You can pin them up anytime you want.

Take a break from endless free porn and every variation of naked girly girls and rediscover the incredible allure of not seeing everything with 1000 Pin-up Girls by Taschen.

Collecting together luscious illustrated front covers and ludicrous black and white photoshoots (uber-babe Betty Page in her underwear taking a dog for a walk down the street) from Beauty Parade, Eyeful, Titter, Wink, Whisper and Flirt, 1000 Pin-up Girls shows us that … guys don’t change.

These girly magazines were printed through the 1940s and 1950s and on every few pages you can see things you wouldn’t have thought were around back then. Hmm … incredibly hot blonde girl (Bound Beauty) photographed with wrists chained. Hmm … girl on girl wrestling. Hmm … girl with whip. Is it just me or do most people think the 40s and 50s were much more puritan than they obviously were?

Going Everywhere and Doing Everything in Underwear

The black and white photographs (known as photo-plays) tell ridiculous stories where girls in underwear get into all kinds of absurd almost silent-movie catastrophes. Trapped in a travelling chest – of course! Going to the dentist in your underwear and it just so happens the dentist is another hot girl in her underwear as well? Yes certainly!

Publisher Robert Harrison (who was involved in many a scandal back in the day) knew that men don’t read and don’t care what the story is so long as there is a girl in underwear involved. He was right then and he is right now. I’ve owned 1000 Pin-up Girls for a few years and looked at every picture but hardly read any of the accompanying text. What do I care why that girl is dressed as a sexy cop? She’s a sexy cop in underwear!

Before I talk about the brilliant illustrations I’ve got to mention the odd feeling I get whilst reading this book. No … it’s not that odd feeling in the pants. It’s the some-of-these-hot-girls-are-dead-and-gone feeling. These pictures are from say 1950 and the girls were about 25ish or so. So they’d be about 75 – 83 right now. Which means … they’re either dead and you’re getting hot over them or they’re 80 years old and you’re getting hot …

In the photos they’re so young and beautiful – perfect miracles of physical beauty and health and they’re all real girls. These are the days before Photoshop, breast implants and other tricks of beauty.

Enough sidenoting.

Sexy Illustrations

Those with a passing interest in “cheesecake illustration” or pinups have probably heard of Peter Driben, Earl Moran and Billy Devorss. Harrison hired them to illustrate the front covers of his many magazines and in our time we now call what they did “art” whereas at the time it was probably called smut or some other 1950s word like … saucy.

The illustrated pinup girls are simply extraordinary works. Sexy girls with long legs and wide real-girl hips are painted in amazing detail. As you flick through the book it’s easy to find an illustration far sexier than a real-life girl massaging another real-life girl (of course the masseuse would be in her underwear as well!). There is a lot of winking and expressions that are far hotter than the vacuous wide-open mouth expectant stare of a modern porn star.

It’s the anticipation you see. Illustrated girls waiting on beds, tying up bathing suits, stretching out their long legs and winking at you in their oh-so-seductive way. You feel as though they are in front of you, allowing you to watch … a mere moment away from you carrying them kicking and screaming over your shoulder to your bedroom.

I think the smiles really do it in making these illustrations so alluring. When did you last see a porn star smiling?

1000 Pin-up Girls is another one of those must-pick-it-up books for your bookshelf which may lead to your date jumping you. It gets people hot without anyone calling it x-rated.

Love that top

Spread throughout the book are some of the original advertising pages from the magazines and they are hilarity compressed into tiny squares. 100 feet of film of Betty Page dancing sent to you in brown-paper package. 1000 photographs of female beauty around the world in five picture-packed volumes (only $1.98 for the complete set and you’ll see Oriental modes of marriage and female slavery in China, Japan, India etc). Perhaps you’d like 16 glossy photographs of Gorgeous Grapplers showing lovely young blondes and brunettes testing their strength on the wrestling mat? Only $1.00 and will be sent in plain wrapper.

How I got 1000 Pin-up Girls: I’m going to have to go with the ever-amazing Polyester Bookshop in Brunswick Street. You can find it in mainstream bookshops though (at least those big enough to have some of the nicer art-type books from Taschen).

You can buy it from Amazon but check out the shipping first – it’s a bit of a chunky book in hardcover. You can also find a lot of illustrations around on the unite-o-wires if you do a bit of google-diving.

Oh yeah, there is a whole introduction to the various magazines and a bit of history on the publisher but no one will read it. Not when there is a girl lion-taming in her underwear to check out.

Happy reading,

Mat

–

i swear i didn’t sleep with your girlfriend

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Andrew Compton, escaped serial killer, lands in New Orleans, hot sweaty fuck me now New Orleans and meets Jay, another serial killer. They soon form a bloody bond, twined together in a death spiral of murder and lust.

19 year old Tran, a beautiful Vietnamese boy, still aching from his failed love affair with Luke, an infected writer, spins into Jay’s orbit and tempts him to break his golden rule: never kill a local boy.

Luke, thin and mad, infected and furious, wants to execute the breeders, to kill all those pushing for pairing and children.

Poppy Z Brite writes some truly fucked up prose.

Cannibals

If you ever wanted to read in gory detail about people eating dead bodies, this is the book for you. Poppy is detailed.

Poppy lingers.

“He sank his teeth into flesh that had gone the consistency of firm pudding. He ripped at the edges of the wound. Pulling off strips of skin and meat, swallowing them whole, smearing his face with his own saliva and what little juice remained in this chill tissue.”

Poppy embraces seeping liquids, our essential meatness and pulls us along from standard human behaviours (swallowing cum, revelling in vaginal juices, drinking from the lips of a lover) to further down the spectrum: swallowing blood, revelling in ichor, drinking from the throat of a lover.

It’s gross but a very well written gross.

The Mythical New Orleans

For anyone who has read Anne Rice, you’ll be instantly familiar with the New Orleans that perhaps only exists in fiction: hot, dark, luscious New Orleans. The French Quarter, the drugs, the beautiful waifs and doomed wanderers snuffing out like glowing embers floating from a midnight bonfire. The rich food, the good heroin, the wrought iron fences and clash of old money and new.

Poppy’s New Orleans is essentially Anne’s New Orleans. It seems impossible that it has a business district or playgrounds. Instead it has little restaurants where tourists flock, preyed on not by locals but by the excesses of the city itself. It is easy to imagine Anne and Poppy’s worlds overlapping: Lestat is stalking the streets just as Jay and Andrew are.

Her intense writing

Poppy has an amazing style of writing. It is both lurid but clean, over the top but balanced. She spends time on the details but moves her focus so we don’t tire of it. There is blood and death here but also love and relaxation.

“When morning light woke us, we rose aching and stinking, staggered into the house, and leaned on each other in the warm spray of the shower. Clean as babes we burrowed into bed and slept for the rest of the day, half unnerved and half comforted by the nearness of each other’s breathing body.”

Oh, and the fucking

This is a book of sex. A lot of sex.

Exquisite Corpse of another kind

An exquisite corpse is a surrealist technique where words and/or images are collectively assembled, resulting in a mixed piece of art. How does this relate to the book? I’m not really sure. The structure switches viewpoints as it moves from character to character but it is hardly a proper exquisite corpse: there are no multiple collaborators. I feel Poppy chose the name because she is into horror and the words have a beautiful pairing ring.

Jeffrey Dahmer

In 1991, one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims escaped, heavily drugged, and encountered the police while wandering the streets naked. Despite the neighbours protesting, the police turned 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone over to Dahmer, who subsequently took him home and murdered him.

I won’t tell you who dies or who kills but this exact scene is written in the book and it is fucking chilling.

Why you should read it

Exquisite Corpse is beautifully written. As the story glides along we’re pulled into the simmering New Orleans, wading into it and leaping from one character to another, chapter by chapter. The serial killers are violent and maudlin, dark and terrifying, disgusting and wrong and then … we refresh with Tran, a cleansing of the palate before the next dish. The story is a meal, a dark and disturbed meal easily consumed.

How I got Exquisite Corpse

I have no idea so I’ll tell you something else instead: I once had a housemate who was really into Poppy Z Brite. She was also into internet dating. So she met this guy who had told her he was a sex addict and had a huge cock. She brought him home and he showed it to her. And apparently it was huge. They didn’t have sex though.

So think about that.

Happy reading,

Mat

–
tiny fish cleave the concrete path

There is nothing artist Eric Stanton loves more than an incredibly sexy woman completely dominating a man. His powerful women slap, kick, punch and wrestle men until they submit (and sometimes cry). All while wearing skimpy see-through lingerie, latex and other not-appropriate-for-dinner-with-the-parents gear.

It’s bondage art people.

And it is art of extraordinary colour and movement. An Eric Stanton fight is a real fight, full of swift slaps and punches that you can feel as you read.

Reunion in Ropes contains four long stories, titled: Whippers All, Bonnie and Clara, Reunion in Ropes and The Dominant Wives.

Hmm … what do those titles suggest?

Some stories are presented in standard comic book format – wives spanking their husbands, speech bubbles floating around – and some have a more cut-and-paste sketch design with text at top and images below.

This book will get someone to jump you

This is one of those must-pick-up-now-from-your-bookshelf titles. Got a girl over at your place on a date? Let her idly peruse your bookshelf and discover it sitting side-by-side with some cool photography books. It’s not porn, it’s art … which people happen to read and get a bit hot and bothered about.

Got a guy over at your house on a date? Even better! After he reads it then you can slap him and drag him to your room.

There are certain books which serve two purposes. Firstly, they are simply cool. Beautiful art or an amazing story or a great front cover or whatever. Secondly, they introduce ideas or nudge people away from standard life towards a little bit of craziness.

What is so very cool about this book and Eric Stanton’s art is that it captures part of the sexual behaviours and games people play. What girl hasn’t grabbed her boy’s hands and pushed them up over his head, holding him down?

Although Stanton’s art goes further than most people do in their little games, it is still very enjoyable to read and the storytelling is on par with the art.

How I got Reunion in Ropes & Other Stories by Eric Stanton: From none other than the most awesome provider of the freakiest underground books, magazines, films, comix and zines, Polyester Books! Located at 330 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne.

Eric Stanton produced a massive body of work, some of which the very cool people at Taschen Publishing have reissued as part of their Icons series. A quick googlerama will also find you big chunks of his work out there on the connecto-webs (turn off filtering in preferences).

Buy it from Amazon if you’re shy about face-to-face contact or head down to your local strange bookshop (not those adult shops. Although I suppose they could have them. Just don’t go anywhere the floor is sticky).

Happy reading,

Mat

–

we need a honey intervention for winnie the pooh

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