Met Museum Highlights 4/3/14

Qui Anxiong
New Classic of Mountains and Seas I, 2008
Woodblock print, ink on paper

Tangtan: There is a beast in the western lands with a body like a bull. Its head is connected directly to its back and its body is covered in armor-like scales. It has no feet but moves rapidly on its belly and its straight snout erupts fire. It is called "Tangtan" (Tank).

Qui Anxiong
New Classics of Mountains and Seas I, 2008
Woodblock print, ink on paper

Tingdu: There is a large beast in the deep, dark waters of the North that dives several kilometers under the ocean. Its body is black and its skin is hard. Its eyes are on the tops of the back fins Its back has holes from which small fish can leap up beyond the clouds. It is called "Tingdu" (Trident submarine).

Yang Yongliang
View of Tide, 2008
Inkjet Print

Below it are portions of Zhao Mengfu's Ten Thousand Li of Yangzi River from the Song Dynasty (1127-1279) on which it is based.

Yang Yongliang
View of Tide [Detail]

Mishka Henner
Staphorst Ammunition Depot, Overijssel, from the series Dutch Landscapes, 2011
Inkjet print

Locations important to Dutch national security were rendered into a mosaic pattern on Google Maps at the behest of the government.

I'm So Happy this Webpage Exists

I am geeking the fuck out right now. I just stumbled upon Philip R. "Pib" Burn's collection of Cryptozoological and Meteorite Stamps! This guy is amazing! The following two posts are image dumps of my favorites (note: I was in the stamp club in 4th grade):

Cryptid Stamps

Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility

I just randomly came across the Wikipedia article for Poles of inaccessibility, marking "a location that is the most challenging to reach owing to its remoteness from geographical features which could provide access." Included in its list of poles was a map of the Oceanic pole of inaccessibility, showing the area on earth farthest from any land.



I then checked out the region on Google Earth with the Wikipedia option turned on expecting to just see empty ocean floor but was surprised by a few scant entries, hundreds of miles away from anything else. They were as follows:

Bloop
The name given to an ultra-low frequency and extremely powerful underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The source of the Bloop is unknown but cryptozoologists have suggested it originates from a massive unknown sea creature. Others have ruled this out since it is several times louder than the loudest known biological sound (from the Blue Whale). [Map]

R'lyeh
A sunken city located deep under the Pacific Ocean where the godlike alien being Cthulhu is buried. [Map]

The Mysterious Island
Captain Nemo's hideout and home harbor of his ship the Nautilus. [Map]

Podesta island
A phantom island reported by the Italian Captain Pinocchio of the vessel Barone Podestà in 1879. The island was charted falsely until 1935 when it was removed from charts. The island has not been found since. [Map]

Funnily enough, Easter Island looks to be the closest civilized land to any of these places.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

I just finished watching The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, one of the first ever Creature Features. Long story short, a nuclear test in the Arctic (what?!) awakens a hibernating dinosaur, the remains of which have only ever been found in the Hudson Canyon. It makes its way south destroying several boats and a lighthouse (stealing straight from Ray Bradbury's The Fog Horn, one of my favorite short stories as a kid and still worth reading) before rampaging through New York City (where obviously it originally lived).





Stupid cops. It doesn't count as post-apocalyptica but I still love it. Ray Harryhausen (of course) did the effects. You can watch the entire thing here if you must but it wasn't actually that good.

Catalog of Monsters

In 2005 I went to the Little Boy exhibition at the Japan Society which featured images from the book An Anatomical Guide to Monsters (1967) that I desperately scoured the internet for but couldn't find. Thankfully someone finally posted some more images from either it or a book doing exactly the same thing and has allowed me to tag this post with all my favorite labels:

On a related note, these are also cool:

Key West

Theme Music: King Horror - Loch Ness Monster [download]

I got back from Key West a while back and think I got skin cancer as a result (no joke!). Mostly all I did was read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, swim, eat and drink too much.

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I read that the dead outnumber the living in Key West due to the large cemetery in the center of it. There's a tomb rumored to house a vampire and one man's inscription reads "I told you I was sick." Which is not nearly as funny as this.

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I also caught this on video, an osprey eating a fish...brain first! I shoot what National Geographic is afraid to:

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Oh, and I saw this:


Dilettante cryptozoologists would probably presume it to be a variant on the Loch Ness monster or Champ but it's clearly related to the Mokèlé-mbèmbé. Please ignore the asshole blocking the shot...