RANKED: Top Ten Moar Animals that are Cool!

Theme: Zoo - Swallow

Another Tuesday finds me characteristically unprepared with a b└ögg post, so, whilst I compose my thoughts like Beethoven at his Moog synthesizer, here's another turbo-low-effort listicle about animals.

Tentacled Snake

Noone knows why Vietnam's tentacled snake has tentacles, nor why what look more like the rhinophores on a good sea slug are considered tentacles at all. By that logic I might well call myself a tentacled bloğğer, but let's not go there. What is of more direct import is that it exists, and coolly trips up and down its watery abode looking for things to eat. Perhaps the real reason it has those things is that it's an metalhead throwing the \m/.

Bat-Eared Fox

Both adorable and deadly, if you're something very small, like a termite, because, honestly, these things are about the size of a comical terrier. One thing I've been told about the bat-eared fox is that they're apparently chill with porcupines, unlike the fabled honey badger, which will maul and eat the spiny bros despite the cost in perforation this inevitably incurs. Bat-eared foxes are found in southern and eastern parts of Africa, where they are every bit as cool as rhinos and other megafauna that are better-known.

Wilson's Bird of Paradise

There are many bird of paradises to be found in the mysterious lands of Indonesia, but no one's ever been there or knows anything about it, despite its having a population of 427 thousand billion people. Wilson's one has this cool tail that curls inwards, perhaps to mimic the impression of a young lady doing her mandatory-under-Pat-Bastard's-dictatorship regime of squats.

Mandarin Duck

Imagine, if you will, a species so alien to the human experience that the men were cool to look at and the women visually dull. The mandarin duck is just such a species, with the male mogging the shit out of his lady friend, which must drive her insane. Fortunately, the male deigns to date down instead of being an homosexual, for which, let's be honest, we couldn't blame him (no homo, no furfag, no bird-botherer). Plumage of his caliber is so patrician that it scarcely seems of this world, but God put him there just to make us happy, and that is an encouraging thought.

Painted Bat

As orange is the colour of Halloween, and bats its patron animal, you might think the bright orange painted bat would be well-known, except to think that you'd have to know about it, but now you do, so now you do.

Golden Poison Dart Frog

In the crowded field of cool frogs, one stands out both by virtue of being bright yellow and also adorably small. The fact these things will kill you deader than a schoolgirl in a country Laura Loomer doesn't like puts them quite strictly in the look-don't-touch category beside roadkill and women who still like Beyonce.

Bright Blue Stick Insect

Named achrioptera manga after Japanese cartoons, the bright blue stick insect misses the point of looking like a stick by being bright blue, but by the same token lands a slot on my prestigious list, because bright blue things are cool. When I was but a mere changeling, I had pet stick insects purchased from a classmate at the Yookay workhouse I attended, but they all managed to drown themselves in the water dish provided. Given that the noble stick insect lives in the fucking rainforest, and is therefore conversant with the concept of H2O, I can only conclude this uniform demise was the result of suicide.

Oblong Winged Katydid

What did Katy do? Science may never know, but all katydids resemble leaves, so one theory is that she made like a tree. The oblong winged katydid, however, katydid it wrong by being bright pink (sometimes yellow). Like the above mentioned stick insect, their survival chances' loss is our gain, although I'm sure their predators probably don't see the same colour spectrum we do, so it might not make any difference.

Nilgai

Most people think of antelopes as dainty, springy, sprightly little things. Not so the nilgai, which is ripped af as fuck and will murder you with its roid rage should you get too close. This Indian antelope has never once skipped neck day and is hunted in routine culls because it's been known to total vehicles that presume to trespass on its rightful territory, like the roads. I saw one out the window on an Indian road trip once, but I didn't get a picture, so I'm free to wax one-that-got-away about its brutish physique, even though it was actually fairly medium.

Gibbons

Normally I'd be more specific, but all gibbons are cool. Their exclusion from the title "great ape" strikes me as a travesty of justice, with their funny long hands and arms and ghostly, mournful whooping. Yet none can deny them the epithet "great troll", as evidenced by this four-minute clip of one fucking with tigers for the lulz. Even the humans with the densest scrotum-stretchers in the human kingdom will typically do so only with a steel cage for protection, but the gibbon just does it au naturel for the love of the game, making it the GOAT troll out of all the fauna on the Earth.

"LOL YOLO" - A. Gibbon.

Join me next week for more haphazard filler straight off the top of my head!!!

Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: Medusa!

Theme: Challenge - A.R. Kane

M O O D

Having been on my goth bullshit lately, you'll permit me to wax fanboy on my favourite 4AD art-goth record outside the hallowed discography of This Mortal Coil: Clan of Xymox's atmospheric odyssey Medusa. While Bauhaus took malevolent glee in the the act of post-punk rampage and the Sisters of Mercy brought majestic grandiosity to would-be stadium anthems (they weren't above having Jim Steinman pen their monster hits), it's the bummed-out voice of Ronny Moorings that's largely defined the tonal footprint of the dark scene in the wider culture, as evidenced by the fact his brand of languid, self-searching intonations better matches the loving pastiche of Peter Steele in Type O Negative.

But Clan of Xymox were scarcely a rock band at all; their goth was always of the trippy, dancey darkwave variety, and never more dramatic or more dreamlike than when it dripped with 4AD's trademark production shimmer. Medusa was so definitive a document of this ineffably cool style that it's no wonder they switched up genres altogether afterward, taking a multi-album detour into synthpop as just Xymox. Sure, the purist might well call it sElLiNg OuT, but at the very least Twist of Shadows is really good synthpop, and tracks like "In a City" still maintain much of the fatalistic melancholy that's as core to the project as snarling aggression is to Megadeth or wide-eyed exultation is to Catherine Wheel. I hope ol' Ronny isn't as perpetually bummed as he invariably sounds, and if he isn't I can but salute his four-plus-decades-long commitment to the bit.

Much as I love a good playlist, I remain a firm proponent of the album format and the integrality of proper sequencing, and Medusa is as flawlessly sequenced as the Mortal Coil records, ebbing and flowing from one morose shade of black to another with such effortless mastery of macro-dynamics that each track, verse or sonic interjection seems a narrative twist and/or turn, where lesser acts with less sophisticated production would blur into a sludge. Like TMC, they make liberal use of instrumental tracks to segue between arias. The heightened angst of "Agonised by Love" recedes like a tide into the sullen, sombre, yet serene "Masquerade", and there's a strident, cathartic climax in "After the Call"* before the anguished closer "Backdoor" drags us back down the sonic labyrinth, with its plaintive lament, "Tomorrow I will be here again/Tomorrow I will be here again/Be here again". By the number of spins I've given this immortal disc, this panicked prophecy was every bit as much a promise. Listen to Medusa (in the dark, alone).

*Pieter Nooten did another version on his solo album which is also worth a listen; less bombastic march, more calm reflective prayer. They're both so good I can't pick one over the other.

RANKED: The Top Ten Women!

Theme: I Respect Your Feelings as a Woman and a Friend - Anal Cunt

As you know, this March marks Women's History Month, and we at Pat Bastard and the Spurious 5 Dot Blogspot Dot Com intend to honour this prestigious month by ranking the women who have shaped our lives and brightened up our world. You may not like our ranking, but we don't like you.

Diora Baird

Freckles bros, your patience has paid off.

South of Heaven star Diora Baird may have been famous for her chest, but let's not sleep on her ridiculously kino hips and face. In the Berenstein timeline in which Hollywood was wiped out by a natural disaster and taken over by me and my goblins in the 90s, she would have reigned as queen of the silver screen throughout the 2000s. In a way, though, her legend is more potent for the fact that, like a latterday Barbara Crampton, she remains a secret to be found in such B horror fare as Night of the Demons and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake prequel.

Anita Ekberg

No wonder Sweden's furniture is so popular.

Like Baird, Anita Ekberg would have been Earth's biggest star had she lived under my dictatorship, but kinosseurs have little to complain about, what with her livening up La Dolce Vita and dancing hypnotically in GOAT noir Screaming Mimi. Although styled by publicists as Paramount's answer to Marilyn Monroe, Ekberg was much better because Monroe was a cartoon character, a camp and derisive pastiche of the hetero ideal, while Ekberg was the real thing. Mass media hacks only revealed their classless seething in dubbing her "Iceberg" for her completely warranted dearth of patience with their bullshit.

Stacy Keibler

As prophecied by ZZ Top.

INSPIRING: WCW and WWE star Keibler proved you can rock A-cups and still be a 10. All you need to compensate is an impossibly perfect visage and 41½" legs. INSPIRINGER: thanks to her, straight men watched wrestling for the first time in droves. Is there any barrier she couldn't break?

Linda Darnell

You must be this perfect to be known professionally as The Perfect Face.

Sabotage a safe-horny "classic beauties" list by posting monochrome 10 Linda Darnell, whose largely forgotten oeuvre nonetheless includes odd gems like Hangover Square and Blackbeard the Pirate. Literally and accurately called The Perfect Face, I'm surprised the Hayes code allowed Darnell to be shown from the neck up. Check out the Hills Have Eyes rejects at your local bus exchange and tell me with a straight face that we're all one species.

Aishwarya Rai

Finally, a 10 who doesn't have to say "my eyes are up here".

One hundred billion Indians were guaranteed to produce at least one instance of genetic perfection. Rai's credits include Dhoom 2 and The Last Legion, but who are you kidding? You'd watch her watch paint dry. Plus, getting to feature a woman whose hottest feature actually are her eyes classes this article up by ~500%.

Kelly Brook

Kelly Brook looked like this:

Thank you, Kelly. Very cool!

Elena Satine

Pictured with suspicious beverage.

Doomed forever to be known as Pissfu for the scene in Twin Peaks The Return in which she listens sexily to Dougie draining the lizard (????), Elena Satine deserves immortalisation of a more auspicious and dignified kind: on my bl■g about Mad Max ripoffs and sea slugs.

Jennifer Connelly

Our Jen models her very least bedroom eyes.

Dark City may have been her most cerebral and stylish kino and The Hot Spot the pinnacle of top shelf sleaze, but it was in Career Opportunities that she redefined the possibilities of that most tastefully erotic female garment, the white tank top.

Claudia Cardinale

If you draw a woman this shape, at least 200 people will tell you it's unrealistic and impossible.

From The Leopard to The Pink Panther, Cardinale made two films named for big cats. Federico Fellini cast her as herself as his perfect dream waifu in 8½, placing her on the same tier as Anita Ekberg. Nordic? Med? Why can't we all just get along?

Tia Carrere

Filipina/Chinese/Spanish, born in Hawaii, as if that gives you anything to work with.

Best known for her role in Wayne's World, Carrere also starred in Relic Hunter, which was a show about her chest. Carrere singlehandedly started the yellow fever epidemic that killed every single male who came of age in the 90s, making her the Typhoid Mary of her day.

Did I miss any good women??? Post ur favourites in the comments!!!

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Nightmare Returns!

Theme: Second Coming - Alice Cooper

Note: I know this is a Halloween post, but I ran out of buffer articles to post bc lazy, but in any case it's been a whole winter since Halloween, and we deserve another.

You may be /fa/, but are you /fa/ enough to rock this bright red codpiece? I didn't think so.

Can a concert film be greatest movie of all time of the week? Why not, if it's Alice Cooper's 1987 comeback showcase The Nightmare Returns? For, from the psychedelic 60s inception of the OG band to the present, perennial Pat Bastard and the Spurious 5 favourite Cooper has injected off-kilter narrative and imagery into the rock show format, transforming it into a visual spectacle with a classically theatrical throughline, from scene-setting start through rising action to knuckle-biting eucatastrophe to ecstatic catharsis. Groucho hailed it as the last stand of vaudeville, while the Dalí praised it as musical surrealism. Personally, I've been to see the great man twice, back when he was a mere boy of sixty-something, and can report that he still stage-mogged bands a fraction of his vintage.

Unlike Sir Mixalot, Alice actually has an anaconda to back up his boasts*.

Yet the narrative behind the scenes lends even more satisfaction to this triumphant moment: Coop himself describes how the old Alice of the OG band days and the classic Welcome to my Nightmare was society's whipping boy, cringing, stumbling about the stage, as pitiful as he was dastardly. Like so many rock stars, Cooper felt the pull of addiction and collapsed personally even as his career lurched erratically from one creative peak to another. From the Inside turned personal misfortune into top tier songcraft, with each tale inspired by fellow inmates in the nuthouse where he spent his first rehab, but it was cocaine masterpiece DaDa where the master hit rock bottom personally even while the unchained forces of his shadow wrought his finest art.

This is exactly how I look when dreaming up my firest b╙og posts.

But then something happened to shock everyone anew: Coop ditched the coke and booze, retvrned to Christ and stormed back into the public's nightmares as he took his rightful place at the head of a brand new wave of rockers who had cut their teeth on his material, pacing and leading like the genre godfather he was. And he was no longer the whipping boy: this Cooper owned the stage. No longer was it his nightmare; this time he was yours.

The pro wrestling energy in this entrance is off the scale.

Alright, the actual Constrictor album this tour promoted kind of sucked, minus the GOATed opener and closer ("Teenage Frankenstein" and Jason Lives theme "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" respectively), but this hardly matters because only two of the blah tracks are in this show, while all the justifiably overplayed hits you know from radio benefit measurelessly from the added muscle of the metal treatment ("Go to Hell" sounds like it was written with just this overhaul in mind). Speaking of muscle, the more elaborate axework on display comes courtesy of Kane Roberts, who played up to the Rambo image his physique implied, making this even more of an 80s time capsule experience. He even has a machine gun guitar that shoots flames:

Sorry Marty, this is what peak cinéma actually looks like.

The rampage continues in crowd-pleasing style, with Alice duelling this dominatrix who shows up on stage, as dominatrices are wont to do:

Thot patrolled. I repeat: the thot has been patrolled.

The Coop then aims his righteous malice at a cameraman who's been foreshadowed getting too close in a couple of shots, laying the groundwork for his well-deserved demise:

Vlad III poses with Ottoman invader (1462, colourised).

But all good things must come to an end, and so our hero sadly finds himself restrained in hospital, where he laments his lonely life in classic "The Ballad of Dwight Frye". Of course, no hospital can keep /ourpsycho/ down for long:

REKT.

Further shenanigans include a bit of practical magic, in which the Coop constructs a monstrous automaton...

And "Sick Things", in which Coop is adored by these dudes that kind of look like the Toxic Avenger:

I love how he poses like a rapper with his bitches and/or hoes, except they're drooling mutants. Don't worry; I feel the same way about you guys.

Finally, it looks like he must pay for all his crimes. But even a murderer is entitled to his last words, in this case tender fan favourite "I Love the Dead":

"Before I go, I just want to say one thing: I love fucking corpses. Thanks!" - A. Cooper.

Even in death the spirit that inspired every subsequent shock band from the Sex Pistols to Mötley Crüe shows its defiance of society in general. As the executioner steals a triumphant kiss from the Coop's severed head...

Oh, like you've never had a faceful of fluids before.

But then, as though the clouds suddenly part, the spiral into madness and horror gives way to the jubilant strains of "School's Out", which I'm fairly sure even yak herders in the ruralest hamlets of Nepal have heard, and what's better still, after the journey you've been on, it hits like you're hearing it for the first time.

Now that's entertainment.

It's masterful sequencing of a sort the OG band used to good effect on Love it to Death, with the bleak "Dwight Frye" giving way to the reassuringly Zen "Sun Arise". You could also liken it to the end of Fantasia, when the first rays of light put paid to all the devil's bullshit. Generations of imitators have come and gone and tried to top the spectacle with more lavish productions, ostentatious pyrotechnics or tryhard shock antics, but that showman's grasp of narrative and the immortal songs have yet to be surpassed.

*Yeah, I know it's a boa constrictor. Everyone's a herpetologist.