Melita and Katrina in Studio Diablo
capri_brat
It might be Friday the 13th, but lemme take y’all back to a random ass weekend in Kankakee, Illinois—yep, Kankakee—when I accidentally stumbled into a horror fan fever dream.
Met @mkultramag (Mr Alex Zander The Man behind MK Ultra Magazine) at the hotel bar one night… next morning I go down for breakfast in my sweats and BOOM—he’s sittin’ there with the one and only OG Jason Voorhees, Ari Lehman!!!!
I came down for coffee and toast, ended up sharin’ a moment with a slasher legend. Life’s weird like that!
Stay spooky, babies
I’ve always said that a little kindness goes a long way. Today I relive that belief, as I’ve been feeling a little (a lot) down lately regarding my job and a week of COVID didn’t help. This morning I was tagged in the above IG post and it made me feel a world of a lot better. It’s too bad there aren’t more people like her.
I bike here an hour in the morning for exercise. Its excellent and no traffic. Part of my new routine.
Eternal Silence, alternatively known as the Dexter Graves Monument or the Statue of Death, is a monument in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery and features a bronze sculpture of a hooded and draped figure set upon, and backdropped by, black granite. It was created by American sculptor Lorado Taft in 1909.
The monument commemorates Dexter Graves, who in 1831 led a group of thirteen families from Ohio to settle in Chicago. Graves died in 1844, 75 years before the statue’s creation and 16 years before Graceland Cemetery was founded. His body was presumably relocated from its original resting place at the old City Cemetery (the present site of Lincoln Park). The will of Graves’ son Henry, who died in 1907, provided $250,000 in funds for the monument and another $40,000 intended to commemorate Henry’s favorite race horse, Ike Cook. The Cook monument was to stand alongside a drinking fountain for horses in Washington Park. The horse monument never materialized, despite the construction of a model; instead, in 1920, another Taft piece, Fountain of Time, was built in its place and features a hooded figure similar to the one in Eternal Silence.
Ada Bartlett Taft’s 1946 book Lorado Taft; Sculptor and Citizen lists Eternal Silence as one of the artist’s most important works.[Images of Eternal Silence have been used in other artworks, including those by Claes Oldenburg.One folktale claims that looking into the eyes of the statue’s hooded figure causes the viewer to see a vision of his or her own death.
Eternal Silence has been called “eerie”, “somber”, “grim-looking”, “mysterious”, and “haunting”.[8] The bronze figure, based on traditional depictions of the Grim Reaper, is set against a black granite base and stands 10 feet (3.0 m) tall upon that base. The black granite provides contrast for the bronze statue, which is heavily oxidized because of its age. The cemetery used to shine the statue to return its true bronze patina but received many complaints and requests to return it to its more dramatic green sheen; the cemetery now keeps the statue in its preferred oxidized state. The hooded figure was influenced by Taft’s own “ideas on death and silence”. Historically speaking, the figure in Eternal Silence is related to the sculpted funeral procession around the Tomb of Philip the Bold in Dijon, France and the Adams Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Washington, D.C. The statue has been noted as Graceland Cemetery’s most “unforgettable” monument. The monument was designed by Taft and cast by Jules Bercham. On its base, Taft inscribed the north side with his signature; the south side is inscribed with Am. Art Bronze Foundry J. Bercham -Chicago-. The monument falls within Art Nouveau style.
When George Pullman died three years after the strike, there were concerns about grave robbing or disgruntled employees desecrating his grave. “After he died, there’d been a lot of high-profile grave robberies lately, [bodies] being held for ransom,” local historian and author Adam Selzer told Geoffrey Baer. “This was only a few years after the big Pullman strike, too, so that might’ve been on people’s minds, as well, that some of the employees weren’t quite done getting revenge.” A New York Times article from 1897 describes Pullman’s grave as having an 18-inch “concrete flooring of a pit of 13 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 8 feet deep,” and that “the body itself had been placed in a lead-lined box wrapped in tar paper. Under and around the box was an inch of asphaltum.”
16VOLT Live
I sit here getting in the headspace for today’s all star podcast with guest Eric Powell of 16Volt along with my good friend graphic designer and magician Max Bravo, Digital creator and founder of Derision Cult and SYS Machine Dave McAnally and Sean Payne Owner – engineer/producer at Glitch Mode Recordings as well as that guy who yells and makes beep-boop noises/beats for Chicago based Cyanotic. In the kitchen 3 lbs of fat chicken legs are in the air fryer (thanks Ellen) . I feel accomplished as I have a job interview on Tuesday with a firm downtown to give me something till work at Empowered picks back up. I’ve had a pretty damned good weekend.
Friday morning was busy as most Fridays tend to be being that new music is released on Fridays. It was drizzle, cloudy and damp outside and biking in Graceland was out of the question. The sun didn’t show herself till after 5 PM which is when the cemetery closes its gates. I posted the new Carla Harvey video and got a message from Heidi Ellen Robinson-Fitzgerald that she was trying to call me. She had an outdated number and my current number which I’ve had since 2011 had not been added to her database. Heidi I’ve worked with professionally since 1990 is one of the biggest names in PR. www.herfitzpr.net/about She wanted to talk about setting up a podcast interview for MKULTRASOUND with both Carla Harvey AND her fiance Charlie Benante (Anthrax/Pantera). We had an in depth conversation in the morning and to my great surprise she called again in the afternoon and we talked for over an hour about all things rock n roll and publicity and a little about my life’s background. We talked about how amazing the music was in the 70’s and again in the 90’s/ We talked about Glenn Danzig, Andrew Dice Clay, Rick Rubin and Lollapalooza. I felt great inside and out having spoken to a legendary publicist who has been instrumental in my career as a journalist. I was amazed that she had documented the dates and times of some of our conversations over the last few years including my legal name which is what I used as a writer up till 1995 when I committed symbolic suicide to that “other guy”. So I will know in a few days when this podcast will take place as I am trying to coordinate it with Eden Lakes schedule.
2 1/2 hours till showtime.
LtR R=The Industrial All Stars: Dave McAnally, AZ. Max Bravo and Sean Payne
