Download or read book The Eccentropedia written by Chris Mikul and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An A-Z of eccentrics! 250 true stories of the most original and outrageous people on earth, from bad poets to transsexual evolutionary theorists this encyclopedic guide covering ancient times to the present, includes reams of material never seen in book form before. Famous eccentrics like King Ludwig, Salvador Dalí and Howard Hughes rub shoulders with a host of lesser-known, but equally colorful, characters in these -- mostly -- life-affirming stories. There are unsuspected parallels and connections throughout creating an alternative, off-kilter history of the world.
Download or read book My Favourite Dictators written by Chris Mikul and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I’m personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets, but it’s what the people want.” — Saparmurat Niyazov, dictator of Turkmenistan Dictators may be among the worst people in history, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t laugh at them. In My Favourite Dictators, Chris Mikul tells the stories of eleven of the twentieth century’s most colourful and reviled human beings, including Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Muammar Gaddafi, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il. In each case, he examines the political backgrounds to their rise to power and eventual downfall, but the focus here is on the personalities, peculiarities and private lives of these very strange men. You’ll be amazed and appalled by their effortless cruelties, voracious sexual appetites, absurd personality cults, ostentatious uniforms, promotion of dreadful art and pretensions to being great writers – not to mention their terrible taste in interior decoration.
Download or read book Bizarrism II written by Chris Mikul and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2018-07-09 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bizarrism II collects further tales of high weirdness from around the world, including: • The curious death of Sherlock Holmes scholar Richard Lancelyn Green. • Baroness Eloise de Bosquet and the mystery of Floreana • The strange odyssey of William Seabrook – writer, adventurer, cannibal. • JLB Smith’s obsessive search for the coelacanth. • The cult that promised eternal life. • The unexpectedly appalling story of Madalyn Murray O’Hair and the American Atheists. • Leonard Lawson – comic book artist and killer. • Padre Pio, Italy’s celebrity stigmatic. • The strange fate of Napoleon’s penis and other illustrious male members. • Ferdinand Sauerbruch – the senile surgeon. • Murder and mayhem among the Hare Krishnas. • The enduring enigma of ‘Somerton Man’. Mikul brings these stories to life in meticulously researched accounts that will amuse, appal and intrigue, and leave you marvelling at the infinite strangeness of human beings.
Download or read book Are You In The House Alone written by Amanda Reyes and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2017-04-05 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning in the 1960s through its heyday in the 1970s and beyond, the telefilm remains an important cultural artefact masquerading as disposable entertainment. Made specifically for the small screen, within the tight constraints of broadcasting standards, what these humble movies lacked in budget and star appeal, they made up for in other ways. Often they served as an introduction to genre films, particularly horror, mirroring their theatrical counterparts with a focus on sinister cults, women in prison, haunted houses and even animals in revolt. They were also a place to address serious contemporary issues—drugs, prostitution, sexual violence and justice—albeit in a cosy domestic environment. Production of telefilms continues to this day, but their significance within the history of mass media remains under-discussed. Are You in the House Alone? seeks to address this imbalance in a series of reviews and essays by fans and critics alike. It looks at many of the films, the networks and names behind them, and also specific genres—everything from Stephen King adaptations to superheroes to true-life dramas. So, kickback and crack open the TV guide once more for the event that is the Movie of the Week!
Download or read book Never Be Sane written by Hannah Hightman and published by Blurb Inc.. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Never Be Sane is a monograph focusing on young people who did something different with their youth, despite adolescence usually being the time when people begin to become what society wants them to be. This book profiles the antics and accomplishments of 18 people during their teens/youth (including Tavi Gevinson, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Aaron Swartz, Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, and Akiane Kramarik) in an effort to promote individuality in the face of conformity. It features brief excerpts on each person with accompanying visuals and ink sketches.
Download or read book Bizarrism Vol 1 written by Chris Mikul and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2016-09-22 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bizarrism is a collection of strange-but-true tales, featuring a grand parade of eccentrics, visionaries, crackpots, cult leaders, artists, theorists and outsiders of every stripe. First published in 1999, this new, fully revised and expanded edition revisits a host of unique individuals, including: William Chidley, who believed that, when it comes to sex, we’ve all been making a terrible mistake; Arthur Cravan, who combined poetry with boxing; Slim Gaillard, jazz singer and dispenser of ‘vout’; William Lindsay Gresham, author of the classic noir novel Nightmare Alley; Rosaleen Norton, Australia’s most notorious witch; Harry Crosby, poet, sun worshipper and the best looking corpse of 1929; Reginal Levgiac, author of the mysterious pamphlet Drugs Virus Germs. In writing their stories, Mikul does not judge, but instead celebrates these characters for their fabulous weirdness. For him, they are the “beacons of shining if erratic brilliance in a world of sensible conformity”. The world would be a poorer place without them.
Download or read book Masterpiece written by Nancy West and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-11-27 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The definitive guide for scholars and fans alike to all things Masterpiece and Mystery!" Library Journal, Starred Review On a wintry night in 1971, Masterpiece Theatre debuted on PBS. Fifty years later, America’s appetite for British drama has never been bigger. The classic television program has brought its fans protagonists such as The Dowager Countess and Ross Poldark and series that include Downton Abbey and Prime Suspect. In Masterpiece: America's 50-Year-Old Love Affair with British Television Drama, Nancy West provides a fascinating history of the acclaimed program. West combines excerpts from original interviews, thoughtful commentary, and lush photography to deliver a deep exploration of the television drama. Vibrant stories and anecdotes about Masterpiece’s most colorful shows are peppered throughout, such as why Benedict Cumberbatch hates Downton Abbey and how screenwriter Daisy Goodwin created a teenage portrait of Queen Victoria after fighting with her daughter about homework. Featuring an array of color photos from Masterpiece’s best-loved dramas, this book offers a penetrating look into the program’s influence on television, publishing, fashion, and its millions of fans.
Download or read book I Am The Dark Tourist written by H.E. Sawyer and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dark Tourism is the practice of visiting sites associated with death. While participation increases, dark tourism remains a mystery, regarded as the tourist industry’s dirty little secret. This book challenges the misconceptions of a ghoulish practice through the eyes of a self-confessed dark tourist, who has spent forty years visiting the world’s dark sites. From the cobbled streets of Whitechapel on a Jack The Ripper walking tour to the snowy suicide forest of Aokigahara, Japan, H. E. Sawyer ticks off the darkest sites on earth. He visits locations that have promoted themselves to become major tourist attractions, contrasting with those dark places that seek to remain hidden from view. In the course of his travels he wrestles with the ultimate question regarding dark tourism; why would anyone want to visit sites touched by death in the first place?
Download or read book Bizarrism written by Chris Mikul and published by Headpress. This book was released on 1999 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A funny and entertaining look at outlandish ideas, wacky religious cults and the extremes of human beliefs, both in Australia and overseas. It is a celebration of strange and eccentric lives, with an emphasis on unsung Australian eccentrics, bringing together the best ten years of "Bizarrism" magazine.
Download or read book Small Town Skateparks written by Clint Carrick and published by . This book was released on 2021-04 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many Americans who grew up in a small town, childhood and adolescence revolved around the skatepark. As time passes, however, these people drift away from skateboarding and the spaces where they learned to do it. Part memoir, part travelogue, part essay, Small Town Skateparks is the story of an adventure to discover the role skateparks play in such lives and the role they played in the author's own. Clint Carrick grew up at the skatepark. Every day of the summer, he and his friends would loaf at the dilapidated park with warped plywood ramps strewn with rusty nails. They were the outsiders of the town, or at least thought of themselves that way. They wore jeans and ripped skate shoes and felt free in their special hang out, the skatepark, where they had their own language, their own heroes, and their own views of the world. In this setting they matured from children awestruck of high school kids to bored young men desperate to get out. Clint, now an adult, rekindles these forgotten memories as he drives across the country visiting unremarkable skateparks in America's small towns. Why is he drawn to these skateparks? What is their charm? How does the skatepark function as an institution, and what is the indelible mark it leaves on those who grow in its womb? As he makes his way further west, Clint relearns how to skate. He chats with locals, crashes, bleeds, and hears a lot of stories that sound like his own. The rust begins to wear off, but questions remain. Can someone who left skating behind rediscover the activity that defined his youth? Can someone who abandoned skateboarding make the skatepark once again his home?
Download or read book Homer Langley written by E.L. Doctorow and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Beautiful and haunting . . . one of literature’s most unlikely picaresques, a road novel in which the rogue heroes can’t seem to leave home.”—The Boston Globe SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Kansas City Star • Booklist Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers—the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for things they think they can use, hoarding the daily newspapers as research for Langley’s proposed dateless newspaper whose reportage will be as prophecy. Yet the epic events of the century play out in the lives of the two brothers—wars, political movements, technological advances—and even though they want nothing more than to shut out the world, history seems to pass through their cluttered house in the persons of immigrants, prostitutes, society women, government agents, gangsters, jazz musicians . . . and their housebound lives are fraught with odyssean peril as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves. Praise for Homer & Langley “Masterly.”—The New York Times Book Review “Doctorow paints on a sweeping historical canvas, imagining the Collyer brothers as witness to the aspirations and transgressions of 20th century America; yet this book’s most powerfully moving moments are the quiet ones, when the brothers relish a breath of cool morning air, and each other’s tragically exclusive company.”— O: The Oprah Magazine “A stately, beautiful performance with great resonance . . . What makes this novel so striking is that it joins both blindness and insight, the sensual world and the world of the mind, to tell a story about the unfolding of modern American life that we have never heard in exactly this (austere and lovely) way before.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Wondrous . . . inspired . . . darkly visionary and surprisingly funny.” —The New York Review of Books “Cunningly panoramic . . . Doctorow has packed this tale with episodes of existential wonder that cpature the brothers in all their fascinating wackiness.”—Elle
Download or read book The Pepsi Cola Addict written by June-Alison Gibbons and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-05-30 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legendary lost novel in which fourteen-year-old Preston Wildey-King must choose between his all-consuming passion for Pepsi Cola and his love for schoolmate Peggy. "He walked into the turbulent super market. There were people everywhere. His eyes swept over the shelves and stabilised on a large stack of Pepsi-colas. He could almost experience the cool fizzy liquid descending his parched throat." Written by June-Alison Gibbons when she was only 16, The Pepsi Cola Addict is considered one of the great works of twentieth-century outsider literature. More than just a literary curiosity, however, this tale of a teenager whose passion for a well-known cola drink threatens to ruin his life is the uniquely vivid expression of a young woman trying to make sense of the confusing, often brutal world she in which found herself. Published in 1982 by a vanity press who took £800 from its young author and gave her only a single book in return, it's thought that fewer than ten original copies still exist in the world. Shortly after its publication, June-Alison and her sister Jennifer would become infamous as "The Silent Twins" and find themselves cruelly incarcerated for over a decade in Broadmoor Hospital. This author-approved edition makes June-Alison Gibbon's remarkable vision widely available for the first time.
Download or read book The World s Worst Poet written by William McGonagall and published by . This book was released on 1979-09 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Crites Coloring Book written by Tom Crites and published by . This book was released on 2016-06-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A talented artist with a thirst for music and literature, Tom Crites self-published zines and contributed to the small press for over two decades. He designed album covers and t-shirts, but also created art simply because he loved to do it, often leaving his work in public places for others to find. Throughout all of this, Tom struggled with mental health issues. In August 2013, at the age of forty-five, he committed suicide. The artworks collected here were produced by Tom over many years and are representative of his unique and largely unsung talent. Some pieces were drawn at home in his apartment, watching films he would later review for zines or online; others he sketched whilst in hospital. All are suitable for framing. Be forewarned: There are no 'mindfulness mandalas' here, no kitsch exotic flowers to relieve the stresses of your desk job. Here is a darker beauty: macabre mysticism, human-animal hybrids, hallucinatory patterns, a melding of the sublime and the horrific. The works contained in this book are evidence of a symbolic anthropology and they embody the creative spirit that carried Tom through much of his life. Do not colour them lightly.
Download or read book The Brown Derby Restaurant written by Sally Wright Cobb and published by Rizzoli International Publications. This book was released on 1996 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features photographs and anecdotes from the famous Hollywood Brown Derby during its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, and includes many of the restaurant's recipes.
Download or read book Headpress Powered by Love written by David Kerekes and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 24th edition of Headpress features an exclusive in-depth interview with John Stagliano - the man known the world over as 'Buttman', with Laurence O'Toole, author of 'Pornucopia', as well as much, much more.
Download or read book The Devil s Saint written by Dulcie Deamer and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
