College Humor’s Furry Superheroes Get Even Grosser
by Patch O'Furr
Yay! There’s a sequel to the hilarious animated series, Furry Force! Furry Superheroes Get Even Grosser:
Dogpatch Press
Fluff Pieces Every Week
May 29, 2013
Santa Ana gallery’s ‘Art of Furry Fandom’ connects public with Furry past and future
by Patch O'Furr
Repost from Flayrah news, 5/29/2013:
Mark Merlino and his friend Rod O’Riley might be called “first wave” furries from original geek culture, when that meant underground comics, fanzines and pen-pals. They held the first parties that turned into conventions, and WikiFur calls them “founding members of organized furry fandom.” Mark owns The Prancing Skiltaire.
Rod’s most recent accomplishment is The Art of Furry Fandom, at Avantgarden art gallery in Santa Ana, CA. It opens concurrently with this year’s Califur, this weekend. In his journal, Mark calls it a dream he’s had for over 30 years.
According to the gallery:
AVANTGARDEN is proud to present “Women Desperately Seeking Escape…a Series” photographically captured on film and digitally by ELLEN SEEFELDT. We also welcome JAY RIGGIO‘S hand cut pasted collage work, SHARLYNORA WILKINSON‘s paintings, and The Art of Furry Fandom, curated by RODNEY STANSFIELD. This exhibit runs June 1–29, opening reception June 1, 7–10pm.
Mark reminded me of a similar show in 2012 in San Jose during Further Confusion, with “more artists, more art, same kind of independent gallery”. Actually, there were two: a Slave Labor Graphics show, and “People-Shaped Animals” at Kaleid Gallery.
May 8, 2013
Book review: ‘Freak’s Amour’, by Tom De Haven.
by Patch O'Furr
Freak’s Amour, by Tom De Haven, is simply a masterpiece. This is some of the best weird literature that few seem to have heard of or remember. It’s been out of print for 27 years. I started it once, long ago when I was just getting into science fiction and weird genre stuff. It was a bit arty and demanding for a teenage reader, and my interest wasn’t up to the challenge at the time. Now, I have to give it very high recommendation after finding it again.
I suggest that anyone into classy lit as well as furries and pulp/pop culture go get it now, even if it takes your last two bucks. It’s one of those obscurities that could be worth quite a lot if it was less available – but it earned enough acclaim to get several printings, so it’s cheap and easy to get secondhand. (In fact, I’ve noticed a new comic/graphic novel version: info below.)
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May 3, 2013
Opinion: Street fursuiting is the most fun furry experience
by Patch O'Furr
Repost from Flayrah, 5/3/2013:
San Francisco hosted the 14th annual How Weird Street Faire last weekend, with the theme “WEIRDI GRAS: Carnival of Peace.” An informal fursuiter outing was organized through Meetup.com and its active Bay Area Furries group (independent from the mailing list), which runs many local events each month. I offered changing space at a nearby apartment, and scored a pair of “Disco Pants” for costuming, direct from the office of local web-based fashion startup company Betabrand. Afterwards, Betabrand was cool enough to post photos of modeling the pants on their “Model Citizen” section. (There’s more photos on Reddit.)
Any news media story that covers furries is likely to focus heavily on fursuiters, and their striking visual appeal and fuzzy glamor. Fursuiters can’t represent the whole of furry fandom, when “furry” is a vague and broadly defined umbrella over anything related to anthropomorphic animals- but I think it’s OK to consider fursuiters the expressive, theatrical soul of furrydom. There is an element of “ambassador” role to their hobby. Without the 15-20% of furries who wear fursuits and costumes for role-playing, you’d just have regular unglamorous nerds saying “meow! I’m a cat”. That’s what crazy people do.
Of course, I’m kidding: Call me the most crazy of all, but I prefer the term fabulous. I like to put on silver disco pants and a Husky partial, and get on the subway to go dance and hug random people, under the influence of blasting techno music and magical substances in the air. They get so entranced by a giant sparkly talking dog, that they hand over their babies for photos. That actually happened several times this weekend at the How Weird Street Faire. I didn’t know where those babies had been, but I let them touch my paws anyways, even more carefully than when I pick up my chihuahua (who gets super confused and never knows whether to trust me when I dress up.) As far as I can tell, everyone loved the experience, even the astonished babies. Those photos might provoke some interesting questions when they grow up.
April 29, 2013
Scaly, feathery alternative limbs leap the uncanny valley into the future of prosthetic design
by Patch O'Furr
The mention of an amputee flaunting a showy, bird-plumaged prosthetic arm should make the Furry connection clear, in this story about the work of the Alternative Limb Project (ALP) and it’s director, Sophie de Oliveira Barata.
De Oliveira Barata is “challenging the belief that prosthetic limbs should aim to look as realistic as possible.” Her career started in special effects for film and TV, before she moved to work with a realistic prosthetics company for eight years. In her opinion:
The dominant thinking is that a new limb should be as close a match to the previous limb as possible. But until technology gets to the point where you can have a realistic looking limb in movement and aesthetics, there will always be this uncanny middle ground. Having an alternative limb embraces difference and can help create a sense of ownership and empowerment.
The new option for limbs include crystal, stereo speakers, lighting, and simulated internal anatomy to tranform disability-concealers into creative, eye-catching fashion. What’s next, hooves and paws?
Fursuit-owning readers may appreciate why, as custom-designed pieces, these limbs do not come cheap, with a cost between $4,600 and $21,000. In Britain, government health funding is dedicated only to realistic prosthetics. But De Oliveira Barata argues that alternative prostheses could be just as beneficial. It opens the imagination to a whacky sci-fi future where species-transition could be as acceptable as gender reassignment. Until then, artists, designers and biomedical engineers can explore creative inspiration and improve the lives of patients with this new kind of prosthetics.
March 7, 2013
Opinion: Indie web series ‘Fursona Files’ looks a little mangy
by Patch O'Furr
I haven’t seen this shared around until I noticed it on the Bay Area Furries mailing list.
Admit One Productions presents – Fursona… A SNEAK PEEK from Courtney James.
(EDIT: video down, try here.)
According to their website:
What’s your Fursona? Thats [sic] the million dollar question asked in this fast paced black comedy web series about the adventures of Virginia Blake – a successful investigative journalist – who is writing an expose on the FURRY underworld to save her tarnished career!
March 5, 2013
A famous experiment in anthropomorphism and psychology
by Patch O'Furr
Flayrah News, 3/5/2013:
Anthropomorphism is often imagined from our human point of view (attaching human characteristics to something non-human). But the concept can exist apart from ourselves, when animals see themselves in objects. The way it works for them can reveal more about us.
Harry Harlow was a psychologist who experimented with monkeys. In the 1950’s and 60’s, he gave his subjects “surrogate” mothers built from different objects, to see how they would behave, and learn about care-giving and companionship in social and cognitive development. PBS says about his famous experiment:
He took infant monkeys away from their real mothers, giving them instead two artificial mothers, one model made of wire and the other made of cloth. The wire model was outfitted with a bottle to feed the baby monkey. But the babies rarely stayed with the wire model longer than it took to get the necessary food. They clearly preferred cuddling with the softer cloth model, especially if they were scared. (When the cloth model had the bottle, they didn’t go to the wire model at all.)
Here’s an image gallery that illustrates the concept of “anthropomorphism” in monkey terms. To understand the experiment as a powerful metaphor, this web art project/essay says a lot with few words: Chicken Wire Mother.
November 2, 2012
Raccoons after dark: their haters, and their lovers
by Patch O'Furr
Urban raccoons are known as cute, smart, yet sometimes destructive pests that cause headaches for homeowners. Their mischief can range from raiding trash, to sensational headlines about terrorized neighborhoods that call for traps and controls.
According to the PBS nature show Raccoon Nation:
In an effort to outwit raccoons, we may be pushing their brain development and perhaps even sending them down a new evolutionary path. One biologist who has been studying raccoons for 25 years believes the city life is in fact cultivating “über-raccoons,” ready to take over the world.
While PBS jokes about “über-raccoons”, Germany has somber, no-nonsense, bedenklich news about their Nazi raccoon occupation.
Some people worry about repelling them, but other people have a much more welcoming point of view… although they might keep their unsavory interests on the down-low. Mauricio Baiocchi, a distinguished San Francisco Bay area animator with credits from Industrial Light and Magic, lets us in on their sordid secrets in his 2011 short film, Cooners.
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October 23, 2012
Opinion: Why the furry experience hits home so deeply
by Patch O'Furr
Originally posted to BAF and reposted with permission, here is a nice short piece by Spottacus.
The furry experience addresses a nearly universal desire to be seen as you feel you are
Whether you are a fur (who feels a species identity different than your human skin shows), a transgender (who feels a gender different than your birth body shows), or just differently colored, shaped, or pigmented than those around you, probably all furries and their kin were likely acutely aware at an age as young age as 4-8 years old that how people saw and treated them was very different than what they felt they were like inside.
This is true for all humans, in fact, who are instantly judged at some level based on impressions: blonde, female, Mexican, Asian, African, and so on, which also have nothing to do with who you are inside. Where furs step off this path of false impressions is that we, nearly uniquely, create a fursona that we own (we feel it, we made it, it was not set a birth), and then we project and interact based upon that character.
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October 19, 2012
Furry artist in finals of San Francisco Public Library card design contest
by Patch O'Furr
Walter Ringtail’s comic strip Paw Valley features a gang of cartoon animal friends who often end up in ticklish situations.
Now, patrons of San Francisco’s Public Library may be tickled to have his art work in their pockets.
According to this cartoon illustrated tour, seven million people a year pass through SFPL’s main branch alone (one of 27 branches in the city). Library membership is over 350,000, with over nine million loans circulated per year. That’s a lot of patrons who could become card-carrying appreciators of furry art!
3,000 submissions were received for the SFPL card design contest. Judges selected ten finalists in each of five age-based categories. The top vote-winners will be printed on SFPL library cards in 2013.
Walter Ringtail’s submission “The Bedtime Story” was chosen for the adult level finals. Now, it’s up to the public to vote for the winner.
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