RAPT IN PLASTIC

MESSAGES FROM SPACE

2009-09-15T23:16:00.000-07:00

SITES OF IMPACT

Meteorite Craters From Around the World
Stan Gaz

hardcover, 2009

60.00

Earth has 170 documented scars from falling space rocks. A single meteorite can leave a wound as big as 236 miles wide (like South Africa's Vredefort Dome). The best-preserved impact sites are often difficult to access – buried under ice, obscured by foliage, or baking in desert climes. These desolate landscapes are connected to another place outside of our world, and for photographer Stan Gaz they are sites of pilgrimage – steps in a journey begun as a curious young boy accompanying his father on geological expeditions, and culminating in a six-year journey traveling the globe in search of these sites -- resulting in these epic 85 black & white aerial photographs from Namibia, South Africa, Australia, the United States and elsewhere.

THE LONELY DOLL

2009-09-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

THE SECRET LIFE OF THE LONELY DOLL
The Search for Dare Wright
Jean Nathans
paper, 2005
7.95........ was 15.00

In 1957, The Lonely Doll made model/actress turned author/photographer Dare Wright famous. The children's book told the story of Edith, a lonely doll until two teddy bears—a father and son—come to live with her.

Nearly forty years later, writer Jean Nathan decided to find out whatever happened to the author of favorite book as a child. What she discovered was a tragic and disturbing tale of family secrets, a mother/daughter relationship like no other, and a creative life gone to waste. Haunting.

THINGS I DID THIS SUMMER...

2009-09-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

Has it been nearly two months since my last entry?

Discovered some great new titles over the summer -- Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Dave Eggers' wonderful true fiction What is the What (highly recommended), the lurid Stripmall Bohemia by Jethro Paris, and Jean Nathan's The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll, the tragic biography of children's author Dare Wright. In art and photography, highest on the list would have to be Kinsey Photographer featuring the duotone photographs of the Pacific Northwest taken in the first half of the 20th century by Darius and Tabitha Kinsey.

More to come...

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

2009-07-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
Sarah Gruen
paperback, 2007
$13.95

How did I miss this book?!

A terrific, colourful, engrossing page-turner about life and love in a depression-era travelling circus that came highly recommended a few weeks ago from a visitor to the bookstore. A very BIG thank you, whoever you are...

Told in flashback by 90-year-old Jacob Jankowski, who upon the death of his parents drops out of veterinary school and winds up in the employ of The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, tending to their menagerie of exotic animals and falling in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for.

Photographs courtesy of our partner Todd/Browning Gallery.

SKIN AND BONES

2009-07-04T23:26:00.001-07:00

DISSECTION
Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930
John H. Warner & James M. Edmonson
hardcover, 2009
50.00

A startling window into the education of American doctors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- on both a visceral level and for its revealing cultural record. Two hundred pages filled with cringe-worthy shots of medical students -- barehanded gentlemen and a few ladies in street clothes showing off their scalpels, saws and textbooks -- while their cadavers, mostly poor and black, are awkwardly posed, and exposed.

A BUG'S LIFE

2009-06-28T22:47:00.001-07:00

KAFKA
David Z. Marowitz & Robert Crumb
paper, 2007
$14.95

I can't believe I've waited this long to mention Robert Crumb, one of the most influential contemporary artists of the last 40 years. And there is no more perfect way to introduce his work to this blog than with Kafka.

Essentially an illustrated biography and primer -- I will not use the term: Idiots Guide -- to the work of F.K., with Crumb's dark pen and ink drawings providing a window into the writer's inner world.

RETURN TO THE CLASSICS...

2009-06-22T23:52:00.000-07:00

DAUGHTER OF BONNIE & CLYDE
Brent Lynton Wright
1971, paperback
$12.95......out of print

Great, hard-to-find vintage paperback - actually, the novelization of a screenplay (a movie tie-in for a film that was never made) - courtesy of one of the most interesting worst novelists of the 50s & 60s whose work spanned nearly every genre of paperback fiction, from westerns to crime, gay pulp, and sleaze. Wright was also a character actor in more than 200 Hollywood films going back to the the original Three Stooges.

As for the book -- a tale of the orphaned child of gangsterdom's most famous couple and her journey into crime is pure pulp. But that's a good thing.

THEY MIGHT AS WELL BE ...

2009-06-19T23:20:00.000-07:00

TOY GIANTS
Daniel & Geo Fuchs
2007, hardcover
$45.00

The duo responsible for this eye-popping book spent over three years photographing the 10,000 piece private collection of Selim Varol, bigger-than-life group and portrait shots of toys and celebrity action figures (from George W. Bush to Bruce Willis to Quentin Tarantino).

NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK

2009-06-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

CHARLATAN
America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam
Pope Brock
hardcover, 2008
$19.95 (was 24.95)

In 1917, after years of selling worthless patent remedies throughout the Southeast, John R. Brinkley -- America’s most brazen young con man -- arrived in the tiny town of Milford, Kansas. He set up a medical practice and introduced an outlandish surgical method using goat testicles to restore the fading virility of local farmers and thousands of paying customers quickly turned “Dr.” Brinkley into America’s richest and most famous surgeon.

Eventually, his notoriety captured the attention of the great quackbuster Morris Fishbein, who vowed to put the country’s “most daring and dangerous” charlatan out of business. Their cat-and-mouse game lasting throughout the 1920s and ’30s.

Despite Fishbein’s efforts Brinkley prospered wildly. When he ran for governor of Kansas, he invented campaigning techniques still used in modern politics. Thumbing his nose at American regulators, he built the world’s most powerful radio transmitter just across the Rio Grande to offer sundry cures, and killed or maimed patients by the score, yet his warped genius produced innovations in broadcasting that endure to this day. By introducing country music and blues to the nation, Brinkley also became a seminal force in rock ’n’ roll.

In short, he was the most creative criminal this country has ever produced.

BANNED FROM BLOCKBUSTER - PART 3

2009-06-15T00:17:00.000-07:00

THE BROWN BUNNY
2003
dir. Vincent Gallo
colour, uncut X version
14.95

When originally screened at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, Roger Ebert called this "the worst film in the history of the festival." High praise for this minimalist road movie written and directed by star Vincent Gallo and featuring Chloe Sevigny in her now infamous explicit oral sex scene -- probably the best reason to watch this narcissistic bit of celuloid although it does have a few fans, due mostly to its purity as an example of maverick filmmaking. Also stars Cheryl Tiegs!

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

2009-06-14T23:27:00.000-07:00

THE BIG BOOK OF LEGS
Dian Hanson, ed.
hardcover, 2009
59.95

Gams and more gams from the publishers of The Big Penis Book and The Big Book of Breasts. Mammoth pictorial history -- from the Victorian Age to present-day -- and tribute to the female leg featuring photographs by Irving Klaw, Peter Gowland, Bunny Yeager, Elmer Batters, and other great masters of leg art.

BANNED FROM BLOCKBUSTER - PART 2

2009-05-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN
1977
dir. Jess Franco
color, imported
$19.95

Third in the Ilsa series -- she the former She Wolf of the SS and Harem Keeper of the Oil Shieks -- starring Dyane Thorne as the sadistic warden of a Latin American (where else?) prison for women. Legendary b-grade director Franco has included all of the usual elements of this kind of film (cat fights, long shower scenes) and - as one reviewer put it - "although it doesn't quite reach the threshold of violent sadism established by the other two entries, it's no Girl Scout picnic either."

Good clean fun.

THIS WAY COMES...

2009-05-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

DREAMS
The Dark Erotic Photographic Visions of John Santerineross
hardcover, 2004
39.95

Disturbing, unique, dreamlike visuals from NY photographer Santerineross, a long overdue follow-up to his highly coveted (and long out of print) Fruit of the Secret God.

note: the author will be holding his first Los Angeles solo exhibition this coming October at Todd/Browning Gallery.

AFTER THE BALL IS OVER

2009-05-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

PHOTOGRAPHIC ATLAS OF CIVIL WAR INJURIES
Julian E. Kuz, editor

hardcover, 1996
150.00

More than 400 rare photographs illustrating case histories of the battle wounds and surgical rehabilitation efforts undergone by Civil War veterans from 1865-81. Originally an eight volume study produced by the Army Medical Museum. Quite easily the best book on the subject (if not the only one). Out of print.

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

2009-05-18T23:01:00.000-07:00

GUN NATION
Zed Nelson
hardcover, 2001
$49.95.. ...

British photo-journalist Nelson had covered armed conflict in Afghanistan, Somalia, El Salvador and elsewhere, before taking on this sometimes graphic project photographing U.S. guns and gun owners, gun shows, gunshot victims, Columbine survivors and mourners, police, etc. Out of print.

The publisher, Westzone, lasted little more than a year and released only a handful of titles including Cock: Indian Firework Art and Andrew Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin's Trust -- some of the best produced, most interesting photography and pop culture books of the last 10 years.

AND IT GOES ON...

2009-05-05T20:07:00.000-07:00

BEAT
Christopher Felver
hardcover, 2007
$29.95

The most comprehensive photography collection of the people, players, and friends of the Beat era in American literature, including Kathy Acker, David Amram, Karel Appel, Al Aronowitz, John Ashbery, Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Richard Brautigan, James Broughton, Joan Brown, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, John Cage, Ernesto Cardenal, Carolyn Cassady, Don Cherry, Francisco Clemente, Andrei Codrescu, Gregory Corso, The Dalai Lama, Elaine de Kooning, Willem de Kooning, Diane di Prima, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Durrell, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Karen Finley, The Fugs, and many many more.
Seminal.

(photos below: Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey)

BANNED FROM BLOCKBUSTER

2009-05-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

GOODBYE UNCLE TOM
(Addio Zio Tom)
1971
dirs, Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi
color, widescreen
$14.95

This little-seen Italian underground classic bills itself as a documentary on life in the anti-bellum South and an examination of the evils of slavery, with actors re-creating the everyday and dialogue courtesy of actual letters and documents.

It is, in fact, thanks to the creators of Mondo Cane, what Roger Ebert calls "the most disgusting, contemptuous insult to decency" and a "vomit-bag of racism and perversion-mongering."

A truly unbelievable, outrageously violent, one-of-a-kind oddity.

BUY EAST, YOUNG MAN

2009-04-28T21:08:00.000-07:00

THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES:
New Art From China
Saatchi Gallery
hardcover, 2008
60.00

Ten years ago, the passenger seated next to me on a 14 hour flight from Bangkok to London advised me to look toward asia if I had any interest in playing the big-money art game.

Charles Saatchi, one of the savviest figures in the contemporary art scene, has built an unparalleled collection of new Chinese art, unveiled to the public in 2005 for the opening of his Chelsea, London gallery. Presented here in glorious color reproductions, this is first book to bring contemporary Chinese art into focus.

LIVIN' THE LIFE

2009-04-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

GENTLEMAN OF LEISURE:
A Year in the Life of a Pimp
Bob Adelman & Susan Hall
hardcover, 2006
35.00....sale 16.95

Meet Silky and his ladies - Lois, Linda, Kitty, Tracey, and Sandy - visit his tailor and friends and family in this new edition of photographs and interviews first published in 1972 when fascination with the pimp lifestyle was in its heydey and the subject of glorification in the rising genre of blaxploitation cinema (Superfly and The Mack, etc).

MISSING IN ACTION - DVDs - PART 2

2009-04-22T21:50:00.000-07:00

BLACK LIKE ME

1964
James Whitmore, Roscoe Lee Browne, Will Geer, Al Freeman Jr.
dir. Carl Lerner

dvd import
b&w, import
$19.95

After 40 years, this films still hits home. The true story of a northern white journalist's journey through the Southern U.S. in the guise of a black man. Shot on a sparse budget by the film editor of such classics as Klute, Twelve Angry Men and The Swimmer -- his only feature as writer and director.

Not available in the U.S. on dvd or vhs.

MISSING IN ACTION - DVDs - PART 1

2009-04-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

SANDS OF THE KALAHARI
1965
Stuart Whitman, Stanley Baker, Susannah York, Harry Andrews
dir. Cy Enfield
dvd import
colour, widescreen
$19.95

Not available on vhs, dvd or even TCM, this British survival story from the director of Zulu, has virtually vanished from the cinematic radar. Six men and one woman survive their plane crash in the South African desert and wind up battling against the elements, each other, and a tribe of man-eating baboons.

Tough, sweaty, suspensful and a great entertainment on par with such similar fare as The Flight of the Phoenix (the original, not the pointless Dennis Quaid remake) and The Naked Prey.

GIRLS ON TOP

2009-04-19T14:57:00.000-07:00

EXQUISITE MAYHEM
The Spectacular & Erotic World of Wrestling
Theo Ehret
hardcover, 2001
$50.00

In the early 70's, photographer Theo Ehret began staging female wrestling scenarios in his studio for various erotic and fetish magazines. This mammoth (400+ pages) coffee table book documenting the golden age of wrestling and Ehret's "apartment wrestling" work , now out of print (although we've got a few copies hidden away), remains the best book on both subjects.

MYSTERY MEN

2009-04-01T21:37:00.000-07:00

THE GLORIOUS DECEPTION
The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Ching Ling Soo
Jim Steinmeyer
hardcover, 2005
26.95 sale 10.95

Steinmeyer unveils the secrets behind the most enigmatic performer in the history of stage magic, Chung Ling Soo, the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer." Soo’s infamous and suspicious onstage death in 1918 mystified his fellow magicians: he was shot during a performance of "Defying the Bullets," in which he attempted to catch marked bullets on a porcelain plate. When Soo died, his deceptions began to unravel. It was discovered that he was not Chinese but a fifty-eight-year-old American named William Ellsworth Robinson, a former magicians’ assistant and the husband of Olive Robinson. But even William Robinson was not who he appeared to be, for he had kept a second family with a mistress in a fashionable home near London.

A great read. Fascinating as biography, mystery and chronicle of early vaudeville and the world of magic at the turn of the last century.

A LIFE IN PICTURES

2009-03-31T00:11:00.000-07:00

LEADBELLY
A Life in Pictures

Tyhimba Jess, Tom Waits (introduction)
hardcover, 2008

$50.00

A visual biography of blues great Huddie Ledbetter (Midnight Special, Rock Island Line, Goodnight Irene), discovered by a music anthropologist from the Library of Congress in a Louisiana prison while serving time for assault and murder, consisting of unpublished photographs, news clippings, concert programs, personal correspondence (including letters from Woody Guthrie), record albums, awards and other memorabilia discovered only recently from a basement trunk in New York City.

BLOWS UP REAL GOOD

2009-03-30T22:08:00.000-07:00

COCK
Indian Firework Art
Gavin Alpert
concertina-style binding, 2001
$50.00

Nearly impossible to find these days but this is a beautiful, one-of-a-kind book, presented as a continuous, fold-out board of nearly 24 feet (86 pages), adorned with reproductions of Indian firework labels, most from the Cock Firework Company from the . Comes in its own firework box.

A DOUBLE LIFE

2009-03-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

SECRET IDENTY
The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Schuster
Craig Yoe
hardcover, 2009
24.95

A showcase for the rare and recently discovered erotic artwork by the most seminal artist in comics, Joe Shuster. Created in the early 1950s when Shuster was down on his luck after suing his publisher, DC Comics, over the copyright for Superman, he illustrated these images for an obscure series of magazines called "Nights of Horror," published under the counter until they were banned by the U.S. Senate following the notorious Brooklyn Thrill Killers trial in 1954.

ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE

2009-03-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

LOBSTER BOY
Fred Rosen
paperback, 1995
$29.95 (out of print)

In 1978, sideshow performer Grady Stiles Jr., known as Lobster Boy (the sixth generation in a family afflicted with a condition known as electrodactylyl), picked up a shotgun and murdered the boyfriend of his eldest daughter. Placed on trial and convicted of the crime, he was granted 15 years probation due to the prison system's lack of facilities to cope with someone afflicted with his handicap. A dozen years later, Stiles himself was gunned down by a 19-year-old hitman hired by his wife and stepson in retaliation for years of physical and emotional abuse.

Quite simply one of the most bizarre biography/true crime books in print.

TOP 'O THE WORLD, MA

2009-03-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

DEADLY INTENT

Crime & Punishment Photographs from the Burns Archive

Stanley B. Burns, MD

hardcover, 2008

$49.95

The Burns archives is well known for its private collection of historical photographs. Previous books include A Morning's Work (medical anomalies), Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (dead people) and American Dentist.

Drawing from its extensive bounty of crime photos from the the 1890 to 1950, this is a treasure trove of unique images examining the ever-changing standards of the American justice system -- images from water torture at Sing Sing prison, whipping posts, penitentiary life, and the notorious deadly work camps of the South, to executions: hanging, firing squads, and the electric chair.

justice befalls the neighborhood pedofile

THE FILM BUFF'S HOLY GRAIL

2009-03-25T00:11:00.000-07:00

FLICKER
Theodore Roszak
paperback 2005
$17.95

'A sprawling novel that comprises, among other things, a magical mystery tour of the history of cinema, an acid satire on Hollywood and what passes for today's cultural avant-garde, a metaphysical puzzle, an exploration of the psychological impact of films and a parable about the modern spiritual wasteland. UCLA film scholar and critic Jonathan Gates becomes obsessed with legendary German expressionist filmmaker Max Castle, who went to Hollywood in the mid-1920s and whose vampire and ghoul B-movies are viewed by cult fans as deeply troubling evocations of evil. On the trail of Castle's dark past, Gates and his ex-girlfriend, tough-minded film critic Clare Swann (a thinly disguised Pauline Kael), encounter medieval gnostic heresies, secret societies, Orson Welles, a teenage genius albino movie producer and an aged Dutch ex-vamp who practices tantric-like sex.'

Described elsewhere as Sunset Boulevard meets The Name of the Rose (and I would offer Ragtime as well). Without a doubt, perhaps the best work of contemporary fiction to date on the art, history and lure of the movies. Required reading for all film buffs and film-makers.

FINDING THE GOLDEN TICKET

2009-03-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

HUBERT'S FREAKS
Gregory Gibson
2008 hardcover
$24.00 JFJFJsale $11.95

Subtitled 'The Rare Book Dealer, the Times Square Talker, and the Lost Photos of Diane Arbus' -- this is a must-read for bibliofiles, sideshow enthusiasts, Arbus fans, and most of all collectors -- anyone who dreams of that one big score -- the priceless item with the $5 pricetag hiding in some corner at a fleamarket, garage sale or antique store.

'From the late 1950s until her death in 1971, renowned photographer Diane Arbus took pictures of oddball performers at the now-forgotten Hubert's Museum, a typical freak show in New York City's seedy Times Square. One frequent subject was Charlie Lucas, first a freak himself, later an inside talker. In 2003, Bob Langmuir, an anxiety-ridden, pill-popping, obsessive antiquarian book dealer from Philadelphia, unearthed a collection of photographs and memorabilia, including Lucas's journals and what he thought were Arbus's photos. This trove of genuine American kookiness came to dominate his life. Following Langmuir's quest—from the slums of Philadelphia to the halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—as he gathered, priced and ultimately came to understand this collection.'

VISIONS OF LIGHT

2009-02-20T22:12:00.001-08:00

100 SUNS
Michael Light

hardcover, 2003

$49.95

Photographer Light returned to the government's original files at Los Alamos and painstakingly re-master these amazing images of our atomic arsenal at work -- from the original Trinity tests in the Nevada desert to our megaton tests over the Pacific.

FEMALE BODYBUILDERS

2009-02-16T23:01:00.000-08:00

FEMALE BODYBUILDERS

Martin Schoeller
hardcover 2008
$50.00

Schoeller started his career as an assistant for Annie Leibovitz. His previous monograph, CLOSE UP (also available) established him as one of the best portrait artists working today.

CHILD SOLDIERS

2008-11-22T11:04:00.000-08:00

CHILD SOLDIERS
Leora Kahn, editor
hardcover 2008
$45.00

Up to half a million children have been engaged in more than 85 conflicts worldwide. As armed conflict proliferates, increasing numbers of children are exposed to the brutalities of war. Child Soldiers focuses on countries with a history of child warfare, as captured by photographers and writers from across the globe including Tim Hetherington's photographs from Liberia; Roger Lemoyne and Cedric Gerbehaye’s work from the Congo; Ami Vitale on child Maoist recruits in Nepal; and other work from Burma, Columbia, the Central African Republic, and Palestine.

RAPT IN PLASTIC

2008-11-16T23:03:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the blogspot for Polyester bookstore.

Since I am totally new to to this, please allow a little leeway for the time being when judging this site while I teach myself the technical aspects of creating a great blog and while I discover my voice. I have spent a great deal of time over the past five months since our opening, thinking about what I might like to include here -- previews of new book acquisitions and gallery exhibits, film and television reviews, comments on the art scene in downtown Los Angeles, a returning ex-pat's perspective on life in general after more than 15 years living overseas (Sydney). But, as I found with both the bookstore and our companion gallery, Todd/Browning, over time this too will become exactly whatever it was meant to be...