When it launched in 1952, there had been nothing like MAD -- a comics magazine dedicated to humor and satire aimed at a broad range of targets. In particular, MAD exposed the cultural fakery behind familiar and beloved images that originated on television, in the movies, and in sports and politics. Led by creators Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines, MAD's cartoonists peeled back these images to expose calculated manipulation of the American populace by newly powerful postwar corporations. A retrospective exhibit on MAD opens this weekend at the Cartoon Art Museum.

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Clouds of crimson billow across one wall as if from an open wound. A length of stained gauze decays seemingly before your eyes. Jagged streaks of rusty-red fluid erupt into the ether. No, these aren't scenes from the set of Hollywood's latest vampire franchise. It's the new solo show "Haemoscuro" by artist Jordan Eagles that opens Thursday -- a First Thursday -- at Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art. Eagles uses a most unusual material in his work: animal blood. Vegans and those who are weak of stomach take heed. Sourced from slaughterhouses, Eagles' blood is the real deal and is certainly unsettling.

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Rarely does one get access to the magical creations of haute couture, fashion works of art that by definition are handmade and shown in Paris exclusively. Which is why we are still freaking out about our viewing of "The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk" on Thursday at the de Young Museum, where 140 of his haute couture works of art (including a set of rotating bustiers in a video clip below) are on display in a meta-exhibition.

The mannequins on which robes hang are not merely hangers, but expressive faces that move and talk. There are videos, large-format photographs by prominent photographers, illustrations, and a rotating catwalk. The scale and depth of the exhibition is impressive, but there are so many works that it does get overwhelming, especially with all the multimedia distractions.

That is, until you realize you have real-life garments in front of you, sewn by fairy-tale-like seamstresses, begging to be looked at and admired.

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Bob Holmgren

Dragon

Most of our smartphones contain digital cameras that rival the best that money could buy less than a decade ago. We often pay hundreds of dollars for these devices. And what do we do with them? Filter our 8-megapixel masterpieces through apps such as Hipstamatic and Instagram, to lend that elusive "shitty camera" sheen of yesteryear's cheap point-and-click models. It makes a persuasive case for Devo's grand theory of devolution -- as a race, we're going backward. But whether the trend toward faux-distressed photos with blown-out colors is mindless fun or the worst kind of kitsch, the results definitely lack the authentic charm of photos taken with a real, bottom-shelf, analog camera. Said cameras are becoming harder to find, but RayKo gallery director Ann Jastrab must have a secret stash, which she dispatched for "the International Juried Plastic Camera Show," which opens tonight (Wednesday). Jastrab describes the show as an exhibition of "the best images from the worst cameras."

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Bedroom Kandi

The Kandi Kisses vibrator is part of Kandi Burruss' new Bedroom Kandi line of products.

Female-friendly and home-grown sex-toy retailer Good Vibrations has a new store in Oakland. Reality TV star, R&B musician, and newly minted sexpert Kandi Burruss has a new line of sexual products. Where do the two intersect? Well, literally speaking, in Oakland later this month. Good Vibes plans to have Burruss on hand for the grand opening part at its new location on Lakeshore on January 28. We'd say she's a good fit.

straightfromthea.com

Burruss shows off her Happiness & Joy toy.

Burruss was in the 1990s R&B group Xscape before writing girl-positive international chart-toppers for TLC ("No Scrubs") and Destiny's Child ("Bills, Bills, Bills") and landing in her current spot on television via Bravo's Real Housewives of Atlanta. Her own reality special, The Kandi Factory, where she'll look for promising amateur musical talent, is forthcoming.

In recent seasons of Housewives, she's started to brand herself as something of a sexpert via a podcast, and she has recently launched Bedroom Kandi, her own line of sex toys and intimate products. Some of them are concealed in clever packages that are disguised to look like makeup, such as lipstick and a compact.

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Alan Scherstuhl

Not very sheepish, is he?

Going back to work after the holidays can be rough. So it's nice when the news comes directly to us. Even better? When it's posing in our lobby as a half-man, half-ram.

It was hard to ignore the rather ripped "Ramotaur" ("Ramo" for short) when he visited SF Weekly this afternoon to promote the Nov. 21 opening of an Icebreaker TouchLab store in San Francisco on Post Street.

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John Zaklikowski

Useless stuff put to use.

We're not quite halfway through ArtSpan's SF Open Studios, which continue through the last weekend in October, but we've seen some great work so far. The first weekend we went to Workspace Limited, a 37,000-square-foot converted industrial space where more than 40 artists set out the wine, hurriedly slapped labels on their work, and opened their doors.

Workspace Limited is glorious and though at night a gaze out the huge windows met pitch black, it was easy to imagine the pounding mission sun supplying ample natural light for those lucky to have scored an upstairs studio. The crowd was less than banal, the way Burning Man vehicles look after you've lived here for a while -- all flash and no substance. Thankfully, there was plenty of work to look at and a labyrinth of rooms to explore.

Most notable was the work of John Zaklikowski, whose room literally exploded with kinetic energy of dead technology. Motherboards and hard drives, CDs, and all the other stuff under the hood of your second self that when disassembled is just as useful as a brick.

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Kaiya Rainbolt

Upscale

On the way to Recology San Francisco we notice the gulls. We call it a venue, but it's mostly a transfer station, just across the freeway from the bay. It gets hordes of visitors in the form of birds, eager to scavenge from the piles of garbage brought for consolidation before being sent on to the landfill. Thanks to an unusual arts program, the site also attracts a different kind of scavenger: artists. These lucky few get to pick through all the rubbish they can navigate -- of course with face masks and heavy-duty gloves -- and then build things from the recycled and reusable materials they find. See what the past few months have meant for residents Lauren DiCioccio and Abel Rodriguez along with student-artist Kaiya Rainbolt in Artist in Residence Exhibitions, which open Friday and Saturday. Rainbolt, as seen in the image above, makes giant-scale jewelry from unexpected household items.

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Opening night at the San Francisco Opera and the Black and White Ball are probably the two top events in the city for dressing up (in formal attire, as opposed to fancy or wild costume or drag, for which there's an event at least every other week). It's an off year for the B&W Ball, but Friday's gala for Puccini's Turandot, as well as Saturday's premier of Christopher Theofanidis's Heart of a Soldier, gave us more than enough to gawk at. For instance, we are happy to see such a flamboyant hat at the opera as is perched atop the above lady's temple, but also happy we didn't sit behind her. This was a headdress surpassed only by that of Turandot herself.

Click through to see more.
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Yoon Lee

Splash

Large-scale abstract paintings ask you to do things. They ask you to stand in front of them a while, to see what you see -- because you can't know what you're seeing until you've stood in front of them a while. It's a process that, once "gotten," can make you feel like you're free to do and think and feel whatever you want. Bay Area/Brooklyn painter Yoon Lee's enormous panels are perfect proof of the phenomenon. Her exhibit, "Minor Inconveniences," opens Thursday.

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