Quantcast
Channel: Culture & Arts
Viewing all 18485 articles
Browse latest View live

Watch This Woman Bravely Face Her Disorder By Shaving Her Head

0
0



“Hello, today’s video is very special. I am shaving all my hair off. And I’m terrified.”


That's how vlogger Rebecca Brown begins her newest video on her YouTube page TrichJournal. Uploaded on Jan. 1, the video shows Brown shaving her hair off to deal with a condition she suffers from called Trichotillomania, which causes people to compulsively pull out their hair


“It’s either shave my hair or lose my hair," she says. "I’m fed up being triggered and tortured by the hair on my head and I don’t really feel that I have any other option.” 


Brown has been documenting her struggle with Trichotillomania on her page TrichJournal since she was first diagnosed at the age of 11. 


“For many people watching, they may think this is a bit excessive or unnecessary and it’s not," Brown explains. "Countless people with my disorder have to go through this.”




“I’m not scared of shaving it off or being bald. That doesn’t scare me," Brown says. "It’s what it symbolizes that hurts.” 


This is the second time Brown has shaved her head because of Trichotillomania. The first time was in 2011. "You can’t give up with a disorder," Brown says at the end of the video. "Even when you hate it, you just have to keep going.” 


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


Giant Chairman Mao Statue Torn Down By Embarrassed Officials

0
0

Remember the massive golden statue of Chairman Mao that was mysteriously erected in a rural town in China earlier this week?


Well, turns out the late communist leader's reign was short-lived this time around: The extravagant statue was demolished just two days after news of its completion, per the orders of "embarrassed" local officials, The New York Times said. 


The 120-foot, gold-painted statue cost nearly half a million dollars to construct and was reportedly funded by local businessmen and villagers from Tongxu County in China's Henan province.  


But a village official told the People's Daily that the statue's construction had not been approved in the first place, according to the BBC. 






Photos circulating on social media show the statue's head covered with a large black cloth as it was dismantled. Security officials and groups of unidentified men in olive green coats reportedly blocked the streets leading up to the statue as it was being torn down. 


On social media earlier this week, people criticized the statue's construction, saying that the money would have been better spent on education or health care. 


Nearly 45 million people in Henan province, where the statue was built, died from a mass famine resulting from Mao Zedong's restrictive policies in the 1950s. It continues to be one of the poorest provinces in China to this day. 






The above photo's caption reads, "China's first statue of Chairman Mao, 120 ft high and estimated to be 3,000,000 yuan, was torn down on Jan. 7, according to media reports. What a shame! That is Tongxu," according to a HuffPost translation.


While it's unclear who exactly was behind the statue's construction in the first place, The New York Times reports that online chat site users suggested it was the idea of a local businessman named Sun Qingxin, who heads a machine manufacturing business and owns food processing facilities, hospitals and schools. 


Also on HuffPost:




-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Semi-Nude Photo Series Will Empower Older Women With Body Woes

0
0

When middle age arrives, it can announce itself with added pounds, a changing shape and a tough time going clothes shopping. No doubt a positive body image can be difficult to maintain as you get older, so two women decided to take the struggle public in an effort to put everyone at ease.


Lori Petchers, 57, and Faith Baum, 63, came up with the idea for a photo project to reflect older women's struggles with their changing bodies. Petchers and Baum, both post-menopausal women and mothers, told The Huffington Post that it was a common discussion topic in their circles.


"Middle-aged female bodies are rarely seen except in advertisements about lifting, incising, creaming and hiding," Baum and Petchers said. 


So they decided to change that. Enter, "Old Bags."


A photo series was imagined to "poke fun at consumerism." Middle-aged women ages 45 to 70, of all body shapes, races and sizes, were asked to bravely strip down to their underwear, and show off their bodies proudly -- but anonymously. They are all wearing shopping bags on their heads.



 


The project's creators say they wanted older women to know they aren't alone.


"A lot of middle-aged women have little idea of what is typical of an aging woman’s body. They think they are the only ones with saggy thighs, loose skin and everything else," the creators say. "It is so important to normalize aging.  And to feel comfortable in our own skin."


The project was launched a few years back and has since grown into more than just powerful images. The photos have been featured in several art shows, an independent exhibit, and most recently, a book. "Old Bags Taking A Stand" features photos of women, as well as anecdotes on aging taken from hours of interviews -- all for other women to draw strength from.


 


"Many women see middle age as the end -- the end of children, sexuality, youth," Baum and Petchers said. "But the project has made us realize that many of us have 30 to 40 years ahead ... it's a chance to reap the benefits of past endeavors and start some new ones."


Check out the photos below and see more on the Old Bags Project website and Facebook page.


 



Also on HuffPost:



 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


"Hiding their heads with bags, forces the viewers really look at the body – which we think is very important," Baum and Petchers said. 


 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

'Pizza Rat' Suspected Of Being A Hoax, Because Nothing Is Sacred

0
0

"Is anything real?"


That was the question posed to The Huffington Post by Eric Yearwood, a New York-based comedian who told Gothamist this week that “Selfie Rat” -- a viral video purportedly showing a rat climbing on top of a sleeping man and snapping a selfie with his phone -- was staged.





The video earned national fame in November after someone claiming to be “Don Richards” sent the video (and the accompanying “rat selfie”) to Connecticut local news station Fox 61, and the station aired the video. Fox 61 did not respond to a request for comment.


Yearwood now says that he played the sleeping man in the video and that the whole thing was really the work of a mysterious Brooklyn performance artist named “Zardulu.”


Gothamist’s John Del Signore believes Yearwood’s statement also calls into question the veracity of a much more famous viral rat video -- "Pizza Rat." Both videos are the work of rat-training hoaxers, he theorizes. 






Of course, it’s not difficult to believe that "Selfie Rat" was staged. The rat in the video stands around placidly when the man wakes up and shakes it off, but a wild rat would probably become frightened and scamper away, a biology professor explained to Gothamist. And CityLab writer Kriston Capps noted in November that the guy’s sleeping posture looks unnatural.


It's also pretty suspicious that the sleeping man jumps up and notices the rat about one second after the videographer whispers, “He’s got a rat on him.”


But Yearwood’s revelation seems nearly as outlandish as the video itself. Did the video really come into existence the way that Yearwood claims? He told both Gothamist and HuffPost that Zardulu, the alleged performance artist, contacted him seemingly out of nowhere, and offered him a chance to appear in a video for $200.


“I don’t know if you’ve ever had this moment in your life when time stops,” Yearwood told HuffPost, describing the first moment he met Zardulu. He described her as a woman around the age of 30 “wearing robes,” and claimed that she brought him to her studio -- a hidden, semi-underground “hatch” in Brooklyn, where he met three trained rats, one of which is the video’s star.


Working with Zardulu, Yearwood says, has had a profound impact on his psyche and convinced him that basically nothing is guaranteed to be real.


“I’m hearing a car siren and I’m thinking, ‘Is that Zardulu?'” he said.


Two other actors told Gothamist that they had also worked with Zardulu, though both sources were cited anonymously. One of them claimed that many "huge stories" in the media were really the work of Zardulu.



"I condemn your article and every click it gets."
"Zardulu"


There's little proof that Zardulu exists, however. Yearwood was unable to provide Zardulu’s real name, or the name of the person who filmed the video. He also was not able to provide any proof of email correspondence with Zardulu.


Yearwood did provide an email address for Zardulu, though. Someone writing from that address told HuffPost, “If a lack of proof that I exist means you will not be doing [a story about me], that is quite alright with me.”


The person also noted, "I condemn your article and every click it gets."


There is a Twitter account and a Facebook page for a self-described “Mythmaker” named Zardulu, but both have only been active since last month.


When asked if he had any hard evidence to prove Zardulu’s existence, Yearwood told HuffPost, “I would just say the proof is in the pudding.”


As for the infamous rat seen in a September video dragging a full slice of pizza down the New York City subway steps, there’s not much proof one way or the other whether that incident was staged. Matt Little, who filmed the video, maintains it was not.





“I hate to break it to you, but 'Pizza Rat' was real,” Little told HuffPost in a Facebook message. “It’s hilarious to me that people think it was faked.”


Pat Baer, who says he was with Little when "Pizza Rat" was filmed, also posted a public defense of the video's authenticity on Facebook.



I am not a liar, and I am not part of some hoax or conspiracy. I have received no financial gain for pizza rat. I...

Posted by Pat Baer on Friday, January 8, 2016


Both Yearwood and Little say they’ve never met, though they are both members of New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, as is Baer.


But what does Yearwood think about "Pizza Rat"?


“Is anything that you see online and that people care about real?” he asked. “I don’t know if it matters.”


We don’t even want to think about "Cannibal Rat."


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This NYC Rave Will Explore Queerness And Surveillance In The Digital Age

0
0

How do we reconcile the spectrum of possibilities technology affords us in the digital age with the realities of living in a culture regulated and policed by a state of surveillance?


It's a wonderful and terrifying time to be alive -- and an event this weekend in the depths of Brooklyn will explore this technological friction and the way that it intersects with queerness and queer culture in 2016.


Called DOWNLOAD, the event is curated by Brooklyn party production duo The Culture Whore, previously featured in the HuffPost series "After Dark: NYC Nightlife Today and Days Past." Made up of Dream Dommu (formerly Mark Dommu) and Paul Leopold, The Culture Whore wants to use their transcendental rave experience to open up a space for conversation about the realities of being queer in the digital age and how technology shapes and informs the lives of queers who are plugged into the matrix 24/7.


"Surveillance is only scary because we don’t trust those who control it," Dommu and Leopold told The Huffington Post. "But what if queers controlled all of the cameras? There’s something transformative about recording, screening, documenting yourself in real time #selfie. Who doesn’t love some good cyber sex? We’ve been in enough of those private facebook groups to know how much everyone loves recording themselves masturbating. It’s so wonderfully raw and narcissistic. What happens when you enter digital reality as a code of numbers in a matrix of light? Why do we love waving at ourselves in the jumbotron? Where can we go if we shift_alt_control and start writing the code? Don’t let gay tales of marriage, gym pics and cookie dough clog the feed -- we’re taking back the Internet."





DOWNLOAD will occur in conjunction with American Realness, an annual festival of contemporary performance in New York City. American Realness presents over 72 performances throughout an eleven-day period, primarily at Abrons Arts Center, but also MoMA PS1 and Gibney Dance Center.


"The artists of American Realness expose issues and questions around identity, ritual, blackness, history, pop-culture, futurity, and consumption in an American-focused, globally-minded context," organizer Ben Pryor told The Huffington Post, quoting a brochure for the event. "American Realness exposes the cracks in the façade: of the practice of art making; of the construction of contemporary society; of our increasing inability to slow down and really see, hear and think. American Realness is an opportunity to reclaim the reins and rewrite the narratives."


In this way, DOWNLOAD aims to build off of these ideas being explored through American Realness. Technology has completely altered the fabric of our lives and communities as queers -- in ways that aren't necessarily good or bad, just new. From community building to hooking up to creatively collaborating to coming to understand and live as our authentic selves -- our experiences are all documented within and projected into the digital realm under the watchful eyes of an omnipresent, yet intangible, state of surveillance.



For over three years, The Culture Whore has curated these transcendental party experiences for the queer community navigating this outer borough of New York City.


Some events have examined the ways in which our shared cultural phenomena, like Harry Potter, shaped the way we embody queerness today. Others have provided alternatives to mainstream gay pride celebrations that have become increasingly corporatized and focused on profit rather than the celebration about what makes us different from the rest of the world.


Others have payed homage to seminal experiences that played a role in molding our consciousness as queer beings, like "Rocky Horror Picture Show."


As we descend further down the rabbit hole of a world framed by all-encompassing technological pervasiveness, DOWNLOAD is here to provide a space for exploration about what the future holds for us as queer people who are continuing to take agency over our lives -- and especially our bodies.


And that is something both terrifying and beautiful.


DOWNLOAD will take place on Saturday, Jan. 9 a warehouse in deep Brooklyn. Head here for tickets and information and check out the slideshow below for photos from past The Culture Whore events.


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Someone Hid A Tiny VW Beetle In A Museum’s Insect Collection

0
0

The Beatles sum it up perfectly: “Beep beep'm beep beep yeah!”


Someone at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has proved that entomologists can be quite funny when a Volkswagen Beetle toy hiding amongst an insect display was uncovered.


Reddit user Muppaphone shared a snapshot of the ladybug-sized car on the content-sharing site on Thursday, causing pun-demonium among fans of a good dad joke.


Although the clever image is new to the web, apparently the placement of toy isn’t. It’s been there for years.


According to Muppaphone, the Beetle hiding within a swarm of insects has been there since they were in high school, around the late '90s and early 2000s.


Glenda Bogar, director of communications for the museum, backs up that claim, saying the joke was installed along with the exhibit around 2002.


“It serves as a fun way to engage our visitors,” Bogar told The Huffington Post, adding that there are a handful of other hidden surprises in displays around the institution. “Visitors are always excited when they uncover these humorous and unexpected objects.”


After this image began flying around Reddit, commenters began sharing their experiences spotting visual puns at other museums around the country.


“The Science Museum of Boston has a lawn flamingo in their birds of prey exhibit,” said one Redditor.


Yet another Redditor has another theory as to why the joke exists. Funny is just the way entomologists bee.


“In my experience, the plant biologists tend to be boring as hell, the vertebrate biologists are a hoot and the entomologists are fucking hilarious," the poster wrote. "Top of the list are lepidopterists, for some reason I can't understand. Maybe it's the act of running after pretty fluttering insects with a net that just keeps anyone from taking themselves too seriously.”


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The Ocean's Chaotic Beauty Captured In 15 Award-Winning Photos

0
0

In case you needed further proof that the ocean is a bizarre, magnificent and totally alien world, the Underwater Photography Guide has announced the winners of its 2015 Ocean Art Underwater Photo Competition.


The photo submissions, which come from more than 50 countries and include ocean as well as freshwater scenes, capture "out-of-this-world fish and marine life shots, rarely seen underwater behavior, cute portraits, dreamy scenes in the conceptual category, sharks, whales and some dramatic moments between humans and marine life," the publication said in a release.


The "Best of Show" winner, for example, is a photo of a larval-stage eel spotted at night off the coast of Hawaii's Big Island. The creature, UPG wrote, "looks like an alien invader from outer space, and has only been photographed a handful of times before."


The rest of the first-place photographs show equally impressive scenes, proving yet again that the ocean is a chaotically beautiful place. Below, you can see some of the winning photos, along with the photographers' own accounts (which originally appeared at UPG) of how each picture came to be.



All text [sic]. 


Also on HuffPost: 


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

12 Awe-Inspiring Poets To Read In Your Lifetime

0
0

Poets have a way of evoking life's most complex philosophies in just a few short lines. And falling upon the right ears, those lines can change lives.


The 12 poets below are seekers, mystics, naturalists and more. In their words, we hope you find beauty and meaning:



 


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


Lady Gaga And Fiancé Taylor Kinney Pose Nude On The Cover Of V Magazine

0
0

Here's one way to immortalize your love. 


Lady Gaga and her fiancé, Taylor Kinney, appear nude on the cover of V magazine's spring preview issue, giving us a glimpse of their not-so-bad romance. The pic -- a mirror selfie -- shows the couple in a close embrace sitting atop an art canvas, their bodies smeared with paint.


The cover is one of 16 for the issue, which was guest-edited by the singer herself. Another one of the covers features the couple's French bulldog, Asia.



The 29-year-old singer (real name Stefani Germanotta) and Kinney, 34, got engaged on Valentine's Day last year. Gaga revealed the news by sharing a photo of her gigantic heart-shaped ring on Instagram. 


"He gave me his heart on Valentine's Day, and I said YES!" she captioned the pic. 



He gave me his heart on Valentine's Day, and I said YES!

A photo posted by The Countess (@ladygaga) on




The pair met in 2011 while filming Gaga's "You & I" music video, in which Kinney stars as a shirtless mad scientist (or... something) who gets it on with a mermaid Gaga. The video is full of what now looks like foreshadowing, including a scene in which Gaga -- wearing her mother's wedding dress -- accepts a ring from Kinney. 


Whoa. 





V99 hits newsstands on Jan. 14. To see all the covers and to read more, head to vmagazine.com.


Also on HuffPost: 


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Dad Beatboxing With His Baby Is All Kinds Of Cute

0
0



Some good things get even better when there's an adorable baby involved. That's certainly true for beatboxing, anyway.


Dad Brad Dowdy, aka B_80, posted a video of himself beatboxing on his baby daughter's belly, and her giggles are almost too cute to handle. 


The video -- which he captioned, "New technique I'm working on called 'baby bass'" -- has over three million views on Facebook.


In a follow-up post about the viral video, the beatbox artist wrote, "I know my daughter is totes adorbz and I owe this all to her and her beautiful smile."


Aww!


H/T PopSugar


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











12 Breathtaking Photos To Encourage Every Woman To Embrace Her 'Essence'

0
0

Embracing your essence never looked so good. 


Created by photographer Eva Woolridge, "Embrace Your Essence" is a photo series highlighting women and their favorite physical features. Inspired by her mother's quote "be the flame, not the moth," Woolridge defines a person's "essence" as "the inner flame that attracts positivity and beauty." 


"Embrace Your Essence" features images of 12 college women showing off what they love most about their bodies, with quotes from each about why they chose that specific feature. 


"The foundation of the project was based on an idea that my mom instilled in me when I was growing up; that everyone has at least one beautiful feature to be proud of, whether it's one's hair, eyes, freckles, scar, or birth mark, as well as an endless list of their inner beauty," Woolridge told The Huffington Post.


The series started as a senior class project and most of the women featured are Woolridge's classmates. "I think the women involved wanted to be a part of the solution," she said. "They wanted to change this cycle of self-criticism and embrace every magnificent element of themselves."



Woolridge said that it took some time for each woman to openly talk about what she found beautiful about herself during the shoot. Woolridge would ask the model what she found beautiful about herself and the young woman would reply, "Well, people tell me that..." and Woolridge would immediately stop her. "I told them 'I do not want to know what other people find beautiful... I want to know what you find beautiful about yourself,'" she said. 


Through the project, Woolridge said she's really begun to recognize how much strength and perseverance it's taken many of these women to find self-love, including herself.


"As a young woman, I have faced my own turmoils with who I am and my body image," she said. "I can tell you 100 of reasons why I don't like my hands, but why waste the energy and hurt my self esteem in the process. Let me instead tell you 1000 reasons why I love my smile... We already face enough negativity. Why add to it? Instead embrace your essence, because only when we embrace ourselves, is when we will truly love who we are."


Scroll below to see the rest of Woolridge's stunning "Embrace Your Essence" series.  



Head over to Woolridge's Instagram, Facebook or website to see more of her work. 


Also on HuffPost: 


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











Your Inner Nerd Will Love These Photos Of Old-School America

0
0

The New York Public Library announced this week that it has digitized approximately 180,000 public domain images, bringing the total number of images in the library's digital collection to more than 672,000.


We've compiled some of the most striking photos in the new collection, including some by Dorothea Lange, famous for her iconic shots of migrants in California, as well as black-and-white images of New York City in the 1930s. Also included were 40,000 stereoscopic images from all over the United States. 


Check out the photos below:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











Check Out The Adorable Little Entrepreneurs On The Forbes '10 Under 10' List

0
0



Earlier this week, Forbes released its annual "30 Under 30" list -- a roundup of "the brightest young entrepreneurs, breakout talents and change agents" under the age of 30 in 20 different fields, ranging from technology to media to food and drink. 


Following up on the list's release, we now have the Forbes "10 Under 10 Influencers In Tech." This parody video shows a fake Forbes reporter interviewing some of best and brightest kid entrepreneurs, like the duo behind the popular playdating app "Binky Meets Cradle" or the creator of "Napchat," a messaging app "for kids to nap socially, mobile-y."


When asked what advice they'd give their younger selves, the under-10-year-olds said they wished they'd dropped out of school sooner and bought more bitcoins.


"It's tough to stay relevant in the Valley past a certain age," one kid remarks.


LOL.


H/T Tastefully Offensive


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











'The Wire' Animation Makes Us Want To Binge Watch It All Over Again

0
0



Fans of "The Wire," this one's for you.


It's been eight long years since Omar Little, Stringer Bell and Jimmy McNulty left our TV screens. But they're now back, kinda, in a brand new animated clip.


Elliot Lim has beautifully reimagined the show's opening sequence, set to the Blind Boys of Alabama's title theme song, "Way Down in the Hole."


"The Wire hit me harder than anything else I had seen on TV," Lim, from the San Francisco Bay Area, told The Daily Dot.


He said the idea of paying tribute to his favorite show was with him for a while before he was "finally able to find the time and motivation to make it happen."


The freelance director, designer and animator posted the 1-minute 24-second clip to Vimeo last Sunday, and it's going viral.


Also on HuffPost: 




-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











See David Bowie Defend Long-Haired Men In TV Interview At Age 17

0
0



David Bowie, who died Sunday aged 69, proved he was well ahead of his time in this early TV interview 52 years ago.


The boy then known as David Jones was just 17 when he appeared on the BBC's "Tonight" show as the spokesman for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men in 1964, reports Dazed Digital.


Unearthed footage posted to YouTube shows him complaining about the treatment of men with lengthy locks, which would later become fashionable.


"I think we're all fairly tolerant," he tells host Cliff Michelmore in the interview. "But for the last two years, we've had comments like 'Darling!' and 'Can I carry your handbag?' thrown at us, and I think it just has to stop now."


"I think we all like long hair and we don't see why other people should persecute us because of it," he adds.


Bowie has collar-length hair in the clip, and Open Culture speculates that he created the society as a tongue-in-cheek move after a record producer asked him to cut his locks -- an early example of Bowie's knack for using his changing image to generate publicity for his music.


 


More coverage of David Bowie:















Also on HuffPost:




-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.












David Bowie's Final Album, 'Blackstar,' Is A Goodbye Letter To Fans

0
0

In The New Yorker on Saturday, Ben Greenman declared David Bowie's newest album, "Blackstar," "prime Bowie is in its willingness to embrace nonsense."


But after the singer died at age 69 on the same day following a secret 18-month struggle with cancer, it doesn't seem like nonsense anymore. His death came just three days after the release of the album, and "Blackstar" has quickly started to feel like Bowie's own way of saying goodbye to the world, sprinkled with hints and farewells throughout. 



Look up here, I'm in Heaven!
David Bowie on "Lazarus"


Bowie's collaborator and "Blackstar" producer Tony Visconti confirmed on Monday the legendary singer created the album as a "parting gift."


"He made 'Blackstar' for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be," Visconti wrote on his Facebook page. "His death was no different from his life -- a work of Art."


Two of the album's accompanying music videos underscore the themes of the seven-track album, which runs for a short 40 minutes. A skull motif weaves through each of the videos, both set against a bleak palate of grays and blues.


On "Lazarus," we see Bowie constrained to a hospital bed, gauze ominously wrapped around his head and a button sewn over each eye. In the song, named for a man raised from the dead in the Bible, he sings, "Look up here, I'm in Heaven!" and later, "Oh, I'll be free / Just like that bluebird," before backing into a dark closet.





Another video, this one for the track "Blackstar," functions as a short film, telling a story over 10 minutes of Bowie as a blind prophet to a group of convulsing followers. "Something happened on the day he died / Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside," Bowie sings.





Throughout the album, other lyrics take on new meaning based on Sunday's news: "I know something is very wrong / The pulse returns the prodigal sons / The blackout hearts, the flowered news / With skull designs upon my shoes," Bowie sings in "I Can't Give Everything Away."


The album got its start in mid-2014, when Bowie and Visconti first met. By December, Bowie was ready to record, Visconti told Rolling Stone in an interview where he also proclaimed the singer to be "in fine health."  


Recording sessions, Visconti explained, would frequently last seven hours per day. Mark Guiliana, who plays drums on the album, remarked on Bowie's stamina when it came to his music.


"He'd just go from zero to 60 once we walked out of the control room and into the studio," Guiliana told Rolling Stone. 


 


More coverage of David Bowie:
















Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











What David Bowie's Turn As A Sci-Fi Star Can Teach Us About Grief

0
0

In 1976, British filmmaker Nicolas Roeg directed the cult science-fiction film "The Man Who Fell to Earth."


The movie, based on Walter Tevis' 1963 novel of the same name, tells the story of Thomas Jerome Newton, a human-like extraterrestrial who, in a search for water for his drought-riddled home planet, finds himself tragically marooned on Earth.


In one of the most fated casting choices in cinematic history, the starring role went to the late David Bowie, the musician who rose to fame on the wings of a song dubbed "Space Oddity" and would go on to adopt the mythic pseudonym, Ziggy Stardust. 


"Bowie, slender, elegant, remote, evokes this alien so successfully that one could say, without irony, this was a role he was born to play," Roger Ebert wrote in 2011. As a result, critics like Joshua Rothkopf called the film "the most intellectually provocative genre film of the 1970s."



As Newton, Bowie acts out the travails of a hyper-intelligent being transitioning from doomed traveler to technological tycoon to the object of CIA experimentation. Bowie, embracing the Thin White Duke persona at the time, delivered the heart-wrenching role with ease. His character moved seamlessly from a forlorn, alien refugee to a full-fledged member of Earthly society and back again, in an allegorical story sci-fi fans adored.


But beyond the fandom, the film explored an emotion Bowie fans are all too familiar with: grief. As the world mourns the death of David Robert Jones this week, it's worth looking back on his turn as Newton. Particularly since "Lazarus," the loose musical adaptation of "The Man Who Fell to Earth," co-written by Bowie and Enda Walsh, is currently running in New York City.


"At its core, 'Lazarus' is a two-hour meditation on grief and lost hope," Rolling Stone's Kory Grow wrote. This is an accurate description of the film, too.


Throughout Newton's stay on Earth, he's constantly reminded of his wife and children, slowly succumbing to a drought. While at first Newton works tirelessly and somewhat successfully to repair his crashed spaceship, hoping to eventually return home to his people, his plans are inevitably disrupted. Government officials become privy to Newton's alien identity and they opt to imprison him and subject him to a litany of medical tests. Only after years of captivity and near torture does Newton realize that his "prison" -- a luxury apartment inside a hotel -- has no locks.


He escapes, but for what? His home, he expects, has not survived.



Tevis's book and Roeg's movie are not meant to gloss over the complexities of loss. Bowie's character is enveloped by a real, overwhelming sense of despair that waxes and wanes as he experiences semblances of success and failure in his disguise. Nonetheless, Newton never forgets his desire to reunite with his family no matter the score -- a potent emotion that wound its way into later films like Steven Spielberg's iconic masterpiece, "E.T." Unlike the friendly alien of all our childhood dreams, however, Newton's desire does not bring him home. 


Roeg leaves us with a scene that poetically reflects on Newton's fate. He had, throughout the course of a long and loopy plot, managed to hang on to some sense of hope. So he records a final message, meant to be broadcast to his alien home. Alas, the film ends before we find out if his family is still alive. Instead, he passes out in a cafe, apparently in an alcoholic stupor.


It's a sad scene; there's no denying the unhappy ending. But Roeg and Bowie reveal, in a not so ironic way, the real humanity of tragedy and love. We're capable of feeling a depth of emotion not contained by circumstances. And while absolute despair can encompass any person, hope is a strange and persistent feeling. And as we remember the man who went by many names, including Thomas Jerome Newton, it's hope that shines brighter than despair or loss.


"There's a starman waiting in the sky," Bowie crooned in 1972, nearly four years before the movie. "He'd like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow our minds."


"Lazarus" is playing at New York City Theatre until January 19, 2015.


 


More coverage of David Bowie:
















-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











The Dystopian Books That Put A Fresh Spin On The Old Genre

0
0

If popular fiction books are to be believed, the world as we know it is definitely ending, and soon -- the only question is when, and how.


A firm belief in an eminent doomsday isn’t the only thing that keeps people reading dystopian fiction, of course -- it’s also a neat means of examining the problems that exist in society today. The only problem with the Hunger Games-fueled trend? It’s pretty much everywhere, and shows no signs of letting up soon.


If you’re tired of reading and re-reading similar books about heroes overcoming corrupt governments in worlds that resemble our own, these dystopian books might offer something different from the norm. Behold:



The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell


If the compassionate themes and thrilling plot of “Children of Men” captivated you, Dibbell’s novel might pique your interest, too. After a pandemic wipes out much of humanity, Inez is hired as a test subject, prized for her immunity-containing genes. Her work is risky, however -- a religious and violent group that opposes scientific work poses a threat, and when a woman she works with changes her mind about working with Inez, she’s left with a child to care for, who she eventually grows to love and protect.



Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins


Watkins recently said in an interview that her aim in creating a story about characters living in an apocalyptic wasteland was to make them self-aware -- almost worn tired of the whole dystopia cliche. She achieves that with Luz Dunn and her partner-in-everything Ray, who while away their days in an abandoned LA mansion before they meet a child who changes all that. Faced with the task of keeping a living thing safe, they set out on a journey through the expansive and expanding desert -- and meet some shady characters along the way.


Read our review of Gold Fame Citrus



A Planet for Rent by Yoss


Dystopia is powerful not only for predicting the future, but also for putting the problems with the present in a fresh context, allowing readers to see stripped-down versions of societal wrongs. That’s exactly what Yoss does with his pithy critiques of Cuba, so searing that he wrote them under a pen name. In A Planet for Rent, aliens take over a planet and revamp it as a tourist spot.



Find Me by Laura van den Berg


In Find Me, the life as we know it isn’t threatened by war or otherworldly forces, but by a strange, mystical disease that strikes suddenly and wipes out most of the population. Some, however -- including protagonist Joy -- find that they’re immune. Incubated in a hospital with other survivors, Joy gets the idea to escape and find her mother, a relentless explorer who left her and many questions behind. It’s as much a dystopian book as it is a road trip novel, and a poignant commentary on loneliness.


Read our review of Find Me



California by Edan Lepucki


Like Watkins’ novel, Lepucki’s turns away from the broad scope of post-apocalyptic societies and instead looks at how a new living situation might effect the parties in one of the most personal relationships there is: a marriage. Cal and Frida have fled Los Angeles and are living in a ramshackle old house, blissfully happy and trading for supplies with an occasional visitor. But Frida’s eventual boredom leads them to seek out a nearby settlement, and that’s when the trouble begins.


Read our review of California



The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips


If you’re more interested in those writers working in the spare, weird camp of fantasy where Haruki Murakami and Steven Millhauser’s work resides, Helen Phillips might be a great pick for you. As the title implies, Phillips’s novel starts out as a story set in a slightly off-putting workplace, but as strange happenings keep getting stranger, protagonist Josephine begins to question just what she’s signed up for. Think “The Adding Machine” meets 1Q84.


Read our review of The Beautiful Bureaucrat



The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood


Atwood has a penchant for facing contemporary problems head-on, exploring them through fictional stories set in the could-be near future. The Heart Goes Last is set amid an economic disaster that has antiheroes Charmaine and Stan living in a car, moving often to avoid threatening visitors. The solution, it seems, is a community that functions by allowing its citizens alternating months of comfort and willful imprisonment, doing the grunt work that keeps the small society functioning. Things go swimmingly for a while -- until they don’t.


Read our review of The Heart Goes Last


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











A Children's Book Illustrator Turns Little-Known Facts Into Art

0
0


You know that irritatingly tiny pocket-within-a-pocket hiding out on most pairs of jeans? It can only hold about five quarters, and therefore is pretty much useless, so what’s it doing interfering with an otherwise functional outfit?


It turns out, the small pocket is not an outdated fashion trend or some droll prank drummed up by Levi Strauss himself. When jeans were invented in the 1870s, that little compartment was meant to hold pocket watches often carried by cowboys.


Children’s book illustrator Mike Lowery highlights this and other quirky facts on his Instagram feed, where he compiles twee scenes of furry animals accompanying lesser-known tidbits of knowledge. Most of the facts are kid-friendly, but there are a few for all ages, too. To find out precisely how many offspring a notoriously busy pair of rabbits can birth in a given year, see below or check out his Instagram feed
































Also on HuffPost: 


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











In Movies, David Bowie Was Always So Perfectly Himself

0
0

Known for four decades as an iconoclast whose work propelled androgyny into the mainstream, David Bowie didn't limit his glam-rock stylings to his music. Instead, he carried them throughout the many film roles he inhabited.


Whether conjuring voodoo as Jareth the Goblin King in the cult-classic Jim Henson fantasy "Labyrinth," portraying the like-minded Andy Warhol in a Jean-Michel Basquiat biopic or cameoing as himself in "Zoolander," Bowie's detached, otherworldly spunk was always woven into the fabric of his screen appearances. His characters were as odd as his Ziggy Stardust persona, and audiences worshiped him all the more for it. In the wake of his death, here's a look at some of his most memorable movie achievements. 



More coverage of David Bowie:
















 


Also on HuffPost:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.











Viewing all 18485 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images