Monday, November 15, 2010

THE STEAMPUNK WEEKEND


Bored with everything bland in his English country life, Little Lord Evercreek ruminated on another; one where inventions and copper tubing and quirky gauges and electro-shock meters filled his days. Jules Verne had written fantastic adventures, and Evercreek wanted to live them. The young lord had heard about the goings on at The Pot Boiler, a Soho club off Wardour Street, where the London experimental engineering set gathered each Saturday to play inventors. With a personal invitation from Reginald Highcroft, the club's secretary, Evercreek set off by coach and horses - the coach lavishly furnished with red velvet walls, metal chains and locks, and a bar stocked with the finest selection of spirits - from his home at Skeleton Quay Castle, a half-hour north of London. Five minutes out of the gate, the hornblower, Harold Timmins, lit up his big bong atop the coach. Once passed around to Bert and John, the drivers - then down through the coach window to the little lord, the trip began. Evercreek then poured himself a large crystal cup of gin, which he sipped slowly, imagining all the spouts and steam-vents he'd be designing in his gadget-ized future.
© BILL BLAIR 2010

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

TRETCHIKOFF'S WONG WAYS



Having lived his early years in China, the young Vladimir Tretchikoff - Vlad for short - wandered the backstreets of Cape Town looking for a wild time. Arriving at Miss Wong's Olde-Worlde Opium Den & Sandwich Emporium, he knew he'd hit gold. Bold bongo rhythms and freaky flute trills floated stoccato-like into the South African night. Vlad entered...never to be the same. All the Asian women in the emporium had blue skin. The bongo rhythms pulsated between his ears, while his eyes took in the exotic and the unfamiliar. Tendrils from the Hyakulanga plant swayed behind the main drummer, whose hair splayed like the highest surf wave off the coast of Java. Right then and there, the artist decided he would paint cyan-skinned beauties and wilted orchids. He spun dollar signs in his head, as he imagined travelling the world, pedalling his glossy chromolithographs - his mind forever an open edition.
© BILL BLAIR 2010