecker cartoons. (more…)

A Reality Check for Steinbeck and Charley
by Charles McGrath
The New York Times
April 3, 2011

In the fall of 1960 an ailing, out-of-sorts John Steinbeck, pretty much depleted as a novelist, decided that his problem was he had lost touch with America. He outfitted a three-quarter-ton pickup truck as a sort of land yacht and set off from his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., with his French poodle, Charley, to drive cross-country. The idea was that he would travel alone, stay at campgrounds and reconnect himself with the country by talking to the locals he met along the way.

Steinbeck’s book-length account of his journey, “Travels with Charley,” published in 1962, was generally well reviewed and became a best-seller. It remains in print, regarded by some as a classic of American travel writing. Almost from the beginning, though, a few readers pointed out that many of the conversations in the book had a stagey, wooden quality, not unlike the dialogue in Steinbeck’s fiction.

Early on in the book, for example, Steinbeck has a New England farmer talking in folksy terms about Nikita S. Khrushchev’s shoe-pounding (or -brandishing, depending on whom you ask) speech at the United Nations weeks before Khrushchev actually visited the United Nations. A particularly unlikely encounter occurs at a campsite near Alice, N.D., where a Shakespearean actor, mistaking Steinbeck for a fellow thespian, greets him with a sweeping bow, saying, “I see you are of the profession,” and then proceeds to talk about John Gielgud.

Even Steinbeck’s son John said he was convinced that his father never talked to many of the people he wrote about, and added, “He just sat in his camper and wrote all that [expletive].” (more…)

The Artiness of Naughtiness
BBC Radio
April 1, 2011

Toby Amies discovers how tricksters have turned the poking of fun into an art form.

Produced by Rob Alexander and hosted by Toby Amies, this 30:00 radio show is now available here for listening.

There are pranksters who have been determined to show us our folly all year round and most have philosophical, political and artistic reason to do so… Toby investigates this reasoning behind pranking – discovering why people will risk consequences as serious as prison to make a point or get a laugh. Sometime the motivation behind a prank is not always only a good laugh at someone else’s expense. It can be a very serious business.

Culture Jamming, Sureños-style
by Michael Fallon
Utne Reader
April 1, 2011

Sometimes great cultural breakthroughs are watershed events, celebrated far and wide. When evolutionary forces conspired to mesh Appalachian hill music, Mississippi River Delta blues, and big-city boogie woogie and create a wholly new cultural entity in Elvis Presley, the country duly rejoiced. Other cultural milestones, however, arrive not at all with a bang. They percolate underground for forty years or more, roiling through several generations of evolution, adoption, innovation, and cultural adaptation, until they find a more gradual, quieter, and less publicized acceptance by the mainstream. (more…)

Update, April 3, 2011: You can now listen to this 30:00 radio show here.

The Artiness of Naughtiness, hosted by Toby Amies, aired on BBC Radio 4 on Friday, April 1, 2011. Until April 7, 2011, you can listen to it here.

The art of the perfect prank
by Toby Amies
BBC News Magazine
30 March 2011

As April Fools jokers hatch their plans, what’s the secret to a perfect prank, asks broadcaster Toby Amies. And how far do the very best tricksters go in preparing their practical jokes?

This article is not a hoax. I promise you. It’s a serious work about the practical joke.

How far would you go to pull off a prank? The dole queue? In 1987, a young British broadcaster called Chris Morris let off helium into the BBC Bristol studio, causing the newsreader’s stories to reach a higher and higher pitch. Chris lost his job. And started his career in satire.

Would you risk prison? Pranks are often protests, against unfairness or authority or reality. And protest is increasingly risky in the 21st Century.

As the film director Billy Wilder said: “If you are going to tell people the truth, be funny or they will kill you.”

Whether personal or public, the prank has a point to make, but if you’re planning on tricking someone, it’s best to ensure everyone gets the joke. (more…)

From Deceptology

How to sneak an art exhibit inside a museum

Here’s how artist Harvey Stromberg deceived the Museum of Modern Art, as written in New York Magazine in June 1971:

“With the help of a friend, but with no assistance from the museum, Harvey Stromberg put on his exhibition himself. A New York artist, he describes his work as “photo-sculpture.” To prepare the exhibition, he spent some weeks in the museum, disguised as a student with a notebook under his arm, peering nearsightedly at pictures while at the same time measuring and photographing museum equipment: light switches, locks, air vents, buzzers, segments of the floor and bricks in the garden wall. These photographs he printed actual size, covered the backs with adhesive, and one day he sauntered through the museum adding 300 trompe l’oell photographs (“photosculpture”) of museum equipment to its walls and floors. (The floor pieces were a mistake: “I didn’t realize that when they buffed the floors they would buff them right off.” says Stromberg.)”

Read more here.

Submitted by Chris Cook as seen in this article from the BBC about the origins of the phrase “Bunga Bunga”, February 5, 2011:

The infamous Dreadnought hoax, circa 1910, was dreamed up by aristocratic joker Horace de Vere Cole, who contacted the British Admiralty pretending to be the Emperor of Abyssinia. He informed officials that he wished to inspect the Home Fleet while on a forthcoming visit to Britain.

After enlisting some friends – artists from the Bloomsbury group, including writer Virginia Woolf – to masquerade as his entourage, he turned up at the navy’s state-of-the-art ship, the Dreadnought.

Officials, taken in by the dark stage make-up, false beards and oriental regalia, treated the group to an official civic reception.

They were reported to have cried “Bunga, bunga!” while marveling at the ship. An account of the visit plus a picture were sent to the Daily Mail newspaper – probably by Cole himself.

Virginia Woolf said that when the real Emperor of Abyssinia arrived in London weeks later, wherever he went, ”the street boys ran after him calling out ‘bunga, bunga!’”

Read the rest of the article here.

Elusive Forger, Giving but Never Stealing
By Randy Kennedy
The New York Times
January 11, 2011

His real name is Mark A. Landis, and he is a lifelong painter and former gallery owner. But when he paid a visit to the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum in Lafayette, La., last September, he seemed more like a character sprung from a Southern Gothic novel.

He arrived in a big red Cadillac and introduced himself as Father Arthur Scott. Mark Tullos Jr., the museum’s director, remembers that he was dressed “in black slacks, a black jacket, a black shirt with the clerical collar and he was wearing a Jesuit pin on his lapel.” Partly because he was a man of the cloth and partly because he was bearing a generous gift — a small painting by the American Impressionist Charles Courtney Curran, which he said he wanted to donate in memory of his mother, a Lafayette native — it was difficult not to take him at his word, Mr. Tullos said.

The painting, unframed and wrapped in cellophane, looked like the real thing, with a faded label on the verso from a long-defunct gallery in Manhattan. Father Scott offered to pay for a good frame and hinted that more paintings and perhaps some money might come the museum’s way from his family. But when the Hilliard’s director of development chatted with Father Scott about the church and his acquaintances in deeply Roman Catholic southern Louisiana, the man grew nervous. “He said, ‘Well, I travel a lot,’ ” Mr. Tullos recalled. “ ‘I go and solve problems for the church.’ ”

Mr. Landis — often under his own name, though more recently as Father Scott or as a collector named Steven Gardiner — has indeed done a lot of traveling over the past two decades, but not for the church. He has been one of the most prolific forgers American museums have encountered in years, writing, calling and presenting himself at their doors, where he tells well-concocted stories about his family’s collection and donates small, expertly faked works, sometimes in honor of nonexistent relatives. (more…)

From publisher and editor Joey Skaggs:

It is with shock and sadness that I write of the unexpected passing of Verne Williams, a life-long friend and co-conspirator, on Thursday, October 14. Among other illustrious facets of his career, Verne was with me on my Hippie Bus Tour to Queens in 1968, was the inspiration for and center piece of my Bad Guys Talent Management Agency in 1984; and performed in Walk Right! (1984), The Fat Squad (1986), and Save The Geoduck (1987). He appeared as me for an interview with Playback Magazine (1995). He was a great, endearing and enduring friend.

A memorial service will be held October 30 at 1pm at Marinella Restaurant, on the corner of Carmine and Bedford Streets in Greenwich Village, NYC.

Here’s a walk down my memory lane with Verne:

Hippie Bus Tour to Queens, 1968

In 1968, I loaded a Greyhound bus with camera-toting, long haired, beaded hippies and took them on a bus tour of surburban Queens. I did this in response to all the suburbanites who were coming into the East Village to gawk at the hippies. I called it my “cultural exchange” program. Verne was one of the passengers.

Bad Guys Talent Management Agency, 1984

Verne left NYC for greener pastures, literally. He ran a hog farm in Vermont for a while and then moved to Virginia where he was trimming the hooves of cattle for a living. He really wanted to be an actor. He wrote me letter after letter imploring me to help him get some national commercials while he awaited the brass ring, which to him was a role in a feature film. I tried to talk some sense into him, but he would have none of that. Since he didn’t have any acting training, experience, or representation, I decided to create a talent management agency specifically for him. I called it Bad Guys Incorporated. I would represent bad guys, bad girls, bad kids and bad dogs — venomous vixens, burly bouncers and slimy sleazes. I told Verne to go to the Post Office and bring back a wanted poster so I could create his head shot.
(more…)

Submitted by Dave Camp, saying “Prescient again”? Dave is referring to a hoax Joey Skaggs did in 1981 called “Metamorphosis“. Skaggs said he was an entomologist who had discovered cures for all of mankind’s common ailments such as colds, flus, acne, anemia and menstrual cramps, by extracting and eating cockroach hormones. Is history repeating itself? Or, was Skaggs really onto something?

Here’s the article:

Cockroach Brains May Be a Source of Antibiotics, Research Says
by Simeon Bennett
Bloomberg
September 6, 2010

Cockroach brains may be a source of new antibiotics capable of killing deadly drug-resistant bacteria, according to research that suggests the germ-spreading pests may be good for something after all.

Insects such as cockroaches have a defense mechanism against bacteria, a “logical” development from living in unhygienic conditions, research from the U.K.’s University of Nottingham showed. Tissues from the brains and nervous systems of cockroaches and locusts killed more than 90 percent of MRSA and E. coli without damaging human cells, scientists said. (more…)

Italian group claims to debunk Shroud of Turin
by Ariel David
1010WINS / AP
October 5, 2009

In this Aug. 12, 2000 file photo, The Holy Shroud, a 14 foot-long linen revered by some as the burial cloth of Jesus, is shown at the Cathedral of Turin, Italy.

A group of Italian debunkers is claiming it has proved that the Shroud of Turin – revered as the cloth that covered Jesus in the tomb – was man-made. The shroud bears the image of a crucified man. Believers say Christ’s image was recorded on the fibers at the time of his resurrection. The Italian Committee for Checking Claims on the Paranormal said Monday Oct 5, 2009 that scientists have reproduced the shroud using materials and methods that were available in the 14th century. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, file)

Read the whole article here.

Tobacco Smoke Enemas (1750s – 1810s)

The tobacco enema was used to infuse tobacco smoke into a patient’s rectum for various medical purposes, primarily thte resuscitation of drowning victims. A rectal tube inserted into the anus was connected to a fumigator and bellows that forced the smoke towards the rectum. The warmth of the smoke was thought to promote respiration, but doubts about the credibility of tobacco enemas led to the popular phrase “blow smoke up one’s ass.” To learn more, click here.

via tophattobacco.com, thanks Don

Submitted by Tim Jackson:

A great prank? As it was 208 years ago, I thought I’d mention it…

I’ve often thought of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public” as a great early satire as prank.

Not dissimilar to the Joey Skaggs dog food restaurant hoax/satire.

I just heard about Daniel Defoe’s “The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church” written on July 31, in 1701. His satire called for the savage elimination of dissenters. When the church found out it was parody, he was (allegedly) pilloried. The crowd threw flowers instead of fruit.

images: astroblogos.wordpress.com & Indiana.edu

Update, July 16, 2009 — An interesting twist for conspiracy theorists — NASA lost moon footage, but Hollywood restores it

Submitted by Jorge Luis Marzo:

From Wikipedia:

“Dark Side of the Moon” is a French mockumentary by director William Karel which originally aired on Arte in 2002 with the title Opération Lune. The basic premise for the film is the theory that the television footage from the Apollo 11 Moon landing was faked and actually recorded in a studio by the CIA with help from director Stanley Kubrick. It features some surprising guest appearances, most notably by Donald Rumsfeld, Dr. Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Buzz Aldrin and Stanley Kubrick’s widow, Christiane Kubrick…

Here, as a tease, are three clips about 25 minutes long, cut from the hour and a half documentary.

(more…)