#this is what old fashioned eccentric goths freaks used to do in person right?

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

.... so i may or may not have discovered local online estate sales

well, MaxSold really. so it's like 1/3 estate sales, 1/3 moving out sales and 1/3 downsizing and it's like garage sales but the items are CONSIDERABLY more buckwild in some cases

i am telling you this because i just got outbid on a marble tray with brass handles and I think the emotions of a 2004-era chronic eBay trawler have subsumed my body

edit: there ARE still two hours left in the thing but would paying thirty two dollars on a tray i plan to eat charcuterie in bed off of be #worth?

[arbeaone]

OPEN Magazine The Serial Kidders Issue Published on October 09, 2014

[ View larger version here ] Text from the article can be read below. (There may be some errors.)

SERIAL KIDDERS

NOEL FIELDING

By Zoe Yvonne Delaney

Noel Fielding the man Phil Jupitus magnificently described as 'a Gothic George Best', is 41 years old! Forty freaking one. This is like when I learned that Gwen Stefani was actually my mum's age, all over again. It’s not that he's especially baby faced; it’s just that he looks like he'd be more at home smoking outside Bold St Coffee with graduates, rather than down the local pub, playing darts (I have no idea what men in their forties actually do; I'm just lazily stereotyping). Either way, he's looking good for his age - he could probably still blag a student ticket on an Arriva bus.

Perhaps ‘The Fountain of Youth' from Fielding's most notable work The Mighty Boosh, actually does exist? In the hit TV show, Fielding played the ultimate confuser ("Is it a man? Is it a woman? I'm not sure if I mind!"), Vince Noir. Alongside his highly wound sidekick Howard Moon (Julian Barratt), The Boosh amassed a cult like following and took viewers on a surreal journey through time and space with their unique brand of comedy. Androgynous Vince; with his childlike outlook on life, narcissism and impressive hair hubris ("A basic back-comb structure, slightly root-boosted framing with a cheeky fringe") quickly became one of the most popular characters in British comedy. The multi-award winning comedy troupe went on to produce three BBC series; two live UK tours and see Fielding and Barratt dubbed the funniest double-act in Britain' by NME.

Since we last saw him in Zooniverse and Nabootique, Noel has been busy going solo. There has been two series of the inescapably whimsical Luxury Comedy, an inspired stint as a team captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, the infamous appearances on Big Fat Quiz and now he's about to embark on a nationwide tour - his first in five years. An Evening with Noel Fielding promises to be a magical mix of his eccentric brand of stand-up comedy, live animation and music. There will even be some special guests too as he's taking his brother, Mike Fielding (Naboo) and Luxury’s Tom Meetan along with him on the 34 date stint. It certainly sounds like it’s going to be value for money. I caught up with Noel to discuss the upcoming Liverpool date but to be honest, we mainly ended up chatting about beards, Cliff Richard and Russell Brand's move into politics.

OPEN: So, your live show is called An Evening with Noel Fielding - it sounds more like an ITV special with the likes of Michael Buble rather than a comedy show?

NOEL: Haha, that is the angle I'm going for, there are going to be a lot of Frank Sinatra covers [...] When I booked it, I didn't really know what kind of show it was going to be - I hadn't written it. I was thinking it may be an amalgam of things; I knew I wanted to do some stand-up, I have some characters and have people with me - quite a mixture. But yeah, I was aware of what I did with the title. I did do it slightly tongue in cheek because it’s really not the sort of show I would ever do and it really made me laugh - it’s the sort of thing Barry Humphries would do.

They'll definitely be a mention to Michael Buble now you've said that though. The thing is with 'An Evening With...’ is that it sounds like you're 70 and ITV are giving you a pat on the back for being amazing but Buble has got to be incorporated into it too, now.

A lot of the Operation Yewtree suspects loved a good old fashioned 'An Evening With...' but I reckon were safe with Buble. We hope.

Yeah well this doesn't go to print for a few weeks so you never know....

What’s happening with Cliff at the moment, is he alright? I hope to God he didn't do anything. If Cliff goes then the whole fabric of society will disintegrate.

The whole of the 70's are going to be in prison, that's what’s happening. Oh it’s horrible.

It's looking that way. Now your last solo show was scheduled in 2010 but, according to the fountain of knowledge that is Wikipedia, it got postponed due to you working on The Boosh movie. Where the hell is that film?

We didn't really know what to do. Oh God, I don't know what we were doing. We were supposed to be going to America to do a show... then we decided no to that. Then we started writing a film but we didn't know which one to write so we wrote half of a film, it was a musical like Rocky Horror, and then a different half of another film. They didn't go together, obviously, which wasn't useful to anyone. We ended up doing neither of those things and I started working on an animated thing while Julian worked on something else - it was a bit of a shambles at that point. Also, that last big Boosh tour, it was like 100 dates - I was wasn't really in shape to tour.

But I'm back! Has it really been that long? 2010? I like doing that keeps people on their toes. It looks like its took me four years to pluck up the courage to come back on tour but I've done three series of the Buzzcocks, two of Luxury and I've done little bits of stand-up, but not a tour. I have been busy.

I’m not judging. Are you looking forward to this long awaited tour then?  

Yeah, it’s going to be nice to see some faces. Comedy is best with an audience otherwise it all feels a bit weird; making it in secret and putting it on telly. You don't really know how its gone; you get ratings and a few reviews but its not the same as going out into a room full of people.

When I was texting all my friends showing off that I was interviewing you, I noticed that the iPhone decides to autocorrect your name to Noël. What do you think about Apple giving you a Christmassy edge - too hipster?

I was born on Christmas Day, just like Jesus. Haha, no I wasn't...

I knew, I have read your Wikipedia after all. Speaking of hipsters - the man who created Vince Noir must be a tiny bit hipster?

You know what, no - I'm not like that. I’ve got loads of friends from Shoreditch who've got massive beards, short hair, tattoos - that seems to be the new hipster look doesn't it? When I went to Brooklyn, the Williamsburg crew all had massive beards - it’s quite funny, it’s like sitting in a convention of lumberjacks. Everyone looks like their dad, it’s all quite weird.

I can't really grow a great beard. And also, I’ve never wanted a massive beard. Do I really want something that covers up my face? That seems like a waste!! Haha, no, I'm joking.

Too late, that's going to be the headline of the interview.

The truth is I'm just not very good at growing a beard. It all goes a bit rubbish. Russell can grow a good one, Russell Brand.

Ahhh, speaking of Russell, he tweeted you the other day - are you guys really going to reunite as the Goth Detectives for The Big Fat Quiz of the Year?

Yeah we might be...(intriguing voice)

Really?

Maybbbbbeeeeee

I want an exclusive, come on.

Ahhh ok. I don't know if I'm allowed to say.

I'm taking this as a yes, Noel.

Ah, are you? We might be, we might not... hahaha. I haven't got black hair anymore - I can’t do it!

You can! Come on, hair dye is like a fiver from Boots.

Alright then. Five quid from Boots, yeah? I'll speak to Russell and see what he says. He’ll find the Big Fat Quiz too flippant now he's a politician.

He has gone political of late, hasn't he? Are you planning to join him on the revolution?

Well, the thing is, I'd like to... no, basically. Hahaha. I've heard that he's currently writing a political manifesto.

Really?

I know! Its insane isn't it? He's gone serious. And I think Eddie Izzard is running for Mayor at some point - all the comedians are going for it. I better get involved somehow. I don't really know how; it’s not my vibe, that. Maybe I could remake The Monster Raving Looney Party?

You could form The Goth Detectives Party with Russell?

The Goth Detective Party! Everyone has to wear black! We can spray all the Boris Bikes black, it will be amazing. I'm up for that lets do it!

When you discuss this with Russell I want full credit.

Haha, okay. I’ll wear a badge saying "It was Zoe's idea" and if it all goes wrong we’ll definitely, definitely say it was your idea.

Yeah but if it goes right then I'm laughing, I've started a political revolution.

If it goes really wrong then we’ll all have to grow beards.

Deal. I'll probably grow a better one than you by the sounds of things.

Haha. Basically we’ll grow massive beards and stand in Shoreditch then all my mates will get arrested instead of us. My mate Baccy has such a good beard, its huge. I was like, "how long did that take?" and he claims two months. I was like, "get lost it would take me about ten years to grow that". What do you think about them, you like them?

Not for me. I'm not sure why girls are pretending we really fancy men with them - grow a personality, not a beard. My dad had a beard growing up, so I sort of have a fondness for them, though.

My dad in the 90's had a beard, sleeve tattoos and smoked rolls up - he'd be so on trend now.

He was the pioneer of the look.

Either that or just a bit lazy. Now we've gone a bit off topic with talk of beards and politics - any plans for the return of The Boosh?

Maybe. The thing is, never say never. It’s difficult because when you get involved in something you have to see it through and it takes a while. I don't know when we’ll both be free but we still do fantasise about writing the film.

Well you should get cracking, Wikipedia has blown your cover with that one-you've got people excited!

I know! We need a year where we can sit down and write. People have such a fondness of The Mighty Boosh and it lives on in their memories so we don’t want to come back and do something not as good.

True. A lot of the great series bow out after two or three series.

Ah yeah, that's true. If we came back and do something not very good then we’ll have undone all the good work that's been done. It’s tricky. You never know what to do.

You can give me a ring once you've wrote it and I'll let you know...

Yeah we'll try that I'll send it to you and you let me know.

That would be great. I promise I won't leak it - I won't even save it to iCloud or anything!

I'll send it to you in a beard!

I best start befriending those who enjoy the lumberjack look, then.

[her-culture]

Tim Burton and the Cult of the White Freaks

by Archita Mittra (20), India

I almost didn’t write this article. When I was 12 or 13, I went through an intense punk phase, complete with electric blue highlights, ripped jeans, inscribing Green Day lyrics on the walls of my room, and a vocabulary of extremely colourful expletives. I was a devoted rebel without a cause. I was suffering from a severe identity crisis.  I’ve always been a weird person. I’ve always liked the strange and eccentric characters. I took to writing emo poetry and creating morbid art, because I couldn’t speak, because for the most part of my childhood and my teenage years, I didn’t have the right words, the right face, the right personality, to fucking speak. I’m 20 now, and I still make morbid stuff, and things have changed, but only a bit. I close my eyes and I’m back there in that dark room with no light, a child with sewn lips, trying to articulate a trauma that knows no language. Somewhere in that demented darkness, I discovered, among other things, the films of Tim Burton. I fell in love with him and just some months back, I think, he betrayed me. This is why I almost didn’t write this article.  Let me tell you why I fell for him in the first place.  My skin’s brown as a dried walnut, and I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it’s going to stay that way, even if in my fantasies I’m white as Mia Wasikowaska’s Alice exploring a Gothic wonderland and having tea with a Mad Hatter wearing too much of white face paint. And, for as long as I could remember, that was a problem to everyone else. Why wasn’t my skin tone as fair as my parents, all my relatives would whine at every wedding and social gathering that my shy and introverted self was forced to attend. In holiday pictures, people teased me by asking if I was adopted. My classmates and I would play a game where the person with the lightest skin tone would win. During the annual school play, I was supposed to be grateful because I was getting to wear an expensive and exquisitely beautiful gown, pretending to be a spoilt stepsister and not the beautiful and oh-so-white Cinderella. Hey, at least I got the limelight for a bit. And yeah, it’s so okay, that even the colour pencils I use to make my art, label the peachy-pink tone as ‘skin’ and my brown flesh as well, just brown. Brown as tree bark, I suppose. For a long time, I kept telling myself that my shyness, my social anxiety, my crippling depression wasn’t because of all the bullying I had to endure at school, wasn’t because I was darker than everyone else around me, that it was just a manufacturing defect. Isn’t it normal for people to make fun of those who st-st-stammer? Isn’t it abnormal to st-st-stammer when you’re talking about the things you love and the things you fear? So, I did the only thing I could. I stopped talking. I wrote instead, but even that frightened me. Tim Burton was the best friend I never had. Because his films with all their Gothic visuals and macabre aesthetics, were about people supposedly like me. Beetlejuice wasn’t my first Tim Burton film but it is significant in two respects. One, it was Burton’s breakthrough film that landed him the offer to direct the blockbuster Batman films and kick-start the superhero industry. Two, it introduced to the world what is now regarded as the popular stereotype of the Goth girl: the charming Lydia Deetz. For my depressed 14 year old self who was tired of making up imaginary friends to play with and slitting wrists, the black-clad, eye-liner-wearing psychic and photography enthusiast became both my role model and my mirror image. She was introverted (yay), creative, super duper depressed and could talk to ghosts. She was me! Of course there was something strikingly wrong with this image and I tried to ignore it by smearing a shit load of face powder on my brown brown face: she was white. Years later, Tim Burton’s trademark vision gave way to the pastiche dark fantasy comedy Dark Shadows, which although failed commercially, greatly pleased me aesthetically. Johnny Depp was playing a delicious vampire, fashion icon Helena Bonham Carter was a psychologist, a sassy teenage girl was later revealed to be a werewolf, the whole family was as dysfunctional as mine and the soundtrack included both the Carpenters and Alice Cooper. What else could a lonely POC girl, steadily losing her mind in a world of Gothic films that reflected back her own emptiness and strangeness, ask for?  And even now, despite everything that has happened to me, Edward Scissorhands still remains as one of my favourite films, and although I pride myself as the type of person who doesn’t cry while watching a movie, my eyes were watery by the time Edward and Kim had parted ways and Edward remained in that dark castle, lonely as he ever was, making snow with his scissor hands. I was simultaneously Edward, this misfit-monster abandoned by God and his parent, and Kim, the suburban girl, slowly tasting what it is to love a stranger whose heart is so familiar and to dance for the first time in snow. And I thought, as I watched the pain in Edward’s eyes that it was Burton and not Edward, who was pleading to the audience to look beyond appearances and voicing for the first time, his childhood issues of alienation and misrepresentation. Soon after watching the film, my diary entries (I kept several journals because I didn’t have ‘real life’ friends to talk to) began to be addressed to a mysterious man named Edward while the Johnny Depp fan art I made bore the note ‘the only Edward I ever loved’ much to the annoyance of my Twlight-obsessed classmates. The movie wasn’t perfect, but then again, most beautiful things never are. And I’d long outgrown my fangirly love for Depp, long before those allegations about abusing Amber Heard began. But the love story with Tim Burton doesn’t end here. In 2010, when Alice having slain the Jabberwocky is preparing to leave, the Hatter softly requests her to stay. Alice promises to come back but the Hatter is unconvinced, saying she won’t remember him. Alice was not ready to comprehend the implications of that exchange, but I did and it terrified me to death.  Tim Burton’s movies were the wonderland I would run away to, to escape my harsh reality, to forget this world that wouldn’t treat me as one of them, because I wasn’t fair enough, because fuck it, I wasn’t normal enough. I was trapped in the world of the Mad Hatter, a dream concocted by Alice, a world that is fragile and ephemeral, a world that disappears the moment Alice wakes up and forgets her dream.  I’ll come back to this later, but for now, let me tell you the final lesson I learnt from watching Tim Burton’s movies: I learned to hope. In his delightful stop-motion animated feature Frankenweenie, Victor attempts to bring his dead pet dog Sparky back to life and he does so with disastrous consequences. Watching it and remembering all the pets I’d loved who died and would sell my soul to bring back, I was filled with a childlike sense of hope and the realization that I wasn’t alone for believing in and desperately hoping for impossible things, I wasn’t alone in being misunderstood and misrepresented. For once being the weird kid in class and scribbling poems and doodles on the sly, didn’t matter. Not having people to connect to, or appreciating me for the messed-up person I was, didn’t matter. I was okay. I didn’t have to be normal like everyone else, because there were people like Tim Burton who could totally get me. At least that’s what I felt when he said stuff like, ‘I think a lot of kids feel alone and slightly isolated and in their own world.’ And as much morbid a Tim Burton film may appear to a first time viewer (especially if it’s Corpse Bride), Burton’s characteristic brand of Gothic-ness wasn’t so much as a celebration of death, as it was a celebration of life. Working within the Hollywood system, Tim Burton has managed to retain his personality and also be, subversive. And that was so fucking inspiring to me.  Why then did this man, who dresses up in black, whose films have tried to teach me to fall in love with myself and to believe in magic, miracles and impossible things, suddenly, betray me?  Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children should have been my perfect film. After all, it’s a film about kids who are eccentric and don’t fit in, has time travel and a love story thrown in the mix and a secret house where they can be themselves. It is exactly the stuff I relate to and enthusiastically devour.  But this is what Tim Burton did. When asked about the lack of diversity in his films, he said ‘Nowadays, people are talking about it more. But things either call for things, or they don’t. I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct, like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black — I used to get more offended by that than just — I grew up watching blaxploitation movies, right? And I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, OK, there should be more white people in these movies.” In that singular moment, my whole carefully-constructed illusion came crashing down, so efficiently, I didn’t even realize it. Okay, I told myself, I’m a POC and I’m not ‘called for’. All through my life I have been worshipping a man in whose imagination, I have no space, I do not exist. I’m the Mad Hatter in Alice’s world, alive for a short time, useful as a plot device and erased out of the narrative, the moment Alice returns to the real world.  Is this the kind of space WE occupy in the white imagination? Okay, I tell myself. At least unlike Steven Moffat, he isn’t famous for saying a string of problematic things. Okay, perhaps it was someone else’s fault- maybe Ransom Riggs or a Disney executive didn’t want too much tampering with the too-white source material( Never mind what he did with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by adding a back story to Willy Wonka that I totally loved). Plus if he really suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, as his ex-partner Helena Bonham Carter claimed, we shouldn’t take his words to heart. Maybe he didn’t mean it. It’s just one blunder, I told myself. It doesn’t change anything.  But it did. It changed everything. I couldn’t make any more excuses. Taking a look at his entire filmography-a career spanning over three decades- I realized that casting white, pale-as-death people is his artistic and directorial choice. It’s his fucking personal and creative choice. He just said that out loud. And it’s shoved into my face that this is a world running on white privilege and racism and hate crimes. That it’s the discrimination that POC face on a daily basis both from the whites and the communities who have internalized such values is the reason why I’m too afraid to even consider studying abroad in the UK or USA because Brexit and Trump administration yada yada, why I’m never ‘pretty enough’ to be considered to take part in college fashion shows built on patriarchal beauty conventions, why I still spend a part of my earnings on cosmetics that promise me ‘fair’ skin. My skin color isn’t an issue, most charming hypocrites will claim, it’s my shyness and weirdness and my lack of fucking ‘normal-ness’ that’s to blame.  I wish someone would just tell me that I was born okay, that I am okay, that I’m not some sort of manufacturing defect most people think I am. In other words, Tim Burton’s niche audience wasn’t as inclusive as I made it out to be. It had outsiders and misfits yes, but only the white ones. Tim Burton’s fan club is a cult of white freaks, not Black freaks, not POC freaks, not any non-white freaks.  I can’t be a part of this fan club, because in their world, I don’t exist. I am not ‘called for.’ When Ash Davis responds to Burton’s comment, she writes this brilliant article and says, ‘I write fanfiction for the people Tim Burton says are not ‘called for’. My mind, likewise, is a movie theatre where I edit my favourite films and include myself in the lead. I change the endings, add more romance when I’m lonely, put on costumes so outrageous that my mum won’t even let me wear on Halloween, deliver the dialogues my mouth will never speak, and feel a sense of belonging that is every bit delightful and artificial and illusory. In the films I direct in my mind, I look like the typical Tim Burton heroine. I’m white, not brown.  This is what the white gaze has done to me.  When I fell in love with his films, I thought I was seeing myself reflected back in Jack Skellington, in Lydia Deetz, in Edward Scissorhands, in Ed Wood, in Willy Wonka, in the Mad Hatter, in young Victor, in the Corpse Bride, in Ichabod Crane, but I never saw myself. I only saw what I wished so desperately to be seen as. Do I stop watching Tim Burton films after that racist comment? No. A part of me still hopes he’ll apologize or better yet include people who actually look like me in his next film. A fangirl, can hope, right? After all his films did help me to get through some dark times, albeit in a twisted way and I can’t erase those tense growing-up years when his oddball characters were all I could hold onto. But at the end of the day, he belongs to the mold of white film directors who make white movies for a predominantly white audience and think diversity POC-narratives aren’t important at all.  But do Tim Burton films help me feel less lonely and less marginalized and less threatened by the big bad world out there? Not a bit.