Category Archives: Anatomy

Next Monday at Observatory, Paradiso Contapasso presents a fantastic double feature: the haunting cello music of New Orleans-based Helen Gillet followed by an illustrated lecture about Dante's trip to hell and back by medievalist Nicola Masciandaro. All for just $5.

The music begins at 7 and the lecture at 8.

Full details below; hope to see you there!

A Paradiso Contapasso Double Feature:
Beyond the Sphere: Getting Lost with Dante and the Music of Helen Gillet
An illustrated lecture with professor of medieval literature Nicola Masciandaro preceded by the a performance by Helen Gillet
Date: Monday, November 22
Time: 7:00 for music; 8:00 for lecture
Admission to both: $5

Everyone knows that Dante went to hell and back. “Non vedi tu come egli ha la barba crespa e il color bruno per lo caldo e per lo fummo che è là giù?” [Do you not see how his beard is crisped and his color browned by the heat and smoke that this there below?], a lady is reported by Boccaccio to have said upon seeing the poet in Verona.

The underworld is written all over the author’s image. In many circles, from video game consoles to college lecture halls, the Divine Comedy is virtually synonymous with Inferno. The “Paradiso Contrapasso” concept presents a liberation from this stygian fixation. A contamination of paradise with the essential principal of divine punishment? A saturation of eternal torment with celestial, empyreal bliss? Or maybe something more radical than either. The damnation and perdition of the very idea of paradise? Or a penalty that would itself comprise it?

The word paradise, from ancient Persian, signifies an enclosed or walled garden. The divine punishment of paradise might then be imagined as the annihilation of its constitutive boundary, an exposure of the garden to what is beyond it. Does paradise disappear? Or does everything become a paradise?

Tonight’s lecture will take this theme as an invitation to read Dante as a radically paradisical poet, one for whom the original and ultimate state of being is never somewhere else, before or after, but is something that must always, and precisely in its absence, always be here.

Nicola Masciandaro is Associate Professor of English at Brooklyn College (CUNY) and a specialist in medieval literature.

To find out more about the lecture, click here; to find out more about the music of Helen Gillet, click here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

"Oddities," Morbid Anatomy's new favorite television program, is in danger! Below is a plea from Mike Zohn, co-proprietor of Obscura Antiques and Oddities, the antique shop which is at the center of this new and wonderful Discovery Channel reality show:

Fans of Oddities...We need your help.....First, thank you for all the kind words and all. We appreciate all of it. It seems that for some reason Discovery has not run any TV ads for our show. Our ratings have been OK, but most people don't know there are 2 episodes back to back...and many more don't even know about the show. Seems it might be hard to build an audience and a following without some TV advertising......

So, what can you do to help?

• You can watch! Oddities airs on the Discovery Channel on Thursday nights, from 8-9 PM; At 8:00 PM, catch a screening of last week's episode; stay tuned for a new episode at 8:30.
• Lodge a complaint to Discovery Channel asking for commercials and better promotion! You can do so (as I just did!) by clicking here.
• Spread the word; if you like the show, tell your friends!
• "Friend" them on Facebook! This is also a great way to keep apprised of the latest "Oddities" and shop information. You can find them on Facebook by clicking here.
• Come to our "Oddities" screening party on December 9th at 8:00 PM! You can find out more details about that by clicking here or here.

Thanks everyone for your help in saving this new and wonderful television show!

News alert! Just in time for Christmas, Criterion--God bless them--has released a deluxe, 2-DVD edition of Charles Laughton's 1955 unparalleled masterwork--and Morbid Anatomy film favorite--The Night of the Hunter.

Director Charles Laughton memorably and accurately described The Night of the Hunter as "a nightmarish sort of Mother Goose tale," and that it is. Starring film-noir bad boy Robert Mitchum in a much imitated performance as an evil preacher with "love" and "hate" tattooed on his knuckles (see top image), a slightly depressing Shelley Winters, and a late-career star turn by silent film mega-star Lilian Gish (see bottom image), the films is by turns hallucinatory, menacing, and darkly comic, but always lyrically beautiful at the same time. It is truly its own thing entirely; I simply cannot recommend it highly enough.

The new Criterion edition supplements the film itself with an archival interview with the film's cinematographer Stanley Cortez, a 2 1/2-hour making-of documentary, and interviews with a variety of critics and scholars.

To read a really wonderful article about the history of this remarkable, influential, and idiosyncratic film, click here. Click here to purchase the Criterion Edition of Night of the Hunter from Amazon.com. To purchase same in Blu-ray, click here.

Thanks so much, Megan, for letting me know about this!!

Image credits: Image one, from the LA Times article "A Second Look: 'The Night of the Hunter'"; other images from The Horror Digest.

This just announced: the 5th-Annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest is scheduled (December 7th at the Bell House) and is seeking contestants! Eligible entries include (in the words of thepress release) "taxidermy (bought, found, or homemade), biological oddities, articulated skeletons, skulls, jarred specimens—and beyond, way beyond..."

To add to the excitement, this year, our friend Mike Zohn--Obscura Antiques and Oddities co-proprietor, new reality show celebrity, and 2007's Carnivorous Nights champion will be a judge and speaker.

Full details follow; so enter away, and hope to see you there, either on stage or in the audience!

The Secret Science Club's 5th-Annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest
Date: Tuesday, December 7
Time: 8 PM
Location: The Bell House
(149 7th St., between 2nd and 3rd avenues in Gowanus, Brooklyn)

The The beasts are back!
Calling all science geeks, nature freaks, and rogue geniuses!

Your stuffed squirrel got game? Got a beaver in your brownstone? Bring your beloved beast to the Bell House and enter it to win at the 5th-annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest.

Eligible for prizes: Taxidermy (bought, found, or homemade), biological oddities, articulated skeletons, skulls, jarred specimens—and beyond, way beyond

Plus!
--Spectators are invited to cheer on their favorite specimens
--Groove to taxidermy-inspired tunes & video
--Imbibe ferocious specialty drinks!
--Prizes will be awarded by our panel of savage taxidermy enthusiasts!

Entrants: Contact secretscienceclub@gmail.com to pre-register. Share your taxidermy (and its tale) with the world!

Don't miss this beastly event on Tuesday, December 7, 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn, p: 718.643.6510 Subway: F to 4th Ave; R to 9th St; F or G to Smith/9th

More here. The image you see above is the Pope Mouse by Mouse Angel/Jeanie M. You can purchase your very own Pope Mouse--or Angel, or Punker Rocker, or Mousealope, or Hamlet (!) at The Morbid Anatomy Library; click here or email me here for details.

Image credit: The wonderful blog Crappy Taxidermy.

Tonight, at the Merchant's House Museum, as part of the exhibition “Memento Mori: The Birth and Resurrection of Postmortem Photography" blogged about recently here:

Wednesday, November 17, 7 p.m.
Reading: Sleeping Beauty III Memorial Photography: The Children
Merchant's House Museum
29 East Fourth Street, New York, NY 10003
The Museum is located between Lafayette Street and Bowery
Free, space is limited.

Dr. Stanley Burns of The Burns Archive will speak about the practice of postmortem photography from the 19th century until today, and sign copies of his latest book in the renowned Sleeping Beauty series. A reception to meet the author will follow.

To RSVP Call 212-777-1089

To read more about postmortem photography at The Burns Archive click here.

Stay tunes for a similar event Morbid Anatomy Presents event at Observatory sometime in the new year!

Image: ©2010 The Burns Archive, found here.

We in New York have been enjoying the last unseasonably warm days of a spectacular autumn. In my opinion, there is simply no better place to enjoy the autumn colors in the area than in the "400 acres of rolling lawns, spectacular trees and impressive memorials" that comprise the epic Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.

You can find out more about this fantastic cemetery--founded in 1863--by clicking here. You can see more photos--all of which I took on a visit my boyfriend and I made last Sunday--by clicking here, and can see larger version by clicking on the images.