___________________




'The YOLO Pages is the book of a movement with hope behind it. Artistically it is quite the endeavor. Many, many years ago Steve Roggenbuck talked of such a book, one epic in undertaking that would offer a ‘taste’ of what people were doing with online literature. Lots of takes have occurred since then most of them exclusively online. Upon founding Boost House the Boost House team began working on a Walt Whitman sampler book and The YOLO Pages. Let me say the following with pure sincerity:

'I have never been so excited in my entire life for such a collection. Reading the YOLO Pages has changed my life. Years of my life I have spent reading online literature seems to have reached a wonderful peak with the YOLO Pages. Everyone who is included in the YOLO Pages deserves the spot and hopefully this is only the beginning.

'Anybody interested in what new art is being created online really ought to get this book. A beautiful carefully curated and edited collection, the YOLO Pages is the book that the Internet needed. With that let me begin probably one of my favorite reviews of all time. Many thanks to Steve Roggenbuck, Emily Elizabeth Scott, Joseph Kendrick, Rachel Younghans and of course Charlie for putting in the time needed to make this such a compelling document.

'Adefisayo Adeyeye tries to polish up the sky. Next to Belarus the polish sky feels okay about life in general. Flowers are full of lips stamens ready to receive bumbling bees happy to create new beautiful things. Colors to insects are more incredible than any mere human could possibly comprehend. To a human a flower is pretty, to a bee a flower is life. Homes enjoy housing their happy inhabitants. Homes dream of all the wonderful creatures that have gone through doors, seen the world from their eyes. Up on high the sun captures it all happy to arrive a few minutes late right on time. Funerals are held for tiny voices for the sound lasts for a moment before it goes away. People orbit each other for humanity is a bunch of satellites looking for heavenly bodies to call their own.

'I’m here! Thank you happy people at Boost House for going through my massive stream of online consciousness!

'Gabby Bess becomes a miniature bear. This happens all the time. One moment people are people, the next they are bears. Happy bears hibernate together on beds content with the blankets that have been provided. Ceilings need their necklaces, chandeliers as the sophisticated call them. Lil Bouncy is the tightest rapper in the game. Anybody who lives life on a bouncy ball is living the dream of a five year old child. Internet life creates a crisis because the Internet life demands people all of the time. Social networking is a web people weave because actual weaving has gone out of fashion.'-- Beach Sloth








The Yolo Pages
Boost House

'the yolo pages is an epic anthology of poems, tweets, image macros, and prose from over 50 people. one of the first anthologies ever to cover "alt lit,""weird twitter," flarf, and associated communities and figures, the yolo pages showcases an exciting array of possibilities for poetry in 2014. with a focus especially on politically- and spiritually-minded writers, it also affirms the integration of poetry into concrete efforts to make the world better.

»»» MAY 18 UPDATE !!! «««

'THE YOLO PAGES FIRST RUN IS SOLD OUT !! the second run will be ready in the next month . you can still order it now, and you'll have it by mid june .'-- bh

full contributor list: adefisayo adeyeye, beach sloth, gabby bess, liz bowen, melissa broder, jos charles, richard chiem, santino dela, brian ecklund, pancho espinosa, joshua espinoza, catalina gallagher, cean gamalinda, james ganas, cassandra gillig, amelia gillis, lara glenum, philip gordon, tom hank, michael hessel-mial, @horse_ebooks, brett elizabeth jenkins, raymond johnson, kenji khozoei, ji yoon lee, tao lin, cayla lockwood, patricia lockwood, carrie lorig, sharon mesmer, stephen michael mcdowell, luna miguel, k. silem mohammad, moon temple, ashley opheim, anthony peregrine, @postcrunk, john rogers, amy saul-zerby, bob schofield, lk shaw, angela shier, bianca shipton, alexandra simone, andrew w.k., russ woods, dylan york, and the bh team: joseph kendrick, steve roggenbuck, e.e. scott, rachel younghans, and charlie the dog emeritus. cover design by hunter payne.


Excerpts















'THE YOLO PAGES' trailer! SCARY IF WATCH FULLSCREEN BRAVE


unboxing "the yolo pages" this is rare!!


FIRST EVER WALKTHRU OF BOOST HOUSE (RARE UNFURNISHED 2014)




____________________




Where do you live?

Richard Hawkins: Los Angeles, old gay Silverlake

Where would be your dream location to exhibit your work?

RH: The Musee Moreau in Paris, definitely. Le Consortium, Dijon though was also a dream come true. The one that got away was Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. If you know this place — Moorish architecture, decayed walls hung with faded tapestries — you know it would’ve been perfect. I was ¾’s of the way through deliberations for a show there before it fell through. I think the problem was shipping — imagine one of my 10 tall haunted dollhouses teetering on the edge of a gondola.

What’s your favorite medium to work in? Are there any that you haven’t used that you’re interested in trying out?

RH: I think I might have done everything except video and performance. Usually I follow obsessions until the medium I’m meant to be working in becomes obvious. But while I’ve spent 20 years making paintings and sculpture I always seem to return to collage. Even the new book of short stories has a basis in collage: something about reordering the existing world to suit your desires is always present.

Do you find the art world to be more supportive of queer artists now than it has been in the past?

RH: I started showing at the height of AIDS activism and the beginnings of groups like Queer Nation so, for me at least, I’ve only seen a great acceptance and even an open invitation to be as gay as you want in the artworld. It is heartening though to see such a grand array of queers showing in the 2014 Whitney Biennial: Elijah, as mentioned above, but also Tony Greene, Catherine Opie, Travis Jeppeson, Bjarne Melgaard, Ei Arakawa, Ken Okiishi, Gary Indiana and several others.

Where are you happiest?

RH: When you turn what you love doing into a profession you work all the time. I’m either in the studio or sitting in this chair at home writing a novel.








Richard Hawkins Fragile Flowers
Les presses du réel

'Since the beginning of the 90's, Richard Hawkins (born 1961 in Mexia, Texas, lives and works in Los Angeles) has developed a collage practice inherited from the cut-up legacy of Brion Gysin which aggressively mined the collapsed myths of American counter-culture. For Hawkins, collage is a space for doublings and expansions, for the unrealizable, the transient, the ephemeral and the unstable. Collage, in fact, could be seen as the basis for the artist's entire oeuvre whether they be paintings, sculptures, assemblages, books of fiction, poems, tumblr accounts saturated with vintage porn or curated shows of other artists' works. All of Hawkins's works are haunted by a horny voyeur, a hungry cruiser, a desiring hunter whose point of view focuses on the fantastical space of classic and contemporary mythologies, perusing fleshy magazines and galleries of old paintings as lustily as he stalks real boys on streetcorners.
    'Rather than direct links between the different narratives, practices and media in Hawkins's work, there are only the melding continuities of similar levels of indulgence, the little joys of being fascinated and getting carried away. So the beauty of teenbeat star Matt Dillon, the shadow of Lautréamont and the dislocated gesture of Butoh founder, Tatsumi Hijikata, are all approached with the same delight, grace and vulgar pleasure as are any of Hawkins' other obsessions: Greek and Roman statuary, 19 C. French Decadent literature, Gustave Moreau's paintings, American Indian cultural narratives, zombies, haunted houses, poststructuralist theory or the sextrade in Thailand.'-- Stéphanie Moisdon


Excerpt









Lunchtime Art Talks: Richard Hawkins


Richard Hawkins, de Appel, Amsterdam Part 1


Richard Hawkins « Glimmer »



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Much of your work seems to be about bringing a sense of gravitas to something absurd, whether it’s the horrible fucked-up reality of existence, or something as banal and pervasive as pop culture. As I am someone generally opposed to contemporary cultural referents in art (as I often find they immediately date a work or sit as shallow gimmickry), I find your use of pop culture refreshing. Your allusions & direct references aren’t the subject of any of the work, rather they pervade the word in the same way they creep into the world at large, and they speak in your work as pure fucked-up absurdity. How do you approach pop culture?

Cassandra Troyan: Pop culture is the endless circling cesspool that desecrates as it revives. As much as I feel Capitalism has destroyed the possibility of contemporary life, and how that pains me, I cannot ignore it. There is no “away”. It is the sensorial theater of the absurd. During the whole twerk-apocalypse, if you looked at google statistics for searches in the US, Miley Cyrus was trumping Syria hard, which is insane but sadly not surprising. Yet even for me there are some days where I read Al Jazeera and Huffington Post or OMG! in equal parts. This quality of seepage, or the transfer between high and low, I think Janice Lee touched on it a few days ago when she discussed Glenum’s and Klaver’s work in relation to Lauren Berlant’s ideas about the juxtapolitical. Too much seepage is toxic, and still maintains the prominence of hegemonic culture, unless it gets queered enough to complicate and disintegrate the work of commodification or the reproduction of the status quo.

Since I know you are constantly working on things, can you tell me what you’re working on right now?

CT: Right now I am editing a manuscript called “Kept In Lacerated Light (KILL MANUAL)” which is a combination of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, clinical trial results, operational procedures, and biblical verses. I’ve realized my project will always involve violence to some degree, but the dynamics are constantly fluctuating in terms of intensities and affective registers. I’m also writing on a longer novel-ish piece that is a sort of “cunt-up” (in reference to Dodie Bellamy, of course) of Fifty Shades of Grey, and re-writes the work as a schizo-remapping of submission to late-Capitalism and consumption as the 21st century romantic model. In terms of film/video work, I’m working on a new series called A CURE FIT FOR A KING, which I describe as “A hysterico-environmental dreamworld set at the edges of capitalism, A CURE FIT FOR A KING, cycles through endless rabbit holes of Midwest despair and absurdity only to find further economic collapse, failure of masculinity, and the ever-present bee plight.” And I have a show next month in Malmö, Sweden with my collaborator and friend, Ola Ståhl at KRETS where we will have a multi-channel video installation and several hand-bound books as a part of interdisciplinary project that we have been working on for the past four years. The project is based in translation, immigration, opticality while exploring narratives around migration and itinerant labour from the unpublished memoirs of a Swedish immigrant in the US during the first decades of the 20th Century.








Cassandra Troyan Blacken Me Blacken Me, Growled
Tiny Hardcore Press

'Cassandra Troyan's Blacken Me Blacken Me, Growled is about failure. It's about ecstasy. It's about taking ecstasy and fucking. It's rap and emo and sharks. It's all the optimism and yearning of a Midwestern youth mixed with the pain of an intelligent and obsessive mind slowly realizing that language isn't enough. That touching isn't enough. That pain isn't enough. That nothing's enough. Troyan's voices are powerful voices. They are broken voices, climbing atop one another and splitting open. Equal parts disturbing and comforting, like a lullaby from the abyss, Blacken Me reminds us, "If we’d only stop flailing / we’d realize we float."'-- Tiny Hardcore Press

'Cassandra Troyan’s writing, here in these non-stop great, coruscating poems and everywhere else, is one of the total wonders of contemporary lit. It can make every form it wears seem at once perfected and helplessly corrupted. So, it’s like an ongoing R.I.P. to the historical models. But she’s not just a writers’ writer. She seems to know so much so unusually and feel everything so complicatedly and yet concisely that reading her is something new and gigantic.'-- Dennis Cooper

'Writing that is so hot it turns to lava in your mind!'-- Stewart Home


Excerpt













Cassandra Troyan at Engineer's Office Gallery July 19, 2011


THE PUSH TO PULL THE FLOW FROM LIFE'S DISTURBANCE TERROR FANTASIA


INCANTATION HOUR TRAILER




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Kyle, how did you become an author at such a young age? How long have you been writing?

Kyle Muntz: I started writing when I was really young—I’m not quite sure of the exact number anymore, but I’m pretty sure it was somewhere around 14 or 15. The first three novels I wrote were really terrible, and then after that something just sort of clicked, and suddenly, after a little while, I was able to reread my work without cringing. I’m really glad I was able to reach the point, or I never would have been able to begin submitting anywhere.

You've been labeled as avant-garde. Is that a fitting expression for your body of work?

KM: To an extent. I have two novels—Voices, and another unpublished one called Green Lights/Purity of Vision—that fit more firmly in the territory of the avant-garde. Other than that, I like to think of myself as incorporating elements of the avant-garde into a kind of hybrid form. Since the subject matter changes a lot from book to book, recently I’ve felt compelled to move more towards something a little different, since I noticed I was sort of writing myself into a corner, but there’s always an influence from the avant-garde in all my writing, because that’s usually the type of material I enjoy reading the most.

Believe in writer's block?

KM: Definitely. I seem to get it all the time, usually when I’m somewhere around 2/3rds of the way through a piece. It sucks, but it generally goes away. The thing I’m most of afraid of, I think, would be a time when it doesn’t…. -- from Calliope Nerve








Kyle Muntz Green Lights
Civil Coping Mechanisms

'Green Lights is a surreal fable set in a neighborhood that goes on forever, where the light is always changing color. It’s the story of two people in love, a friend with a problem, and an old man who eats children; but also one about perception, the gaps between universes, and the struggle to find happiness in a dangerous, sometimes incomprehensible world.'-- CCM

'Kyle Muntz wants to talk to you about color. And you’ll want to listen, because the light that flickers and floats behind this extraordinarily conceived and executed book will have you utterly transfixed. This is a book about love, loss, pain, and other people—the big important stuff—but also about the way we perceive, the way the world shapes itself, and the way we shape ourselves in response. ‘The sky can only go so long without a moon,’ writes Muntz, and so instead of taking away the moon, he’s given us a new sky—one that seems as fickle as starlight, even as it folds us in and lights our way in the darkness. Green Lights is a singular, beautiful book.'-- Amber Sparks


Excerpt

E and I spent the morning sitting outside.
We were trying to drink water, but the light kept making it evaporate. That’s the problem with setting things in the sun. They melt, and disappear out of the universe.
Not far away, with just his head showing over the fence, I saw the old man. He was whittling a stick with his teeth; bits of squirrel were stuck between them. He had a hunter’s eyes, emphasizing his pointed chin, sickly grinning. He liked to eat things and laugh about it. Making them disappear.

“Hey,” I pointed at him, “look over there, do you see him?”

She saw.
“Be really careful.”
“Why?”
“He’s scary, and he likes to hurt people.”

She nodded, and said the old man was kind of ugly, too.

We looked at him and made faces. When he didn’t go away we started to throw things: rotten fruit, rubber, paper cups, a chair. One hit him and he growled; he picked up a rock and started chewing on it. Bits of stone crumbled until finally he crushed it through the center.

After that, we were especially careful. Like I said, he was scary.

:::::::::::::::::::::

I went walking with E in the forest. We went to the river and threw rocks at the waterfall. Then we put our heads beneath the water and tried to breathe, and it was nice, even if it didn’t work.

Yeah, it was nice.

:::::::::::::::::::::

I found the old man in his usual place; as expected, he had not gotten any younger. His teeth kept grinding together, chewing something that made his face look funny. Every few seconds he would shift it against his cheek. His back was even crookeder than normal, al- most enough that his spine stuck out. Bird shit clung tohis shoulder. It was hard not to notice. “Gross,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I replied, “it’s nothing.”
“I don’t like you, you know that?”
“I figured.”
“The way you stand annoys me. When you talk, itmakes me angry.” He coughed. “And you move far too quickly.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And you’re too willing to apologize,” he said. “I hate people who apologize for the things they do.”

The house across from us was very quiet. No one ever came to this part of the neighborhood, except me. “You know,” I said, “I’m not sure if I really like your ideas.”
“That’s the point,” he said. “You aren’t supposed to.”

:::::::::::::::::::::

E was hiding in the bushes. She jumped out and pressed me into the ground.

I almost hit my head on a rock. It was pretty awkward.

“Are you comfortable?” she asked. “Not really… no.”

“Yesterday I saw a candle. It made me think of you.”

“I’m touched.”

“It was burning,” she said, and told me how I was like a candle. Her eyes started to glass over, like xylophones.

Her hair fell from above so that it touched my face. It was like a kiss except it tickled more.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “What were you doing in the bushes?”

“I was waiting for you.”
“How did you know I would come this way?”
“It wasn’t very difficult.” She paused. “Don’t you always come this way?”

“Yeah,” I said.

I guess I do.

:::::::::::::::::::::

“I like your suit,” I said. “It suits you.”
“I like it too,” the old man replied. “Particularly the stripes.”
“Where did you get it?”
“A long time ago, I used to sell things on the radio.

That’s where I learned to use my voice.” He cleared his throat, and spat out a piece of somebody’s dog. “Every day when I came into work I would wear this suit, or one like it. I have a closet full of them.”
Awkwardly, as if it hurt to move, he scratched his crotch. I shuddered. It was frightening to see.
“What did you sell?” I asked.
“Useless things,” he replied. “The more useless the better.”
“Fond memories?”
“I’ve never had a good memory,” he said. “When I think about the past, all it does is make me hate the present more.”

Fluttering its wings, a crow landed on his shoulder, and began to caw. Dark ink shot from its beak, a hideous vomit, so strong it made a hissing sound splattering against the sidewalk. The spray was powerful enough the crow nearly knocked itself down. A black pool formed, seeping outwards across the pavement. No fish swam in it. No fish could live in such a place.

“I really hate catfish,” I said.

“For a long time,” the old man replied, “I was the head of a company. The radio company. I took it over utilizing deceit, poison, sharp daggers, and pills to help with my indigestion.” He chuckled, and picked a piece of fur from between his teeth. “I had stomach problems because of drinking so much blood.”

“What happened?” “To what?”
“Your money.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. Television.

:::::::::::::::::::::

Nearby, behind an abandoned house, we found an immense flower growing from the ground. The flower was at least a hundred feet tall. Beads of water clung to its sides.
“Look,” I said. “It’s a flower.”
“Who do you think planted it?” E asked.
“I don’t know. But it really holds the view together.

This part of the neighborhood.”
She nodded. “It looks like a picture of itself, meaning it looks better than real. That means something. It implies amazingness.”

“Should we climb it?”

“Probably,” she said. “If we didn’t, we would feel bad about it later.”

We were holding hands and it was pretty cute.

“I kind of wish we could see the top,” I said. “That would make this so much easier.”











*

p.s. Hey. So, for what it's worth and fyi, today circa my blog outsider life marks the kind of official start of the making of Zac's and my film 'Like Cattle Towards Glow'. The final all-day rehearsals with the two performers in the first scene will happen today and tomorrow, and on Thursday we dress the locations, and on Friday we start shooting. From now until the end of August, the project will be continually/off-and-on occupying a lot of my time. The only immediate impact on the blog will be that, on this coming Friday and Saturday, there will be no p.s. per say since we start shooting at 9 am on both days. There also is a good chance that you'll be getting more rerun posts than you're used to on occasion over this summer since my preoccupation with the project is already impacting the time I have to create blog posts. But I'll do my best to give you newness, post-wise, as regularly as I can. ** Bill, Hi, B. Yes, I did hand them out at random, even to myself, but that did lead to some cool and interesting matches. Glad Berlin has cooled down enough to suit you. We're still sloshing around over here, but it's pleasant-ish. How long are you in Berlin? This trip of yours is a nice long one. ** Lee, Thank you, man! I'm good, and I hope the good is heavily shared by you. ** David Ehrenstein, The SPD turned out okay, right? Thanks. Well, yeah, awful news on the French portion of the European parliamentary elections. The UK didn't fare much better. Euro-skepticism and anti-immigration is very trendy in Europe in general. A lot of it is very scary stuff. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yeah, we're kind of all set over here barring some props and details that we still need to gather and arrange in our spare time. Of course great news that the school building was mostly saved, but, yeah, the prospects of that incredibly beautiful wooden library don't seem good. Any news on that? ** Misanthrope, Thanks, G., and thanks for helping make it so. I didn't much like that song, I'm afraid, as much as I hate to be predictable. Oh, shit, you're already in London now! Are you going to be blog-friendly? Shit, Wednesday is my day-off, so to speak, meaning I'll have as much free time then as I'm going to, and it's probably too late, but if you want to make a spontaneous trip over here, let me know. I'm so sorry for the timing on your trip. Anyway, rock London every which way but wrong! ** Steevee, Hi. Yeah, the simulacrum was an interesting success. Ah, sorry, I probably read your comment too quickly. My brain is half-elsewhere at the moment. ** White tiger, Hey, bud! Thanks on behalf of the gang. You up and good? ** Keaton, Hi, pal. No mall. Unless some drastic rewrite happens. If we don't lock down the chateau we need for one scene, a mall might be possible, although we would have to rent the whole thing since that since is sexually explicit city, and that's not going to happen on our budget. Sex-uh new blog post there, maestro. Everyone, Keaton is back, or rather his blog's back, and it's in his balls, or, I mean, 'There's A Blog In My Balls', meaning his balls. Fine day to you and yours, and love in return. ** Derek McCormack, Hey, Derek! Sweet! Mm, you could help make it happen by being my ghost writer. I decided a while back that I could only write long form nonfiction that way 'cos my talent, such as it is, is too crunched or something. 'De Cakewalk', gotcha. And I'll go check that Facebook page imminently. Thank you! And I'm going to see what AbeBooks and all those sorts of places look like re: it, or maybe query some Amsterdam friend who has specialty Dutch bookshops at his or her disposal. You've gotten me kind of obsessed with getting it.
I don't know of any circus bookshops in Paris. There is this: Musée des Arts Forains, which is an apparently really great circus museum. I've never been, but friends of mine who have rave. You have to make a reservation to visit it. Maybe they have a bookshop. Oh, Derek, it would be so awesome if you come to Paris! Wow! There are so many places and things I would love to take you to and show you! And you could see Paris's year-round spooky house, Le Manoir de Paris, which is a ten minute walk from where I live, and which is really quite wonderful. I've gone several times. I didn't know about David Altmejd's show. Very cool. Paris will actually get a little Halloween this year. Anyway, please come, and let me know your dates if you decide to come because I want to make absolutely sure I'll be here then. That's very exciting about the novel you're working on! Mega-yay! Aw it's so great to talk to talk with you, my great and powerful friend! Tons of love back to you! ** Jared, Jared! Whoa, of course I remember you. What the hell, of course! Hi, man! How are you? What's up? Yep, that 'DC' was yours truly. Couldn't you tell, ha ha? I read 'Finnegan's Wake' ages ago, but I don't think I actually finished it, and maybe not even by a long shot. Interesting about the comparison. I'll pick up a new copy and at least leaf through it. So, yeah, I'd love a catch up on you and yours, if you don't mind. ** Kiddiepunk, Oops, indeed! Oh, it's okay, you know. Can you believe that the film is actually happening? Yikes, and amazing! You still coming to the rehearsals tomorrow? ** Robert-nyc, Hi, Robert! Going on: film project. Tons of that. Some writing on the novel too. Things are great here. Lucky you to go to Psych Fest. I was following it through the internet channels. La Femm? Hm, I don't know them. I'll find out. And seeing Kevin/Dodie and doing your own reading are so enviable? Well, seeing you read and seeing them read, not doing the readings. I hope your niece's birthday was a blast! *** Kier, Hi, K! I hope that sigil is altering everything to its will as we speak. My weekend was good, lots of film prep stuff and related meetings and so on as will constitute my life for the foreseeable future. But everything is great here! Thanks! How's Monday? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hey there, Jeff. The locations for the first scene are set, yeah. We're still searching madly for the location for the next scene we're going to shoot, but we have a week or so to nail that down. We are contractually obligated to make a film that lasts at least 75 minutes, which is the minimum length to qualify as a feature film. So it'll have to be at least that long, but we don't have a clue how long it'll end up being exactly. The email you sent is very, very interesting. I'll write to you about it as soon as I get a break from the film stuff, but, yeah, that's very interesting, and I thank you so much. Lucky you on the Polke retrospective. I'm really hoping it gets to Paris. I've read quite a number of Duras novels. Off the top of my head, some of my favorites are 'Destroy, She Said', 'The Ravishing of Lol Stein', and 'L'Amante Anglaise', I think. (Update: Thomas Moronic reminded me in his later comment about 'Malady of Death', which escaped my memory there for a second, and which would be my favorite novel of Duras's, I think.) ** Paul Curran, Thanks, Paul! ** Schlix, Hi, Uli! That does sound like a very cool exhibition. I'll google some traces. So glad that you're having a great time there, man! ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Ha ha, I don't know, I must be psychic or something. Thank you again about the gift! I have a busy summer too. An indoor/outdoor/everywhere busy summer, it looks like. ** Schoolboyerrors, Hi, D. Who, me? It's you guys who are the beautiful ones. I'm just the bricklayer of record. News! Wonderful shit! I'm excited. Yes, come back tomorrow and tell me as much of everything as things allow. I'm almost all-film project all the time with some novel progress mixed in. That's my life. It's great, though. Love, me. ** Sypha, Hi, James. The hit and miss thing is no surprise, yeah. Every anthology sports that theoretical warning label. Nice cover. ** Kyler, Hi, K. Oh, pooh on your self-deprecation. The proofs are out of your hands now? Or as soon as the post office opens today. Or, wait, wow, I slipped back into the 20th century there for a moment. Email, right? I sometimes forget about email. Congrats! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, Thomas! Thank you, thank you! You were running around in a good-to-great way, one hopes. ** Right. There are 4 books up above that I can safely recommend to you and which I do highly. Check 'em out. I'm off to rehearsals. See you tomorrow.

'Ken Russell was so often called rude names – the wild man of British cinema, the apostle of excess, the oldest angry young man in the business – that he gave up denying it all quite early in his career. Indeed, he often seemed to court the very publicity that emphasised only the crudest assessment of his work. He gave the impression that he cared not a damn. Those who knew him better, however, knew that he did. Underneath all the showbiz bluster, he was an old softie. Or, perhaps as accurately, a talented boy who never quite grew up.

'It has, of course, to be said that he was capable of almost any enormity in the careless rapture he brought to making his films. He could be dreadfully cruel to his undoubted talent, almost as if he was defying himself, let alone those who supported him. The truth was that, when he deliberately reined himself in, as he did in 1989 with an adaptation of DH Lawrence's The Rainbow (as a sop to financiers who thought he was too much of a risk), he could be rather dull.

'That he regarded as an almost mortal sin. "Wake 'em up" was generally his watchword, and it was certainly true that you could seldom go to sleep in a Russell film. If you did, you had nightmares. Sex loomed large in many of them since he felt it was the mainspring of most things, and generally covered or tidied up by latterday English hypocrisy. Though he was undoubtedly no advocate of the proverbial British good taste, once exemplified in the cinema by beautifully suppressed emotion and clipped middle-class accents, he was never quite the strange and hairy monster determined to scandalise the bourgeoisie or, at the very least, to exemplify everything that's foreign to the steadier British temperament.

'He was much more like one of the last of the great British romantics, whose roster included Michael Powell. Much of Powell's work also attempted to cut through the conventional treatments of controversial subject matter and expose the often boiling passions underneath. For this, Powell was frequently attacked – Peeping Tom being so badly mauled that it almost ruined his career. So was Russell, and most would say with better reason. Regularly set upon as vulgar, crude and deliberately shocking, he was never best friends with the British film critics. He once called me, after a favourable review, "the best of a very bad lot".

'In 1963 he made his first film, an underrated offbeat comedy, French Dressing, and, four years later, a thriller, Billion Dollar Brain, taken from Len Deighton's novel and starring Michael Caine as Harry Palmer. His first real commercial success came in 1969 with his version of Lawrence's Women in Love. Its fireside nude wrestling scene with Oliver Reed and Alan Bates jolted a good many, including apparently the actors themselves and a nervous censor, but the film brought Russell an Oscar nomination and made him a director to be reckoned with. Hollywood took note, but it was a long time before he took note of them. After the freedom Wheldon had given him, he was not best pleased by the relatively uncultured suits he found on visits to the west coast.

'There followed a stream of films: The Music Lovers (1970), a swingeing account of the gay composer Tchaikovsky's marriage and death, which starred Richard Chamberlain in the lead role and certainly helped his co-star Glenda Jackson into worldwide prominence; The Devils (1971), an interpretation of Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun that contained some of Russell's most brilliant and audaciously cinematic work but was cut by Ted Ashley of Warner Bros, who didn't like such things as nuns masturbating at representations of Christ on the cross; The Boy Friend (1971), a musical based on Sandy Wilson's successful stage production and paying homage not just to Wilson but also to the choreographer Busby Berkeley; Savage Messiah (1972), about the tempestuous life of the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska; and Mahler (1974), a fictionalised biography starring Robert Powell as a very neurotic composer. Many of these were criticised for factual inaccuracies, but the point of most of them was that Russell intended them to be psychological fantasias rather than biographies.

'During this time, Russell became not only the most controversial British director but also the first in the history of British film to have three films playing first-run engagements in London simultaneously - The Music Lovers, The Devils and The Boy Friend. But his reputation as a kind of unruly cinematic anarchist, capable of frightening even the horses and doubtless making some of his subjects swivel in their graves, tended to cloud the formidable technique he brought to everything he did. In most of them there were some extraordinary passages. It might have been better if there had been a few more ordinary ones as well.'-- The Guardian



___
Stills



















































_____
Further

Savage Messiah, a Ken Russell site
Ken Russell @ IMDb
'Ken Russell: A Bit of a Devil
fuck yeah ken russell
Ken Russell: Offscreen
'Goodbye Uncle Ken'
Book: 'Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils'
1970 interview w/ Ken Russell @ Film Comment
'The Secret Career of Ken Russell'
Ken Russell @ mubi
'Ken Russell: The Rare Director Who Understood Musical Greatness'
'The Pope still loathes Ken Russell's The Devils, and with good reason'
The Ken Russell Appreciation Society
Ken Russell interviewed @ Garageland
'Ken Russell’s Female Fugue'
'The Ken Russell Aussie film that never was'



____
Extras


The Devils Audio Commentary with Ken Russell


Ken Russell interviewed


Ken Russell on Federico Fellini


Ken Russell's Christmas Movie



_______
Interview
from Empire Magazine




When was the last time you walked out of a movie?
I walked out of Pulp Fiction. Shortly after the hypodermic needle was driven through the heroine's heart. I thought the sadistic smile of pleasure on the faces of all the members of the cast was just too gross for words.

What's your idea of heaven on earth?
Where I live. But I won't tell you where it is because everyone will want to go there.

Do you think Hollywood is full of big babies?
And old babies.

Is there a phrase which you over use?
Thank-you.

What did you dream of last night?
I can never remember my dreams any more, unfortunately, but they are always spectacular.

How far is too far?
Not far enough.

When was the last time you were naked in the open air?
Yesterday by myself when I was watering the garden. It was a lovely hot day and my garden is totally secluded, miles anyway from anywhere, but all the birds and the bees were having a good look.

Have you ever had a supernatural experience?
Most days.

Have you ever worn a dress?
Several times.

Who is the person you most despise?
I've given up despising people; it takes so too much out of you. I find liking people is taking over.

What is the worst crime you ever committed?
Hitting my children, I think. Not often, but I shouldn't of hit them once. With a gold club.

Would you eat human flesh if your life depended on it?
I sure would... probably have.

Where is your Achilles heel?
In the usual place.

How many notches do you have on your bedpost?
I don't have bedposts.

Do you have any notches anywhere else?
I don't have a long memory.

Where do you go to when you die?
Heaven.

Back to your house?
Exactly. I shall haunt it for thousands of years.



____________________
16 of Ken Russell's 24 films

_________________
Billion Dollar Brain (1967)
'Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is located as his disheveled London office is searched by a white-gloved POV shot, a Humphrey Bogart portrait is pinned next to a Dolly Read centerfold; Col. Ross (Guy Doleman) promptly dispatches him to Latvia on a mission, the McGuffin is a Thermos bottle full of virulent eggs, the Richard III opener is appropriated as password. The dizzying pile-up effect is the intent of Ken Russell, who takes over the secret-agent franchise and takes the piss out of it, Karl Malden naked in a snowbound sauna guffawing "Don't be so British!" to his bashful guest -- it's not a matter of whittling the genre for the art in it (A Dandy in Aspic) or purposefully degrading it into clarity (Modesty Blaise), but of recognizing its Pop Art impudence and zipping through, smacking every gag.'-- cinepassion.org



Trailer


Montage



_____________
Women in Love (1969)
'One Russell effort stands quite alone, in both subject matter (a D. H. Lawrence novel) and public approval -- the 1969 Women in Love. This is a quite faithful adaptation, by the film's producer, Larry Kramer, of Lawrence's 1920 novel about the complexities two diverse young English couples encounter in their expression of love and friendship. To date, Ken Russell hasn't made a better movie than Women in Love, a fact which he characteristically disputes. With reference to the critics who have treated his output with increasing severity, Russell says, "Women in Love was easier for them. It was literal and had just the right amount of violence and erotic things in it. But I don't think it was as good as the others."'-- alanbates.com



the entire film



________________
The Music Lovers (1970)
'The Music Lovers is an extended 1970 fever dream on Tchaikovsky's sexual torment that opens in medias res with a wordless scene of lushly scored winter revelry. In a favored Russell technique, single events—like a public recital wracked with excitement and insecurity—are elongated by long fantasy sequences, and whole stretches of images seem pushed and pulled along before our eyes by projected desires and anxieties. Cutting himself off from a secret relationship with a count, Tchaikovsky convinces himself to accept the fanaticism of an admirer (Jackson, a Russell axiom), and weds to pursue a new fantasy. As the composer-conductor, Richard Chamberlain looks like he might shiver into pieces.'-- The Village Voice



Trailer


Excerpt



_____________
The Devils (1971)
'Inspired by actual events, and combining strong and disturbing elements of historical drama, religion, sex, music, politics and horror, The Devils is masterful, and is unlike anything that the British film industry had produced up until that time. The ferocity of Russell’s vision represents a kind of multicoloured artistic purging, with close to two hours of invention, energy and madness loaded into a blunderbuss and fired onto the screen in shocking, blasphemous glory. Unsurprisingly, The Devils attracted great controversy on its initial release (the original US trailer seems acknowledge the film’s controversial nature, with a voiceover that exercises damage limitation by proclaiming that The Devils is “not for everyone”), and a portent of the trouble that would lay ahead came when horrified US studio executives, upon first seeing the film, told Russell it was ‘disgusting shit’.'-- Pop Matters



Trailer


Excerpt



________________
The Boy Friend (1971)
'The fact that the film is considered “slight”—in other words, has no particularly deep meaning and is simply intended to be fun—has caused The Boy Friend to be considered a lesser Ken Russell film in a lot of quarters, which is a great pity. It is actually a film of considerable complexity in that it interweaves a great many storylines into its overall fabric. The characters all have considerable depth—or at least the illusion of it—and virtually nothing happens in the film that isn’t ultimately functional to the plot. Even things that seem like complete digressions—Tommy (Tommy Tune) recounting his life story (with a nod to Potemkin in it), for example, are part of an ultimately tight narrative. It’s also interesting that Russell managed to make two of the girls—Fay (Georgina Hale in her second of six Russell appearances) and Maisie (Antonia Ellis in her first of two Russell films)—a lesbian couple in such a way that the MPAA never noticed.'-- Mountain XPress



Trailer


Dream sequences



________________
Savage Messiah (1972)
'Russell seems to fly into his films full-tilt, and I picture him sometimes with steam and sparks jetting from his ears. His movies are almost always paced just this side of frenzy, and his characters mostly seem to be on speed. This can be as tedious, in its way, as the use of a very slow pace, but sometimes it works. For Russell, early in his career, it worked in Women in Love (1969) and again in 1972 with Savage Messiah. This is another movie, like Russell's awful The Music Lovers, about genius, art and the act of creation. What makes it work so much better than The Music Lovers is that Russell is mostly willing to stay out of his subjects' minds and let us see and hear them instead.'-- Roger Ebert



the entire film



_________
Mahler (1974)
'The film is structured around a train ride Gustav (Robert Powell) and his wife, Alma (Georgiana Hale), are taking, during what we come to discover will actually be among the last days of his life (Mahler died in 1911, a month from his 51st birthday). Already quite sickly, and in active denial of it, he’s plunging forward, oblivious to the path that has been more or less set for him. Don’t worry, kids, this is still a crazy Ken Russell film. The opening scene, in which Alma, completely nude, wrestles her way out of a sort of thick webbing, rather urgently establishes two important things – first, that Alma is as much the protagonist of this film that her more famous, titular husband, and second, that this isn’t just going to be two hours on a train, but an experience in which the past, present, imagined future, and total fantasy will roll together to create the kind of total portrait that no element on its own could fulfill.'-- criterioncast.com



Excerpt


Excerpt



________
Tommy (1975)
'Although in criticising Russell's lack of discipline people tend to forget that he was virtually the first film-maker to escape the strictures of realism and telestyle that have dogged British cinema since the heyday of Powell and Pressburger, it must nevertheless be admitted that watching his more excessive movies tends to be a wearisome experience. The Who's ludicrous rock opera was in fact tailor-made for the baroque, overblown images and simplistic symbolism of Russell's style, which only means that this is both the movie in which he is most faithful to the ideas and tone of his material, and one of his very worst films.'-- Time Out London



Montage


Cousin Kevin scene



____________
Lisztomania (1975)
'Lisztomania: the most embarrassing historical film ever made? Wagner as Hitler, Ringo Starr as the pope, and an anatomical anomaly that suggests an unfortunate mishearing – this film just gets worse and worse. Wagner – dressed, in a painful literalisation of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, as Superman, complete with red cape – strums an electric guitar and sings about restoring the Teutonic godhead. This isn't an attempt at historical accuracy: just an alarming glimpse into director Ken Russell's mind. Or possibly he misheard someone describing Liszt as Europe's biggest pianist. Lisztomania may be the most embarrassing historical film ever made.'-- The Guardian



Trailer


Excerpt



___________
Valentino (1977)
'The film topped the British box-office for two weeks, but was not a hit in America. Upon its release there, Valentino was a commercial and critical failure. The film garnered mixed reviews, most generally negative. The Village Voice called the film "so embarrassingly and extensively bad that it achieves a kind of excruciating consistency with the rest of his [Russell's] career." Charles Champlin of The Los Angeles Times dismissed the film as "superficial and silly". The majority of the negative criticism stemmed from Russell's blending of fact and fiction. Russell defended his actions stating, "I only want to be accurate up to a point. I can be as inaccurate as I want -- it makes no difference to me. I'm writing a novel. My films are novels, based on a person's life, and a novel has a point of view." Despite its general negative reception, some critics and scholars liked and respected the film. Russell later stated that he would rather forget Valentino.'-- collaged



Trailer


Excerpt



______________
Altered States (1980)
'Altered States, about a scientist who is his own favorite guinea pig, is the first Ken Russell movie with psychedelia for its subject - but it is certainly not Mr. Russell's first psychedelic movie. If anything, Mr. Russell's other work has had a hallucinogenic quality all its own. His best films have been giddy, kinetic and half crazy without even trying to be. Altered States, which does try, is more like a methodically paced fireworks display, exploding into delirious special-effects sequences at regular intervals, and maintaining an eerie calm the rest of the time. If it is not wholly visionary at every juncture, it is at least dependably - even exhilaratingly - bizarre. Its strangeness, which borders cheerfully on the ridiculous, is its most enjoyable feature.'-- NY Times



Excerpt


Excerpt



________________
Crimes of Passion (1984)
'Even though Crimes of Passion is only the fourth Ken Russell film that I've seen, it's actually only the second film of his that I've watched utilizing the entirety of my face. While I can't really explain how a normal person goes about watching something with the total sum of one's face, take my word for it, Ken Russell directs the kinds of films that require them to be watched in this particular manner. Interspersed with a dizzying array of unusual stylistic choices, the kind that no sane director would ever dare implement, Mr. Russell, whether injecting the paintings of Aubrey Beardsley and John Everett Millais into his sex scenes or having a scene where a bland suburban couple watch a surreal music video that mocks materialism, seems totally unafraid to skewer society's puerile views on sex.'-- House of Self-Indulgence



Trailer


Excerpt



________
Gothic (1986)
'For better and worse, Gothic‘s hallucinatory structure allows director Ken Russell to jettison narrative coherence and focus on what interests him: filling his frame as full of images of knights with giant pointy phalluses, stripteasing Turkish automatons, self-stigmatizing masochists, all-seeing bosoms, and naked girls covered in muck chewing on rats as he can think of. This is a very bad thing if you go into Gothic looking for some insight into the creative processes of Romantic poets and novelists, and potentially a very good thing if you just like to see Russell going hog wild, shamelessly playing out his psychedelic sex fantasies with typical campiness against a luxurious, decadent background.'-- 366 Weird Movies



the entire film



_________________
Salome's Last Dance (1988)
'What do we learn from this film? Not much, except that Russell is addicted, as always, to excesses of everything except purpose and structure. After his previous film, Gothic, which re-created a weekend idyll involving Shelley and Byron, Russell demonstrates again that he is most interested in literary figures when their trousers are unbuttoned. And even then, he isn't interested in why, or how, they carry on their sex lives; like the defrockers of the scandal sheets, he wants only to breathlessly shock us with the news that his heroes possessed and employed genitals.'-- Roger Ebert



the entire film



__________________
The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
'Let this much be said for Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm: It provides you with exactly what you would expect from a movie named The Lair of the White Worm. It has a lair, it has a worm, the worm is white and there is a sufficient number of screaming victims to be dragged down into the lair by the worm. Russell provides you with your money’s worth. Why he would have wanted to make this film is another matter. This is the kind of movie that Roger Corman was making for American-International back in the early 1960s, when AIP was plundering the shelves of out-of-copyright horror tales, looking for cheap story ideas.'-- collaged



the entire film



________
Whore (1991)
'Whore is not about a world where the heroine can do anything with her days except try to pull herself together after the night before. The movie is based on a play called “Bondage,” written by a London taxi driver named David Hines, who based it on the stories told to him by hookers who hailed his cab late at night. It has been moved from London to Los Angeles, and the screenplay has been written by director Ken Russell and Deborah Dalton, who produced a radio series on prostitution. Whore has been given the NC-17 rating. Pretty Woman, of course, got an R. Ken Russell has complained that the ratings system is penalizing his movie because it tells the truth, after rewarding Pretty Woman for glamorizing prostitution. He may have a point, but then again Pretty Woman was about a character who lived in an R-rated world, and Whore is about a woman who lives in the real one.'-- collaged



Trailer


Excerpt




*

p.s. Hey. ** Dom Lyne, Hi, Dom. Really nice to see you, of course. And I'm glad the ComicCon event ended up being positive, fruitful. My great pleasure, man, to get to host one of your book's birth announcements. You're almost finished with a new novel? Awesome, I kind of envy how your productivity is so friendly towards the end result. I'm so gradual, and I can't work any other way, but seeing the finish line is always so great. Yeah, the typing up. 'The Marbled Swarm' was my first novel that I wrote directly into a Word doc as an experiment rather than handwriting, as I had always done, and it worked well enough, and I so didn't miss the 'typing up' part, ha ha, that I'm trying it again. Much love back. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Thanks for your worrying but we'll be fine. What happened re: the FN's success in that election was kind of a foregone conclusion. It's ugly and a wake up call and etc., but the result was specific to the election that it was: a reaction to the nature and goals of the EU as it stands. Fear of immigration is a big problem in Europe and in the UK, and the FN is good at manipulating people's fear, and the larger than comfortable vote for the FN in that case was a symbolic gesture for a lot of people since the far right elected candidates were destined from the start to form a minority in the Parliament, a noisy thorn and sidelined voice there. The usual simplistic, hysteria-based spin that passes for reporting on French politics by the American media of course has made the election result seem apocalyptic since the US powers-that-be desperately want to feel less embarrassed by the Tea Party's success, so they ratchet up everything that happens re: the Far Right in France as though every increase in the FN's poll results is a sign that the French population is gradually being converted into an army of fascists. The result of that election was quite depressing, but what it means is a lot more complicated and nuanced and particular than 'Oh, my God, the French are becoming racist, homophobic fascists!' Oh, sure, I jumped on the Isla Vista thing and watched all of his videos before they blocked his account. Very interesting. And, yeah, as always, I'm so happy that 24 hour news isn't a thing over here. ** Misanthrope, Hey. You're there, You're near! Sucks that you got as close as there and my schedule/timing got you no closer to here. But enjoy the shit out of everything there. What are you doing? What are the highlights or, like, low-lights? ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Thanks a bunch. It's exciting to have this place available to pass along things I really like and support writers I like a lot. And we'll do our best to warrant popcorn. ** White tiger, Yeah, 'Yolo Pages' is very cool. 'The idea fountain' is such a beautiful way to put it. You have a date: December 10th. A finish line. Awesome that you've hooked up with Codi Suzanne Oliver! Yeah, she's great! I don't know her personally, but I love what she does. Mm, well, the incomplete Antarctica post is still sitting there in my blog dock, and it's been a while since I looked at it, so I'll go back and see if I can salvage it, or something of it, from this greater distance, okay. xoxoxo. ** Cassandra Troyan, Hi, Cassandra! My total honor, maestro! And I'm super excited to get my copy! Kudos and mega-affection to you! ** Bill, Thanks, Bill. So far so good. The Muntz and Hawkins won't disappoint you, I'm pretty sure. Wow, you're still there for quite a while. That's so nice. Who's watering your plants? Do you have plants? I don't. ** _Black_Acrylic, So sad about the library. It really was so beautiful. Nice gesture there @ Central Station. ** Schlix, Hi, Uli. Thanks. My smart phone is still a mysterious source if mostly intimidation for me, and I've had it for years now. ** Schoolboyerrors, Yeah, grab that second edition, obviously. You saw Wayne, and you hung out with him! That's so cool. What a great one that Wayne is. And such a lovely, funny guy to boot. And, oh, sweet about that continuing power of her gaze. Nothing better in the world really. Fuck art, relatively speaking. I don't know those two films you mentioned, and I now have no interest in pursuing any more awareness of them, thanks to you. The middlebrow bullet dodge is much appreciated. With love in return. ** Kyler, Oh, right, Memorial Day. They have one here, I think. Or maybe even many of them. France has so many holidays that people just call them 'bank holidays' because even dyed in the wool French people can't seem to keep track of what they mark. ** Sypha, Mm, I think you might be right that your 'Userlands' story was the collection's longest, now that you mention it. Sorry about my slowness with your email. I'm even worse than usual at the moment. I don't think they expect or want anything in return for doing that for you because I'm sure it was nothing but a pleasure. ** Steevee, Auditioning, and especially finding people to audition, is so stressful. I can't wait until we have our cast locked down. So, yeah, understood. ** Paul Curran, Great, great, I can't wait to see the real 'LH'. Thank you kindly, Paul. ** Keaton, Your blog is seriously cooking, man. You liking Jane Bowles? She's pretty great, I think. Novel, your novel, your possible novel! Yes! ** Derek McCormack, Oh, cool. I would love to know where those bookshops are, if your friend tells you and if you don't mind letting me know. Thank you! Paris is so packed with these amazing kind of secret jewels of places. It's astonishing. It's kind of an inexhaustibly intricate place. It's weird. You'll see. Thanks a lot about the film shooting. I'll try to share stuff here from the shooting when I can. Have a wonderful, wonderful day, Derek! Love, me. ** Okay. Kier mentioned watching a Ken Russell film about a week ago or something, and I realized I hadn't done a Day on his stuff, and it seemed like a fun idea, and I hope the outcome is fun in some way too. Your call. See you tomorrow.

photo: Marc Vallée





AT 3AM THESE SECRETS EXPIRE

















Precursor, 2013


'You couldn’t really not dig it. Last month I went to the first London screening of James Batley’s Kneel Through the Dark. It was at the Bunker, Dalston, which was a fair bit better than it might sound. For a start, the Bunker is (or was) an actual WWII bunker, with stinking rotting walls lined—for the occasion—with guttering sputtering candles. Then there was the rain, a mighty downpour above ground that the ceiling only filtered through its filth, so that it sluiced dirtily down, refilling drinks gratis and forming such large puddles about the film gear that the nerves of the sodden audience were soon getting quite lustily strummed by the dual threat of flood and fire. Meanwhile Batley himself—great name!—flitted (or flapped) hither and thither in a splendid black cape.

'As for Kneel Through the Dark itself, the short, Crowley-inspired film left an impression more physical than mental. A bassline clawed nastily at your stomach, while the images—a turning torso of technicolour smoke; a submerged face; a boy crowned with antlers—flashed by.'-- Thomas McGrath, Dangerous Minds



Kneel Through The Dark Trailer


Kneel Through The Dark Excerpt for Dangerous Minds Blog
















'A short film; more of a half-remembered dreamscape.

A feeling that you just can’t shake throughout the day, leaving you with a sense of foreboding for the coming of a new night.

The glimpse out of the corner of your eye, the movement in the shadows. Just out of reach, like every yesterday; but as tangible and familiar as the taste of blood from a bitten tongue.

An ancient incantation, a call to arms.

A swooning, balletic and menacing opus to the power of memory, the ambiguous search for meaning… and the triumph of hope?'



Bad Owl And The Fox Boy - Trailer


'A short experimental film using animal totems and occult magick to exhibit and effect transformation “as above, so below” augmented by a jarring ritualistic soundtrack.'

















The subterranean chamber for the Kneel Through The Dark screening in Dalston, London. Friday 13th September 2013


Thomas McGrath: Loved the screening. I found the atmosphere and setting to be a part of the film, rather than extraneous to it. How important is it to you where you show a film?

James Batley: Ah thanks. The environment definitely adds an extra dimension. When I first walked down those stairs and saw how the bunker sucked in light, the stale air choked my lungs and rancid water dripped through my eyelashes. I was like… this is perfect

Thomas McGrath: Could you think of some kind of ideal setting or circumstance?

James Batley: I’d love to do a screening in a burning building.

Thomas McGrath: Tell us a bit about Kneel Through the Dark?

James Batley: It’s my second short film shot on Super 8 that features an Aleister Crowley magick ritual but it’s about a lot more than that. It’s a bit like a spell that buries into your subconscious and pushes your whiskers to the ether.

Thomas McGrath: Go on, unpick its symbolism for us a bit…

James Batley: I don’t like to break it down too much. I hate going to an art show where the plaque on the wall tells me more about the art than the piece does or just spells it all out arbitrarily. Why’d you create something when you could have told me on a postcard? I don’t like to be lead around and told what to think. Art is ultimately subjective anyway. Anything you connect with is because it relates to your own experiences or self in some way, no matter how coded or buried in your subconscious it is.

Thomas McGrath: Would you draw any distinction between ritual and art?

James Batley: Art is magick in the Crowley sense. When you listen to a piece of music, watch a film or whatever, it is momentarily possessing you, directing your mood and bending you to its will.

Thomas McGrath: How did you come to make films?

James Batley: I I just see it as a way of communicating. Language can be clumsy and fraudulent so I threw up some sound and light to try and express something that gets lost in words. I tried photography for this but found it wasn’t enough. Sound is better but put them together and you have something really potent.

Thomas McGrath: Tell us about the Crowley influence.

James Batley: He made his own way in. I’m an aerial for this stuff. It’s important to be a conduit.

Thomas McGrath: I understand you’re very fond of your cat. How would you describe your cat in five words?

James Batley: Nippett. Will. Eat. Your. Brains.

Thomas McGrath: Crowley has a bad reputation among cat lovers usually, right?

James Batley: Well, yea. He has a bad reputation generally.

Thomas McGrath: Got a new project in mind/motion?

James Batley: I’m planning out my next short at the moment. It involves a boy who buries dead bees in the park and draws maps to their corpses. It’s autobiographical. It has meteors too.



satan is boring, 2008


^^^, 2011


er, 2008


glossy mew, 2010
























"Glimpse Of An Untamed World" Test Footage (NSFW-ish)


Kneel Through The Dark Premiere at Cannes Film Festival 19th May 2013 at 15:15


'Self-taught British filmmaker James Batley's first short Bad Owl and the Fox Boy screened at Cannes in 2011, and he recently went back with his second Kneel Through the Dark. His colour-drenched experiments - shot on Super 8 - elegantly lace together oneiric soundscapes, animal totems and occult motifs with an instinctual understanding of rhythm.

'"When I started I didn't even have a computer to edit with” he says when we meet at his east London home. “I'd just record onto VHS and film it back through the TV." His room teems with subtly discernible animal forms, from a door-stopper cloaked in cats' faces to a pink bedside pigeon-lamp and a stag's skull on the record-player. A creature on the wall inspired his first film: "My friend brought back this amazing postcard of a badly stuffed owl from the Florence Nightingale Museum - an owl Florence had rescued that had fallen out of a tree. She kept it in her pocket and when she went to the Crimean War it died. If Florence Nightingale leaves you you're pretty fucked."

'Kneel Through the Dark references legendary English occultist and libertine Aleister Crowley. "I'm not really into his religion or philosophy but I find him an appealing character," Batley says. "All ‘the occult’ means is ‘the hidden’. If you deconstruct the sound it turns into something else."'-- Dazed & Confused





















James recommends:

Blank City (dir Celine Danhier, 2010)
A documentary about New York's 70s No Wave filmmakers.
Batley: "To film a Roman scene, they'd arrange a viewing for an apartment with big columns, undo the windows, and at night come back and shoot. I really appreciate that sensibility!"

Possession (dir Andrzej Zuwalksi, 1981)
Cult '80s Berlin-set horror about a demon-possessed wife. "I love the camera shots,” Batley says.

Night of the Hunter (dir Charles Laughton, 1955)
The lyrical ‘50s classic about a reverend-turned-serial-killer. "Everything about it is perfect."



777 - teaser trailer


prr prr -- a bunch of videos i made way back in 2003. they were simpler times.


Hey James, how are things?
Ace

I heard you were running a Halloween night this week – what’s the plan? How scary is it?
Yeah. On the 31st we are taking over the Red Gallery in Shoreditch. There will be live music from Crows (on Savage’s Pop Noire label), DJs, macabre photography, sound installations, blood stained walls, projections, free communion shots and in the basement I’m showing my short film Kneel Through The Dark on a loop, which features an Aleister Crowley ritual that caused all kinds of weirdness the last time I screened it. It’s BYOB and cheap entry too.

We intend to open the gates of hell.

So you’re a self-taught film maker. How did you teach yourself? Or did you watch an awful lot of YouTube?
I got a Super8 camera and started waving it around. Cut the footage and got a feel for what worked. It’s just about rhythm really.

How important are animals in your work? There seems to be some kind of theme there…
It’s more about what they represent. They are messengers.

What’s your favourite bit/part of London and why?
There is a bank of the Thames by St Paul’s that, when the tide is out, is full of bones left over from when the carcasses of dead animals were dumped in the river over the centuries. You can find teeth, jaw bones and other gnarly skeletal remains. It’s great for a first date.

What’s next for you?
I’m planning out a new short. It’s in the early stages but it involves meteors and a boy who buries dead bees in a park.-- from Le Cool























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p.s. Hey. Oh, the superb writer and longtime d.l. Mike Kitchell has written a great review of my 'The Weaklings (XL)' @ HTMLGIANT, if you're interested. **  Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Russell's stuff is all over the place. Very uneven, if you ask me. Crazy, fascinating things and just god awful but kind of train wreck things that are still fun to watch mostly. Singular, for sure, and what more can you ask? That's great that you've made 'HOSPITAL' available, and I can imagine the emotional difficulty there, but, yeah, I'm really glad you've done that. Everyone, Thomas 'Moronic' Moore has a gift that you should accept for the sake of the glorification of your literary input, I think. Here he is to explain: 'I've decided to make my old HOSPITAL book available for a little bit. For whatever reason, I had a few people ask me about it recently, and although I have very mixed feelings about the project now (for probably obvious reasons) I thought I may as well let people get it if they want. So, yeah, for a short while people can but it as an eBook from here if they're interested.' It's a powerful, beautiful book, and you are highly advised to do the little-to-nothing that it takes to acquire it. Thank you, Thomas! ** Kyler, Hi, K. I'm trying imagine that mash-up, and I think I can, and I'm certainly glad that I'm trying 'cos my presumption rocks. ** Keaton, Hi. Wow, that's interesting: the new blog thing. I'm glad it's my day off so I can pore over it. Everyone, a very seductive looking and slightly, super-interestingly different bit of stackage is now up on Keaton's presentational work space. I don't even know how much someone would have to pay me to sit through that new 'Spiderman'. The P. Bowles is amazing, yeah. Especially his short stories for me. I watched 'Altered States' on acid. It worked. In fact, just remembering that is giving me a flashback. The shooter guy's manifesto is interesting, but his videos were much, much more so. Shame, in a way, that they got removed. Bon Wednesday to you! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Ha ha. 'Savage Messiah' is one of my favorite Russell films, for sure. I don't think any of the text squibs re: the Russell films that I found much less chose mentioned their screenwriters, which I guess is par for the course in those sorts of things. ** Kier, Hi, Kier. Did the rhubarb field look like this? Did you have to wear high topped boots or something to protect your ankles or something? My day was good. Zac and I rehearsed with the performers all day, and it went so well that we ended early. So, it was good, and we're all set to go/shoot on Friday almost. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. In your future Russell viewings, I personally would advise avoiding 'Lizstomania' like the plague. It's been a while since I saw it, but it leapt to the near-top of the worst films I have ever seen at the time. Sorry about the crawling pace on the Art101 front. But it'll be like the break never happened when you get restarted. Funny how that works. ** Steevee, Hi. 'The Devils' really might be his very best. I need to watch 'Tommy' again. I haven't seen it since its original theater release, and it drove me crazy in the bad way at the time. But time and the changing/evolving of pop culture fashion has that magical 'camp' adding power. ** Derek McCormack, Hi, Derek! I'll wait a little while on the Musée des Arts Forains just in case you do come to Paris because it would be so much fun to go with you! There's also a circus museum in Grenoble that's supposed to even better, if you come over and are feeling ambitious enough for a train trip. Wow, that's crazy. I actually went to Boekhandel van de Moosdijk once. Or .. I'm pretty sure I did, if it's been around a long time. Huh. I'll have to check my memory and notes or something. The website looks heavily explorable. Thank you! I don't think I know Le Coupe Papier, but I've walked by A Livr'Ouvert dozens of times. In fact, I'll be spending Thursday, Friday, and Saturday right by it since our film is being shot at two apartments down the street from it, so I'll definitely venture in. And I'll let you know the scoop. Very cool! The huge treat of our talking is heavily mutual! I've really missed you, D. Like I told Kier, my day was good. All film stuff. Today is my day off, sort of. And then tomorrow it gets amazing and crazy busy for three days. Making this film has been really magical so far. I can't wait for you to see it! How was your day? What did you do? ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Thank you about the post. And thanks for finishing the gift, very much, of course! Oh, wow, the photo of it! It's stunning! The mail had better be unusually adept and thorough when it gets its systematic 'hands' on it or I'll be a serious snail mail pooh-pooher. Gosh, thank you again! ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron. Start with 'The Devils', I think. You know, someone alerted me to that Brendan Healy thing, and I can't for the life of me remember if he got in contact with me about doing that or not. Either way is fine, and it's obviously very cool that my stuff fueled his. If you go, I would be very, very interested to hear what it is, of course. Thanks a ton, man! ** Armando, Hi, Armando! I'm doing great, thanks! And you? I'm working on a bunch of projects at once. Yeah, I'm working on a novel. It's going very well, I think. It feels like it is, anyway. Uh, it's really different from any of my earlier novels. Very personal. The film: I wrote the script about six years ago. Then Zac and I went back and revised/rewrote it together, so we're co-authors of it. Zac is directing the film. Michael Salerno aka Kiddiepunk is the Director of Photography. It's in five sections that are interconnected by theme and concerns but are autonomous in terms of the narratives and the performers in the sections. Zac is my dearest, best friend in the world and my soulmate. He's a very brilliant visual artist. This is his first film, but he's made a number of video works. He and I are also co-writing a feature film that Gisele Vienne is planning to direct next year. And I'm working on a new theater piece for her. And on a book about Scandinavian amusement parks, again with Zac. So I'm very busy, and it's all great. I'll probably say more about the film and novel and stuff as they happen and develop. Thank you a lot for asking, my friend. Love and hugs back, and have a sweet day. ** Okay. I'm a really big fan of the films of the young UK-based filmmaker James Batley, and I thought I would put my blog where my tastes are in that regard. Explore and enjoy, thank you. See you tomorrow.

'On 23 September 2013 at 14:45, YouTube user Webdriver Torso quietly uploaded a video. The mysterious 11-second sequence of red and blue rectangles could easily have been lost, unexplained and unappreciated among YouTube's plethora of kittens and music videos. But 28 minutes later Webdriver uploaded an almost identical video, and another an hour after that, and another, until eight months later - apparently happy with nearly 80,000 clips - they fell silent, with 236 hours of video to their name. At the peak, over Christmas, Webdriver was uploading a video on average every two minutes, presumably in between opening presents. Webdriver also never slept, uploading about 400 videos on most days, every day Monday to Sunday. However, new videos began appearing again on May 2, 2014 – causing conspiracy theorists to speculate on what the clips are.

'Boing Boing reader Enkidu was among the first to suggest the videos were a code of some sorts. Enkidu said they were modern-day equivalents of the radio ‘numbers stations’ used during the Cold War. A numbers station is a shortwave radio frequency used to post unusual broadcasts of lists of numbers or morse code-style messages. They were first used shortly after the Second World War and the broadcasts were made using typically female voices, often created by speech synthesis, and transmitted in a range of languages. It is widely assumed they were used to send encrypted messages to spies. In addition to the changing shapes and sizes of the rectangles, each YouTube clip has a soundtrack of different notes that change pitch.





'Taking it a step further, Stephen Beckett from BBC Click used the YouTube platform to discover that two of the videos suggest the user is from France. These videos were the only ones in the collection that didn’t follow the usual formula; the first was a cartoon clip from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which is only viewable in France. The second was a film of the Eiffel Tower light show followed by a brief shot of a person’s face and the description: ‘Matei is highly intelligent.’ These marry up with the fact the videos use the colours of the French flag, and some theorists have suggested it could have been used as a way of French spies to communicate.





'Wired magazine was the first to report on the clips in February. Soon after readers began to suggest Webdriver was related in some way to the Selenium WebDriver tool used to test websites. But a member of the development team has since denied these claims. Another theory suggests the channel could be a code breaking challenge in which difficult puzzles are created by anonymous groups, designed to test and recruit cryptographers. The first 420 videos are entitled ‘aqua’ before the names switch to a mix of number and letters, such as ‘tmput21k0’ – the first code posted on 1 October 2013.

'Earlier this month, The Guardian thought they had explained the mystery as a series of test patterns used by a European telecom company, but that turned out to be a dead end. Now all eyes are on Google as Webdriver Torso conspiracy theorists claim to have traced the channel back to Google’s offices in Zurich. Is Google developing a sentient YouTube channel that will one day rise up and enslave us all? Is Webdriver Torso secretly communicating with extraterrestrial life? Is it issuing commands to brainwashed operatives à la The Manchurian Candidate? Or maybe, just maybe, is this just some mundane technical exercise that Google isn’t bothering to explain because conspiracy theories are hilarious?'-- collaged





























































(continued)


Weird Negatives-Webdriver Torso's Like
Strange negatives show up. To date, per Webdriver Torso's Channel, only one "like" was registered and it was for this video: tmpdKHvbS So, being curious, I decided to play around with it so it could be discussed. No offense to Webdriver Torso is intended, nor any infringement to the beeps and whistles or graphic displays.









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p.s. Hey. Like I mentioned a couple of days ago, there won't be full-fledged p.s.es tomorrow and Saturday due to the early morning start of the first two days of shooting on Zac's and my film, but please do leave comments as usual, if you like, because I'll interact with them when the blog's normality returns on Monday. ** Kier, Hi, H. Thanks, yeah, Batley's work is really wonderful. Wellies, right, that's the term. I'd thought that was a UK-specific term for them, but I can't think of any other name. Jesus returns to heaven today? That must be a holiday here too since the French also seem to think Jesus existed and deserves to have his doings lionized via the closing of businesses and stuff. I know, I tried for a while to transfer my love of cassette mix-tape constructing onto CD burning, but it just wasn't the same. Maybe it's a rectangle vs. circle thing or something. North Norway must be so beautiful based on the beauty of its middle, assuming the north is always more beautiful, which I guess I kind of believe or something. The film shoot is going to be happening off and on until the end of August, so traveling, other than traveling to out-of-Paris shooting locations, will be hard, but Zac and I have plans to go to Diggerland, the earth-moving-equipment-centric amusement park in the UK as soon as we get a week without film stuff to do, so at least that short trip abroad will happen. Happy exit of Jesus day! ** David Ehrenstein, I would imagine James B. has alerted Kenneth A. to his work in some fashion, or that word has gotten back to the big A. The penis riding thing is funny, yeah, but I think a clip of that is probably the only thing in 'Lisztomania' that would get a seat in my lifeboat. ** Keaton, Oh, there've been some good recent movies, but it does seem true that blockbusters are started to feel very xeroxed. Yeah, weird, sad about Maya Angelou. Shit. ** Yo, Hi, yo, thanks! Wait, you're Alex Frank! Well, hello, and thank you very much, Alex Frank! ** Bill, Unfortunately, James Batley's films haven't really been screened outside of the UK, I don't think, although I'm hoping to try to help find a venue for them in Paris, at least, once my life settles down a bit. Dude, you're having so much fun and input. Sweet. Bon Thursday and, wait, well, weekend! ** Flit, Very cool that you dug it. The post kind of included everything there is of Batley's that doesn't require an in-person viewing, but I'm sure his stuff will get big/respected soon enough to travel around. You good? ** Steevee, Hey. Thanks about the Moodysson. I'm excited to read it as soon as I come up for air or whatever. Everyone, Steevee recently interviewed the fascinating Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson for the Filmmaker site about his new film 'We Are the Best!' and a reading of said back-and-forth is most highly recommended. Go here. At the time 'Tommy' was first released, The Who were still a vital band, or seemed so, and the Russell adaptation had a kind of grossness and heavyhanded-ness to it that rubbed certain people like me the wrong way, but then I've always thought of 'Tommy' as one of their weakest albums. Russell as 'a populist version of Hans-Jurgen Syberberg' is a very curious, interesting way to think about him. Huh. I'll dwell in that comparison. When you say 'late Fellini', when does that begin? I love almost everything up to and including 'Satyricon', but then not so much, but I think a case can be made for 'Casanova'. ** Armando, Hi, Armando! *Hugs* right back! The novel is different in a number of ways. For one thing, it's based in the personal and in my autobiography far, far more than my earlier novels. And it's not narrative, or I mean there's not a story that runs through it. It's very discursive with little stories here and there. In style and theme, yeah, it's pretty different, but I think what it's about and how it's done is very in keeping with my work, but ... it's hard to describe. It's entirely and kind of only about love in a much more thorough way than my earlier novels are. I don't know. You'll see, I guess, assuming I continue to like it a lot. I think the film will seem like my literary work, yeah, but Zac's input into the script and what he'll do with the material in his direction will hopefully make it overwhelmingly reflective of his concerns and talent, and so it should seem very different too. Thanks for the luck. Even though everything is going really well so far, we'll need the luck. Love, me. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Like I said up above somewhere, I think an isolated clip of that penis-riding scene would be entirely sufficient, but I don't know. I think that does seem like the main thing, yes. For their sake as much as yours. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! Thanks a lot. Yeah, Batley's really, really good. Thanks re: our film. The beginning of the shooting tomorrow is going to be very exciting. I'll pass along whatever kind of report I can. You take care, my friend. ** Derek McCormack, Hi, Derek! Thanks, pal. Everything going on for me right now is really great, yeah. I'm a very lucky dog. I love your play idea. Yes, that idea is incredibly dreamy. I'm going to go chase down that history and more after the shooting days, meaning on Sunday, I guess. It's funny because the film that Zac and I are writing for Gisele to direct involves two characters -- a young guy who works in a factory that manufactures the machinery and nozzles for fog machines (based on a real factory in LA: Mee Industries), and a young failed ballet dancer turned tortured puppeteer -- building a haunted/spooky house together on a vacant lot. At the moment, the whole film is just them basically building the spooky house with some kind of walk-through event at the end. I think you might really end up liking the film maybe. I should come over and see your books! How can I do that? I have to figure that out. Exciting to know and imagine you working on the novel. Ooooh. I am saved for you. Mark those words. Much love to you, D-ster! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Uh, I think I found James Batley's work because he friended me on Facebook a couple of years ago, and I just investigated his doings that way, and I met him once when that 'Weaklings' art show happened at Five Years in London. I think I've only seen one or two of those early Russell TV films. There are quite a number of them on youtube, and I plan to watch them when I get the chance. Okay, we'll figure something out, Skype or something. My brain and time should begin to have at least temporary open areas again starting next week, I think. Thanks! ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, Grant! Awesome to see you! Cool about Mike's review. Yeah, I'm pretty thrilled and honored by it, as you can imagine. And, you know, thanks for digging back into my stuff. No, I don't think I saw that 'Crows' review, but I'll go find and read it asap. Cool! That EP/booklet collab. thing sounds really, really interesting. Wow. Do you know when that will see the light of day? Obviously, I hope the press-based powers-that-be have the good sense to grab what they're looking at when your novel's in their view. Do give me links to any stories or excerpts or whatever, yes, please. I'm doing great, man. Never been busier or happier. Thanks for the love, and know it's a boomerang. ** Rewritedept, Hi, Chris. Shooting starts tomorrow. Today we prep and dress the two locations all day. Fingers severely crossed that your mom gets that job, for sure. I've been great, very busy and great. If doing great is infectious, I hope you're its first 'victim'. ** Sypha, I will admit that whenever a cat shows up here, I do assume it'll get a verbal prop from you, yes. I've never played any Metal Gear Solid games, but one of these days, for sure, especially now that I know from you that they have 'easy' modes. I've seen most of the Coens films, I think. A couple of holes among the later films. You liking them? ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron. Do contact James. He's on Facebook. He's great, and a great guy to boot. Wow, you're as busy as I am, and busy with film, so we're kind of doppelgängers or something, which is strangely comforting or something. I hope everything goes splendidly on your end of the film thing. Yeah, I'll be on set for everything. Even though Zac is the sole director, we're very tune and collaborative, so I'll be there for any input he wants, and, plus, I'm fascinated to watch him work and see the film materialize. Take care, buddy. ** Okay. Not sure if you're familiar with the Webdriver Torso thing or if you're already flush with it or whatever, but I kind of got tickled by the whole thing and thought I'd see if you guys are ticklish in that regard too. The blog will see you tomorrow and on Saturday, and I'll see you via a pre-programmed hi and post intro those days, and then I'll be back to interact 'live' again on Monday.

Naoya Hatakeyama 'Blast' (series)

'Hatakeyama began photographing “Blast” in 1995. The series was shown in the exhibition “Aspects of Contemporary Photography – another reality” held during the same year at the Kawasaki City Museum. Since then, Hatakeyama has continued to work on the series and it has been presented in numerous exhibitions in Japan and abroad. For Hatakeyama, who has created works that carefully and poetically examine nature, the cities that we have built, and the philosophies that give them form, the photographing of “Blast,” which is coordinated with an explosives expert who accurately predicts where the shrapnel from the blasted boulders will fly, has been an invaluable experience that has allowed him to reexamine photography’s appeal and the foundations of its technology.'-- Taka Ishii Gallery







Carstein Nikolai 'Future Past Perfect'

'Conceived as the fourth part of the series under the name future past perfect, the fourth short film of the row is the result of a long-term fascination with clouds, their movements, structure/texture, and their potentially infinite variety of forms. Shot from the plane on various trips, the sequences of cloud imagery are edited and collaged in different ways to match the diverse qualities of constitution and behaviour of clouds. The short movie especially focussed on so-called stratus clouds, a category of clouds that usually appears rather flat, hazy and featureless. Their visual quality as seen from above may imply micro and macro structures at the same time thus potentially deceives the viewer's perception.'-- C.N.









John Isaacs 'A Necessary change of heart'

'A necessary change of heart' contains what appears to be some kind of murder victim or human sacrifice, presented here in the form of a self portrait. Dissected beyond the point of recognition the sculpture of an incomplete body is based on the 17 century anatomical waxes of the Museo La Specola in Florence. Central to the work, the concept of anatomy and dissection forms a complex and purposefully sensationalised metaphor of the way in which not just science but institutions as a whole investigate and formulate their "world view" - which is effectively the same for all human thought and activity - at least all aspects of cognition.'-- kw-berlin.de







Takeshi Murata 'Melter 3-D'

'Takeshi Murata is known for distorting and manipulating videos into chaotic-yet-stunning pieces of colorful geometry, and while his new work, Melter 3-D, is short on color, it is undoubtedly a work of incredible form—especially as it never maintains a consistent one, despite being physical. Melter 3-D is by definition a zoetrope, a device that produce the illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures, but it's tangible. In other words, the installation is a sculptural animation. The 3D-object itself spins, creating a kinetic effect (with the help of some strobe lights) that makes it look as if it's melting into itself. Murata spent months configuring the object on a computer before making a physical incarnation with a master fabricator and mechanical engineers who typically work on high-profile Hollywood CGI projects.'-- The Creators Project







Matt Kenyon 'Supermajor'

'The perceptual structures of the human brain enable individuals to see the world around them as stable, even though the sensory information may be incomplete and rapidly varying. Some of these perceptual structures are highly susceptible to manipulation. Seeing is not believing. Especially when the refresh rate of our reality hides the truth about our macabre fossil fuel faith. All around us people simultaneously hope and fear that our material abundance may never come to an end. In the gallery a wire rack of vintage oil cans sits. One has a visible fissure out of which oil slowly flows, cascading onto the pedestal and the gallery floor. The only thing is, upon close inspection the oil isn’t flowing out of the can. Instead, oil appears to slowly flow, drop-by-drop, back into the can. At times the drops of oil seem to hover unsupported in mid-air. At other times, the drops are in the process of a reverse slow motion splash onto the pedestal.'-- SWAMP












Yayoi Kusama 'The Obliteration Room'

'Yayoi Kusama’s interactive Obliteration Room begins as an entirely white space, furnished as a monochrome living room, which people are then invited to ‘obliterate’ with multi-coloured stickers. After a few weeks the room is transformed from a blank canvas into an explosion of colour, with thousands of spots stuck over every available surface by children who visited the exhibition over the course of two weeks. It was conceived as a project for children, and was first staged at the Queensland Art Gallery in 2002.'-- collaged







Markus Raetz 'Yes -- No'

'The Markus Raetz 'Yes -- No' piece is one of the moodiest structures to date. Ask it a simple yes or no question and it will provide you with both answers as you walk from one side of the piece to the other. This sculpture houses an extremely innovative design so that it changes its appearance depending on the angle it is being viewed from. By choosing the words "yes" and "no" as his main subjects, Markus Raetz has formed a piece of art that covers both ends of the deciding spectrum.'-- collaged







Massive underwater entrance discovered off the Malibu, CA coast

'A massive underwater entrance has been discovered off the Malibu, CA coast at Point Dume which appears to be the Holy Grail of UFO/USO researchers that have been looking for it over the last 40 years. The plateau structure is 1.35 miles x 2.45 miles wide, 6.66 miles from land and the entrance between the support pillars is 2745 feet wide and 630 feet tall. It also has what looks like a total nuclear bomb proof ceiling that is 500 feet thick. The underwater base has been a mystery for many years with hundreds of UFO/USO sightings…many with photographs…but the entrance of the base has remained elusive…until now. The entrance can support nuclear sized submarines and massive UFO/USO activity and allow access to different military installations that are inside the US such as the China Lake Naval Base that is in the middle of the Mojave desert and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Hawthorne, NV between Las Vegas and Reno. The support pillars to the entrance are over 600 feet tall. Malibu, California, is known the world over for its scenic beauty and as the playground of the rich and famous. Few people know that it is also the land of UFOs.'-- Disclose.tv







Biliana K Voden Aboutaam "Untitled (2014)'

'Peinture digitale, ethnicité et contrôle numérique. Voici l'univers de l'artiste peintre bulgare Biliana K. Voden Aboutaam. Un vrai régal surtout quand il s'agit d'une artiste pour qui l'art a toujours été le moteur de ses actions. Dans son travail, elle allie pêle-mêle la fiction à la réalité, la fantaisie au sinistre. Ses peintures, présentant des costumes folkloriques berbères, sont réalisées de mémoire et révèlent à partir de tout et de rien une empreinte à la fois réaliste et digitale. «Pour Biliana K. Voden Aboutaam, une «structure numérique ethnique», c'est l'ethnicité (images de costumes folkloriques berbères) convertie en forme de processus de digitalisation au moyen d'un ordinateur. Les peintures digitales de cette série sont la visualisation de cette «structure numérique ethnique». Cette dernière traduit une histoire se situant exclusivement dans le monde du «réalisme digital», où la seule «véritable» histoire relève des nombres.'-- Liberation













Zack Doughterty 'untitled'

'Zach Doughterty is an unusual artist that many find difficult to define. Is he a photographer, a 3D artist, an animator? Instead of being any single style of artist Zach covers those three areas of art, and more, to produce his bizzare, strange, and interesting photographic creations. Zach’s works are not stagnant photographs, but vibrantly alive animated GIF’s that have us staring in astonishment. You are confused as you watch an astronaut spinning through the solid sidewalk. A statue in the park is captured slowly breathing, but no other movement is detected. A statue of the Mother Mary spins on her pedestal quietly rocking her baby. A short statue glances up to see what we are looking at.'-- indulgd.com







Makino Takashi 'Space Noise'


Makino Takashi '2012, act 6'

'Words feel woefully inadequate to describe Makino Takashi's practice, where the abstract is drawn out of the real through the layering of images, flickers of light and the perpetual movement of dots and grains. Screen space is redefined with a flattened image surface that engulfs our peripheral vision and feels deeper the closer we focus our eyes. Pulsed drones by the foremost international talents of noise and soundscape music, including Jim O'Rourke, Machinefabriek and Makino's own sound collages, not only accompany his visual cacophony but interweave to concoct a breathtaking audiovisual experience of transcendent measures.'-- ica.org.uk












Cai Guo-Qiang 'Inopportune: Stage One'

'Inopportune: Stage One, from 2004, is a large-scale installation work consisting of a meticulous arrangement of life-size cars and multichannel tubes that seem to blow up in sequence, symbolizing a series of car explosions. Guo-Qiang's works are often politically charged and entertaining at the same time. He creates seemingly violent explosions that are visually attractive and dazzling despite their harrowing subjects. He feels the artist is "like an alchemist" who "has the ability to transform certain energies, using poison against poison, using dirt and getting gold."'-- seattleartmuseum.org








Martin Sexton 'The Head of John the Baptist - Acoustic Levitation'

'Martin Sexton's golden reliquary contains the levitating head of John the Baptist. Martin Sexton produces powerful and controversial art. He works at the interface of ancient history, metaphysics, the psychosocial aspects of ufology & the politics of aesthetics — all countered with an overpowering poetic vision that has echoes of the wilful extremism of rock n’ roll. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including Tate Britain, Benaki Museum Athens & the Venice Biennale. He works with ice, fire, meteorites, sound, film and text.'-- collaged







David Fried 'Self Organizing Still-Life'

'David Fried's Self Organizing Still-Life (SOS) is a series of interactive, sound-stimulated kinetic sculptures. Whatever the scale or materials used for the SOS, they all consist of solid hand-made spheres, which are stirred into motion by ambient sound on a predetermined level object. Audible sound is transformed live into waves that silently stimulate each of the spheres into motion. The resulting action of the individual spheres and their interactions with one another are undetermined. No two spheres are alike – each is composed of either solid stone, or synthetic polymers layered with organic materials such as marble dust and rare earth, with no moving parts. The artist infuses them with unique bipolar qualities, and an ability to interact with each other in inimitable and unexpected ways on an elemental level, rather than a mechanical one. Fried is therefore able to give each sphere an individual personality, allowing them to respond and behave differently to sound, and with each new artwork, create an entirely unique interdependent family of individuals that we can influence, but not control.'-- D.F.











Heather Dewey-Hagborg 'Stranger Visions'

'Heather Dewey-Hagborg spends time collecting hairs, cigarettes and chewing gum shed in public spaces … and then sequencing the DNA therein to print 3D sculptures of what those hairs’ owners might look like. She sequences the DNA at the Brooklyn open bio lab, Genspace. She then determines gender, ethnicity and other factors and then uses a 3D printer to create a portrait. She can code for eye color, eye and nose width, skin tone, hair color and more. While critical of technology and surveillance, some critics have found her work disturbing.'-- collaged




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p.s. Hey. Julie Aude, an independent curator and 'dedicatedly quiet reader' of this blog takes over my galerie today to hopefully delight and amaze you with some art trickery. Please dig in and direct comments to our guest-host, if you don't mind. Thank you, and thank you heaps, Julie! By the time this post launches, I will be in the midst of the first day of shooting of Zac's and my film. I wish us luck, and I hope you do too. The blog will see you with a new post and a similarly short, pre-set p.s. attached tomorrow.

_______________

fucknowownnow, 22
Straight boy 22 years old, looking for a master or alpha to recolect me for 24/7, i need to find a master because of the crisis in Spain.

By being used, abused, humiliated, degraded, raped, drugged, tortured everyday until it scream, tremble, cry, pass out , 24/7, lifetime servitude with no limit, no freedom, no release, no option but to be worthless, useless, fag, slut, animal, toilet, pig, toy, object, piece of shit.

Apart from all this I am a very nice person.





____________

joe, 21
There are 2 different sides to me:

One side is a sweet, happy, and innocent boy that wants nothing more than to find a loving partner. He wants his partner to be kind, considerate, and relatively close to his age. He would love to chat and to meet if his possible-partner would like to.

The other side is a kinky, naughty little slut boy that wants to have a good master tie him up like a pig in the wild. His master is hunky, much bigger and older than him, and treats his partner like a piece of meat to be stripped, spanked, and pissed on/came in, with his master's hands running up and down my body, in and out of every hole. His cock is forever locked away, but occassionally gets the better of him and leaks on his own.

Honestly, I don't know which side is the real me, but I know I'd be open to either scenario and maybe some guy can help me figure it out. If you're close to my age (18-20) live in or around St. John's, Newfoundland, or if you're older (oh, 30 - 60 lets say) and live anywhere and want to imprison me for your rape/torture pig for life, send me a message and i'll be happy to talk to you and possibly meet you.





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loveusomuch, 23
IMMA SHIT, A HUMAN SHIT

imma castrated

My small penis is not more working and i'm available for taking it off

Spit, piss, rape






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AsphyxiateMe, 24
Bottom horny fag freak amputee, looking for top group. Top group is going to tie me up, fuck me up (booze, party, whatever), then squeeze my neck closed.

Or, just synch a bag over my head, sit back, drink, party, beat off, and wait.

Out with a whimper






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Neaty, 22
Hope your having nice day 4 sure.

RELOCATABLE CHILDISH INFANTILE BRATTY SCAMPY FUKIN BITCHBOY. Straight Roommate Friend who was Old School Type Boss of a Department of Engineers 4 Decades Say Me B BIPOLAR and AUTISTIC but CRIME LAB MASON SHRINER Straight Friend Think Me Be Fine 4 Sures.

Folks say stuffs like "hi Dear" because Im silent when alone like SHEEPISH Little Fukin BITCHBOY in tight little Humble Shorties or PUNISHED on My Very Tight Bottomed Little Bouncing Seat of Slicky Smooth Skinny Sissy Bitch Cunt Whore Pants. Sitting next to Daddy in scampy bitchy stuffs is a WARM FUZZY HUGGY BARE BOTTOM SPANKY thing 4 Sure.

I'm POLITE IN PUBLIC unless TOLD 2 Dress SCAMPY or BITCHY outdoors. INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION is a NICE THING too for sure.

I spent high school years in Dedham, MA taking care of Mom till she died of Diabetes in January. Am currently in Lowell, MA area helping a slightly disabled best friend Bossy roommate with houseStuff.

I like ROMANTIC ERA Warm Fuzzy Music (squeaked on violin in a Dissonant youth orchestra), like Rachmaninoff and heavy hands of Beethoven, ADAM LAMBERT that got banned 4 Playing with a Little WHIP in PRIME TIME, BILLY IDOL squirming in leather pants, Vangelis, Enigma, Country, etc.

I'm quiet when in public because of what Straight Roommate claims is AUTISM but I DON'T USE LABELS.

Doctor Mengele style War Crimes could B result of "OPERATION GLOBAL ASSYLUM" Implementing Disturbing Cleansing Process 4 the WARM FUZZY HUGGY BARE BOTTOM SPANKY Version of ALPHA DADDY LEADERSHIP.





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Redrum, 18
Bored and i live in San Diego and i love heavy metal and idk playing black ops 2 zombies and came across this website and i am beyond tired right now and well that's it





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Knockknock_whatsthere_my head, 25
i am nothing more than straight, sub-human, currently ownerless property seeking the cruelest and most abusive gay Owner for permanent, no-limits enslavement. i am definitely straight (not bi or bi-curious) and i will never enjoy being used by a man (but that is mostly the point for me). But most of all i am a worthless piece of garbage that is hoping that there is a brutally cruel Owner out there that can turn this garbage into a gay-owned, useful piece of property with absolutely zero limits and in an abject state of misery and suffering as close to 24/7/365 as possible.

Of course, this product can be sampled by anyone that wishes to try it out.

i do not want to argue with anyone about what it means to be straight or if i am so. i have zero sexual interest in men and i am repulsed by even thinking about it. i am extremely sexually attracted to women and can often think about nothing else. i do not want this to be any form of sexual slavery for me at all. You on the other hand can get all the sexual pleasures, if any, you desire from me. A 24/7/365 existence of pure suffering and misery without sexual gratification is my one and only goal for my life.






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Psycrologist, 23
I am a shy and nervous mixed race boy from the Bronx. I am so far in the closet and never coming out so I am looking for an older man, 100% top/dominant/violent who have experience with my type and want to be my husband and blablabla wont kill me.






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gapingboypussy, 20
Been bred since 11 y.o., and cum dump since. I am a young horny Asian boy cunt slave for anybody"s use. I don"t have any off because i have to be used by everyone. I would love to serve black thugs and get pimped out and collect loads in my boy cunt. Or by mature, masculine, with beard, bears or whatever you call it. Get used by a bunch of guys, fucking me taking turns, cum all over me and in my hole. After I am done being used, I go back to my dog cage.






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slave266, 18
wanna be made into proper proptie and made feel what I am a slave prop tie . beging for this happen .

me code is 260-838-459
want some one take ownership of me and make me that code in decently .

now owns prop tie








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heshorrendous, 24
Punkrockgenderbenderfaggotwithasstoexhaust

Laura Palmer RIP





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Nice_choice, 20
Hey it's Skyler and I'll tell you the important things because lets face it. My biggest problem is being too nice and helping others before I help myself which I'm currently working on now. I'm trying to turn my life around by going to a 5 hour-5 day a week therapy program so hopefully it'll help with the problems I'm going through. I'm one person you can always count on to be there even if you aren't my master I'll help you no matter what time of the day it is, thats just the type of person I am. I'm also a masochist and kinky slut x3 so I can drink your hot cum, I can cum on my face and all over my body, I can piss in your mouth, and you can also do inside my asshole, I can shit on his face and in his mouth, I can drink my piss and eat my shit, and similar things because I'm good at helping people and it makes me feel good to make people happy no matter what they want. I wanna make a change in this world by helping people in any way possible whether it be at hospitals,mental illnesses, cancer organizations, or people of the BDSM community. I care about everyone so don't be afriad to ask me for anything. All I want is your word that I'll return to my home after I help you, not to hospital, not killed. Even though I'm in therapy every day to work on my lack of self-worth, that doesn't mean I don't know when I'm being taken advatage of though so if youre going to do that just know that even though I won't say anything and I will let you do anything to me, I'll know at the same time I should cut you out of my life, not tht you'll care, I guess.

Why did I just get hit with depression ..






____________

meetyoutoo, 19
We čsn spend each other obě hour ,we can be together forever ,who know . If you like to see me ,i can meet you anywhere . Dont sorry to write ne .I do not need a piece of money ,.. !I need is honesty ,i don't need long story ,don"t be angry if i did not answer you as you want ,because am serous men no long story thank






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SATANSwhore, 24
i eat anal

interest guy who has magic power

also

1 bedroom flat for a executive professional guy or couple in Brighton central to rent please contact me for details if interested.





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Unsustainable, 22
Hey I,m french. my mom is ­dead. My d­ads a Dick. I just can­e out of a­ horrible ­hospital. ­It was hor­rific but ­I'm cool. I h­ave a nack­ of preten­ding I am ­okay when ­in fact I'­m not, I h­ave this s­ort of def­ence thing­ I guess. I am also that kind of useless human also called flâneur. Would you fuck me, I'd fuck me. I ­used to at­tend colle­ge but had­ to leave ­due to per­sonal issu­es. I ho­pe to take­ a year ou­t of educa­tion to fi­nd myself ­or die trying. Thats where you come in.







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GroomerSlave, 22
Look your best for your Master! Full body grooming including trimming and shaving at very reasonable rates. Discounts given if you choose more than one grooming area. Discreet and relaxed setup in the privacy of my Master's home. I groom the following areas:
1. Face / Designer stubble
2. Ears and nose
3. Neck and shoulders
4. Chest
5. Back
6. Arms and legs
7. Crotch / Groin area
8. Scrotum and taint area
9. Buttocks
All my grooming tools are cleaned and sanitized after each use. Contact my Master NOW for an appointment.






_______________

Destroyme96, 21
I want anyone to fuck me and cum in my ass and then pick up a hammer and bash my skull in then literally tear me apart. Im just an ordinary guy with good and bad things.





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BigReader, 25
Lately, it seems the guys I meet in books are more interesting than the guys I meet here online. Maybe I'm getting older. In any case, when masters answer my ad, I find myself saying, "Y'know, I think I'd rather stay in and read." Some of the recent books I've liked:

These Things Happen
Jailbait
GWM
Love In The Shadows
Now Is the Hour

They're all available in the usual places, though I tend to read electronically.






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smallfuck, 21
ohhhhhhhhhhhh dear. hello specific lords. do what you wsnt with my body. enjoy the power of the sexness. whatever happens, happens. we won't be leavin' on the same road that we came by. you decide. i remember the first time i got the shit beaten out of me - i kept the receipt.







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LostItAll, 18
Not a normal 18yo, i like extreme sex. Depraved, sadistic, evil torturers needed.

I have only had one partner who touched on sexually pleasing me. He treated me like a punchbag, abusing me until i was screaming , constantly making me suffer through disgusting acts of sadism. He is out the picture, and i miss it. My interests.

Rape, violent sex, anal torture, cbt, hanging, breath control/deprivation, bagging, suffocation, strangling, Being punched and kicked, knife play, cutting, slicing, branding, marking, bruising, scat, piss, filth, fisting, impalement, body mods, lashings and bloody whipping, edgeplay, abrasion play, meat cleaver play, mutilation, amputation fetish, severe bdsm.

Now you can see what i like. If you like a teen covered in bruises and blood then i'll probably be your kind of sub. I feel i need to go this far to discover who i am.

What I do know about myself is I have no self respect and no shame in what I do. I dislike my body and have no issues with what it's used for.

Just see me and you will not.





_________________

shineatnight, 20
I bored gamer with nothing better to do half the time
I need your help to all viewer of my profile
I want to be kidnapped on the street
Lured into a car and tied up
To be taken home and be held in a basement storage room
Take my clothes away from me
Unable to be released
Use me like you never did before
Sell me to someone if your done with me






________________

haircut14, 23
I'm here for the first and I don't what this app they looking for but for me I looking for a man to take control of my hair and change the way I look.





_______________

lol, 20
Im chadd navarro
I'm practically a nursing student

All i want is to explore me
Do things to me that out of this world
Things of me that much exciting to do for you

I am the black sheap of our family but i don't
Care at all

I love the way i am and i dont have a problem with it.

If you want some weed i will help uss all

Yeah yeah

Yeah fuck off

Am a kind of a bit paranoid








*

p.s. Hey. Last weekend you saw what happened when some people of and around DC's crawled inside an escort, and this weekend you get your regular month's-end dose of rock solid slaves. I don't know if there's something especially interesting that comparison, and I guess the thought is a perfectly obvious one, but I just woke up, and clarity is not yet a component of me, so but I thought I'd mention that. For those who are interested, the first day of the shooting of our film was a long but very successful one, and today we do it all over again with hope. That is all. Have excellent weekends, and I'll be back here with a full, catch-up p.s on Monday.

*

p.s. Hey. Sorry for the slow page load. ** Friday ** David Ehrenstein, I thought so too, cool. ** Empty Frame, Hi, man! Thanks on behalf of Julie re: the galerie post. The filming went great, I think. Zac and Michael and the two performers Nicholas and Roman did genius level work, and although we could have used a little more available time, we got enough to work with and, yeah, we're all very happy. ** Kier, Hi, K. Spacing and sleeping sounds nice, actually. I hope they were. I've heard of that 'Terminator' series, but I haven't seen a lick. Wow, a lot of narrative advancing there. Crazy. I'll look for clips or something. Happy Monday! ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Cool, really glad you liked the galerie thing. Yeah, Julie did a ace set of picks. Like I told EF, the filming went extremely well. Better than we'd even hoped. We'll see once we start looking at the footage and editing and stuff, but Zac and I feel really confident that everything is there. The producers have us on a 'no filming images in public' rule at the moment, but hopefully we'll clear that barrier, and I can show you some stuff. Now we're on to the next scene, which we shoot in about two weeks, and we start rehearsing with the performers in that scene this afternoon. ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, Grant. The goodness of the galerie post was all Julie's doing, and I know she's grateful for the props. Next few months, great, soon enough. Gatefold 7" with booklet: yum. I'll go find 'HOE #999'. I didn't know he collaborated with Stewart. Super interesting combo there. 'Irritant' is great. That book needs to be a lot more read and discussed than I feel like it has been. Way looking forward to you sharing the experience, my friend. Thanks! ** _Black_Acrylic , Hi, Ben. Thanks much re: the galerie kindness. Hope the Maclean show ruled. I guess maybe I'll find out when I get to Saturday's comments? Speaking of ...  ** Saturday ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, Thomas! Gorgeous haikus! Wow. Kiddiepunk says he's putting out a book of your haikus? Any slavey ones in there? Anyway, yeah, thank you. Such a pleasure! Oh, and your great new 'EIF' post will go up here on Friday. Thank you so much for that! ** David Ehrenstein, I would hope so, ha ha. I saw that Bernard got married. How about dem apples? ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. Really interesting Moodysson interview! The CAPS-loving slave was a curious one. 'Toby Damnit' is great. ** Bill, Hi, B. How was your weekend? ** Kier, Oh, man, I'm so sorry about your bad weekend. What were you anxious about? Is it something you can locate, or is that awful 'I don't know why' kind. I get that a lot. It is totally the worst. Are you feeling better today, I so hope? Love from me, lots of it. ** Keaton, Words! Nothing but words! Can't wait, man, and I have my first semi-free early part of the day today, so I'll indulge. Everyone, over on the awesome, notorious Keaton's Blog, there's a no doubt luscious and unique short text called 'Naked and Famous' waiting for you, so ... go. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. The filming did go amazingly well, amazingly enough, thank you. 'Predictably brilliant': right. That's always such an interesting point when an artist reaches the stage where they've aced what they're doing. That's when the artist and her/his fans find out how big and differently he/she wants to go. It's an interesting choice. And the weird thing is, it can work either way: staying in the comfort zone and playing/refining forever or making a possibly dangerous break or shift. Most artists do the former. Anyway, yes, the next work/show will be really telling, no doubt. Cool, looking forward to your mixtape! Everyone, here's _Black_Acrylic aka Ben Robinson. Please listen up and do: 'I have a new playlist uploaded to Mixcloud: A Woman Under The Influence. I compiled this for a friend a few years ago and they reminded me of it this weekend, and requested that I put it online. Mostly 50s and 60s stuff, girl groups and doo wop, plus a few film soundtracks too. Maybe you'll dig it.' ** Rewritedept, Hi, buddy. Oh, your guest-post, thank you, and I'll go rename it, and it will appear in almost a flash on this coming Wednesday. I told some if not all about the filming up above. It was pretty smooth. No problems other than wishing we'd had another five hours or so before the location was taken away from us. Anyway, yeah, very happy! Your mom got the job! Congrats, man! That's great news! ** Kyler, Hi, K. Nice about the blurbs, don't you know? Well, of course you do. Given my blah feelings about Christopher Bram, I say your book will do just fine without his endorsement. Screw him. Definitely not literally, ha ha. I remember July 8th. Just send me stuff for it when you're ready, and we're on. ** With that, we are caught up, and you get one of my laboriously materializing stacks today, lucky you perhaps. See you tomorrow.

'Author Robert Coover says he is committed to "obsolescent print technology," but his fiction reads like a harbinger of novels to come in the era of new technology. Born in Charles City, Iowa, on Feb. 4, 1932, Robert Coover always thought he would be a journalist. And although his career has been one of words, it has not been as a hack. Coover is widely regarded as one of America’s most influential living writers. He's a prolific one, too, with 15 groundbreaking works of fiction under his belt.

'Coover has been lauded as an "old school postmodernist." The New York Times Book Review has called him the "master of hypertext,"" a one-man Big Bang of exploding creative force" and attributed to him a "striking gift for language, his ability to create a narrative tone in perfect harmony with the universe of his story." Time magazine, meanwhile, has described him "as an avant-gardist who can do with reality what a magician does with a pack of cards: shuffle the familiar into unexpected patterns."

'But Coover doesn't care much for the label of literary experimentalist. "Most of what we call experimental actually has been precisely traditional in the sense that it's gone back to old forms to find its new form -- to folk tale, to pre-Cervantian, pre-novelistic narrative possibilities," he once told Publisher's Weekly.

'Coover's usual literary trick is to mix fact and fiction, fusing fantastical illusion with morbid reality to create an alternative world of his own making. He can often be found reworking fairy tales, as in his book Pinnochio in Venice, or playing with fables, as demonstrated in the book Aesop's Forest, which he wrote with Brian Swann.

'Coover’s novel The Adventures of Lucky Pierre: (Director's Cut) -- a wild and weird tale of a city where everything revolves around sex -- was the result of almost a quarter-century of work and is also no exception to the author's style. Lucky Pierre is nothing less than a phallic adventure, with a protagonist with an unbuttoned fly who moves from one pornographic interlude to another in a fictitious city called Cinecity. The book is written to feel like a cheap porno film, offering the reader "reels" instead of chapters. After a string of accidents, Pierre starts to believe that his life has become part of a scripted film and that his fate -- as dictated in the script -- won't be kind to him. He desperately seeks a way out.

'But sex isn't the only area where Coover is intent on pushing buttons. The narrator of his intensely political tome The Public Burning raised eyebrows because a young Richard Nixon serves as the tale's narrator. Despite being so prolific and having covered such diverse range of genrés, Coover does not align himself with any real literary circle. "I have close friends many of whom are writers … but I’ve never belonged to any particular literary circle or movement," he wrote once. Coover may have grown up in the American Midwest, but he didn’t stay. His work is to a greater or lesser degree inclined by European sensibilities.

'"Europe is my study," he wrote in an essay titled "My Europe" in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "I’ve spent almost half of my adult life here, primarily in Spain and England, but also in France, Germany and Italy. And I can say, without exaggeration, that about 90 percent of what I’ve written has arisen here." But today Coover lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he keeps a day job as English professor at the prestigious Brown University. He's been teaching creative writing there since 1980 as a way to supplement his income as a writer.

'There, his new passion is teaching students to write non-linear, non-sequential fiction using the Internet markup language hypertext -- a technology he has spent the past decade studying. "I must confess (. . .) that I am not myself an expert navigator of hyperspace, nor am I -- as I enter my seventh decade and thus rather committed for better or worse to the obsolescent print technology -- likely to engage in any hypertext fictions of my own," he wrote in his 1992 paper, The End of Books. "But interested in the subversion of the traditional bourgeois novel and the fictions that challenge linearity," Coover wrote. "I felt that something was happening out (or in) there and that I ought to know what it was."'-- Inspired Minds






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Gallery













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Further

Robert Coover's Wikipedia page
Robert Coover's Twitter
Robert Coover @ Dzanc Books
Robert Coover @ Grove Press
Robert Coover @ goodreads
Video: 'Robert Coover: The Read Around
Robert Coover interviewed @ Bookslut
Audio: Robert Coover @ Penn Sound
'Robert Coover prefers to write in cafés — in other countries'
'Robert Coover: ‘Where it takes me, I have to go’'
Book: 'Robert Coover and the Generosity of the Page'
Audio: Robert Coover interviewed in 1986
'Author Robert Coover battles fundamentalist fervor'
Robert Coover's 'Nighttime of the City'
'Myth and Carnival in Robert Coover's The Public Burning
'What Pretentious White Men Are Good For'
Robert Coover's 'The Goldilocks Variations'
'Dream Eaters of the Apocalypse'
'Fictional Self-Consciousness in Robert Coover's Pricksongs and Descants'
'Robert Coover Criticism Generator'
Robert Coover's 'The Reader'
'In Which We Visit Robert Coover's Gingerbread House'
'Following Robert Coover’s “Suit”'
Podcast: Robert Coover reads Italo Calvino
Podcast: 'In the Obama Moment: Robert Coover'
'Postmodernism as a problematics of the suspension of difference: Robert Coover’s “The Phantom of the Movie Palace”'



____
Extras


Robert Coover answers the question "Why Write?"



Robert Coover on Bookworm


Robert Coover discusses the mainstream


Gout Pony - Robert Coover Doesn't Give a Fuck (demo)



__________________
Literary Hypertext: The Passing of the Golden Age
by Robert Coover




A decade or so ago, in the pre-Web era of the digital revolution, a new literary art form began to emerge, made possible by the computer's ability to escape the book's linear page-turning mechanism and provide multiple links between screens of text in a nonlinear webwork of narrative or poetic elements.

The early experimental writers of the time worked almost exclusively in text, as did the students in our pioneer hypertext workshops at Brown University, partly by choice (they were print writers moving tentatively into this radically new domain and carrying into it what they knew best), but largely because the very limited capacities of computers and diskettes in those days dictated it. Now and then, a black-and-white line graphic was drawn (or, later, scanned) in, perhaps as part of the "title page" or a navigational map, but audio and animation files were virtually nonexistent. These early hypertexts were mostly discrete objects, like books, moved onto low-density floppies (this was before the Web and its browsers, remember, even before CD-ROMs), and distributed by small start-up companies like Eastgate Systems and Voyager, or else passed around among friends by hand or snailmail.

This was, in retrospect, what might be thought of as the golden age of literary hypertext, for with the emergence of the World Wide Web, something new is happening. For those who've only recently lost their footing and fallen into the flood of hypertext, literary or otherwise, it may be dismaying to learn that they are arriving after the golden age is already over, but that's in the nature of golden ages: not even there until so seen by succeeding generations.

Silver ages are said to follow upon golden ages as marriage and family follow upon romance, and last longer but not forever. They are characterized by a retreat from radical visions and a return to major elements of the preceding tradition — while retaining a fascination with surface elements of the golden age innovations, by a great diffusion and popularization of its diluted principles and their embodiment in institutions, and by a prolific widespread output in the name of what went before, though no longer that thing exactly. This would seem to be the sort of time we find ourselves in with respect to literary hypertext.

So, does this mean that literature is dying on the Web? On the contrary. If anything, true to the nature of silver ages, we are into a miniboom as electronic magazines and prizes proliferate, new electronic publishers emerge, organizations spring up to develop online readerships and bring them into contact with the new writers. No, though most of the world's literati continue to shy away from this new, increasingly dominant medium, and so continue to drift further and further from the center, the new literary mainstream is being carved here. And if I am mistaken and it is not, then literature itself is adrift and slipping even further into the backwaters. There is, as we know, a new generation of readers coming along, an audience trained from primary school on to read and write — and above all to think — in this new way, and they will be the audience that literary artists will seek to reach, else perhaps have none at all.

And will the new literature look like the old literature? No, it will not. Changing technologies continually reshape the very nature of the artistic enterprise. The dominant narrative forms of our times, the novel and the movie, for example, would not have been possible without the technologies that created, not so much the forms themselves, as the new audiences toward whom artists directed their endeavors, some translating the classic modes into the new technologies, others exploring the new technologies for new forms appropriate to them. This emergent expressive environment provided by the computer and the WorldWide Web is impatient with monomedia and simple self-enclosed sequences. Rhetoric, in this Age of the New Sophists, is still the route to power, but the hypertextual link and all the visual and aural media are now part of its grammar. Like composers, artists, and filmmakers before them, writers will learn to battle through the new tool-learning tasks, or to collaborate with other artists, designers, filmmakers, composers, and the tools themselves will become easier to learn and use and will interact more smoothly with other tools.

Poetry has indeed prospered in this new medium, even more than fiction. Or to put it another way, since the genre distinctions are breaking down in this new medium: the narrative mode, being a literary gesture that typically moves from A to B — the "nextness" of story — has had to cope with the paradoxically contrary nature of the multidirectional webworks of hyperfiction, while the lyrical mode, in which typically a single subject becomes the center of many peripheral meditations, has often found those webworks most congenial. With hypermedia, a whole new poetic movement has emerged, called kinetic poetry, or poetry that "moves," in which the text of a poem undergoes ceaseless transformations on the screen, emerging and disappearing, evolving into shapes and motions and patterns that "imitate" the poem itself, interacting visually with other elements of the poem or aurally with overlaid sound files. Visual artists sometimes even insist on calling their own hypermedia works "poems," though they may contain few words or none at all, keeping poetic structures intact but displacing language with visual images.

Many of the more beautiful and ambitious works of kinetic poetry, such as "Spy v. Spy" by Jay Dillemuth and Alex Cory, "Captain, My Captain" by Judd Morrissey, and "After Lori" and "Saccades" by Paul Long, are not yet available on the Web, but some sense of the form and its potential can be glimpsed in Australian Jenny Weight's suite of sixteen short poems about Vietnam, which uses hyperlinks, kinetic text, music, artwork, photographs, newscasts, live poetry readings, recorded street sounds, animation, found objects, Shockwave graphics, and much more, in a kind of personal anthology of the formal and technical means currently possible. Other examples can be found at The Electronic Poetry Center at Buffalo, UbuWeb, Turbulence, Multimania, Eastgate Systems (see, for example, pioneer hyperpoet Rob Kendall's "Dispossession"), and Dia. These works can be quite beautiful, at least visually, even if kinesis does sometimes seem like a way of draining a poem of its meaning; this of course is the constant threat of hypermedia: to suck the substance out of a work of lettered art, reduce it to surface spectacle. But then, nothing is ever mere surface, mere spectacle, is it?

It will be obvious by now that I am still in love with the word, still faithfully wed to text, and especially literary text. Reading such text remains, for me, the most interactive thing that we as humans do, converting these little black squiggles on white backgrounds into vast landscapes, ancient battlegrounds and distant galaxies, into events more vivid than those on the news or the streets outside with characters we know better than we know our own families and friends. That's what writers invented: this enlargement of our imaginative powers. And I continue to feel that, for all the wondrous and provocative invasions of text by sound and image, all the intimate layering of them and irresistible fusions, still, the most radical and distinctive literary contribution of the computer has been the multilinear hypertextual webwork of text spaces, or, as one might say, the intimate layering and fusion of imagined spatiality and temporality. In my workshops I continue to insist upon text, often against the wills of students, eager to abandon the slow but demanding word and rush into sights and sounds.

But then, maybe this is where I am stuck in the past and becoming dated, for one might well ask, are not these golden age narrative webworks mere extensions of the dying book culture, as retrotech in their way as eBooks? Could it be that text itself is a worn-out tool of a dying human era, a necessary aid perhaps in a technically primitive world, but one that has always distanced the user from the world she or he lives in, a kind of thick inky scrim between sentient beings and their reality? Even alphabets, clever little tools in their time, are fettered now by the unlinked nature of the times of their origins, and are already giving way to new multilingual alphabets and pictograms called icons. In the beginning was the word — but maybe only for writers, for scribes, a class with special skills, brought into being by the Sumerians and perhaps no longer relevant to the electronic world we live in, or are about to. It may be that it will be the image, not the word, that will dominate all future cultural exchanges, including literature, if then it can still be called that. Text, so far anyway, can reflect upon itself more directly yet complexly than can the image, and so curb its own excesses, but we do not yet know how subtle the language of the image might be. We do know how forceful it can be. Silver ages, you will remember, are generally followed by iron ages wherein the hammer is the hammer and the head the head...

But this is still the silver age, or perhaps even merely the tag end, as some would have it, of the dark ages, that sweet wordy time. Certainly, the world is full still of subversive and obstreperous writers and they will not take being made redundant lying down. Text at the outset of this new millennium remains our traditional source of content, of meaning, imagination's primary trigger, and writers will continue to use it as their tool of choice, if not their only one, even if readers do not. Even as we of this time, astraddle the ages, continue to fuse text with all the hypermedia at our disposal, we also continue to hunger for the old reading experience, until either (the generations come, the generations go) it is forgotten and becomes a legend of the past, or this magical fusion of image, sound, and text, and perhaps of aroma and tactility as well, really happens, and the golden age, thought past, begins.



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Robert Coover's Briar Rose in Hypertext



Welcome to the home page of the hypertext version of Robert Coover's novel, constructed by Robert Scholes for users of Text Book. Briar Rose is being made available in this form by permission of Robert Coover and his publisher, Grove Press. We are grateful to both. Click here for some things to consider as you proceed through this hypertext. Before you start, or if you have trouble hearing the sounds that go with our image pages, please consult our technical page. To enter the text of Briar Rose at the beginning, please click here.



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7 of Robert Coover's 10 novels

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The Brunist Day of Wrath
Dzanc Books

'West Condon, small-town USA, five years later: the Brunists are back, loonies and “cretins” aplenty in tow, wanting it all—sainthood and salvation, vanity and vacuity, God’s fury and a good laugh—for the end is at hand.

'The Brunist Day of Wrath, the long-awaited sequel to the award-winning The Origin of the Brunists, is both a scathing indictment of fundamentalism and a careful examination of a world where religion competes with money, common sense, despair, and reason.'-- Dzanc Books

'” is, at heart, an indictment of America’s current marriage of religion and politics… The novel’s vast networked vision of the way biblical stories lead us to violence and political subterfuge urgently prods the reader to share Sally’s late recognition that stories are the “most dangerous things there are.'-- Stephen Burn, New York Times

'Robert Coover’s The Brunist Day of Wrath is a boisterous, bloody, jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring—for any writer, humbling—sometimes painfully, but always expertly, protracted ride… The Brunist Day of Wrath reflects a decade’s worth of labour and attention; it is a book that should, and does, take time to read, a book that, through mysterious means, nonetheless feels pressed on by some urgency. It seems feverish—serious and self-committed—though it is also pun-funny and clever-funny, daffy and delirious. And yet its eye, casting itself around like a billiard ball, picking up small-town grit and gossip, is uneasy, and should be, for it is accountable for its thousand crimes, self-conscious of its own apocalyptic imaginings…'-- Natalie Helberg, Numéro Cinq


Excerpt

The closer he gets to the center, the worse the damage is, the thicker the smoke now clouding out the sun. The post office is a smoldering shell. He hobbles in on his crutches for a look. There are people on the sorting-room floor covered with gray mailbags and other people carrying on over them. Bo wants to ask them what’s been happening, but they are mostly too hysterical. “Everybody’s dead!” one of them screams, shaking her fist at him. An older cop he doesn’t know stands guard over the place and Bo asks him what’s up and the guy says he doesn’t know, he just got here himself, something to do with a bunch of religious fanatics. He says he hasn’t seen anything like it since the last war.

That’s what it looks like. An old war movie. Main Street lit up with burning cars and trucks and many of the buildings on fire, their windows smashed, black graffiti sprayed on them. Fire trucks, police cars, ambulances parked at whatever angle, mostly empty inside, their lights whirling. Flat water hoses snaking about underfoot. The helicopters are pounding the old hotel for no clear reason. One of them is parked on top of Mick’s Bar & Grill. The old moviehouse marquee is down, which makes the building look like it has dropped its pants. The bank has also been hit. Seems to have lost its front door, the whole corner just a big hole. Some of the police cars and motorcycles rev up their motors and pull out. Bo asks one of them where they’re going. “Out to the mine hill! The ones who did it are out there!”



Robert Coover reads his short story "The Frog Prince" and his new novel THE BRUNIST DAY OF WRATH.



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Noir
Overlook

'With impeccable skill, Robert Coover, one of America's pioneering postmodernists, has turned the classic detective story inside-out. Here Coover is at the top of his form; and Noir is a true page-turner-wry, absurd, and desolate.

'You are Philip M. Noir, Private Investigator. A mysterious young widow hires you to find her husband's killer-if he was killed. Then your client is killed and her body disappears-if she was your client. Your search for clues takes you through all levels of the city, from classy lounges to lowlife dives, from jazz bars to a rich sex kitten's bedroom, from yachts to the morgue. "The Case of the Vanishing Black Widow" unfolds over five days aboveground and three or four in smugglers' tunnels, though flashback and anecdote, and expands time into something much larger. You don't always get the joke, though most people think what's happening is pretty funny.'-- Overlook


Excerpt

It’s a perfect night. Wind, rain, gloomily overcast, the puddled reflections more luminous than the streetlamps they reflect. Cars and buses crash heedlessly through the puddles, forcing you against the wet buildings and blue-lit window displays. You’re sucking on a fag, hands in your trenchcoat pockets, your posterboy face (your mug glowers darkly on wanted posters throughout the city) hidden behind the upturned collar, thinking about Flame’s betrayal, if it was one, about Blue’s dark machinations, the mysterious widow, her unknown whereabouts, about all the bodies you’ve left in your wake. Your tattoo is itching. You reach back under your coat to scratch it with your middle finger erect, just to let whoever’s behind you know that you know. What’s Blue up to? Maybe he’s in Mister Big’s pocket, the chalk drawing of the alleged corpse part of an elaborate cover-up of a heartless murder. Thus the rush to hide the body. Blue figured he could scare you off the case, underestimating your obstinacy, your restless need to know, and what the widow had come to mean to you. Or was he using that obstinacy for some covert purpose of his own? And is Snark a pal or Blue’s agent, his underling and co-conspirator, sending you off on wild goose chases and setting you up to take the fall for others’ crimes? If so, whose? Blue’s? His and Mister Big’s? But why would the big man want to waste a smalltime ivories tickler like Fingers? Because he sent you to an ice cream parlor? Maybe. Message: Helping Noir is not good for your health. Correspondence by cadaver. Body bulletins. Nothing seems to make sense, but why do you expect it to? Shouldn’t you just take Mister Big’s dream warning to heart and stop trying to figure something out when there is nothing to figure? You glance up at a third-floor window over a drug store where shadows play against a drawn blind. Looks like some guy stabbing a woman. But what can you know? And why (though it will do no good, you stop at a phone booth, call the cops, give them the drugstore address, hang up before they can ask any questions) do you want to? Because the body has to eat and drink so it can stay healthy long enough to enjoy an agonizing death, and the mind, to help out, has to know where the provisions are and how to get them and who else is after them and how to kill them. Then, once it gets started, it can’t stop. Gotta know, gotta know. It’s a genetic malignancy. Ultimately terminal. Your secretary Blanche, who reads the Sunday papers, calls it the drama of cognition, or sometimes the melodrama of cognition, which means it’s a kind of entertainment. Solving crimes as another game to play; conk tickling, not to let it go dead on you. Murder providing a cleaner game than most. You start with something real. A body. Unless someone steals it. Is that what happened? Who would want it? And what for? Blackmail? Or did Rats snatch it to use as a stash bag? Happened on his turf. Is that why he was nabbed? But why that one in particular? There are bodies all over the city. Up over that drugstore, for example. It’s a deranged town. A lot of guns but few brains, as someone has said. Did the widow have one in her little purse? Probably. Nested amid the bankrolls. Did she ever use it? If she had one, she probably used it. Put a heater in someone’s hands and it’s too much fun to pull the trigger and watch your target’s knees buckle. Did she use it on her ex? It’s possible. What isn’t? Taxis pass, their wipers flapping, but they all seem to be driven by guys in leather jackets with goatees and granny glasses. Can’t take risks, not enough time for that, must get to Snark, hoping only it’s not a trap. Blue could be waiting. But you and Snark have done each other enough favors through the years to create a kind of mutual dependency and you figure Snark will want to preserve that. You squeeze the widow’s veil in your pocket for luck, then remember you don’t have it anymore. Must be something else.

But though you’re hurrying along, running against the clock, it seems to take forever. Everything’s stretching out. The blocks are longer somehow, the soaked streets wider and packed bumper to bumper with blaring traffic. You have to double back, take shortcuts that aren’t short. You know the way and you don’t know the way. You find yourself on unfamiliar corners, have to guess which turn to take. Racing across a street at the risk of having your legs severed at the knees by clashing bumpers, you catch a glimpse of the pale blue police building glowing faintly in the wet night. You shouldn’t be able to see it from here, but you do. The city can be like that sometimes. Especially when you’re dead on your feet and in bad need of a drink. Joe the bartender has a story about it which he regaled you with one day over his ginger ale. This was in the afternoon before Happy Hour—what Joe calls feeding time at the zoo—so Loui’s Lounge was quiet. Serene. You were in mourning, not just for the widow, but for Fingers, too, so the atmosphere was right and you had more than one. More than three in fact, who was counting? Joe was not always a teetotaler, and when you asked him why he gave it up, he told you about the night the city turned ugly and nearly did him in. I know you love her, he said. But watch out. She’s big trouble. Flame, as you recall, was rehearsing a song in the background, something about a stonehearted bitch who drives her lovers mad, in which hysteria was made to rhyme with marry ya and bury ya, but later she came over and asked why you two always called the city “she.” Well, we’re guys, said Joe. That’s the way we talk.



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The Adventures of Lucky Pierre: Directors' Cut
Grove Press

'Lucky Pierre is the most famous man in Cinecity, where pornography is the basis of social norms and the mayoral motto is “Pro Bono Pubis.” He walks to work (the studio where his films are made) in the winter cold, icicles tipping his constantly exposed and engorged penis, and every small interaction provides another opportunity for exercising his prurient art.

'This vision of a sexualized universe is unique in that social power (and the power to direct, rather than merely appear in, these sex-films) belongs entirely to women. Each chapter (or “reel”) of the book is headed with the name of one of nine women (so, in reality, they are muses, but they are also the artists), and each bears her aesthetic stamp—whether the dominatrix mayor, the experimental avant-garde filmmaker, the ribald cartoonist who “reanimates” him with her pen when he has been left by the mayor in a snowbank to freeze, the wife who makes tender home sex movies, etc. Lucky Pierre himself seems to have no free will, indeed, no existence outside his films. He is commanded by these women, and by the overwhelming impulses of his prodigiously endowed organ.

'The book is a collection of fantasies—a man entering his office instantly begins acrobatically copulating with the receptionist on her desk; a piano teacher administers discipline to his nubile young female students; a castaway discovered by the Nine Muses, who have never seen a man before and quickly begin to test his unfamiliar parts; an engagement party turns into a frenzied bacchanal; a wedding into a sadomasochistic ritual and then a chase scene. But satisfaction is complicated. Pierre is often made ridiculous, a clown as much as a leading man, and always, everything that happens to him is seen; there is no part of his life that is not, potentially, a film. Several times, he attempts to escape, but he is always recaptured and punished—or his “escape” is proven never to be real in the first place. For example, he joins up with the Extars, a guerrilla group of squatters who adopt him as “Crazy Leg,” their leader; with them, in particular Lottie, their young leading lady, he rediscovers the vivid joys of life as a sexual outlaw—including copulating with her on the trapeze of a circus. But he can never escape the tentacles of the mayor and the “legit” industry of Cinecity. Later he is offered the chance to rejoin the Extars, his internalization of his new status won’t allow it—if it was ever a real choice.

'Are these Pierre’s fantasies? But in a world in which he does not own his own life or his body, where the past can be rewritten as easily as the dialogue can be faked in a redub of one of his scenes, his thoughts are not even his own. Even so, L.P. continues his perhaps futile attempts to define his own destiny. In the end, grown old and decrepit, he learns his next film is titled “The Final Fuck”—i.e., it’s the end of his career. Morose and attempting to avoid the inevitable, he flees to a showing of his own work, which ends up leading him, now resigned to his fate, back to the soundstage—where, in the end, he rediscovers ecstasy, and the closure of his destiny.'-- Grove Press



Excerpt

By luck, the movie showing today at the Frivoli as he passes, lost and far from the little honeymoon cottage that he has abandoned, is his wife Constance's most famous home movie, Our Wedding. The one he's always wanted to see! When it was sent out on first release, it was retitled by the producers Here Cums the Bride: The Wedding of Lucky Pierre, but after its spectacular success, she was able to insist on its proper name and it's been known by it ever since. The Greatest Story Ever Told! it says over the doors. Your Life Will Be Changed Forever! He's broke, but there's no one in the ticket booth so he goes on in, passing through the famous circular lobby with its crimson and gold decorations, now looking tattered and abandoned, drawn by the muffled strains of the wedding march which explode exuberantly upon him when he opens the inner double doors and enters the darkened theater.

The opening titles and credits are already rolling as he takes his seat. He sees himself up on the big screen dressed in scarlet top hat and tails riding in a bright green convertible with a carload of women, sisters of the bride, down sunny city streets-yes, sunny: old Sol is out for the first time in recent memory, everything is thawing out, even the old silted-up and frozen canals seem to be running again! It's a kind of tickertape parade-the glowing city canyons are filled with millions of strands of chopped-up audio and video tape and old 8mm film, fluttering down upon him and his companions (Connie is not among them, nor are there, for once, any film crews) like a kind of anointing, glittering like ribbons of gold in the amazing sunlight. Oh, he knows he's going to like this movie! Happily ever after: that's his future! And it's about time! The crowds are out and cheering, parading musicians are blowing shell trumpets and reed flutes and playing tambourines and kettledrums, dancing girls in wispy chemises are throwing flowers at the multitudes, the polished convertible is sliding along, bright as an emerald, and everybody's smiling. It's a great day! The camera holds its fixed position as he rolls into the frame and out of it again, waving at the crowds, then cuts to another vantage point. Though he drifts in and out of focus as the convertible enters and exits the picture at different angles and distances, one can see in the expression on his face-he seems to have just woken up-a conflict of joy and terror, which causes a nervous twitching of the eyes and mouth and suggests he might not know whether he's on his way to a party or his execution. Evidently it's a surprise wedding.

The procession pulls up in front of the High Church of Hard Core as the illuminated marquee over the faux-Gothic doors declares it to be. Massive crowds have gathered. He stands on the seat of the convertible to peer out over their heads, looking around in some amazement, or alarm, and discovers, as does the viewer, that he's dressed in only the top half of the scarlet tuxedo. He sits back down hastily but the convertible door is already open and he is being bumped out onto the pavement. An aisle forms between car and church, lined by tonsured monks and wimpled nuns, dressed in black and white costumes honoring one of his most famous movies from the monochrome era, and, glancing uneasily back over his shoulder, he proceeds up it, still trailing streamers of tape and film, prodded along by the women whenever he hesitates, his progress watched from the rear by the camera until, still glancing back, he disappears through the gaping doors into the darkness beyond.

Abruptly, there is a view of the interior of the church as seen from the back of the auditorium. Nothing has begun yet. The wedding guests, studying the numbers on their ticket stubs, are entering and locating their seats in front of the static camera. The effect is of someone dozing in the back row with her eyes open. There is a hum of low friendly chatter under a sound composition made from grunts and groans and shrieks of orgasmic pleasure which is either playing overhead on the church's public address system or is part of the film's soundtrack. The room is filled with plaster of Paris gods and goddesses, saints, martyrs and prophets, all displaying their aroused private parts, as they were called in the old days when religion was still a force in the city, or engaged in pious fornicative and bestial acts. The stained glass windows depict classic images, now colorized by the glass, from the days of the eight-page comics. With the bright light behind them, they look like giant magic lantern slides. There are large fringed mandalas oozing pearls, confessionals for sacramental fellatio and cunnilingus, holy water fountains with fat squatting gods emitting endless sprays of jism from their laps and seven-branched flesh-colored candelabra spurting gouts of blue fire. There is time to observe all this from the back of the church while waiting for people to take their seats and things to begin. In fact there is not much else to do. Now and then the image is shaken by someone bumping the camera while squeezing past, giving the viewer an authentic sense of being present at a real moment in time. Some of the wedding guests wear sequined Fuck Me! skullcaps, winged phalli dangling from gold necklaces, and mantillas woven from pubic hair, and there are cum-stained prayer rugs unfurled in front of the bloodstained altar, which is in the shape of a four-poster bed with stirrups. Standing there before it, tall and haughty, is the High Priestess herself, dressed in traditional body-tight black leather canonicals, gold ornaments, and the ancient black velvet scapular of her office embroidered with the seven sacred erotic tortures, as defined by the Holy Script, which she holds in her hands. On the screen behind her, pale anonymous bare bodies fuck one another endlessly in looped overlapped montages, imitating the quiet turmoil of the cosmos.



The Adventures of Lucky Pierre (1961)



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Pinocchio in Venice
Grove Press

'Internationally renowned author Robert Coover returns with a major new novel set in Venice and featuring one of its most famous citizens, Pinocchio. The result is a brilliant philosophical discourse on what it means to be human; a hilarious, bawdy adventure; and a fitting tribute to the history, grandeur, and decay of Venice itself.

'Arms and legs askew, puppet with a nose problem and a yen to be human, Pinocchio is back, and Coover--wordsmith par excellence, sly storyteller, master maker of such fictions as Pricksongs and Des cants, The Universal Baseball Assoc., and The Public Burning -- has him in his crafty, string-pulling, postmodern mitts. Poor Pinocchio, his wish granted, is an aged, much-honored scholar who returns home to complete a book on the Blue-Haired Fairy and to die: He is returning to wood. In Coover's version, anything can, and does, happen, as Pinocchio's human self relives its twig-hood adventures. Coover is at his best in this wildly comic fable.'-- Grove Press


The Neverending Story of Pinocchio: on Robert Coover's Pinocchio in Venice
by Elisabeth Ly Bell

In order to see how comprehensively and at the same time how maliciously Coover makes comic use of his material, it is a must to read the original Pinocchio. Kitsch versions should be disregarded, including the Disney adaptation. All the latter suppose that children cannot deal with absurdity, incongruity, and subversive fun, and instead should be fed only a watered-down, extenuated version which must be pedagogically constructive. It is the original story of Pinocchio that Coover continues and enlarges, and only knowledge of the original Collodi childhood tale allows the reader to appreciate fully what Coover accomplishes in his sophisticated version. In the opening scene of Pinocchio in Venice, and in verbatim quotations throughout the novel, as well as in the protagonist's academic development, Coover uses another archived classic, Thomas Mann's 1912 novella Death in Venice. Gustav Aschenbach's infatuation with and description of young Tadzio is paralleled in Prof. Pinenut's longing for the Blue-Haired Fairy. All of Pinenut's books are titled after publications by Mann himself, or by Aschenbach, and, as always, Coover renders these titles in most ironic ways.

Collodi's Pinocchio starts as an artifact and becomes an artist. This is probably most apparent when he meets other artists, when he appears to the marionettes like a long-awaited savior (and does save Arlecchino from death), when they welcome and celebrate him. But then Pinocchio leaves the theater to make the whole world his stage, only to give up his freedom in the end, after so many pranks and adventures, in order to become a real boy: nice and good. Collodi's technique of portraying the final stage in Pinocchio's development less as a culmination than as a painful loss breaks up the outer structure of this "educational" novel and undermines it from within. Thus, despite moralism, sentimental and even kitschy pedagogy, the lure of shenanigans and adventure, the totally unreasonable experience of primal joy have for more than a century seduced children of all ages, among them director Federico Fellini and writers Italo Calvino and Robert Coover. The latter picks up the story of Pinocchio with the question children worldwide have pondered: what happens after the wooden puppet becomes a real boy? And Coover answers this in detail through over 300 insinuating pages.

When the novel begins, Pinocchio is almost a century old. Having gained artistic inspiration from his father's mural in that tiny natal hut, Pinocchio becomes an art-history professor in the United States. He also briefly tries out his talents as a painter, but aborts this career because of metaphysical and physical happenings at his office. From that point on, he better understands "the tragic decline of art". In 1940 he assists a Hollywood film-team shooting a "semi-autobiographical" version of his life. Honored with two Oscars—as was the 1940 Disney film Pinocchio, which Coover exploits exuberantly—the movie's success brings Pinocchio into the company of movie stars and actresses. In spite of all the celebrity, he remains a literary man and his life's goal—after seven "classics of Western letters", seminal studies, and numerous other publications and lectures—is to complete his eighth book, Mamma. This is to be his capolavoro, his all-encompassing masterpiece.

Basically, Coover's novel relates Pinocchio's adventures with these old acquaintances (enemies and friends) and his attempt to complete the missing chapter for Mamma. The story's first two parts, "A Snowy Night" and "A Bitter Day," describe the old gentleman's initial two days in the streets of Venice, mainly in the quarters San Polo and Dorsoduro. Only later does he leave these areas for the better part of town, San Marco. Before the book's third part ("Palazzo del Balocchi"—the Palace of Toys) picks up, there is a temporal interruption caused by the Professor's blackout and the resulting fever dreams. He is sheltered and cared for by Eugenio, who owns and inhabits the Procuratie Vecchie. Cured and restored to consciousness, he next experiences ever more traumatic events from Sunday morning to late night on Monday, one week before the climax of the carnival festivities. The narration skips this whole week. "Carnival" then, is the fitting title for the fourth part, which spans the period from Monday morning to just before midnight on Mardi Gras. Finally, the conclusion, "Mamma," has just one chapter, "Exit," and takes place during the early hours of Ash Wednesday.

(continued)



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Gerald's Party
Grove Press

'Robert Coover's wicked and surreally comic novel takes place at a chilling, ribald, and absolutely fascinating party. Amid the drunken guests, a woman turns up murdered on the living room floor. Around the corpse, one of several the evening produces, Gerald's party goes on — a chatter of voices, names, faces, overheard gags, rounds of storytelling, and a mounting curve of desire. What Coover has in store for his guests (besides an evening gone mad) is part murder mystery, part British parlor drama, and part sly and dazzling meditation on time, theater, and love.'-- Grove Press


PARTY TALK: Unheard Conversations at Gerald's Party

"(Like this?)"

" ...And it's a knockout!"

" ...And the lusty impression they have exercised on the popular imagination, but..."

"...And then there's her rather unusual childhood. .."

"...At the synapse...!"

"...But of course it was Orpheus who looked back, wasn't it, not..."

"...Frozen into senseless self-contradictory patterns."

"...It is the effect that seeks always the cause."

"...Once you—heh heh—get the hang of it..."

"...That got such a rise..."

"... The unbreathable silence..."

"...To shut things down..."

"... Was the hush just before..."

"—But the way that it whistled when ris!"

"—Got our first piece a tail together!"

"Ass my boy!"

"'Ass our Janny!"

"'Ass Big Glad's baby brother."

"'N Hoo-Sin. 'N so on..."

"A bit tight..."

"A busman's holiday..."

"A little—?"

"A long time ago, long ago ..."

"A star is born and all that!"

"A unique adventure!"

"A what—?"

"Above all else, they should be trained to the point of self-confidence and have a professional pride and interest in work."

"After what he said to me?"

"Ah. Is that so...?"

"Ah! That young man! Well, it wasn't its size, you know..."

"Ah! Well! Well!"

"Ah ..."

"Ah, baysay my feces, Hugly!"

"Ah, the plot grows a complication."

"Ah, when will we ever learn?"

"Ah, you dumb twat! Pick 'em up yourself!"

"Ah, Fats, when you gonna get some learnin'?"

"Alas, a soft file cannot clean off ingrained rust."

"All style and no substance."

"All that running around in the streets—I just couldn't keep up!"

"All I mean to say, is that Ros was about the only person in the world who didn't treat me like a dummy!"

"All I want is for you to find true happiness, with all my heart I do!"

"Always—?"

"An hour! We had to wait longer than that for the goddamn fuzz to show up!"

"An ...an accident, my mother—she broke her legs, her collarbone, her jaw, front teeth, one wrist..."

"And then she'd get confused and say it was for darts and all you had to throw were beanbags!"

"And they're filming it all on some kind of portable TV!"

"And yet..."

"And I'm not sure I haven't done it again!"

"Any that shit left?"

"Apparently, while they were going over a bridge at fifty miles an hour, Ros just opened the door and stepped out."

"Are you feeling better, Miss?"

"As I thought, a complete mystery."

"Assume the worst and ... and ..."

"At least there's no mystery about that one."

"Aw, hell, Ger, I'm on a, you know, a cunt hunt for some class ass!"

"Bande de cons, grand meme! Tout le monde s'en fout ..."

"Beautiful from front, wormeaten behind."

(continued)



________________

The Public Burning
Grove Press

'A controversial best-seller in 1977, The Public Burning has since emerged as one of the most influential novels of our time. The first major work of contemporary fiction ever to use living historical figures as characters, the novel reimagines the three fateful days in 1953 that culminated with the execution of alleged atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Vice-President Richard Nixon - the voraciously ambitious bad boy of the Eisenhower regime - is the dominant narrator in an enormous cast that includes Betty Crocker, Joe McCarthy, the Marx Brothers, Walter Winchell, Uncle Sam, his adversary The Phantom, and Time magazine incarnated as the National Poet Laureate. All of these and thousands more converge in Times Square for the carnivalesque auto-da-fe at which the Rosenbergs are put to death. And not a person present escapes implication in Cold War America's ruthless "public burning."'-- Grove Press



Audio: a four and a half minute excerpt from 'The Public Burning'



Robert Coover reads from 'The Public Burning'



_________________

The Origin of the Brunists
Grove Press

'Originally published in 1969 and now back in print after over a decade, Robert Coover's first novel instantly established his mastery. A coal-mine explosion in a small mid-American town claims ninety-seven lives. The only survivor, a lapsed Catholic given to mysterious visions, is adopted as a doomsday prophet by a group of small-town mystics. "Exposed" by the town newspaper editor, the cult gains international notoriety and its ranks swell. As its members gather on the Mount of Redemption to await the apocalypse, Robert Coover lays bare the madness of religious frenzy and the sometimes greater madness of "normal" citizens. The Origin of the Brunists is vintage Coover -- comic, fearless, incisive, and brilliantly executed. "A novel of intensity and conviction ... a splendid talent ... heir to Dreiser or Lewis." -- The New York Times Book Review; "A breathtaking masterpiece on any level you approach it." -- Sol Yurick; "[The Origin of the Brunists] delivers the goods . . . [and] says what it has to say with rudeness, vigor, poetry and a headlong narrative momentum." -- The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)'-- Grove Press


Excerpt














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p.s. Hey. ** Rewritedept, Hi. Change the title back? Uh, okay. Yeah, I might be misremembering, but I think you told me that joke before. Someone did. Guest-posts would be sweet, man. Thanks! It's more than a bit tough keeping the blog up to speed right now. And the 'hey ma ... ' launch thing would rule, duh. My day was good. Film stuff, some writing, a rehearsal with the performers in the next scene that was very promising. I don't have any copies of 'Gone' yet, and I'm not sure how many I'll get, but I think they're on their way. So, I don't know. I don't think it's sold out yet. Favorite Can album? I haven't listened to them in years or, well, a year anyway. Uh, maybe 'Tago Mago'? I love Stereolab. Faves would be 'Transient Random-Noise Bursts' and 'Emperor Tomato Ketchup', I think. I'm less into the post 'Dots and Loops' stuff, but they were amazing live right up to the end. ** David Ehrenstein, Morning. For a moment, I thought it was going to be Albert as in Laura, but I see not, and, hence, I will check that out today, thank you. ** Keaton, Nice little thing that came to you. The 'Eww' is the clinching device. For me. I don't understand geometry, but maybe that's why I like its manifestations. It's like a ghost or something. Being a master is a full-time job. Well, seems like it would be. I can't imagine it working unless the master was independently wealthy. I'm not sure about 'best' Europe escort city. There are ones that seem to have an unusually high number of escorts, or at least of escorts I feel like using in those posts. I guess those cities would be, hm, Berlin, Duisburg (of all places), Bucharest, ... I'm always really surprised by how there are so many escorts in Vienna and Zurich. I don't know why that surprises me, but it does. ** Kier, Hi, K. Oh, yeah, wow, I know that kind of depressive state. You know I'm really into confusion, and I like feeling confused, but it's such a delicate thing, and it can go bad so easily and without warning or understanding, and then it gets
ugly. Man, I really hope that when the sun rose today, it decided to be a magician. More love, and let me know how you are today, okay? ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks, Ben-ster. Huh, that book you ordered looks really cool, for sure. And I had a feeling that Bill's imagination would be all over it, and I was right. Thank you. ** Bill, Hi. As I just said, ... I sort of think of medical illustrations or even medical things that get illustrated as your version of my amusement park-related anything. We're talking to the producers on Thursday, and I'll try to remember to ask them to be specific about the image embargo. I think I've heard of AnimalNacht, is that possible? Hm, I'll see if I can something of theirs to listen to. Thanks, B, and happy Tuesday. ** Jonathan, Hi there, J! Thanks about the filming. Yeah, all is really well so far. Gifs are the internet's crack. Cool stuff you're imbibing. I don't think Dalkey Archive has ever published a book that isn't very worthy of being read at the very least. It's weird. What were the four lines? Yay, about all the work. Want to see evidence, man. When the time comes, hook us up if it's cool. Always great to see you, pal. ** Kyler, Early morning to you. Thanks for liking my squares. Cool, becoming more mystifying is my goal in life, sort of. In that case, it was pretty deliberate, and it's nice somebody had the 'in' and noticed. I did, weirdly and very rarely, know that, believe it or not. Those stacks of mine are much more thought out than I think most people notice or care to. Thanks, in other words! ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. That combination was actually both deliberate and indirect at the same time. Cool. You think there are enough gay republicans to milk for money? Interesting. I keep imagining there are, like, maybe 100 of them, but of course, yeah, they're probably legion and as exploitable as hell. ** Right. I thought I would direct what light this blog has in it upon Robert Coover today 'cos I haven't before, and he's cool in all kinds of different ways, I think. Check it out. See you tomorrow.

Alexander Blake Schwarzenbach (born May 21, 1967) is an American musician. He was the singer and guitarist of Jawbreaker (1988ñ1996), Jets to Brazil (1997ñ2003), The Thorns of Life (2008ñ2009), and Forgetters (2009ñ present). Although experiencing little mainstream success himself, Schwarzenbach and groups he has been a member of have influenced a variety of musical groups which have found success such as Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance.
-from wikipedia.



the music video for 'fireman,' by jawbreaker. the lead single from their much-maligned final LP, dear you.


jawbreaker began as a band called rise, formed by three NYU students in 1986. the original lineup consisted of blake schwarzenbach on guitar, his childhood friend adam pfahler on drums and newcomer chris bauermeister on bass. they went through several lead singers, and then in 1987, moved to LA with bauermeister's childhood friend jon liu on lead vocals.

'It wasn't just this Xeroxed thing. It was something he had drawn, like a poster. It was all colored and it named all the right bands.'
-pfahler on the flyer that drew him and schwarzenbach to recruit bauermeister as a member of the band.



'shield yr eyes.'


schwarzenbach wrote and sang 'shield yr eyes' on the band's first demo. this quickly led to the dismissal of liu on vocals and a change of band name, to jawbreaker. 'shield yr eyes' was released on indie comp the world's in shreds vol. two for shredder records, which also released jawbreaker's first full length LP, unfun, in 1990. between these two releases, jawbreaker wrote and released nearly 20 songs on various comps and singles. during this time, they also played their first shows. their first ever show under the jawbreaker name occured on 16 mar, 1989, at club 88 in LA.



whack and blite, one of the band's early EPs.


in 1990, jawbreaker joined san francisco group econochrist on the 'fuck 90' tour. it was a grueling summer trek that led to the band briefly splitting up. when they reformed, the group relocated to san francisco, and, in 1991, recorded their second album, bivouac.



chesterfield king.


big.


while touring bivouac, schwarzenbach developed a polyp on his throat and had to undergo surgery in ireland to have it removed.



a live version of 'chesterfield king' from the 1992 tour in which you can hear schwarzenbach's difficulty singing.


in 1993, jawbreaker recorded the album 24 hour revenge therapy with steve albini. following the release of the album, they were asked to open for nirvana on six dates of their in utero tour. this move was greeted with everything from trepidation to outright derision within the punk scene, as it was felt more exposure would compromise jawbreaker's sound, or that a larger audience would make the band forget their punk ideals.



boxcar.


do you still hate me?


condition oakland.


following the nirvana dates, jawbreaker signed to DGC records for a one million dollar advance. they used this money to record their major label debut/swan song, dear you, at fantasy studios in berkeley, CA, with producer rob cavallo, who had produced green day's major label breakout dookie the previous year. members of the punk scene were outspoken in their belief that major label success would spell the end of jawbreaker, and feared that being on a major label would 'ruin' the band. comically enough, dear you doesn't stray far from the jawbreaker sound, though the recordings are much more clear sounding and precise.

where their previous recording sessions had been typically brief (they recorded unfun in two days), the sessions for dear you lasted two months, and found schwarzenbach and bauermeister becoming increasingly alienated from each other. it got worse when they went to tour the album. audiences reactions ranged from silence to hostility when the new material was played, and in 1996, jawbreaker broke up, another casualty of the early-90's major label feeding frenzy for successful 'alternative' bands.



jet black.


sluttering.


million.


bad scene, everyone's fault.


following the split, schwarzenbach moved back to new york, where he DJed and wrote freelance video game reviews. in 1997, he formed the group jets to brazil, with chris daly, former bass player of the group handsome. they recorded some songs to 4-track with a drum machine before recruiting chris daly, formerly of texas is the reason, to sit behind the kit. the band name comes from a poster visible in the film breakfast at tiffany's.

in october, 1998, the band released orange rhyming dictionary, which they had recorded at easley mccain studios in nashville tennessee with J robbins, formerly of the group jawbox, and stuart sikes engineering. they shared an album release show with chicago pop punk group (and devoted jawbreaker fans) alkaline trio, who releasd their debut full length goddamnit! on the same day.



king medicine.


chinatown.


alkaline trio - snake oil tanker.


the above three videos are all from the bill both bands shared at the empty bottle in chicago, IL, on 14 nov 1998.



conrad.


morning new disease.


jets to brazil found a following with indie kids, but the punks didn't like them. many longtime jawbreaker fans found schwarzennbach's musical exploration and growth as a songwriter heretical, even though they'd all basically disavowed him after dear you anyway. in 2000, they released four cornered night, on jade tree records, who also released orange rhyming dictionary. while touring their first album, JTB added a second guitarist, bryan maryansky, formerly of NYC indie group the van pelt. this allowed blake to move over to keys on some songs, and four cornered night is stuffed with inventive, piano-driven pop that tends more towards early 70's AM radio sounds than the punk that jawbreaker were known for. the album received mixed reviews (but it was the first album by any of blake schwarzenbach's projects that i owned, and was obviously good enough to inspire me to check out the rest of his stuff).



pale new dawn.


one summer last fall.


empty picture frame.


orange rhyming dictionary (yes, it's the title of the first album).


in 2002, the band teamed up with J robbins (as they had done on both previous releases) to record their final album, perfecting loneliness. they broke up in 2003, with schwarzenbach reportedly moving to canada or back in with his parents.



cat heaven.


perfecting loneliness.


wishlist.


further north.


for five years, schwarzenbach was musically inactive, working as a professor of literature at hunter college. in 2008, he started a band called the thorns of life with aaron cometbus (formerly of 90's punks crimpshrine) on drums and bassist daniela sea (the gr'ups), though they disbanded before releasing any material.



i hate new york.


in 2009, schwarzenbach announced the formation of a new group, called forgetters, with ex-against me! drummer kevin mahon and caroline paquita on bass. their superlative self-titled EP was released in sept 2010 on their own 'too small to fail' record label.



here's the entire EP.


paquita left the band in 2011 and the band continued as a two-piece. in 2012, they recorded and released their self-titled full length with J robbins, who also played bass on the record. from may 2013 to may 2014, the band remained inactive, though they are supposedly playing a show tomorrow night (which by the time you read this will probably be more like a week or two ago, since i'm writing this on the 29th of may).



i'm not immune.


o deadly death.


les arrivistes.


ephemera, etc.
blackball records, adam pfahler's label. he's released a bunch of posthumous jawbreaker stuff as well as securing the rights and re-releasing dear you.
forgetters on blogspot.
jets to brazil on jadetree.com, where one can obtain their records and other things.




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p.s. Hey. Today, generous blog savior and writer/musician Rewritedept lends a deserving glow to Blake Schwarzenbach, key member of the very wonderful, sadly defunct band Jawbreaker among others, and I second his entreaty to get with Schwarzenbach's output post-haste. Read, watch, listen, and get back to your guest-host comments-wise, if you don't mind. Thanks, Rwd! ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Ha ha, since the gifs wouldn't load for you, I guess they do qualify as tiffs. Coover's very interesting, as a writer and also as an experimental writer of a quite older generation who's actually thinking about what the internet is doing to and with fiction in a sharp, inquisitive way. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Agreed, yes. ** Will C., Hi, Will! Terrific to see you! Glad to know you're a Coover guy. What, your job went down? Shit, I'm really sorry to hear that, man. May the job scrambling be a quickie. Plowing away, yeah, same story here. Great plowing, but so much prep to do. I'm really, really busy and really, really good. Best of luck with everything, and I hope time and circumstances let you back in here soon. ** Keaton, Hey. I don't have a head for math at all. Which is kind of weird since I'm good with complicated structuring maybe, and that's all math, I guess, in some weird, fundamental way, but yeah. That 'Gay Europe Map' is funny, but stereotyping makes my skin crawl, so it's a black humor, which is, you know, of course, an A-okay manifest. Whoa, your Meme Generator is cool. Is that easy to do? Where can I learn to do that? The bottom meme in your stack made me crack up heavily. Everyone, Keaton's newest invention is the Keaton2007 Meme Generator, with which he has generated a pile of sweet, funnier than shit stuff, and has, in the process, not that it matters to anyone but me, fulfilled my recent lifelong dream of being immortalized in a meme, so yeah. Check this. ** Steevee, Is that true about the 25%? I wonder what percentage of that percentage reads fiction books? It would be an interesting challenge to try to successfully fake conservatism in a short story. I bet you could do it. I bet they would be too conservative to notice the difference. ** Kier, Hi, K! Yeah, I'm into confusion. It's weird though because once you realize confusion is the truth, you can't go back to thinking otherwise. It's serious mixed bag. It can totally stress you out and fuck you up emotionally not to have the certainty that comes with the set goals that come with being not confused, but I feel like the happiness and peace of mind it can generate are better, but I don't know. Tricky is the word, yeah. I'm glad you're much better, and I'm glad that Thursday is tomorrow. I feel like I'm always confused, but I think for most of the time it works in a really good way because it gets rid of so many expectations somehow. Confusion is inherently hard to talk about, which I kind of like too But, yeah, I can get fucked up by it, for sure. Speaking of things that fucked me up but in a glorious way, I love those new drawings you put on Facebook yesterday. They're so great! I keep wanting them on t-shirts as well as on walls. My day was good. Zac and I cast another role in our film, 'the skateboarder', with this awesome young artist/art student named Paul, who's really great. That was good. And I wrote a bit, which was good. And hung out with Zac, which is the best. And connected up with an old friend, which was nice. What did you today, my pal? ** Torn porter, Hey, Torn! How's it? Did you see 'Situation Rooms'? Our film is going gangbusters so far, so, yeah, it's great. Thanks about the help, man. You're only here until June 20th? Shit, I was going to see if you wanted to be in the club scene of our film, but that doesn't shoot until August. Ratty's almost back, cool. I think this weekend might be really good to meet up unless some disaster with our film happens or something. We're back to scrambling to find the location for our next scene, but hopefully that'll get sorted out before the weekend. So, yeah, it would be great to see you guys. I'll do my best. ** Sypha, Hi, James. I read a couple of Graham Greene novels a really long time ago. I can't remember which ones. I thought they were really well done, yeah. ** Chris Goode, Chris! Hey, man! I know, weird about not doing Coover before. Oh, man it's totally okay if you get me the post today or whenever very soon. No problem at all. I'm really excited! You turned 41! Congrats! Seriously, the 40s are nice. I liked mine. They were cool. I think tardy is still un-blacklisted. I mean, Jesus, language fascism is so on the rise these days, you never know, I guess. Maybe the 'tard' part of 'tardy' might vaguely bring to mind the word 'retard' and offend those who have a stake in the protection of the differently minded? Hope you got all the zzzz's you needed, and I love you too, man. ** Misanthrope, Georgey! You're back! You're alive! What a nice sounding trip. What a nicely written report. Colorful and economical and sans waste of any stripe. You sent me your story. I think I might have seen it in my mailbox while coffee was doing its initial number on me. Cool! Welcome back! ** Jared, Hi, J! I know, it's strange. Really, there are times all the time where I go, okay, there's not a single thing left that I can make a post about, shit. And, then, bang or flood or something, somebody like Coover pops up. Oh, that's very cool about your return to art criticism! And for the flashy magazine, which I think is the most widely read English language art magazine in France. It's everywhere here, whereas you practically have to special order Artforum and Frieze if you want to buy them. That curating thing sounds great too! Wow, you're doing excellently, I must say! I would, yes, have majorly enjoyed that 'immersive 6.1-channel Tim Hecker performance'. To say the least. I do know Julie Tolentino's work a bit, and I like it very much. I should do a blog post on her, actually. That's all really exciting, man! No, Zac isn't Zac German. Another Zac. Anyway, very cool, J! I would love to hear more about the curating and criticism whenever you feel like gifting my pair of eyes. ** Chris Cochrane, Chris, my old buddy and genius collaborator! Hi! Yeah, I'm keeping up long distance on Collapsible Shoulder's doings, and I'm digging it heavily. That Coney Island gig looks really good. Oh, I met Oren Ambarchi finally a few weeks ago, and he was saying that he met you and how awesome you are. Conversations would be sweet, here, there, or even by Skype? Would love to! Speaking of love, take some, buddy. ** HyeMin Kim, Hi! Thank you about the squares, No, no MRI, ha ha, what a scary idea, and yet an intriguing one too, but I think the scariness part wins. Mike Kitchell's review was great, and I'm thrilled by it. I'm good, and the film goes really well, and I'm very happy, and thank you a lot, and I hope all is very well with you too! ** Okay. Back you go into Rewritedept's post, I hope. Enjoy. See you tomorrow.

You say you're not a Method actress, you're a camp actress. Does that devalue what you do?

Mary Woronov: With Method, you become the person you're acting, even if it could be a wet piece of spinach or a chair. With camp, you have no interest in trying to trick the audience. You comment on [your character], like a drag queen whose actions comment on women, how they're too fey or too predatory.

You were in a Charlie’s Angels episode playing a butch cop who drags the Angels off to women’s prison.

MW: I'm not sure why, but it’s my most-watched clip online. That's one of the reasons I got work in Hollywood: They weren't supposed to have a lesbian in the script, but if they hired me, they would get one. I was good at gender slipping.

What’s your sexuality?

MW: Totally fixated on men. They attract me because they're so different from me, so I guess I'm hetero. I was constantly hounded by men. The only place where I was talked to as a real person, where I was told I was good at my career, was with the homosexuals. They told me I was great and didn't want to pound me. Warhol, the Theater of the Ridiculous. I like male homosexuals very much. I like female homosexuals, too, because now they're so pretty. It's bizarre. When I was young, they were always fat and ugly, but now they're gorgeous.

Swimming Underground, your Warhol-family memoir, is pretty dark. Everyone was high on speed, paranoid, playing mind games with each other. At one point you’re all trying to get rid of the body of this sad girl, Ann, who seems to OD and die while being shot up.

MW: We wanted to get rid of her and put her down a mail slot. What's dark about it? It's funny. She wasn't even dead. We were nice to her, we were going to mail her out. You have to understand how high we were. It was pharmaceutical amphetamine, a white powder we'd snort — or shoot. My memories of that time are incredible. The ludicrousness, the insanity that went on, has never been topped.

Your mother sued Warhol over Chelsea Girls, because he didn’t get you to sign a release. In his own diaries, he wrote that he was always uncomfortable running into you because you were such a "creep" about the money. What are your feelings about him these days?

MW: I like him. I think he was very brave, because he was certainly pro-homosexual when everybody was against it. If you saw [Robert] Rauschenberg, he'd pretend to be straight for his clients. Warhol never did. He was a complete fag to everybody. The things I don't like about him was he was just in love with fame. If somebody famous were in the room, he'd just go to pieces. It was kind of gross.

But are you angry that he said you were a "creep" about the money?

MW: I was a creep. I sued him. I obviously had left him, I hurt him. Also, Edie left him. He was viciously hurt by that. I was rude. So he didn't know what to say to me, because I didn't say, "Andy, it's okay," and talk to him like a human being.

It seems like the Factory was presided over by some very mean gay men and drag queens.

MW: I was so angry during my life at that time, it was the only place I felt good. I was furious about the fact that I was going to be some stinky girl who could do absolutely nothing but get married and lick some dick for the rest of her life. I left Cornell to be with Warhol because he was more artistic. What power did I have? Women still don't have that much power. It's a man's world. That's what pissed me off, and it still does. I had to be nice, and I wanted to be powerful.

Do you have any power in your life now?

MW: Yeah, I'm a good painter. I'm a good writer, though I don't write enough. In my acting career, I've realized it hasn't been a total flop. I also managed to realize that I didn't want to be married [after being married twice] and have kids, so I feel good about that.

Do you see any fierce younger women around?

MW: Yeah, what's-her-name. Bouncy-Bouncy.

Uh, Beyoncé?

MW: Yeah. She's mechanical. She's bizarre. She's fascinating. I don't actually like her voice. I would never listen to her. I went from punk rock to heavy metal and straight into Wagner. I only do opera now. -- from Vulture



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Stills






























































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Further

Mary Woronov: The Website
Mary Woronov @ IMDb
'Cult-film staple Mary Woronov on Andy Warhol, Roger Corman, and being typecast'
Mary Woronov @ Facebook
Mary Woronov's books
THE UNTITLED MARY WORONOV DOCUMENTARY
Articles by Mary Woronov @ Artillery Magazine
'MISS ON SCENE: Mary Woronov'
Gary Indiana interviews Mary Woronov
Mary Woronov's feet @ wikiFeet
Billy Chainsaw interviews Mary Woronov
THE MARY WORONOV CHANNEL on Vimeo
2 short stories by Mary Woronov
Mary Woronov interviewed about her paintings
'MARY WORONOV: A NEW WOMAN'
'WRITINGS ON THE WARHOL: AN INTERVIEW WITH MARY WORONOV'
'Mary Woronov; the real siren'
'Mary Woronov Vintage Rule 5 (NSFW)'
Mary Woronov @ Horror Society



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Extras


13 Most Beautiful... Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Test - 7 Mary Woronov


Mary Woronov reading @ The Standard Hotel


Warhol Superstars: The Velvet Underground


The Girls of Rock & Roll High School Chiller Theatre April 26th, 2014


Andy Warhol, Billy Name, Robert Heide, Mary Woronov, Gerard Malanga



____
Author





Excerpt:Swimming Underground: My Years In The Warhol Factory

I first met Celinas at the Factory. She had come with Brandy Alexander. And if she was shy, Brandy was her opposite, the obvious overdone showgirl-type of queenstripper tits, bimbo hair, Louise Nevelson eyelashes, and a mouth brought to you by Chevrolet, a red chrome grill motorized on continuous yap. Desperate was too exotic a description for her, let's just say she was bugging everybody that day, waving her airbrushed 8x10s dangerously close to Warhol's nose. The polite light went out, and Brandy became free bait; the tinfoil walls of the Factory flickered like silver water; the smaller surface fishvisitors and squares, scattered and knotted in excitement; and from out of the aluminum depths glided the larger fishpredators, attracted by the commotion. Billy Name, one of the Great Whites, appeared and disappeared. Often his presence signaled the difference between light play and heavy hard-core shit.

Gerard was the first to attack. Something about where did she put it? Come on, show us. I listened to Brandy's little squeals, first the giddy surge of finally getting the attention she had been bleating for, then the sickening realization that it was too much, it was going to hurt. Gerard was relentless, goading, taunting, and jabbing his prey. "Come on, Brandy, we know you tuck. Tuck it up. We wanna see. Where does your dick go, huh, Brandy, huh?" Shouts. Cries. Drag queens are unpredictable to wrestle, sometimes a good right hook can be sleeping under all that make-up. Most of us were only watching, hopeful that Gerard might get slugged in the face, but I was watching Celinas. She stood like Anne Frank in a Gestapo lineup. Good choice. I liked it.

I didn't know what she wanted, or why she had come with Brandy, but I did know the last thing she ever expected to get was me. I slid in close to her, mesmerized by the panicked rabbit jumping up and down in her jugular. Maybe you should sit down, here on this silver couch which, by the way, is just as dirty as the gutter. When she sat, she crossed her hands and ankles perfectly. Yes, yes, everything was in the classroom. We chatted, bonded, as Brandy flopped around on the silver concrete floor with the silver hook still in her bloody mouth. Both of us were excited, and Celinas tried to climb into her purse, which was filled with dirty broken make-up, the true sign of a queen. I was thrilled she had let me look, even slip my hand into it for a moment. I let her huddle near me, but when she tried to clutch my hand I had to recoil. I hated being touched by anything in the human skin package.



Excerpt: Snake

Once outside she forgot about being angry. The pine trees moved back and forth, soft green windshield wipers across the glass blue sky. Back and forth, just the motion made her happy as she trailed behind Luke and the others through the tall grass. Five guys had come over to walk off Luke’s property boundaries. Walking the land they called it, the men staring at the ground muttering, "Yep.""Looks good.""Yeah." All meaningless back-patting men-talk, with her tailing along behind staring at the tree tops, their needles lost in the endless material of sky.

Luke turned to watch Sandra drifting behind with her head in the clouds. There wasn’t any reason to lower their voices. They could be dragging bags of heroin as big as manure from one car to another and she wouldn’t notice. For sure, someone was giving the cops information, but the fact that these thick-headed Idaho rednecks had dared suggest that it might be Sandra just because she was a new face was chewing up his nerves. "If you don’t fuckin’ drop it, I’ll drive back to L.A. without the deal, right now." No, no, they all backed down. Who were they kidding? When people want their dope, it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks.

Sandra was totally oblivious to the fact that the blue nylon flight bag was now sitting in someone else’s truck. But she did notice that the same dog-faced boy was with them, and when she looked at his back, a shadow crept over her heart. Still she was determined to feel sorry for him no matter what Luke said. Weird... she heard a buzzing noise.

The buzzing was slightly louder than all the insects, like little seeds inside the empty gourd of an Indian rattle, and to her city mind it had to be mechanical. A smoke alarm?

She had set one off in a Holiday Inn once just by smoking in bed. This time she was determined to ignore it, unlike the last time when she had jumped out of bed like a bad girl. She had just made love to a boy she barely knew. She thought it was okay, but maybe she had overlooked something, maybe he was too ugly, or had herpes, or maybe it was some kind of quiz she had failed, or her mother just couldn’t stand it any more and hit the buzzer. She smiled remembering how frightened she was, but now it didn’t even bother her that someone had nailed a smoke detector to one of the trees. Just another stupid idea. She looked up at the vast blue sky. Who cared if anyone smoked out here?

Luke’s voice slid in between the humming insects, the far away birds and the annoying alarm, slid right into her ear next to her brain, "Sandra, don’t move." It was interesting, no matter how low he spoke she could always hear him. It was that mysterious connection she didn’t understand.

She stopped. What? Now what was she doing wrong? They were all watching her from a safe distance. The sad dog-faced boy backed away from the group and bolted for his truck at a dead run.

"Back up, baby, real slow," Luke’s voice purred beside her like a cat sitting on her shoulder watching the empty sky for birds, "Real quiet." So, like a dancer, she took one slow but very exaggerated step backward. The smoke alarm still buzzed away. "Now go back again, SLOWLY," he said quietly.

She almost felt like doing the opposite of what he was saying. Was he was showing off? Some kind of macho display for the others? But again she backed up one step, slowly, as the dog-faced boy ran back from his truck throwing himself down at Luke’s feet. In his hands was the longest gun she had ever seen, complete with a telescopic lens and other gadgets she couldn’t identify. He raised the gun into position, pointing at what she thought must be her knee caps. Unable to move, her eyes were drawn to the little black mouth of the gun.



_____
Painter




'Like most people who end up in L.A., I am a transplant. In 1973 I moved here for what seemed like sound professional reasons: having received no encouragement in New York for either my painting or my first novel, I figured all I was good for was acting, so I came to Hollywood. L.A. scared me at first. It was so full of blank space, and my response was to fill it up by painting colorful and increasingly nightmarish narratives.

'In New York I never used color, but here I couldn't use enough, and although I was supposed to be acting, all I did was paint. When I met other girls we would compare notes while fixing our hair or sharing a joint in restaurant rest rooms: no one seemed to have a clear course, and the air was packed with dreams trying to find bodies to crawl into. A world of art

'Of course we blamed L.A. for our confusion. She wasn't what she pretended to be: for all her promise of paradise her real weather was fire, and the glitter on her streets just crushed glass from some car wreck. Yet Los Angeles is the only muse I have ever taken seriously, and she is the subject of my art. Although I do not paint from real life, using actual models, still the paintings emerged like an eerie hologram of the city's subconscious, vaguely familiar but with dream-like exaggerations.'-- Mary Woronov






















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19 of Mary Woronov's 83 films

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Andy Warhol Chelsea Girls (1966)
'The Chelsea Girls was Andy Warhol's his first major commercial success and catapulted many of the participants into superstardom - Ondine, Nico, International Velvet (Susan Bottomly), Brigid Berlin and Mary Woronov. When Mary Woronov's mother saw the film she sued Warhol because her daughter had not signed a release. Warhol eventually paid all the actors $1,000.00 each to sign a release. The Chelsea Girls is made up of various scenes shot at the Chelsea Hotel, the Factory and at various apartments including the Velvet Underground's apartment on West 3rd Street in the Village. Nico, Brigid Berlin and Susan Bottomly (International Velvet) lived at the Chelsea Hotel at the time the film was made. Brigid said that she spent about one night a week in her own room and the rest of the time visiting other people in other rooms. At the premiere of the film at Jonas Mekas' Cinematheque, the film sequences were listed on the program accompanied by fake room numbers at the Chelsea Hotel. These had to be removed, however, when the Chelsea Hotel threatened legal action. At least two of the segments listed in the original program for The Chelsea Girls were deleted from the film - The Afternoon and The Closet. The Closet starred Nico and Randy Bourscheidt and is now shown as a separate film. The Afternoon starred Edie Sedgwick. According to Paul Morrissey, Edie later asked for her footage to be taken out of The Chelsea Girls, saying that she had signed a contract with Bob Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman.'-- warholstars.org



THE CHELSEA GIRLS - EPISODE 7 (RIGHT)/ EPISODE 8(LEFT)


Chelsea Girls QUAD SCREEN!



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Theodore Gershuny Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972)
'Silent Night, Bloody Night is actually an engaging, cheap slasher that proved to be slightly ahead of its time. No one goes in expecting too much from public domain cheapies, but often enough you’ll get one that surprises you, and that’s precisely what happens here. The similarities to Black Christmas are definitely there, from the snarly phone calls, Christmas setting, POV shots to general slasher mayhem. The two would actually make quite the double feature of season’s slayings. Just when you think things can’t get any better, you see Mr. Cameo himself, John Carradine’s name in the credits and nostalgic cheapie fans can’t help but grin. From start to finish, the flick grasps the viewer by the throat and doesn’t let go. At one point during the climax, things get a little far fetched, but that is something easily overlooked in a film of this nature. The strongest element the film has going for it is the fact that it was made before the slasher boom hit and therefore doesn’t exist entirely within the rules that became standard. Revenge is a key motive in the film, but unlike Prom Night and countless other slashers, the theme of vengeance isn’t used as merely a motive to put the knife in a killer’s hand to cut up cuties. Instead, the mystery unravels with the characters and viewer both not knowing what comes next, adding extra oomph to the occasional severed hand and a sensational axe massacre by the black-gloved madman.'-- Oh, the Horror



the entire film



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Theodore Gershuny Sugar Cookies (1973)
'Back in the world of pre-Troma Troma, we have this intriguing little picture which has the distinction of being the only X rated film that lost money. Upon release, the film was re-rated with an R because the sex is no more explicit than a typical soft-core porn. Sugar Cookies, although an American production from the independent Armor films, which Lloyd Kaufman worked for before starting Troma, resembles a stylish Euro-trash picture of the era. Even though there is a lot of sex, it’s still held together with a solid thriller plot and it’s also a blatant homage to Vertigo.'-- savagehippie



Trailer



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Oliver Stone Seizure (1974)
'Seizure is a 1974 horror-thriller film. It is the directorial debut of Oliver Stone, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Horror writer Edmund Blackstone (Jonathan Frid) sees his recurring nightmare come to chilling life one weekend as one by one, his friends and family are killed by three villains: the Queen of Evil (Martine Beswick), a dwarf named Spider (Hervé Villechaize), and a giant scar-faced strongman called Jackal (Henry Judd Baker). Star Mary Woronov would later claim that one of the film's producers was gangster Michael Thevis, who partially bankrolled the film in an attempt to launder money, as he was under investigation by the FBI.'-- collaged



the entire film



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Paul Bartel Death Race 2000 (1975)
'Vintage 1975 sleazebucket production from Roger Corman's New World Pictures, loaded with sex, violence, and general vulgarity, but orchestrated by one of the most interesting personalities then operating in the exploitation field, Paul Bartel (director of the notorious Private Parts and, later, Eating Raoul). The story, about a road race in the not-too-distant future for which the drivers are given points for running down pedestrians, becomes an elaborate and telling fantasy about our peculiar popular entertainments. Fine work carved from minimal materials. With David Carradine and a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone.'-- Chicago Reader



the entire film



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Michael Miller Jackson County Jail (1976)
'When advertising executive Dinah Hunter finds out that her boyfriend has been cheating on her, she leaves her promising career and Los Angeles behind and heads for New York City for a new start. But along the way she makes the mistake of picking up some hitchhikers who beat her up and steal her car. Stranded in a small western town, Dinah is thrown in jail on some false charges and under the supervision of a psychopathic guard who beats her up and rapes her. After killing her attacker, Dinah escapes with another inmate, a radical named Coley Blake, and they are chased by the sheriff's department, through a Bicentennial parade as they head for the open road.'-- collaged



Trailer



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Joe Dante Hollywood Boulevard (1976)
'Hollywood Boulevard is a ramshackled delight. Made for 60,000 dollars on a bet with Roger Corman, Hollywood Boulevard contains a variety show sense of humor, a pace that suggests a severe Benzedrine addiction and enough Stock Footage to make Ed Wood blanch (in one rather perfect moment we see footage of roller derby girls while one character delivers a voice over monologue how much she hates being a roller derby girl only to have it never mentioned again). But what it really contains and what saves it the three or four times it goes careening over the line between smutily amusing and degradingly sexist, is its sense of enthusiasm. Like the two films that Joe Dante and Allan Arkush would make directly after Hollywood Boulevard; Piranha and Rock N’ Roll High School, Hollywood Boulevard is the work of men who fully expect to never make a movie again and thus try to cram in as much as they love about them in one go.'-- Things that Don't Suck



Excerpt



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Allan Arkush Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979)
'Roger Corman, Executive Producer of the film, was looking to produce a modern teen film similar to the ones he made in his early career during the 1960s, with the focus on current music of the time. The initial title Disco High was selected for a story idea from Allan Arkush and Joe Dante. A script was developed by Richard Whitley, Russ Dvonch, and Joseph McBride. During this time, the film went through several different title changes including Heavy Metal Kids and Girl's Gym. Arkush directed the majority of the film, but Dante also helped when Arkush was suffering from exhaustion. Corman had originally intended to center the film around the band Cheap Trick, but due to a conflict of schedules, he was forced to find an alternative band. The Ramones were suggested by Paul Bartel, one of the actors in the film. The film was shot on the campus of the defunct Mount Carmel High School in South Central Los Angeles, that had been closed in 1976. The actual demolition of the school was used in the end of the film.'-- collaged



the entire film



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Allan Arkush Heartbeeps (1981)
'Heartbeeps is a 1981 romantic sci-fi comedy film about two robots who fall in love and decide to strike out on their own. It was directed by Allan Arkush, and starred Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters as the robots. The film was aimed at children & was a failed experiment: Universal Pictures gave Andy Kaufman a blank check to make this film after focus group testing indicated that children liked robots, apparently in the wake of R2-D2 and C-3PO. Reviews of the film were negative. Film website Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles reviews from a wide range of critics, gives the film a score of 0%. Kaufman felt that the movie was so bad that he personally apologized for it on Late Night with David Letterman, and as a joke promised to refund the money of everyone who paid to see it (which didn't involve many people). Letterman's response was that if Kaufman wanted to issue such refunds, Kaufman had "better have change for a 20 (dollar bill)".'-- collaged



Excerpt


Siskel and Ebert review Heartbeeps



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Paul Bartel Eating Raoul (1982)
'A sleeper hit of the early 1980s, Eating Raoul is a bawdy, gleefully amoral tale of conspicuous consumption. Warhol superstar Mary Woronov and cult legend Paul Bartel (who also directed) portray a prudish married couple who feel put upon by the swingers living in their apartment building. One night, by accident, they discover a way to simultaneously rid themselves of the “perverts” down the hall and realize their dream of opening a restaurant. A mix of hilarious, anything-goes slapstick and biting satire of me-generation self-indulgence, Eating Raoul marked the end of the sexual revolution with a thwack.'-- Criterion Collection



Trailer


Three Reasons: Eating Raoul



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Thom Eberhardt Night of the Comet (1984)
'Night of the Comet is a good-natured, end-of- the-world B-movie, written and directed by Thom Eberhardt, a new film maker whose sense of humor augments rather than upstages the mechanics of the melodrama. The film's premise: All of the world's scientists have mysteriously died 12 months before the movie begins. At least that's the only way to explain why no one has predicted that the comet, hurtling toward earth during a jolly Christmas season, is going to come a lot closer than all of the comet-party revelers around the country suspect. The film's initial special effects aren't great, but some of the dialogue is funny and Mr. Eberhardt has an effectively comic touch. All of the performers are good, especially Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney, who play Reggie and Sam; Robert Beltran, as the young man who fancies Reggie, and Mary Woronov - the classically beautiful comedienne who co-starred with Mr. Beltran in Paul Bartel's Eating Raoul - as one of the Government people who, heroically, refuse to steal someone else's blood just to stay alive a little longer.'-- Vincent Canby, NY Times



the entire film



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Rick Sloane Blood Theater (1984)
'Blood Theater (a.k.a. Movie House Massacre) is an Independent Film Slasher/Horror Comedy. It was the first feature film by director Rick Sloane. The film includes many bizarre movie theater related deaths, such as being fried inside a popcorn machine, stabbed in the ticket booth, electrocuted by a film projector, decapitated by a projection booth partition, stabbed while a movie is playing on screen, smoke inhalation from burning film and a telephone receiver which breaks apart while a dying girl screams hysterically into it. The majority of the movie was shot at the historic Beverly Warner Theater in Beverly Hills, which was also a location in the film Xanadu. It was later demolished and the site became a bank building.'-- collaged



Trailer



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Ted Nicolaou TerrorVision (1986)
'TerrorVision was not a box office hit when it opened on February 14, 1986. According to Box Office Mojo, it lasted a mere four days in theaters, playing on 256 screens and earning just $320,256. It seemed ubiquitous on home video, though. I used to belong to about half a dozen different video stores, and I recall seeing the box – with a giant eye inside a satellite dish – in several of them. Home video is actually the preferred format for a picture like this. It’s not really theater quality, but it is perfect for watching and mocking with friends in the privacy of your own home. As for Producer Charles Band …well, he’s still out there doing his thing. Recent output bearing his name includes the Evil Bong movies (about, you know, a killer pot-smoking device), and the unforgettable Zombies vs. Strippers. The ’80s were his heyday, though. Band and his stable of collaborators embraced the “make it cheap” ethic. They also savored exploitation elements. I suspect that, viewed in its day, TerrorVision might have just seemed stupid. Viewed today, it’s still stupid, but at least it’s stupid in a nostalgic-for-’80s-cheese way.'-- Aisle Seat



the entire film



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Bob Rafelson Black Widow (1987)
'For all its faults, Black Widow is Rafelson's comeback after a six-year hiatus, and it's good to see the director of Five Easy Pieces in the saddle again. For the joys of Black Widow are the joys of a film well made -- the cinematography of Conrad Hall, the production design of Gene Callahan, and a fabulous cast that includes Sami Frey, Dennis Hopper, Nicol Williamson, Mary Woronov, Diane Ladd and a cameo by playwright David Mamet (as a poker player). And something more than that. The essence of film noir is mordant humor -- remember, for example, that the greatest of the film noir narrations, in Sunset Boulevard, was spoken by a dead man. What makes Black Widow special is the fun Rafelson has with it. All the different ways of dying -- from empty scuba tanks to a penicillin allergy to something called Ondine's curse -- become not just plot points but a tapestry of black comedy. After so many films in which a body builder who works as a mud wrestler turns out to be a CIA agent trying to suppress rock music in a small town, it's pleasantly shocking to see an active intelligence working in the movies.'-- Washington Post



Trailer 1


Trailer 2



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Bruce & Norman Yonemoto Kappa (1987)
'Kappa is a boldly provocative and original work. Deconstructing the myth of Oedipus within the framework of an ancient Japanese folk story, the Yonemotos craft a highly charged discourse of loss and desire. Quoting from Bunuel, Freud, pop media and art, they place the symbology of Western psychosexual analytical theory into a cross-cultural context, juxtaposing the Oedipal and Kappa myths in a delirious collusion of form and content. The Kappa, a malevolent Japanese water imp, is played with eerie intensity by artist Mike Kelley; actress Mary Woronov plays Jocasta as a vamp from a Hollywood exploitation film. Steeped in perversions and violent longings, both the Kappa and Oedipus legends are presented in highly stylized, purposefully "degraded" forms, reflecting their media-exploitative cultural contexts. In this ironic yet oddly poignant essay of psychosexual compulsion and catharsis, the Yonemotos demonstrate that even in debased forms, cultural archetypes hold the power to move and manipulate.'-- Electronic Arts Intermix



Excerpt


Excerpt



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Paul Bartel Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989)
'The movie, an original screenplay by Bruce Wagner, tells the story of two affluent Beverly Hills wives (Bisset and Mary Woronov), who live side by side and share many things, including friends and perhaps lovers. Bisset's husband, Sidney (Paul Mazursky), has died in kinky circumstances shortly before the movie opens, but his ghost visits her from time to time, still bitter. Woronov is in the middle of a disintegrating marriage with a pipsqueak (Wallace Shawn), and both women become the subject of an interesting bet by their house servants (Ray Sharkey and Robert Beltran): They wager $5,000 on who can seduce the other's employer first. No real attempt has been made to create consistent characters and then allow them to talk as they really might. Scenes from the Class Struggle, etc., is an assortment of put-downs, one-liners and bitchy insults, assigned almost at random to the movie's characters.'-- Roger Ebert



Excerpt


Excerpt



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Barry Shils Motorama (1991)
'Motorama is an American road movie released in 1991. It is a surrealistic film about a ten-year-old runaway boy (played by Jordan Christopher Michael) on a road trip for the purpose of collecting game pieces (cards) from the fictional "Chimera" gas stations, in order to spell out the word M-O-T-O-R-A-M-A. By doing so he will supposedly win the grand prize of $500 million. et's start from this point: This is not a movie intended for the common audience. Utterly bizarre, somehow incomprehensible, totally unpredictable, it just keep you stoned watching at the screen trying to figure out what will happen next. If that by itself doesn't make you agree it is an excellent movie, then go back to your "family" movies and forget about Motorama. It has material to be considered a cult movie, it can be placed in the same category with movies that win awards in Cannes or other intellectual film festivals, but, sadly, Hollywood already let if fall in oblivion, simply because it is not commercial.'-- collaged



Trailer


Excerpts



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Gregg Araki The Living End (1992)
'Janet Maslin of The New York Times found The Living End to be "a candid, freewheeling road movie" with "the power of honesty and originality, as well as the weight of legitimate frustration. Miraculously, it also has a buoyant, mischievous spirit that transcends any hint of gloom." She praised Araki for his solid grasp on his lead characters' plight and for not trivializing it or inventing an easy ending. Conversely, Rita Kempley for The Washington Post called the film pretentious and Araki a "cinematic poseur" along the lines of Jean-Luc Godard and Andy Warhol. The Living End, she concluded, "is mostly annoying". Rolling Stone's Peter Travers found The Living End a "savagely funny, sexy and grieving cry" made more heart-rending by "Hollywood's gutless fear of AIDS movies". In a letter (09/25/92) to playwright Robert Patrick, Quentin Crisp called the film "dreadful."'-- collaged



Trailer



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Rob Zombie The Devil's Rejects (2005)
'Zombie’s glorification of the feral Firefly family’s murderous cross-country rampage is undermined by a myopic, adolescent amorality: he sees them as symbols of a rebellious, individualist American spirit. It doesn’t help that the brutalising redneck trio – clown-faced pater familias Captain Spaulding, son Otis and daughter Baby – are played by bad actors: Sid Haig, Bill Moseley and Zombie’s wife, Sheri Moon. All three are eclipsed by veteran genre favourites Geoffrey Lewis, Ken Foree and William Forsythe, the last of whom plays a sheriff unhinged by his lust for Old Testament-style vengeance. This is the kind of unedifying spectacle likely to appeal to brain-dead sickos who think Charles Manson was a misunderstood messiah, rather than a degenerate, manipulative psychopath.'-- Time Out London



Trailer


Excerpt




*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. Oh, good, thank you. The Greene mention made me want to read him again, and a short story is just about as much reading time as I can afford at the moment, so I'll find that story somewhere. And, of course, I'd like to see the adaptation starting Borgarde, it goes without saying. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Okay, assuming the story David suggested grips me, I'll put 'Brighton Rock' on my agenda's angle towards sufficient free time, thank you a bunch. ** Kier, Hi, Kier! I did see that, yeah. Nice, and nice that it seems to be pulling people into the great new GbV album. Thanks a lot for alerting me. Yeah, it's easy for me to be all 'rah-rah' about confusion now that I'm in a happy period. And I have a tendency, good or bad, towards optimism, even about the past and even about bad things in the past. It's very weird. I hope by the end of today you'll have a base of normalcy from which you can be your amazing self again. Let me know if that happened, okay? Holy shit, your Edward Furlong altar is incredibly great! And the presentation! Wow, I've never felt more like you're supposed to feel in a church than I did while watching that video. Everyone, the great Kier Cooke Sandvik made an altar to Edward Furlong and then he made a video of the altar, and it so beautiful that you really, really, really need to see it. Wow! Yeah, the skateboarder boy is amazing. Everything's good on the film. We have a big meeting with the producers today, so we'll see what's going on on the financial and etc. end of things, which is always nerve-wracking, but we're having an amazing time. Big love, me. ** Brendan, Hi, big B! Awesomeness to see you, maestro. Me too, re: Jawbreaker headedness back then. I only saw them ... once. Okay, maybe twice? At Jabberjaw pretty early on and then, hm, somewhere else. Hiking, sweet. Yeah, I talked to Joel last night, and he was filling me in the expanded realms of the new Mario Kart. What are your girlfriend's favorite games, or, if that's too hard, game genres? Nice of her to read my stuff, of course. I hope she doesn't think I got gaming all wrong in 'God Jr.'. Oh, the Giants are killing so far? I'm happy for you. No, really, I am. I've gotten so out of it about baseball that even my Dodgers loyalty has faltered. Well, you can't hurry art, as The Supremes almost sang. Right? Aw, that's sweet that LA needs me. I don't know when I'm going to get there, although around Halloween is a guarantee. Come to Paris soon. Paris needs you. I'm not kidding. ** Steevee, Hi. I think 'literary' would definitely be a flashing red light to the Clancy set. There was a time many eons ago when I might have thought that self-identified gay guys might be genetically inclined to like literariness, but that was back when gay meant weird and adventurous in a great way. Wait, I thought '24' was back? There are all these huge posters in the metro right now saying 'Jack is back!' and talking about a 'new season' or something. Marcel Hanoun: hm, you know, I have seen one film by him: 'Un film'. I remember it being extremely interesting. I'm going to chase down some more clips or something. Cool, thank you a lot for mentioning that. ** HyeMin Kim, Hi. I'm glad you're likewise. Your project sounds as interesting as mine to me. Different physical scales is all. No problem on the MRI. I don't think I've ever had one. Or, if I did, it must have been when I was a kid. I guess I must have gotten one done when that kid I knew axed my head open when I was a kid, if they had MRIs back in the 1960s. Is 'scary' my favorite word? Hm, that seems totally possible. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yay on the Art101 progress at last! Cool, very cool! ** Keaton, Hi. I, of course, lend a pair of big thumbs up to the living in Europe idea. I have no complaints. Okay, I'll go hunt down a meme generator place and try my hand at it. Cool. Yeah Scumbag Steve does not ring any kind of bells inside me either. Thanks for the 'bon'. Speaking of, the other day I had a few hours of intense longing for a Cinnabon, which they don't have over here. And then the longing went away. But just mentioning that incident makes me want one again. Shit. ** Chris Goode, Chris! Yes, I woke up early, saw your email, and put the post together while I was coffee-ing myself into a familiar form. Amazing! I'm really excited! Wow, Chris, that's so incredibly exciting! I'm so honored on behalf of this place. So, it'll go up on Saturday as planned. I wish you guys had a live feed set up for next week. Anyway, yeah, thank you so incredibly much, maestro! I like your current 'do'. 'Do' as in 'hairdo'. What a strange term. 'King Lear' by Sam Mendes? Urgh. Even the idea reeks of boring. Maybe that's just me? Yikes. I don't think I've ever seen a 'Lear' production that didn't disappoint me to death. Have you? Wait, does Orson Welles's 'Chimes at Midnight' count? That's incredible, I think. Anyway, god, yuck. Chris, you're so great! Love, me. ** Rewritedept, Thank you! For yesterday. Stereolab were great, yeah. I feel like something in Stereolab got lost or diverted less interestingly after Mary Hansen died. My week's going really good so far. 90% film-related stuff, which is all positivity. I hope your week remains ok at the very, very least. ** Right. Today the blog celebrates the truly, seriously wonderful Mary Woronov, and 'nuff said. Dig in. See you tomorrow.

'Steganography is more ancient than codes and ciphers, and is the art of hidden writing. For example, a message might be written on paper, coated with wax, and swallowed to conceal it, only to be regurgitated later. Another way is to tattoo the message on the shaved head of a messenger and wait for the hair to regrow to cover up the ink. The best stenography uses innocent everyday objects to carry messages. A once-popular technique in England was to use a newspaper with tiny dots under letters on the front page indicating which ones should be read to spell out the message. Some people would spell out a message using the first letter of every word, or use invisible ink. Rival countries have shrunk writing down so that an entire page of text becomes the size of a pixel easily missed by prying eyes. Steganography is best used in conjunction with a code or cipher, as a hidden message always carries the risk of being found. There is a secret message encoded in this post.'-- collaged



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16 Enigma Machines


























































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33 secret codes










































































































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28 decoder rings
























































































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39 encoded devices

























































































































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p.s. Hey. Tomorrow aka this weekend we'll have a very special post-cum-event-cum-project-cum-invitation for all commenters and readers of this blog via the great UK-based theater maker Chris Goode. It's quite exciting, and I hope you'll all make sure to check in here and give the goings on your full attention, thank you! ** HyeMin Kim, Hi. Okay, understood. I don't know if I've read Bataille's theory of religion, but it seems like I must have at some point. I'll go find out. I hope your allergies diminished as instantaneously as possible, and that your journey was as fresh as you hoped. ** Bitter69uk, Hey there! Nice to see you! Thanks about the MW paean post. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Mary's so great. She's a pal of mine, although I haven't seen her in ages. Never enough Mary indeed. Everyone, as an adjunct to yesterday's Mary Woronov fest, here's David Ehrenstein writing on her, i.e. get yourselves over there. ** Matthew, Hi, Matt! Really good to see you, man! Welcome back! Thanks a bunch for being among the pair of hands that passed my book around. Yeah, the movie project is pretty exciting. I hope to be able to reveal more about it here before too long. And I hope you're doing really great! What's up, what's going on?  ** Sypha, Hi, James. Happy if the Coover post helped get you reinvigorated re: your postmodern writers reading jag. And I hope the RS guy gets back to you as soon as his deck of marriage is cleared if not before or during. ** Empty Frame, Uh, ... Empty-ster. Boy, that's an ungraceful mouthful. I'm doing excellently, sir, thank you. I liked 'Swimming ... '. Her fiction books are really very good too. Serpents Tail published them. You'll see what the Chris Goode thing is tomorrow, but it's pretty fantastic, be assured. You're writing! Whoa! That's superb news, naturally. I miss typewriters until I actually remember what it was like to type on them and use Liquid Paper, etc., at which point I become very grateful for computers, but I'm a very messy writer at the first draft stage. I think I'm so used to writing this way now that I do the 'save' thing without even knowing I'm doing it or something. Good to see you, buddy. I hope getting trashed served you regally. ** Steevee, Hi. I suppose you're right. 'Glee' probably passes for a high quality taxing of gay brain cells these days, which is very sad. Oh, so there is a new '24' season, and I'm not delusional. Thanks a lot about the tip on the torrent sites/Hanoun front. I'll get 'A Simple Story' asap. ** Heliotrope, Mark! I saw on FB that it was your birthday, like, yesterday? The day before? I'm on this 'no birthday wishing on FB' kick at the moment for no particularly good reason, so, if it was your b'day, happiness galore after the fact! Oh, we will for sure visit or five when I get back there again, you betcha! That's so great that you're still free of the headache monster. Wow, that's crazy great! You sound really perky and passionate and stuff, which is GbV to my eyes. I'm really good, really busy, co-making a film, writing a novel, co-writing another film, writing a theater piece, and more. Lots, and every lot is really great. Kirk is 60?!? That kind of freaks me out when I realize that I don't think I've actually seen Kirk in the flesh since we were both 19 years-old. Holy crap! I miss you too, man! We should Skype or something, shouldn't we? You have Skype? You could so easily if you don't. Tons of love! ** Kier, Hi, K! You got 'Cool Planet!' So did I? But two days ago, in my case. I'm so, so, so glad you're feeling better. I loved your altar so much! I showed it to Zac and he loved it so much too! It's so beautiful, and the music playing over it is so perfect. It's a mini-masterpiece. The altar and the video. Love, me. ** Keaton, North Paris is nice. I'm in the north, or the center-meets-north. The south is okay. I don't get over there all that much, but it seems perfectly pleasant. Play your vegan cards right, and you will be super thin. Like I'm sure I've mentioned before, back in the days when I would go vegan for 6 to 8 months every couple of years, my friends thought I was dying, I was so thin. They actually have Baskin Robbins over here, which really surprises me for some reason. Baskin Robbins seems like the distant past to me. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Thanks about the MW post. Film's consuming and going well and almost if not quite hitch-free so far, which is weird. Cave coding ...oh, coding in a cave, right? Cave coding sounds nice, though, whatever that would be. A 'one year after Snowden' group of events': only in Berlin, or for some reason that seems like a really 'Berlin' idea. 'The Magical Secrecy Tour' is a nice title. No such events here, I don't think. Although I think I'm going to try to go see Slowdive and Loop at the Villette Sonique festival on Saturday. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. That ABBA meets MRI sound mash-up has got me excited. If I can find an MRI noise sample online, I'm going to try it. ** Chris Goode, Hi, Chris! Could a post serve a greater purpose in life than to inspire an inability to have seen it coming? Maybe not. Yeah, very excited for the weekend! Do, do, do keep us here updated in lieu of a live feed. A mini-film festival ... suggestions? Huh, like, Cooper-esque type things or, like, DC's type things? Sky's the limit? Top of my head is a sufficient fount? Uh, okay, in addition to the Bresson, let's say ... hm, Resnais''Providence', Rohmer's 'Perceval', a Ryan Trecartin of your choosing, 'Enter the Void', and ... err, James Benning's 'Two Cabins'. Not that you need to actually watch any of those. You got 'GONE'. I haven't gotten mine yet. Oh, wow, thanks! I'm so curious to see it. It's kind of hard for me because the crude censorship/defacement of the scrapbook behind my back by Fales Library kind of infuriates me, but I'll be okay. Right, it's Falstaff in 'Chimes at Midnight', not Lear, duh. My brain. Yes, Skyping would be great and fun. I'll need to figure out when to do it with you in the next couple of days because Zac and I have to train to Le Mans to check out one location for our film on one of those two days and visit another location in Paris during the same time, but, if you're flexible on the hours, we can definitely do it. That would be very cool. Sure, let's check in about the timing over the weekend when I will know our schedule. Great, tomorrow, great! Love, me. ** Schlix, Hi, Uli! Awesome that your trip went so splendidly! Wow, sounds great! How were Loop? I'm thinking of going to see them here on Saturday. Welcome back, my friend! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff! Yeah, her Warhol memoir is very nice, as I recall. It's been a while. She's quite a charming writer. Wow, that is some disparity re: your novel's opening. That's why I'm so overly careful about showing anyone my novels before I'm 98% sure that they're working. Um, well, I guess in that situation, which I have been in to some degree, all I can think to do is to really try to evaluate the individuals who gave you the responses and determine the validity of their responses based on previous experiences with them regarding your work and based on what you can understand of their aesthetic preferences? It's a tough one. I think you should really think it through as best you can before you do a big revision or anything. The 'ruined what follows' response makes me suspicious. Ruined, how? A guest-post would be so great and so welcome! Thank you! The blog is being a bit tough to keep up to speed for me right now. Sounds great! Thanks, Jeff. And happy to talk more with you about the confusing response to your novel's beginning, it that would be helpful or useful. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Oh, I would have been happy with a very lengthy trip report, man, be assured. But I trust your instincts when it come to representation. Ouch, re: your neck. I have that pillow thing too. One pillow only, always. Even two fucks my neck up for days. Looking forward to reading your story! I just want to find a time when I'm not encroached upon by duties/worries/distractions about the film project. Bon-est day! ** Okay. Let's see ... oh, the secret code post. Yeah, there it is up there. And it has a secret message encoded in it that I doubt you'll be able to decode, but you never know, and that I'm not going to reveal unless someone has nothing better to do than try to figure it out and guess correctly. Not that I'm suggesting anyone become crazy enough to do that. Bla-bla. See you tomorrow.

This post ends by soliciting your help. So if you want you can just skip to the final section and see what that’s all about.


Hello! My name’s Chris Goode, I make theatre, and this is the second worst photograph of me that’s ever been taken.





According to the small print, it’s April 15th, 2008 and I’m about to decapitate Dennis. We’re at the London Dungeon, where they encourage this sort of thing. We’ve queued for an hour to get in and I’m not sure I’m going to have any fun here so I slightly want to decapitate Dennis for real which is probably why my smile looks so desperate.

This is my third and final day of hanging out in London with Dennis and it’s been awesome. He’s being astonishingly gracious given the circumstances. The idea was that he’d come over to London to talk about a project I was developing, to adapt this blog into some kind of theatre/performance thing. The project is being supported by a drama school who have invited Dennis and me to go and talk at a symposium they’re having. Only the people who invited us are not the people who are curating the symposium, and the inviting people forgot to tell the symposium people, or something. So we find out just a few days before Dennis is coming over that there’s no symposium slot after all. Amazingly, he says he’ll come anyway, and so when he gets here we talk a tiny bit about the project and I introduce him to some of the artists I know who might work on it with me, but mostly we just hang out, go to art shows, the London Dungeon thing happens, there’s dinner with a bunch of blog regulars (I get freaked out for some reason and amscray). Dennis posted some pics from the trip here. Look how young and hopeful we all are.

A few weeks earlier, I’ve done a guest post on the blog, nominally about the idea of ‘theatre space’, though it’s mostly a way of introducing the performance project to the blog’s then-readers. (It got a re-run a couple of months ago, which was nice; all the audio files have gone missing but other than that it’s pretty intact, and I still feel close to it.) I’m quite nervous because it feels like a weird thing to do, for one person to want to make such a strong creative intervention in relation to a place that’s so collective in nature. But no one objects, and in fact of course a lot of people are warm and encouraging, as is Dennis; and then we have those days together in London, and it feels like we’re off and running. Except that, post-symposium, relations with the drama school get very weird, and given that they’re the only source of financial support at this stage, within another few weeks it’s obvious that the project is dead in the water. (Or so it seems, dot dot dot.)

Maybe I should try and explain something about where that project came from in the first place.


* * *


By the time of Dennis’s London trip and the phantom symposium, I’d been reading the blog regularly – and kind of fanatically I guess – for about eighteen months, though the first few months I was in silent mode. Right from the start, the blog began to re-shape some of my thinking about theatre and what I wanted it to do.





The photos in this section are all taken from the only production to date of a play I wrote in 2007, called Speed Death of the Radiant Child. (I did a day about Speed Death here, which I’d totally forgotten about until now.) I think back to this as a period where what I was looking for from theatre really started to become clearer to me. Speed Death was I guess a first step, a reactive one – a sense of wanting to trash all the things that I felt were constraining me. It was like a convergence of negative aversions – to the literary traditions of British theatre, its bourgeois tastefulness and lugubrious ironies – and positive energies – admitting the energies of punk and late modernism and queer culture that I’d been too cautious about up until then. It was a play about a self-harming teenage girl and the consultant psychiatrist to whom she has been referred; but all of that narrative was completely tangled up with much more oblique stuff about Windscale (Britain’s worst ever nuclear accident) and the death of River Phoenix and stuff like that. There was lots of intense music and semi-gratuitous nudity and a haunted photocopier and a lot of people loved it but even they mostly didn’t know what to make of it. I suppose the important thing was that it told me how much I really fucking needed to rip stuff up and start again.





I had been bugged for a long time by the feeling that, though I had totally dedicated my life to theatre, there were lots of times when even the best work around felt less exciting to me than the experimental scenes in music and poetry, or contemporary visual arts practice, or even (and perhaps especially) the best porn. I hardly ever felt as deeply engaged, as moved, as extended, as empathetic, as alive at the theatre as I did watching good porn – or even bad porn, sometimes. And I was increasingly frustrated that film-makers were increasingly figuring out how to just get on and use real sex and sort of ignore, or overleap, the barriers that conventionally (slash legally) stopped them doing so; in the space of just a few years there had been Pola X and Ken Park and 9 Songs and Destricted and Shortbus– not all of which are great movies but they’re all interesting and worthwhile attempts to do something relatively radical. And then of course there was Bruce LaBruce’s twin-track approach, making arthouse and hardcore versions of the same films. It was a terrific provocation, one I lost sleep over for months on end. When so much of what I wanted out of theatre was a candid integrity around the liveness and realness of bodies and intimacy and the potential political valency of desire, it seemed like yet another generation of makers – my own, this time – was falling short.

And of course this blog was making me braver. Helping me to understand how literature and visual art and music and porn might speak – eloquently, cogently – to each other, about each other, extending each other’s languages, overflowing into each other’s territories.





And then of course the other thing that this blog was throwing down as a challenge was its degree of interactivity. Particularly at that time, when almost any post would attract dozens of comments, there was something fascinating about the de facto community that had formed here: with Dennis as its focal point but by no means its leader or author or parent. We talked to each other a lot, simultaneously strangers and intimate friends, arguing like family sometimes, collaborating as artists, conspiring like activists; weird pseudonymous performances took place ‘backstage’, there were in-fights and irruptions, subroutines of tension or flirting or melodrama. Often it was totally exhilarating; sometimes it could get very troubling.

All of these things still seem to happen here (I’m often not around for weeks at a time now, so I might not have a complete picture), and I guess in harking nostalgically back to 2007/08, what I’m responding to is not some spurious golden era but simply a period where this blog was still discovering – as maybe it still is – what it could be, who the people here could be to each other, what social life here was going to look like. And this, for me, is a set of theatrical questions. Just earlier today my friend Maddy Costa, who’s the critical writer in residence with my company, reminded me of this quote from the academic Helen Freshwater: “Our sense of the proper, or ideal relationship between theatre and its audiences can illuminate our hopes for other models of social interaction.” That’s exactly the sense I was feeling (or, at any rate, feeling clearly) for the first time in 2007, and this blog totally crystallized those feelings. As someone whose politics are on the anarchist left, I sometimes feel starved for visible working models of reconfigured social space. But this was always one. It’s striking even today how self-regulating and largely troll-free this community has been over the years. No one in charge, but everyone setting the tone together for a peaceable – but productively frictional – mode of attachment.





I felt like this was a question that was getting thrown up in all sorts of online spaces a few years ago. These really interesting emergent communities that were occuping a virtual space of congregation or resistance, that could only exist in their distinctive shapes because they were virtual: but what could real world gatherings and social forms take from them? What could be learned and translated across?

So, I guess those were the questions that were increasingly motivating my work as 2007 drew on. What could theatre learn from DC’s? – about sexual dissidence; about dialogue with other cultural ideas and the spirit of the ‘Varioso’; and about the holding-open of anarchic creative and collaborative meeting-space?

And that’s why I wanted to adapt the blog for live performance – whatever the fuck that might have meant at the time! But, as I’ve said, although we got tantalisingly close to making it happen, in the end it just wasn’t a good match for the financial support of an educational establishment with its own innate neo-liberal agenda and institutional inertia.

And so I got on with making other things instead that developed similar ideas. Here are a few examples.


* * *



Hey Mathew (2008)





In June 2007 I started work on a piece called An Apparently Closed Room, for a solo male performer (my longterm collaborator and friend Theron Schmidt). The title came from a chapter in Growing Up Absurd, the queer anarchist sociologist Paul Goodman’s brilliant investigation of what was at that time called ‘juvenile delinquency’: very briefly, it captured the idea that young men growing up in capitalist society were so mesmerised by the apparatus of capitalism – even those who were opposed to it still defined themselves in relation to it – that none of them realised that the door to the room they were trapped in was ajar: that they could just walk away from it all.



Trailer for ‘Paul Goodman Changed My Life’


Something that interested me very much in relation to Goodman’s ‘apparently closed room’ was the choreographer and educationalist Rudolf Laban’s concept of the kinesphere. If you imagine the furthest your body can reach from whatever its position is right now as you read these words – how far you can stretch your arms or legs, the reach of your head, and so on – that imaginary sphere or cube (however you draw it) is your kinesphere: and so as you move, your kinesphere moves with you.





But I read an interesting essay about the great contemporary choreographer William Forsythe and the idea that his dancers are in a sense trying to hurl themselves out of their own kinesphere, or break it or collapse it. In a sense what this essay describes is impossible – the kinesphere always travels with you – but the attempt it describes is not impossible and I’ve always loved the quality of movement that seems to connote or demand.



Extract from William Forsythe, ‘One Flat Thing Reproduced’


So An Apparently Closed Room was an attempt to take the young male body that Goodman was philosophically concerned with (and erotically fixated on) and test its limits in relation to the various kinds of ‘rooms’ that it was in – in terms of locale and compass but also ideology, identity, sexuality. The privileging of the body as the locus of the performance generally meant a default nakedness – I had already come to understand that clothing was not an extension of the body but an ideological expression of the place the body found itself in – but the use of clothing, partial or complete, to create provisional identities which we came to call ‘personas’. These personas tended to be erotically volatile to various degrees and the intimacies they traced and permitted in their offer to an audience gaze were often deeply affecting.

Perhaps inevitably, the trajectories of these eroticized enquiries – the desire (on my part at least) always to be throwing the body beyond normative ‘kinespheres’ of movement and self-presentation – led towards really challenging territories, and in April 2008, just a few days after the optimistic high of Dennis’s London trip, Theron and I came to a place where we found we couldn’t go any further. Once again it felt like my urge to push (as safely as possible) past the safety barriers was – understandably, of course – unsustainable when it came to working with other people, whether institutions or individual collaborators: and I was desperately disappointed to feel that I had to abandon yet another project because, essentially, I was trying to go ‘too far’ – when I felt that going ‘too far’ was the only destination worth pursuing if one wanted to engage seriously with the possibility of political change with a queer / anarchist impetus behind it. It wasn’t that there was a particular goal or some kind of terminal apotheosis of transgression that I was working towards; it was just that I was acutely interested in the moment where the obstruction – the wall of fear, the retreat of desire – was encountered, and in asking what the political or personal nature of that obstacle might be?

Thankfully, having abandoned all hope of proceeding with this work, I remembered seeing a young actor called Jonny Liron on the fringe at the Edinburgh Festival in 2007. He was in a play – Daniel Austin’s Apollo/Dionysus– which required him to be naked throughout, and to occupy (as Dionysus) a mode of intense erotic charisma. In this interesting, frustrating show, I had thought his performance was absolutely stunning. And so I got in touch and asked him what he was up to; we started talking, exchanging emails, swapping ideas – it was very tumultuously exciting to be getting to know him, and fairly quickly he moved to London, and we began an indescribably close friendship and collaborative relationship that lasted for five years, and changed my life utterly and irreversibly – and it started with the aborted project, An Apparently Closed Room.







Picking up sort of where I’d left off with Theron, but bringing two other collaborators into the mix – movement director Jamie Wood and lighting designer Cis O’Boyle, I was suddenly able to pursue my ideas pretty much wherever they might lead: if anything, Jonny was so eager that often he was ahead of me in terms of his intrepid engagement with the erotic threads of the work. I’d done some work with Theron using pornography as a jumping-off point for the development of personas and movement styles; with Jonny, this became critically refined. In particular we were interested in what were then commonly called ‘self-pics’ – selfies, now – and the ways in which the self-created photos of young men that we worked with seemed to reflect something new about the kinesphere – the camera held at arm’s length, often at a weird angle to get the whole body in, or at least the genitals, or whatever the subject was aiming for. This was another ‘closed room’ to play with – how far from the body can the body get? Of course the mirror, often, became the solution, the prosthesis, which we picked up on quickly by handing Jonny a video camera and inviting him to video himself.







By the time it met an audience, the piece was called Hey Mathew– named after Paul Goodman’s son Mathew, who died (at around Jonny’s age) in a climbing accident; this gave the piece an emotional resonance which went way beyond the somewhat theoretical concerns that had initially framed it. The audience watched as Jonny – naked by default, but stepping into and out of different sets of clothes – occupied different personas: both the ‘type’ personas we had discovered in our work, nicknamed things like Cardigan Kid or Hoodie Boy or Bootboy, and the specifically imitative personas we had used as stimulus – Joe Dallessandro in Flesh, say, or the models in photographs by Greg Gorman, Ed Templeton, Steven Klein...



Opening scene from ‘Flesh’ (dir. Paul Morrissey, 1968)



Greg Knudson by Greg Gorman


As Jonny moved around the room, a video screen became the ‘mirror’ that allowed him to have an ‘other’ body to enact his moving self-pics – undressing in a hotel bedroom, sketching in a rehearsal studio, hanging out and drinking with friends, masturbating to orgasm in his own bed. I, meanwhile, was present, if marginal, offering a sort of commentary on what the audience was seeing and how they might or might not frame it for themselves. There was writing and artwork by other people, including a poem of Dennis’s (“James Kelly” from He Cried), some specially written poetry by Thomas Moore (d.l. Thomas Moronic) and a drawing by Kier Cooke Sandvik which became the icon of our show – this place, in other words, was looming large.





In particular I always think of Dennis’s work and of that time in my relationship with this blog in relation to an almost standalone piece of video we used in the show – it was conceived as a sort of visual postcard sent by Mathew after his death to his father, introducing him to all the hot boys in the afterlife, all of whom seem somehow remote or unreachable; I made this collage sequence out of expositional passages in porn movies – boys in indeterminate topographical spaces, alone or in pairs or groups, in slightly slow motion. I then wrote Mathew’s kind of woozy narration and sent it to my friend David Chapman to record (on what turned out, kind of marvellously, to be really crappy sound equipment). I still really like how this sequence works, in or out of the show.



‘Afterlife’ from Hey Mathew (2008)


Trying just to ignore the barriers around making work this emotionally open – almost brutally so – and sexually explicit was not wholly successful, though the piece itself was (to my mind) both successful and, in its small way, significant. The venue where we showed the work first was a bit freaked out by it – by the unusually strong sexual content but even more so by an accident that happened in one of the first performances that injured Jonny pretty nastily. (We ended up in A&E; Jonny, of course, was the only one who was relaxed about that whole thing. But look, you can see here how bloody it got...)





Moreover, Cis was deeply uncomfortable about some aspects of the project, to the extent that my working relationship with her was basically destroyed. (I learned a lot from that; a big part of my practice now is about really vigilantly making sure everyone in the room is OK, or at least talking about it – and being heard – if they’re not.) For some audiences it was all just too much. But I feel fiercely proud of what we did in Hey Mathew– not least because it was the start of an extended period of collaboration with Jonny that has meant more to me than I could ever really say.







Open House (2011)


The challenge – posed not least by DC’s – to think more dynamically about the ways in which spaces for collaboration and dialogue can be held open, has had a number of (for me) interesting outputs in my work. One of the most direct was Open House, which I first made with my company in 2011.

The format is very simple. I take a bunch of actors / makers – five or six of them – into an empty room, early on a Monday morning. We’ll be there from 9am to 9pm every day of that week. At the point that we first meet there, we have almost nothing – I’ve just asked everyone to bring some piece of stimulus to start a conversation. By the Friday evening, we’ll have a complete show, for an audience to watch.

So that’s part of it – getting from basically nothing to something (albeit something that’s still pretty basic) in the space of a week. But the other part of it is perhaps more exciting. The door to the room will be – literally as well as metaphorically – open the whole time, and anyone who wants to can come in to the room and be with us. What that ‘with’ means is very much up to them. They can come and hang out, watch us working; they can bring us ideas, report back on what they’re seeing, ask us questions, give us provocations; or they can join in, become full collaborators in the making of the piece. They can put their heads round the door for two minutes, and then go away again; or they can come in early on the Monday morning and stay all week. It’s totally up to them.

The first time we did this, as part of the inaugural Transform festival at West Yorkshire Playhouse, I put in the marketing copy, almost as a joke – “Who knows – you could even end up performing in the final show!” But in fact, that’s exactly what happened – the performing team of five that we took in had swollen to sixteen by the time we finished making the show.





Admittedly, it was a raggedy-ass thing we made, an on-the-fly collation of bits and pieces; there was an Open House theme song that everybody got to sing, there was a collectively-made dance that anyone could learn and join in with (including the audience). In a way I missed the level of refinement that I’d usually want to bring to that sort of material. But the trade-off was massively worth it: something really magical happened in simply inviting in anyone who wanted to be there, and not turning anyone away. We had everyone from undergraduate students to retired seniors in the room, telling stories, dancing together, singing along, all together inside one cheerfully anarchic process governed first and foremost by a politics of hospitality.

We’ve done Open House a couple more times since 2011, and each time, different challenges come through. I think in time it will become less a thing we do in its own right (though I hope we can continue to do that too), and more a way in which we habitually work on anything we try and do as a company – for example, that in, say, the second week of a rehearsal process, we’ll run in ‘Open House’ mode, and anyone who wants to will be able to be part of that conversation and that making activity. The decisive thing for me is that whenever we don’t work in ‘Open House’ now, I partly miss it.







GOD/HEAD (2012)





The story behind GOD/HEAD is a simple, if somewhat curious, one. On the morning of Thursday 21st April 2011, coming home from the supermarket, I was literally stopped in my tracks by an extremely strong sense of the presence of God – in whom I have never believed. Although the sensation passed quite quickly, for a while my whole life was incredibly disoriented – my complacent atheism was not so much challenged as kicked in the fucking head. Before long, though, I had started to make connections between my ‘God’ moment and my experience, in my teens and twenties, of paranoid delusions. So I went to talk to a neuroscientist at the University of Bradford, who was able to explain away my revelation in terms of neurochemicals. But at the time, I didn’t find that that soothed or resolved the experience I’d had. I didn’t want to stop thinking about it, or talking about it, just because there was a scientific narrative that seemed to make sense of it. There was still something exciting about the idea of God and the way it connected in my head with two entwined strands of thought in my work – one about the failure of language and what lies sensationally beyond the possibility of articulation in words; and one about sadomasochism, and the transcendental experience of sub-space.

And so I made a show about the experience, called GOD/HEAD. It told and re-told the story of my ‘God’ moment several times, each time hoping to shine a different light on it; it told the narrative of my dialogue with the neuroscientist, and what came out of that; and also I threaded through it a sort of fictional strand about a queer teenage boy with a fixation on the King James Bible and the concept of kenosis, which I won’t get into here but is a super-interesting bit of extreme theology for anyone who, like me, can’t easily separate God out from S&M.

If you want to know more about this project, I did a substantial interview about it with Dave Pickering for his podcast Getting Better Acquainted:





I’m mentioning the show in this context because it was the first time that I’d managed to thread together in one piece an autobiographical story element (my experience), a documentary element (the neuroscience stuff), and a fictional element (the teenage boy). And – without giving too much away – the possibility of playing further with those three species of things rubbing up against each other feels like it might be a very exciting part of what happens next. (Now read on...)







I Understand and I Wish to Continue (2012)


Readers of DC’s will recognize this phrase – the consent button that this blog acquired in (I think) early 2012, due to certain unnamed self-appointed patrol guards finding the content ‘objectionable’. This change happened during a period where I was thinking a lot – without ever getting anywhere, really – about the idea of consent, particularly in relation to a performance or other live event. I got really weirded out by the premises of consent and the way in which you really can’t know what you’re consenting to until it’s happening. Quite often my shows have to have warning notices attached to them, in marketing copy or pinned up in the foyer before you go in to the performance space – most usually because of what they call ‘nudity’ (or sometimes, excitingly, ‘full-frontal nudity’). In a sense I don’t mind audiences being forewarned – I have absolutely zero interest in ever shocking or genuinely upsetting anyone, even if I find their sensibilities kind of lame or whatever – but I hate the crudeness of this disclaiming technology – as if all ‘nudity’ were the same, all ‘strong language’ identical, all ‘sexual content’ equal. Partly I object to this because it completely ignores the extent to which the presence of any particular audience changes the tone and temperature of the encounter in which they are participants.

Actors and performers, likewise, are obliged to ‘consent’ – or at least to engage with the idea of consenting – to situations that actually cannot be fully predicted or controlled, and in which the idea of themselves as ‘consenting’ is obscured or suspended in deference to an authority located elsewhere – in a director (like me), or in an audience, or in a venue, or whatever.

In a way the question of consent has always been a vexed one in my work with Jonny Liron, which, after Hey Mathew, continued as an experimental partnership under the duo name Action one19. Some people were always bothered by their reading of the power relationship between myself and Jonny, who was (a) fourteen years younger than me, and sometimes (b) dependent on me for paid work, and also not insignificantly (c) self-identified as heterosexual. How in that situation, people wondered, could he meaningfully consent to, for example, getting naked if I asked him to, or being filmed jerking off, or to different degrees of sexual contact between us? Of course I understood the tenor of their concerns but I think even now Jonny would agree that this was a desperately rudimentary reading of an actually incredibly complex matrix of power relations, in which it seemed to us the only feasible strategy was one of constant dialogue, of trying to be as transparent as possible about what was going on, and the context in which it was all happening.

Mostly Action one19 was just the two of us but in the spring of 2012, we made a piece with the participation of another performer, a brilliant actor called Sean Hart. The invitation to make something came from Marc Hulson, a.k.a. Tender Prey hereabouts, who was curating a short season of performance for the Five Years gallery in nearby Hackney. Our contribution was devised as a diptych: on the Saturday, visitors to the gallery would hear a text I’d written called ‘Proposal In Anticipation’ being read, prerecorded and played back at very low volume.





And then on the Sunday, a performance unfolded over the course of three hours, in which the two actors, Jonny and Sean, were each given a score containing one hundred possible tasks, ranging from the very ‘low risk’ to the very ‘high risk’ – these categories of course being incredibly subjective and kind of useless and that being one of the things I was interested in: but examples of ‘low risk’ would be “Take off your shoes” or “Make a paper bird”, and examples of the highest ‘high risk’ instructions were performance art staples such as cutting yourself, exposing your asshole, giving the other actor a blowjob, that sort of thing. Having completed an action they’d then have a choice of moving to a task that was (approximately) less risky or more risky; if they chose not to consent to an instruction, they’d have to start over with the easiest task and begin the process again.

Like any durational performance it was a thing that was sporadically very interesting, and sometimes less so; that’s the nature of the thing and not a problem that needs solving. A couple of d.l.’s were on hand and said they liked it a lot; Jonny, on the other hand, was frustrated by the structure and didn’t have a good time. I was glad we tried it. At any rate, it was an interesting step towards re-engaging with the blog as a source of theatrical inspiration.













The Infancy Gospel of Pseudo-Belladonna (2012)





One of the last public performances that Jonny and I did as Action one19 – we never did all that many – was an hour-long piece at the Situation Room, Jonny’s live/work studio in Tottenham, north London. We developed it over a long period of rehearsal and sketching; in the end, the set-up was simple: a performing space in the studio was marked out with tealights, and that space was occupied by Jonny, while I sat just outside, at the perimeter, reading texts – mostly by making live, improvisatory decisions, pulling fragments out of larger resources or playing games with whatever textual apparatus was to hand.

The material was in some ways quite simple, though as usual that meant it was also full of ambiguities and reverberant absences. Essentially the piece was structured around a kind of fantasy encounter between two cultural figures that had been important to Jonny in navigating our work – the porn star Belladonna and the UFC champion Jon ‘Bones’ Jones: but I guess those figures will only have come across obliquely, if at all, to an audience. Otherwise: Jonny, naked, prowled and made sounds like a lion; there was a dance learned from a video of Michael Clark and performed by Jonny using a ‘persona’ we’d been working with, who wore a blue polo shirt and (sometimes) trainers but nothing else; I guess maybe my favourite part was right at the end, where Jonny swept all of the tealights up into a cluster, pouring the molten wax from a couple of them onto my forearm, and then all the clothes and objects and props and texts that had been used during the piece were thrown onto the ‘bonfire’ of tealights – at which point all the other lights in the room were extinguished and in pitch black we watched first the fire and then, after it was extinguished, what seemed like thousands of hot embers dancing in the smoky room.







The centre piece of The Infancy Gospel..., though, was a fairly intense 20- or 25-minute sequence in which all the texts I was reading were taken from a deck of a hundred or so of our favourites from the ‘slaves’ posts here over the years. Partly Jonny was improvising personas and images in relation to whatever I picked out – and over the preceding weeks we’d worked a lot with these posts, treating them as voices in search of provisional embodiment; but also he was moving towards a culminatory sequence in which, as the blue shirt persona, he masturbated until he came – something that, despite all the work we’d done in which masturbation and other sex acts were part of the fundamental performance vocabulary, Jonny had never done before in a live performance. In its radical intimacy it felt pretty meaningful for us, and, I think, for many of the people who were present with it; but there’s no doubt it was also (brilliantly) complicated by the layering-over of the ‘slaves’ texts (and also the awesome slowed-down Justin Bieber track we used to soundscore the whole sequence – I think pretty much everyone in the world has heard it by now but here it is if you haven’t).



U Smile (800% slower) – originally by Shamantis


I still think – as I had thought going into The Infancy Gospel– there’s still a whole full-length (or even heavily durational) piece to be made out of the massive amount of ‘slaves’ material on the blog. It’s like a giant performance score already, without any further adaptation necessary.

We did a revised version of the piece – retitled The Infancy Gospel of the Kevins Clash (in which Belladonna and Jon Jones were sort of obliterated by two faint iterations of the then-newsworthy Kevin Clash) – the following month; and then, apart from an incredibly marginal show-and-tell during a CG&Co residency at the Bike Shed theatre in Exeter, that was it. It’s not for me to ventriloquize his testimony but I think it’s fair to say Jonny quite rapidly became disenchanted in our work, sceptical about its efficacy, dubious about its political narratives, and sort of fucked off with everything; and sadly, because our work and our lives together were always so entangled, that quite sudden crash pretty much took our friendship with it. He seems to have really different priorities now, or maybe they’re the same priorities but there’s just no place for me in them any more. I mean, it’s cool, people change, circumstances change. I was very lucky to get to work with such a talented and courageous person for as long as he could stand it. And, well, you know, everyone’s on their journey, most of them seeking their own happiness above all, and that’s OK. I mean I’m incredibly sad about what’s happened to us. I’m heartbroken, to be honest. But I guess maybe it makes room for something else, sooner or later. And I’m really proud of what we did, and of the vast amount of stuff we made together, which continues to exist in an archive of many hundreds of hours of video and thousands of still images, as well as a lot of collaborative writing. I think it is a profound, if largely secret, body of work. That, at least, persists.





But now look where we are in the story. It’s late 2012, I’ve been making a whole lot of work about sexual dissidence, and social formation, and speculative autobiography, and the ethics of consent – and despite the abortive DC’s project, this blog has underscored a lot of that work. And then in February 2013 I get invited to go to the University of Warwick and spend some time thinking about the future.




THIS IS ‘THIS IS TOMORROW’


Warwick Arts Centre occupies an unusual position in the British arts ecology as a highly-regarded public-facing venue situated on a university campus – specifically, the University of Warwick. It would be true to say that channels of communication and cross-fertilization between the University and the Arts Centre are not always wholly abuzz, and ‘This is Tomorrow’, which was first run in 2012, is an attempt to address that slight disconnect. Each year a small bunch of artists from across a range of disciplines are invited to WAC to spend a week meeting academics from different faculties and representing a diverse array of specialisms.





In 2013’s This is Tomorrow, I was lucky enough to be part of the artistic cohort, along with (L to R): musician Robin Rimbaud (a.k.a. Scanner); theatre maker Alecky Blythe; theatre critic Matt Trueman; choreographer Charlotte Vincent; and live artist Michelle Browne. We spent an exhausting but exhilarating five days meeting and talking with dozens of academics from the faculties of Physics, Manufacturing, Economics, Sociology, Politics and International Studies, and Mathematics. We talked about making computers out of fish, about the design task of imagining what electric cars should sound like, about how economists are trying to account for anger in decision-making processes, about fusion energy and Cold War espionage and advanced topology and sex work. It was stimulating, frustrating, enthralling, inspiring. (You can read Matt Trueman’s brilliant accounts of the whole week here.)

Partly it’s all just one big speed date – we’re there partly to try and meet an academic with whom we might be able to forge a productively special relationship, someone whose research interests make our creative ears prick up and our hearts beat faster. For me – just as I’ve started to give up on ever meeting anyone who’ll fit the bill – it’s Dr Cath Lambert, whose interest is partly focused on how people use space in pedagogical systems. We get taken to a ‘flexible learning space’ she’s had a hand in developing. It’s a classroom that has to be rebuilt from scratch each time it’s used, so that the students can determine for themselves what kinds of spatial and connective relationships best suit the work they’re trying to get done in the session that’s just beginning. Talking us through the ideas behind this room, Cath talks about ‘queer space’, and this pings hard for me, not just in relation to Sara Ahmed’s book Queer Phenomenology which has been very important for me in recent years (especially working on Hey Mathew), but also in relation to this blog.

Long story (finally) short: in the weeks after This Is Tomorrow, I revisit the DC’s project, thaw it out, write some of it down, send it to the guys at WAC; they like the idea and ask what I’d need to make a fresh start with it and with them. I say I’d like to take a group of five theatre and performance makers to Warwick for a week, show them the blog and some of Dennis’s other work, begin a conversation with them and see what happens.

And that’s what I’m doing this coming week. And that’s why I need your help.

But first...


* * *


(SC)AVENGERS (SC)ASSEMBLE


I asked each of the five participants to submit a photo and some words by way of introduction, so you could meet them, start to make imaginary relationships with them, decide who’s your favourite, etc., just like they’re some avant garde boyband or something. And this is what they wanted to say:


Greg Wohead





I’m Greg. I self-identify as a writer and performer. Things I make often end up as shows in theatres. I’ve just taken a Myers-Briggs personality test. It was the second time I’ve taken one. The first was in 2001 when I took one which determined roommate pairings for the college I attended in Texas. I ended up with a roommate only interested in talking about football. It wasn’t a good match.

Both times I took the test, I have received the result of INTJ: Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging. So I guess my personality has not changed in 13 years. I have copied and pasted the description below from 16personalities.com, but first I deleted the things I didn’t like.

“The INTJ personality type is one of the rarest and most interesting types. INTJ personalities radiate self-confidence, relying on their huge archive of knowledge spanning many different topics and areas. Unsurprisingly, this personality type can be labeled as the most independent of all types. INTJs are very decisive, original, and insightful. An INTJ will likely immediately and permanently lose respect for anyone who does not have enough talent or simply does not see the point. They are natural leaders and excellent strategists, but they willingly give way to others vying for a leadership position, usually people with Extraverted (E) personality types. However, such action can be deceptive and maybe even calculated. An INTJ will retreat into the shadows, maintaining their grip on the most important decisions, and as soon as the leader fails and there is a need to take the steering wheel, the INTJ will not hesitate to act, maybe even while staying in the background. INTJs dislike rules and artificial limitations; everything should be questionable and open to reevaluation.”


[DC’s readers might be likely to be interested in Greg’s current solo piece: The Ted Bundy Project, which has dates in London and Edinburgh coming up very soon.]



James Oakley





Hi there, I’m James. A solo artist studying at Chichester University and in the final stages of my masters. I love creating semi-auto biographical performances, dabble in spoken word as well as installation work which questions social, political taboos; and exploits my own failures (and successes) in the subject. However I’m still discovering myself as an artist so I enjoy experimenting with different modes of performance as I have not yet established a set form.

I draw my inspiration from current social media and find myself spending a decent portion of my time online, due to it being the perfect place to discover new and interesting people, stories and places and I let this reflect in the work I make.

I have chosen to attach my Facebook profile picture alongside this, due to it being the first image that anybody will be greeted with if they wanted to add me as a friend online. (I’ll let you come up with your own story as why I’m dressed up as a baseball fury).



Jennifer Tang









Nick Finegan





Hello. My name is Nicholas Victor Finegan. I have blonde hair that smells of mustard. And pale skin and blue eyes. So people often ask if I'm Swedish, but I'm not Swedish. People also ask if I'm German, but I'm not German. I think there is something that feels a bit dangerous about that question because everyone knows the dark reason behind their asking it. I mean whether they're consciously thinking 'hmm maybe you're German because Hitler loved people with blonde hair and blue eyes'– whether they’re consciously thinking that, they know/I know/we all know, that that's why they're asking it. And there's something a bit scary about that. Because when someone goes to make small talk over the throb of a nightclub sound system they don't normally intend to invoke the shadow of Nazi war crimes. But when they say 'oh you must be German with a face like that/with hair like that/with eyes like that', somewhere they know, and somewhere I know they know, and somewhere they know I know they know that that's what's going on. (It’s just they’re clutching a redbull and vodka and the throb of a nightclub sound-system is shaking their cranium in that satisfying way that reminds us that once upon a time we were swimming around in a big warm womb so they’re not really acknowledging that that’s what’s going on).

But people don't really think about that too much. They don't think about how the creases of history fold along lines that stretch way further than politics and society and all the big stuff like that. They don't think about how something that Hitler did back in the 1940s could actually shape some sweaty man's chat up line in a basement bar in Bethnal Green in 2014. But it did and it does and it's funny and scary to think about it really... I mean I just thought about it now and found it sort of scary. It's sort of like the butterfly effect but in reverse you know. Instead of micro to macro... macro to micro. Instead of the delicate little butterfly flapping it's painted silk wings and buffeting a grain of wheat off the top of a blade of straw that then gets whipped up through the air and dances into the ether where it spins and spins and creates a little vortex of cold air which an unsuspecting pigeon then flies past and swings it's feathered arms through to generate a mini tornado somewhere above Milwaukee which then twists and pirouettes under a brooding moody rain cloud, dragging specks of rain into its swirling, whirling tornadoey hips and yeah – on it goes until hurricane McBain has ravaged the lives of thousands and President Obama is wading through watery Milwaukee backstreets looking resilient and distressed and titillated all at once. And the little butterfly (who funnily enough was actually called McBain himself) is just fluttering about through warm buttery bars of golden sunlight in a field a few states over. Totally unaware of the havoc he has wreaked with those delicate painted wings of his. Yeah so what I meant was that this guy chatting me up by saying I look German, saying I look like some German boy from Germany or some place like that, this guy using that as a chat up line but not being consciously aware of the horrific heritage his chat up line is born out of - it’s somehow a bit like the butterfly effect in reverse. Like instead of some small insignificant thing sending out tiny vibrations that shake the tectonic plates of the future and give birth to some big and important event, the big important event is actually felt in the sweaty man’s insignificant mouth as he tries to find out why I have blond hair and blue eyes.

My eyes are itchy now. Night night. Love you. Xxx



Tim Jeeves





This was supposed to be a rather earnest extract from a rather earnest introductory e-mail, written to Chris in 2003 or 2004, that led to a voicemail, a phone call, a meeting, a friendship and possibly one of the shortest internships in history. Sadly, that rather earnest e-mail is lost to a time in which writing wasn’t always archived so, instead, we have the 69 words you've just read.



...Oh, and this:






...is me, a couple of weeks ago, in a rehearsal room in Oxford on my 41st birthday. Thanks to Malcolm for the photo.


* * *



And now the really important bit...


WE NEED YOU SO BAD


Quite how DC’s becomes a live performance work, I / we don’t know (yet). I know I want it to be part documentary, part riff, part fiction, and part interactive system. And I know I want those things to be about each other and to bleed into each other.

But this week is not about making the show, but about creating the conceptual space in which to start imagining making the show. It’s about people responding to the blog, and responding to each other’s responses; it’s about seeing how this place translates into liveable images, shareable movement, variably intelligible text, hospitable structures for relationships and speculative intimacies. We’re going to watch movies and listen to songs and read poetry and talk about stuff and challenge each other to think hard and work bravely in refracting DC’s the blog until it starts to become DC’s the theatre piece.

We want the room to be as porous as possible, as responsive as it can be to the live blog and the on-going conversations here; also as representative as possible of the blog’s story-s0-far, its narrative across the eight years of its existence, its changing face and shifting moods.

So we’re asking you to talk to us. You as in whoever’s reading this. People who are presently engaged with the blog, as visible commenters / contributors, or as silent readers / lurkers. People who only just got here, people who’ve been around for a while, people who have been with it since the start. People who used to be active here but aren’t any more.

We want to ask you to tell us about your relationship with this blog.

Tell us anything that comes to mind, but here are some questions that might be useful prompts:

Why do you come here? What do you think you get out of it? 

What’s your favourite thing that ever happened here? A favourite post, or conversation, or event, or series of events? (Choose a whole bunch if you like.) 

What haven’t you liked about this place? Has anything made you uncomfortable? Anxious? Hostile, even? 

If you used to come here / comment here more than you do now, what’s changed? 

If you’re here pretty much every day, how would you characterise the place of DC’s in your daily life? 

If you’re a silent reader, why do you choose to be silent? 

Has this place had any impact on your offline / IRL life? Has anything good happened as a result of coming here? Have you made real-world friends? Collaborators? etc. 

Have you learned anything from DC’s? Has it changed you? Has its impact on you been negative in any way do you think?

This list of questions totally isn’t exhaustive – tell us anything you want to, whether a few words or an extended reflection. Send images if you like.

And of course if you want to feed anything else into our week in the rehearsal room, you can send it to the same place.

Email us at: dcs AT chrisgoodeonline DOT com

(Or, as far as I’m concerned anyway, you’re welcome to leave comments etc. actually on the blog.)


Hopefully we’ll be able to come back in a while and tell you what happened during our week together.

Thank you for reading all this (if you did), and thanks in advance for your contributions. I think we’re going to have a really exciting week.


Chris Goode / CG&Co performance photo credits: SPEED DEATH: Manuel Harlan; HEY MATHEW: Simon Warner; GOD/HEAD: Ed Collier; I UNDERSTAND...: Esther Planas; INFANCY GOSPEL: Chris Goode




*

p.s. Hey. So, this amazing thing starts happening today. I really hope that everyone reading these words, whether you're a commenter of any frequency or a person who prefers to visit this place in silence, will consider participating in Chris Goode's DC's theater adaptation and/or related live space invention in some way, maybe by answering the questions near the bottom of the post either here in the comments arena -- you can be critical of the blog if you want; I won't be offended -- or by email at the designated address, or maybe by using the comments arena as place to appear, be, play, interact, or whatever seems right over the course of this coming week. Here's Chris Goode's request in his own words: 'It would be great if the invitation to feed in to the project over the next few days could reach the eyes of people who don't post here any more but did at one time. Like there are loads of people who I think I'd still be in touch with via Facebook, except I'm not on Facebook. So please everyone pass the message on.' This project is beyond a dream come true for this place and for me, and, yeah, it would be seriously awesome if you would participate and feed Chris's real life d.l.s in whatever way you like and can. Thank you! ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! So happy to have a real world copy of 'Left Hand'. It looks gorgeous, and even the plastic sleeve is so suave. Is the World Cup about to erupt? Did France make the cut? Is that question as embarrassingly naive as it feels? Anyway, Paris is about to get very noisy in that particular way then, okay. ** David Ehrenstein, There is! ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Does a space being beautiful and light-filled negate its cavelike status? I guess it does. It's weird how the mind can turn anything into anything like the Phantom of the Opera or something. Are you de-caved? Any interesting out-and-about planned for this weekend? ** HyeMin Kim, Hi. Thanks! Whoa, and about my work, thanks so much! I hardly ever think about my own work in terms of its content. That part seems to use my conscious efforts as a way-station. Other than my having quite a dent/scar running across the top of my head. I think the axe left me mostly alone longterm. Although I was an 'A' student until that happened, and then school grades began boring me, so maybe I got rewired a little. ** Kier, Hi, Kier! I think a sigil is a secret code. I don't know. A very secret code maybe? I hope they don't catch that rabbit. I mean, I don't know the circumstances, obviously, or the damage the rabbit is causing, but, you know, rabbits seem like they should be a prize or something in theory. My yesterday was a relatively quiet one. I got to actually work on my novel at length-ish for the first time in a while, which was really nice. It was suddenly very warm and even kind of hot in a pleasant way here. I walked around. It was cool. I hope your weekend lets you do all kinds of great things! ** Heliotrope, Ooh, cyphers. I'm going to do a cyphers post. Yum. Thank you. Is that live Quicksilver album a newly released thing? Is it pre-Dino Valenti? If it is, I'm going to get it. Oh, right, you have a roommate. What is he ... or she (?) ... I think you said it was a he ... like? I think there've been times when I wasn't busy. Well, I've always been writing something, but this current busyness is a kind of madness, a great madness, mind you. Aw, thank you, Mark. You're so incredibly great and the best. Friends from Germany? Wait, I think I know about them in some vague fashion or you've talked about them or something? I love you too, man. ** Brendan, Hey! 'Bioshock', yeah, that's a big one. I think that's one of the many, many games that I imagine contains too much fighting for a wuss and fumble-fingers like me. The poor Dodgers, sorry, I can't help it. Well you absolutely should come to Paris! What would you do here?!? You would be in Paris exploring its myriad and almost endless wonders, what do you think? Paris itself is the game plan. Nothing specific yet re: plans for LA in October. Originally, Gisele was going to shoot the film that Zac and I are writing for her in LA this Halloween because the film is about an LA spooky house, but, like seemingly all film projects except Zac's and mine (knock on wood), it's been delayed to next year. I can't imagine not being in LA for LA for Halloween stuff. It's beyond comprehension. But I don't know when yet. Yay about the art plan! Excellent! ** Torn porter, Hi, T! Ah, oh well, best laid plans re: 'SR'. You'll live. It was fun, but whatev'. Ratty is here! Yeah, I think Sunday sometime will work. I'll know more tonight. Let's text or something and make a plan. ** Chris Goode, Chris! The man of the current and many forthcoming hours! Thank you about the codes post. There is an eroticism there, isn't that weird? Or ... why would it be weird? But it is, maybe. 'Two Cabins' is or at least was until very recently on youtube along with a treasure trove of his films in the James Benning semi-secret youtube channel. If you can't find it and need directions, let me know. 'All Hail the New Puritans' is an excellent choice! One of the performers in Zac's and my film bears a strong resemblance to the young Michael Clarke. He says people often tell him that, facially, he looks sort of like a blend of MC and Eddie Furlong. Yeah, the Fales stuff is infuriating. I could go on and on about the bullshit and cowardice and dishonesty behind what happened, but it would be a bad idea. There was this traveling exhibition of the George Miles Cycle portion of my archive that was in Amsterdam and Basel. It included the 'Gone' scrapbook, which apparently had been through the first, less brutal round of Fales' defacement by then. I think the guy who published 'Gone', i.e. the awesome visual and music artist Martin Bladh, saw it in Amsterdam. I think that's what spurred his idea to do a ltd. ed. facsimile book of it. He asked me if I would let him do that in an edition of 100. I wasn't sure, but I asked the opinion of people I trust, and they all said I should let him do it, and I have this irrational thing about destiny/fate and so on, so I said okay. Oh, it feels pretty weird, yeah. It felt weird originally to have it in my archive, and the book version feels super weird 'cos, obviously, I never thought anyone but me would ever see it, and it was made as a very private conversation between me and my imagination. And I'm not the person who made it anymore. And I wasn't very much of a writer back then, and my study of the material was very, very early on and naive, and my attempts therein to write and make sense of the material are embarrassing and simplistic to me now. And etc. But there is something cathartic in a weird way that I don't fully understand about having that book out in the world too. I don't know. Anyway, the weekend, the post! Yes, I forefronted your request at the top of the p.s. And I'll make some kind of short, hopefully clear invitation and lure on Facebook. And I'm very, very curious to see what happens. The blog is not as heavily, tightly. actively community-like at the moment, not to say it's not a community, but it's not the intense community it was in the Antonio era, for instance. So, I'm very curious to see what happens and who shows up and ... well, everything. It's really exciting. I think starting on Monday when the post itself goes into the archive, I'll post the questions you ask and some of their surroundings in a box in the blog's upper right corner for the week, if that makes sense? Thank you a zillion, Chris! Love, me. ** Steevee, Hi. I don't know 'The Americans'. Huh. No, I haven't done a numbers station post, and that's such a good idea, thanks! Oh, yeah, there was never a time when the majority of self-identified gay guys read Genet and watched Jack Smith films and etc., but it was possible at one time to hold that illusion. For me, at least. But then I've lived in Paris for, what, 8 years now, and I still think most French people think like Rimbaud, ha ha. ** Schlix, Hi, Uli. Oh, cool, another plus re: seeing Loop tonight. Hm. The reunion thing is generally gross maybe. I.e., my indecision about seeing Slowdive, although I never saw them back then, so that's a reason to go. Chrome just played here. When I saw the handbill for that concert, I was, like, what?!? Glad I didn't go. Wow, you saw some great stuff. I wish the upcoming Paris Pitchfork Festival line-up was better this year. But maybe it'll get better. Bon weekend, man. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Uh, there's no direct link between that post and my novel other than the general thing of my interests going into everything in some way. I'm very happy to talk about your novel whenever you like, either here or by Skype or ... It would be a total pleasure. Oh, yes, I read that Stacey D'Erasmo put her piece about 'My Mark' in her book. I'm very happy about that. That piece was the first time my work was written about thoughtfully and seriously, I think. It was a really big deal for me. Have a great weekend, Jeff! ** Misanthrope, Your loss, man. The secret encoded message was awesome and life changing, ha ha. The Roy Rogers fast food chain still exists?!? You could blow me over with a feather. Nice dumb jokes. Dumb jokes are a potentially sublime form, don't you know? Of course you do. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Difficulty is just one way to do it. You shouldn't feel inadequate. I don't think there's a hierarchy where difficult is at the top and 'Harry Potter' is down low. It's just taste and need, and they aren't fascist. Shit, that's a long book you've written there. ** Okay. Please get into the spirit of Chris Goode's idea, entreaty, project, etc. and start letting loose, you guys. This is a killer great opportunity for us, I think. See you on Monday.

______________
The Soft Pink TruthBlack Metal
'The Why Do the Heathen Rage? LP, the first in ten years from Matmos member Drew Daniel's The Soft Pink Truth project, is set to see a release later this month via Thrill Jockey. But before the record drops, Daniel has let loose a wild new video for LP cut "Black Metal." An electronic cover of Venom's classic metal song of the same title, The Soft Pink Truth's hyperactive "Black Metal" is accompanied by a strange sequence of images, with the song's vocal contributor, Bryan Edward Collins, donning a cape and covered in face paint as he runs through the track's lyrical phrases, while Daniel himself and House of Revlon voguer David Serrotte also make frequent appearances amongst the fiery backgrounds and Satanic animations which mark much of the clip.'-- xlr8r






_____________
Madalyn MerkeyMend
'Madalyn Merkey describing the scene of Scent’s encoding to The Wire: “On one side of the screen is the darkened, unseen process; on the other side is the light of the generative substance. It’s impossible to observe the inner workings from the outside.” What does she say to her machines, alone in the Art Institute? What sounds, what words, are sequestered in those boxes?'-- Tiny Mix Tapes






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Opéra MortAnaïs ou Satan
'Luke Younger’s Alter label is one of the UK’s best kept secrets, and has long been a source for some of the most unexpected belters. Dédales was edited down from a series of improvised live recordings, and as such is imbued with a kinetic energy and creativity that’s often left for dead on most po-faced experimental full-lengths. ‘Les Spirales Messmer’ is our first taste of the record, and exhibits Opera Mort’s soupy, unsettling explorations perfectly with wobbly basses, cooing synths and percussion that chatters more than grandad’s dentures after a sneaky rub of whizz.'-- collaged






____________
Alex GSandy/Take
'For the better part of the past three years, the Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter Alex Giannascoli (known professionally as Alex G) has chunked out a series of small, scrappy bedroom-to-Bandcamp missives. June 17, Giannascoli will finally emerge with DSU, his first proper LP. Giannascoli's been ambling down this woozy, pitch-shifted lane for a number of releases now (which you can download for free over at his Bandcamp).'-- collaged






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SculptureHackle Scam Populator
'The self-described opto-musical agglomerate was born in 2008 after a chance encounter between British musician Dan Hayhurst and New Zealand animator Reuben Sutherland. By combining practices, the pair’s first test splattered a psychedelic palette that pushed them to explore sensorial intricacies emerging from chance operations. Raw materials for Sculpture’s music include a mix of analog and digital practices. In Hayhurst and Sutherland’s hands, tape manipulation, samples, found sounds, aleatoric and algorithmic programming and live improvisation become more complementary than you might imagine. Sculpture draws from experimentalism to promote new potentials for pop and electronic music in an age where many of our sci-fi fantasies have become mundane occurrences. “I’m aiming to make a coherent, adventurous electronic pop record with its own voice and identity,” Hayhurst explains. “I don’t think experimental music has to be dark, difficult or joyless. I try to make something playful, and maybe a little absurd.”'-- Mexican Summer






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Torturing Nursevs. Animal Machine
'Torturing Nurse emphatically tear to shreds the idea that Shanghai is a city incapable of pushing artistic boundaries. The harsh noise group’s performances have featured brutal walls of static, screeching distortion and spine-chilling screams. Although guitars and microphones are occasionally used, instruments at past shows have included umbrellas, computer chipboards and meat cleavers. The group has garnered international acclaim in the noise community, and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore reportedly names them among his favourite artists. 'I don't care if he's a fan,' says Junky with trademark defiance. 'I don't like him or his band, they’re too rock 'n' roll.''-- Time Out Shanghai






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Black BananasPhysical Emotions
'Jennifer Herrema, half of ’90s trash punk icons Royal Trux, has unveiled the first track from her second Black Bananas album – and it’s a curveball. Departing from the hair metal inversions of her previous troupe RTX (virtually the same band as Black Bananas), ‘Physical Emotions’ sees Herrema channelling retro Parliament-Funkadelic flavours through the lens of Zapp, Dam-Funk and Daft Punk, all in her distinctively fuzzy and freewheeling fashion.'-- FACT Magazine






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King BuzzoBoris (acoustic, live)
'Buzz Osborne, the legendary grunge progenitor who has helmed the MELVINS for thirty plus years, will release his debut solo full-length album, "This Machine Kills Artists", on June 3 via Ipecac Recordings. "I have no interest in sounding like a crappy version of James Taylor or a half-assed version of Woody Guthrie," said the grunge progenitor of the 17-song offering, continuing, "which is what happens when almost every rock and roller straps on an acoustic guitar. No thanks... 'This Machine Kills Artists' is a different kind of animal." Rolling Stone gave listeners early access to music from Osborne's acoustic release, premiering the song "Dark Brown Teeth". The magazine described the track as "doomy, ill-angled" and with the "Beefheartian edge his band is renowned for."'-- blabbermouth.net






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Guided by VoicesTable At Fool's Tooth
'The nice thing about the continued prolificacy of the current GBV line-up is that, with every new album, we get more and more distance between this band and the nostalgia that we associate with reformed acts. We don’t even really need to call this the “classic” line-up anymore, and not just because March has stepped in. This is a current, working band, history and great past records be damned. And this, their sixth full-length in four years, celebrates that more clearly than any of its five predecessors. It’s a nicely polished continuation of the scrappier Motivational Jumpsuit, but it rarely loses its bite in polishing its grin.'-- Pop Matters






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InnodeRotor
'If one day the machines develop artificial intelligence and decide to take up music, their attempts to simulate dubstep might sound something like Gridshifter. There’s a strange sense of organic rhythm being deconstructed and then recombined under the force of implacable machinery. Gridshifter has brains amongst its electronic brawn. The album plays on opposing shifts of established sequences of tone and texture, resulting in a sense of dislocation that, whilst unpredictable, is masterfully controlled by Radian’s Stefan Németh and bolstered by Steven Hess of Locrian and Elektro Guzzi’s Bernhard Breuer. As the album’s title suggests, electronic pulsations and buzzing static bristle across all 10 tracks, like electricity coursing through a generator (a grid, perhaps).'-- Dusted






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Karen GwyerMissisissipippi
'The spiraling sonic helices of Karen Gwyer, fusing classic house and avant-techno sensibility with East African wedding songs and psychedelia, have recently snared considerable critical praise. The U.S.-born producer was trained in cello, viola, and violin growing up, but after re-situating herself in London, adopted electronic production as a more personally apropos expressive practice. Moving through organic cyclical rhythms and 'disorientating psycho-physical disequilibria', Gwyer's debut album, Needs Continuum, is a uniquely dark, brooding and slow-burning masterpiece - a result of personal experiences and lifelong musical progressions, a defining record of a transitional period rendered physical.'-- collaged






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Kim Doo SooMountain
'Kim Doo Soo is the deepest and most introspective of Korea's acid folk singers. Many are the legends that cling to his songs -- political oppression, alcoholism, suicide, a ten-year period of mountain seclusion. Despite having been active since the mid-'80s and having released four acclaimed albums in Korea, most Western listeners only became aware of him through his tracks on the recent Damon & Naomi compilation, International Sad Hits. On 10 Days Butterfly, his fifth album, he mines productive veins of profound melancholy, animistic nature, and unfathomable, hermetic affection. The whole is couched in a veil of the most gorgeous, still melodicism, Kim's vocals and guitar shaded with subtle accordion, violin, piano, organ and harmonica. A reflective and unearthly beautiful masterpiece.'-- cafeoto.co.uk






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Young WidowsKing Sol
'The fourth album from Louisville, Kentucky, noise-rock trio Young Widows is a suffocating aural submission hold that refuses to let up on your carotid artery. Easy Pain is all tension and menace, laden with reverb, distortion and migraine-inducing beats that deliver inspired reinventions of everything fans of metal-gaze (“Doomed Moon,” “Gift Of Failure”), noise rock (“Bird Feeder” sounds like Coliseum, ZZ Top and Sonic Youth in a three-way knife fight) and post-punk (“Kerosene Girl” is what Interpol might’ve sounded like after ingesting near-lethal doses of tequila and trucker’s speed) hold dear.'-- Alternative Press






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Xiu XiuNew Life Immigration
'Angel Guts: Red Classroom, named after a 1979 Japanese erotic movie, is a hell of a comeback: with longtime foil Angela Seo back on board, Stewart is now joined by percussionist Shayna Dunkelman and Swans drummer Thor Harris in what sounds like one of the most Xiu Xiu records to date. Employing only analogue synths and drum boxes, the album falls back in love with rawness and cacophony, going full circle with the sharp-edged sound of their debut Knife Play. The crime and poverty of the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles is the album's narrative backdrop; some of the songs are even named after shops and businesses found in the district. Angel Guts: Red Classroom is the typical blend of passion, pain and awkwardness which makes Xiu Xiu what they are. Fearless, demanding, relentlessly subversive.'-- Drowned in Sound







*

p.s. Hey. Thank you to everybody who has answered Chris Goode's questions and/or otherwise participated in his DC's theater project. If you haven't yet or missed the weekend post and don't know what I'm talking about, click on the photo of Chris pretending to chop my head off in the blog's upper right hand corner, read about the project, and learn how you can participate. Thanks very much! ** L@rstonovich, Larsty! Hey, buddy! I do wonder how you are! Are you psychic or something? Congrats on turning 41. Not bad! You saw GbV live, you lucky motherfucker! Pollard's no-fun attitude towards touring in Europe is no-fun. Don't give up. No doubt your self-styled-poo poo would be others' highlight reel. Man, sweet to see you. Thanks for talking to Chris and crew. Much love back to say the least. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. So awesome to read about your 'Hey Mathew' experiences. I'm going to go read your 'HM' text again pronto, cool! Everyone, mighty scribe/d.l. Thomas Moronic contributed text to Chris Goode's theater work 'Hey Mathew' that you probably read about here over the weekend, and ... here I'll let Thomas finish my sentence thusly: '... which Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy very kindly and cooly published in their Mirage zine a little while afterwards, is up online. I just re-read it for the first time in years and yeah, it all came back. Yeah, so my Hey Mathew contribution is here.' Please click over there and read it for all kinds of reasons. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Thank you a lot for talking/answering to Chris and the gang. ** Keaton, What I just said to Sypha applies to you too, man. Thanks! ** Tosh Berman, Thank you, Tosh! ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, Mr. E. Interesting. Things are certainly very different. I suppose ultimately that I'm only interested that time and politics and capitalism and evolving societal acceptance and whatever else has revealed that the so-called community of self-identifying gay guys is full of subdivisions, undergrounds, a mainstream or two, etc. It doesn't seem good or bad to me. I guess it only contributes to my feeling that definitions of people based on notions of collective identity for which they happen to qualify based on their sharing a given genetic trait results in a prefatory understanding at best. ** HyeMin Kim, Hi. Thanks for addressing Chris's questions. Consider me a cheerleader re: you finishing the topology. ** Chris Goode, Hey! That was and is intense, ha ha. In a fascinating way. Really strange, really helpful, really clarifying and reinventing and stuff. Oh, sorry about the images. Shit. Blogger's image-sizing function is really faulty, and it can and does do something unpleasant to the images I upload here a lot of the time. I'm sorry. Oh, gosh, thanks about 'Gone'. I have, like, no objectivity re: it and only a very strange, moody entrance back into it. Yeah, the community thing here, extremely interesting. Sometimes I think I understand it and have it ingrained in my response and building of this place, and sometimes it seems way beyond me or something. Strange. Of course I'm completely and severely interested to ponder, daydream, and know -- as much as the reality-meets-blog configuration allows -- about what's happening in your respective community. Oh, I should know later today when I'll be freed-up from film stuff and able/excited to Skype with you guys in the next few days. I can let you know tomorrow (here) or by email if that's better? Thank you so unspeakably much, Chris, and same goes to all you guys there w/ Chris reading this, if you are. So incredible! ** Matthew, Hi. You're moving to LA! When, where? Is there a why? You're coming to Paris too? I think I'll be around and free to meet to some degree until Friday, and then Zac and the crew and I head off to Bretagne to shoot a scene for our film. So, yeah, hopefully we can meet up. You want to write to me with your details? dcooperweb@gmail.com. Would and hopefully will be great to see you! ** Kyler, Thanks a lot for the words for Chris and his gang! ** Bill, Hi, B. So the cave is a relative concept. I hoped so. My room here at the Recollets is my cave, but it literally is a cave given the mess of stuff I've acquired over the years and piled randomly everywhere in this cramped unit. Paris weather has been real schizoid. It was mostly quite hot the last two days, and now it's raining like a celestial firing squad. The enigmatic Omar ... wait, Omar Berrada? Or who? ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Yeah, it's in the clear, whoo-hoo. Your book, not the France football team. I guess I hope they will be at least vaguely. Thanks so much for participation in Chris's project! ** Scunnard, Hi, J. You're in CA, so sweet. My heart is kind of crumpled up in a good way. Maybe crumpled wasn't the right word. And you did the Winchester House! You're writing about it! Dude, I so want to read that so please nail it down and then nail it to some spot where I can. Thanks a bunch for being a collaborator with Chris. ** Kier, Hi, K! Thank you so much for being there for Chris's project! It is exciting, right? Chris's project. I'm kind of totally blown away. I'd like to see your arboretum photos if you want to put them somewhere lookable. LA has an arboretum. I grew up a short bike-ride away from it. It's not, like, amazing, but it was cool to have it as a getaway when I was a kid and teen. That old TV show 'Fantasy Island' was filmed there and a bunch of the early Tarzan movies. You guys have a lot of Jesus holidays up there. Weird. Maybe France has them too, though. I hope you have a great time with your old friend today. My weekend was kind of semi-off. I mean, I worked on the film stuff, but I didn't run around town doing so like I will be doing again starting today. I worked on my novel some, which is good. It was excellent enough. Happy Monday, my pal! ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. Thank you very much for speaking to Chris and his collective! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! Hooray about the ABBA availability. Early period, late period? I'm a mostly later/last period ABBA guy myself. Thank you very, very much for involving yourself in Chris's project! ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. I suppose that everyone under my age probably only knows Roy Rogers as the title of that franchise. Which is interesting, weird. There's a metro stop one stop away from mine on the 5 line called Jacques Bonsergent. To me, that name is just the name of the stop, but I guess he was some flesh-and-blood big deal guy that French grandmas probably known about like the backs of their hands. You've got LPS for the summer! That's some sweet shit right there. Speaking of shit ... shit, memory awakening moment, i.e. I'm going to send you his Japanese money bills in the next day or two. I don't think I have your street address, though. Can you email it to me? ** Gary gray, Hi, Gary! That's so cool! You talked to each of the guys individually. What an amazing way to respond. Nice, man, and thank you a whole lot. What's good with me is a fair amount of good, man, thank you for asking. Oh, yeah if you remember what you wanted to tell me, I'm all eyes a.k.a. ears. ** Okay. You get a gig of new stuff that I'm listening to and into of late today, so, yeah, there you go. Take some tips, if you like. See you tomorrow.

Don Q Inn

'The Don Q Inn of Dodgesville aka, Small Town, Wisconsin offers theme rooms for those seeking a different kind of hotel experience. There are rooms for all sorts of loser fantasies, called FantaSuites, like sleeping in a fake hot-air balloon in the "Up, Up, and Away" Room. There is an underground tunnel you can run through. There's a room that's the entire, dilapidated inside of an &47 plane that's rammed up against the building. Then there is the "Northern Lights" room with a bed in an igloo; "Tranquility Base", is a sort of space station; "The Geisha Garden", which oddly enough has a bed and not tatami mats. But it's "The Swinger" room that really got us and we're almost too disturbed to even describe this one.

'Upon arrival when we opened the door of the room and first thing we noticed was a "gross odor" about the room - we believe it was the smell of mold and the room had lots of flies. We keep killing them but there always seemed to be another one. The room was DARK. It had a dark (almost black wood ceiling) with more of that wood on parts of the walls. The DARK carpeting was so thin we think it was outdoor carpeting and OLD. The bedspreads were also DARK and under them the beds were adorned with blankets that were at least 25 years old.'-- Hotel Chatter



















Null Stern Hotel

'Null Stern Hotel is an abandoned Swiss nuclear shelter that’s been converted into a hotel. “Null Stern” translates to “zero star”, and that rating is earned because guests don’t get much more than a bed and hot water. You’ll even have to share your room with up to six other people. On the plus side a night only costs ten dollars, but this hotel isn’t designed just for travelers on a budget. Its creators are marketing it both as a social experiment and a chance for guests to get to know their fellow travelers on a more intimate level.'-- Hotelville















Haoduo Panda Hotel

'The Haoduo Panda Hotel, which lies at the foot of Emei Mountain in southwest China's Sichuan province, is the first hotel of its kind in the world. The rooms are decorated with panda pictures and cuddly toy pandas sit on the beds, tables and chairs. The staff even dress in panda costumes to entertain the guests. The hotel will officially open in May with room rates from 300 ($48) to 500 yuan per night.'-- The Independent





















Maya Hotel

'The $209 million Maya Hotel located south of Cancun, slated to open in 2010. This pyramid-shaped hotel will float in the crystal clear Caribbean waters with the help of a new composite material, normally used in the defense industry, which is billed as six times lighter and ten times stronger than steel.'-- Five Star Alliance














CasAnus Hotel

'A hotel in Belgium is offering tourists the chance to stay in a accomodation designed to look like a colon. The CasAnus Hotel offers couples an overnight stay for 120 Euros - around £100 - complete with a double bed, shower and central heating. It was originally created by Dutch artist Joep Van Lieshout, but the structure was renovated into living quarters and now sits on the grounds of the Verbeke Foundation Art Park. The hotel is run by owners Geert and Carla Verbeke-Lens, who say the hotel is 'extremely popular' with couples. It is utterly silent and pitch black at night, so bring a torch if you want to creep around at night.'-- collaged









Tianzi Hotel

'The Tianzi Hotel in Hebei Province, China is the largest image hotel in the world. Shou, on the left, is holding a peach that contains a suite. Enter the hotel through his right foot. Built in 2000, this 10-story building depicts Fu, Lu and Shou—Chinese gods symbolizing good fortune, prosperity and longevity.'-- collaged















Waterhouse at South Bund

'Like something from a Hitchcock movie, each of the 19 rooms in this converted Shanghai warehouse hotel comes with peepholes in the walls and the door, so visitors can “spy on” guests as they pass by (or vice versa). NHDRO, the interior design firm behind the hotel, claims that this voyeuristic approach to living harks back to the traditional Shanghai residential alleyways called “longtangs” (弄堂). Among these labyrinth-like communities, neighbors would peep into each other’s houses.'-- collaged













Hotel de Sal Playa

'In the dining room of the Hotel de Sal Playa in Bolivia, the salt is always on the table. In fact, at the world's only hotel made of salt, the salt is the table. Located near the famous Uyuni salt mine in the southwestern part of the country, Hotel de Sal Playa's roof, and bar are built of salt. Even the floor is covered with salt granules.

'The hotel was built in 1993 by a salt artisan who saw a mint in the number of tourists looking for places to stay while visiting the nearby mine, which is one of the world's largest of its kind. The lodge has 15 bedrooms, a dining room, a living room and a bar.

'The hotel walls are made of salt blocks stuck together with a cement-like substance made of salt and water. During rainy seasons, the walls are strengthened with new blocks, while the owners ask the guests to avoid licking the walls to prevent deterioration.'-- collaged


















Flush Hotel

'Sim Jae-Duck built the $1.6 million toilet bowl-shaped Flush Hotel in order to raise awareness about cleaner sanitation around the world. This live-in restroom is over 400 square meters in size, and is located just south of Seoul, South Korea. The most amazing part about this giant toilet is not the design, but rather how much it costs to stay here for one night: $50,000. It must be said, though, that the proceeds go to provide poor countries with proper sanitation.'-- collaged












The Sun Cruise Resort & Yacht

'The Sun Cruise Resort & Yacht sits perched high above the shores of Jeongdongjin, a South Korean tourist town which, according to the South Korean government at least, has the best sunrise in all the land. Measuring in at roughly 540 feet, the cruise-ship themed resort has 211 guest rooms. Its rooms feature port holes to give an authentic experience, and the sounds of waves crashing against the boat plays out over loudspeakers. The piped soundtrack of bird calls adds to the illusion of being at sea. The resort opened in 2002 as a way to give tourists who didn't have the money to go on a cruise the experience of being on one.'-- collaged














Can Sleep Hotel

'Every August for the past 30 years, thousands of partygoers have flocked to the Dyrehaven, a magnificent beech forest next to Denmark’s Lake Skanderborg for the Skanderborg Music Festival, or Smukfest. Here, the creative juices flow just as freely as the beer. In lieu of living in a tent, some lucky attendees sleep in one of 114, two-story aluminum Royal Unibrew beer cans, enlarged to 12.5 feet high. Covered in golden, bubbly wallpaper and furnished entirely by Ikea, the first floor features a small living area and a minibar that’s replenished each day. When the dweller’s ready to turn in, he climbs the ladder to a circular double bed and pops the skylight.'-- moco-choco.com













Lloyd in the Sky with Diamonds Hotel

'The Curtis Hotel in Denver, a DoubleTree Hotel, has created a $50,000 floating bounce house hotel, billed as "the world's only floating pop-up hotel room". Guests will stay the night suspended more than 22 feet in the air in an inflatable hotel room that features a bed, a couch and a small bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet. The hotel stay includes luxurious airport transportation via limousine, stocked with cocktails and munchies, a set of Swarovski binoculars, a Tiffany diamond necklace & earrings, a 60s themed party for 100 friends, and the butler service of Lloyd, the hotel's spokesrobot who will give you bottomless Mimosas and Bloody Marys and iPad mini loaded with the Stargazer app.'-- collaged













Gagudju Crocodile Holiday Inn

'Indigenous owned Gagudju Crocodile Holiday Inn is deluxe accommodation located in Jabiru, approximately 2.5 hours drive from Darwin and ideally located for visitors to explore the north of Kakadu, including Ubirr, Cahills Crossing and Magella Creek. The hotel is uniquely shaped to represent Kakadu's most famous inhabitant, the saltwater crocodile. Relax in a spacious air-conditioned room, unwind in your private courtyard, by the shaded outdoor pool or take in the landscaped interior garden view from the balcony. After an adventurous day, dine at Escarpment Restaurant and Bar.'-- travelnt.com














Tate & Lyles Edible Hotel

'The world's first hotel made entirely from cake will welcome guests for one night only in London. More than 14 artists spent 2,000 hours baking and 900 hours decorating the hotel with over 600 kilos of sugar. It has three floors and eight rooms. Guests of the hotel will be encouraged to eat their way through windows and walls clad with 2,000 macaroons. The hotel contains a rug made from 1,081 meringues hand-stitched together.

'Sugar fanatics will also be able to chow down on windowsills built entirely from fudge, a bath filled with caramel-coated popcorn and 20 kilos of marshmallow garlands. Bedside tables at the hotel even have edible books and there is edible art on the walls.

'Guests will have the chance to enjoy a Pirates of the Caribbean room with a treasure chest full of edible pearls, ginger-spiced doubloons and cutlasses and a Mediterranean-inspired bedroom with 10 meters of edible bunting. There is also a British-inspired golden syrup sugar room and a South Pacific room with a two meter-high Easter Island statue made entirely from chocolate mud cake.'-- Opposing Views

















The Nakanoshima Hotel

'Where else can one enjoy room service while on the toilet than in Japan? The Nakanoshima Hotel is a small, but luxurious, fully functioning public bathroom. Located in downtown Osaka, fenced by two rushing rivers, this one-room facility boasts an ivory-sheeted bed, a stylish desk, fresh-cut flowers and a prominent opening in the wall marked with a male figure on the right and female on the left. Through this opening, a stream of citizens flow in hopes of emptying their bladders. Stay if the idea of waking up to a cleaner mopping up urine from the tiles is intriguing to you. Crafted by Tatzu Nishi, the hotel is his celebration of the everyman’s commode. On the other hand, it is thoroughly disinfected and designed to be comfortable even though you can still hear people using the toilet in the other side of the wall.'-- Purple Travel















La Villa Hamster

'If you want to know what it’s like to live like a hamster, than look no further than La Villa Hamster. Tucked away down an unremarkable side-street near the centre of the western French city Nantes, La Villa Hamster offers guests the "unique" opportunity to live the life of a rodent. The hotel has all basic amenities essential for a rodent such as containers of organic grain, a metal water spigot activating by pushing a giant lever with your foot, and a double bed accessible only by a step ladder and a crawl space, a bathroom with a giant vat of wood chips, a giant troth for a sink and a working human-sized hamster wheel. Villa guests are also given hamster masks to wear during their stay. The owners are now looking for properties in Paris and in London with the intention of expanding the experience across the channel.'-- collaged














The Spitbank Fort Hotel

'In 1800, the Lord Palmerston, the British Prime Minister at the time, commissioned the construction of several forts at Sea Portsmouth to protect the harbor from invading French forces after the news that Napoleon III had become Emperor of France. The attacks never materialized, but the forts continued to strengthen with weapons and maintained throughout the century. Decommissioned in the 1980′s and most were sold to individuals, and one of them was transformed into a luxury hotel. The Spitbank Fort has everything one would want to enjoy the holidays. Luxury furnishings in the eight suites, impressive surroundings with pool, bar, restaurant, sauna and specially designed decks for guests to enjoy the sun.'-- loststateminor.com










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p.s. Hey. An early heads up that, beginning on this coming Saturday and lasting until Tuesday, the 24th, I'll be in a period of intensive shooting and rehearsing and traveling re: Zac's and my film, and there's sure to be some collateral damage on the blog here and there during that time. Thus far, I can tell you that there won't be full-fledged p.s.es on this coming Saturday and next Monday because I'll be in Bretagne during that time for the shooting of a scene. Further updates on other local effects when the schedule becomes clearer. Also, the terrific writer Juliet Escoria, whose new book 'Black Cloud' was loved here recently, interviewed me for Fanzine, and it's now online, if you're interested. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Thank you, Tosh. That's very, very kind. Um, I don't know, I guess I spend quite a lot of time making the blog. It's very second nature at this point. Other than the time sort of officially set aside to do the p.s. in the mornings, I kind of work on making posts off and on all the time. In between everything else I do and whenever I have spare energy and home alone time. The posts themselves can take a lot of time to make, probably more than it seems like they would. Some happen in a burst of a couple of hours. Some evolve over a week or more or so. The post today, which I guess is a pretty simple one, probably took about, I don't know, 2 1/2 to 3 hours maybe. Yeah, I too like it that, even though the blog can resemble other forms, and even though I like trying to make it resemble another form sometimes, it couldn't formulate and exist in any other confines but a blog, and specifically a Blogger blog. Anyway, yeah, thank you, Tosh. That means a lot. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. Yep, totally agree with you, yep. ** Kier, Hi, K. Thanks, cool, about the new music posts. You're going to Kongeparken! Oh, that news did something nice to my heart's cockles. The ride that Zac and I love so much is called Fabeldyrene. Here's a photo of it. We're actually very worried that it's been shut down or take out because, when we checked Kongeparken's site recently, it's not listed among their rides anymore. So, if you can check in on it, that would be great. It would be a total tragedy if that ride was destroyed. It's completely weird and amazing. I wrote a long fairytale-like text about it in the Scandinavian theme park book that Zac and I are working on. Anyway, wonderful that you're going to Kongeparken! I so envy you! Cool, I'd love to see your Arboretum photos. And the farm photos too, of course! How was your day? Love, me. ** Bill, Hi, B. Oh, Omar, of course. Omar of the desert. It would be swell to see him here again. It's been a long time. Thanks a bunch for the words to Chris, Bill. ** Steevee, Hi. I like the Soft Pink Truth album. I mean, it's essentially a kind of genre mashing exercise, and there's a limitation there, but it's really surprisingly fun and inventive throughout. It's pleasurable. ** HyeMin Kim, Hi. Oh, thank you so much for the translation! Do you know his work? I've only discovered it quite recently, and I think it's quite beautiful. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Ah, the hits, but I rank 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' among the greatest pop songs ever, so that's not too shabby. Even thinking about listening to Miles Davis during an MRI scan while not even knowing at all what an MRI scan feels like made me nervous. Interesting. Ooh, nice about Stephen's mix! He didn't tell me that was happening. Thank you! Everyone, courtesy of _Black_Acrylic, here's an amazing looking Soundcloud mix curated by my pal and collaborator, the great Stephen O'Malley, full of sounds and tunes from a great combo of music artists, from Angus MacLise to Joe Meek to The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. It's free, and it's here, and I, duh, I highly recommend that you hear/grab it. ** Sypha, Hi. Weird about the 'pop' thing. You have your copy of 'Gone' all the way over in the USA? I still haven't gotten or even seen a copy of it yet. Grr-ish. The French postal service strikes again. Dominic Savio does seem very you, James, yes, ha ha. His apparently famous quote, oft imprinted upon his image at least, 'Death, but not sin' is a bit of a brownie point remover for me maybe? But, yeah, he has a kind of One Direction member's younger brother in a time machine thing going on. ** Keaton, Hey. Well, actually, just one little segment of one of the railings on the Pont des Arts bridge tipped over slightly. Anyway, it's the excuse that will get that bridge scrubbed clean of love lockets. People are putting them everywhere in Paris now. There are locks appearing on the little bridge over the canal right near where I live even, far, far away from the tourist realms. GbV is great, yes! The Breeders cover was nice, yeah. Don't get torn to shreds. That would suck. ** Chris Goode, Hi, Chris. Trippy, I just came to your comment as we were exchanging emails in another window of my browser. So talking to you here in the p.s. context is like, I don't know, what it will be like to talk to the inevitable Madame Tussaud's Chris Goode 'wax' figure or something. Or something a lot more clever than that. Cool, fascinating about the first day's work and the scale issues between the questions and the time frame. And, yeah, if any of those ... wait, you guys doing the thing with Chris ... want to de-shy and pop in here or do more than 'pop', that would be very interesting. Oh, cool, I will forefront your alert right now. Everyone, Chris Goode, whom, as you know, is currently engaged in a project to make a theater-piece-like-shaped thing/soulmate of this blog, has a query/message that I will now pass long to you. This is Chris: 'I know there are a number of d.l.'s past and present who are based around Coventry / Warwick / Birmingham, & if anybody for whom it was convenient wanted to come over and spend some time talking with us and hanging out that would be awesome. So if anybody wants to visit us here, just email us -- dcs AT chrisgoodeonline DOT com -- and we'll figure something out.'  Yeah, hopefully we'll all get to talk later today. Cool, cool, cool. Love you beaucoup, man! ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. I actually knew that about Mr. Bonsergeant, but I was wearing my everyman hat when I typed yesterday. Oh, gosh, that joke wasn't bad. Well, not in a moral sense, at least, ha ha. To me. I used to love 'Hogan's Heroes', man, and you know what, if I ever saw an episode of it again, I might still. I got your address via FB, cool, and I'll send you mine via FB rather than here in a bit just to be symmetrical or something. Thing for me, yum! Thank you! ** Kyler, Hi, Kyler. Thanks about the interview. You're so nice. ** Derek McCormack, Hi, Derek! Yay! Dude, really, come visit Paris and I'll show you everything to do with the cool stuff I'm lucky enough to work with in the work I'm doing and the sources and everything. Yay (again) for false feelings! Or I mean for feelings that turn out to be not false after all maybe? Oh, wow, your trawl through the archives of that Fred Fried guy -- nice name -- and the history is completely fascinating! Shit! Oh, I've missed you, Derek, this is so nice! So, are you working on that book now? That's so exciting! You have to meet my dear friend Zac. He's super simpatico with your fascinations and mine, and we'll have the best conversations. Love from me back to you after being quadrupled at the very least! ** Schlix, Hi, Uli. Cool I'm glad you liked the gig. Alex G, is great. He's one of my favorite discoveries lately. Here, it's not the heat on its own that's the problem, but it's so fucking humid. You have 'Gone' too? Cool, but again, where's my copy? Harrumph. No, I didn't end up seeing Slowdive. I literally got ready to go and then my enthusiasm died. Even through I never saw them in their heyday, I just have a really hard time with reunion gigs as a general rule. I like museums, but for some reason I don't like when bands become live museums of their older work. Oh, well. I hope the heat in your hood lets up today, man. ** Okay. I went out and found visual evidence of 17 hotels that interested me in theory for some reason and decided to put said evidence on the blog, and now it's your turn to do something-or-other in its regard. See you tomorrow.

*

p.s. Hey. Today's post-shaped greetings come courtesy of Thomas Moronic who bestows upon us the fifth configuration in his legendary EVERYTHING IS FUCKED series. It's a happy day in DC's, in other words. Please smile beatifically in language form in his direction, thank you. And thanks a ton, Mr. T! ** White tiger, Math! Aw, thanks, pal. I love you too! ** Matthew, Hi, man. Oh, man, you have so inspired a concentrated google search right there with that Colon, Michigan thing. And can a related blog post be far behind? Probably no doubt. It sounds like the weirdest heaven. Thank you! Got your email, and I think Thursday should work perfectly, it being in all likelihood a semi-day-off for me. I'm in the 10th arr. Let's coordinate. The train strike is a real thing. My friend Zac and I were supposed to train to Le Mans today to check out a film location, and now we're going by rental car by necessity. Whoa, Cal Arts! That's very exciting! Another friend of mine is starting at Cal Arts this September. Oh, you can certainly make the institution work to your benefit. Think new comrades, resources, access, etc. etc. Anyway, hopefully we can talk all about that tomorrow. Kevin Drumm is playing here tomorrow night, if that's of interest. ** Bill, Hi, B. Ah, shit, about the IRCAM gig. I'll be driving through the French countryside in the direction of Paris while it's happening. Damn, piss, shit. Oh, well. The trailer looks fantastic! Thank you. ** HyeMin Kim, Hi. Interesting that you were introduced to his work by an American critic. Perhaps he's one of those artists who's more appreciated outside his own country? I don't know. I'm still new to him. Thank you for the further song suggestion. I'll listen to it shortly. I would love to have that essay in a blog friendly form, needless to say. Yes, know that I'm very interested indeed! Zizek seems like he'd be a weird interview, or I mean that interviewing him would make an interviewer feel weird, yeah. I don't think I'm much of a fan of his. I was on the fence for a long time, but lately I think I've lost interest or something, I'm not sure why exactly. ** Timmyfatlips, Hey! I already thanked you, pixelated face to pixelated face, via the magic that is Skype technology, for commenting here, but, heck, I'll do it again since textual thanks have a whole different vibe or something. Thank you. It was super fun to talk and see you and the other guys and the room in which the cyber is becoming motion-filled and concrete and all that stuff. Anyway, yeah, if it feels fun and suits your purposes, please reenter the comments arena. That would be sweet. Great day to you! ** Torn porter, Hay to you! Yeah, and the hamster hotel isn't so very far away from Paris either. Tomorrow could very well work. Or maybe Friday. I'm sorry to be so scattered in my sense of what my time holds. It's a bit crazy and improvisatory these days. But I think maybe tomorrow. I'm gone all day and evening today, but let's confer in the morning, yes? Have a blast, and hugs to Ratty! ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha, I'm sure you can imagine the look on my face as I imagine a clothing optional hotel located in Palm Springs. But you know how I love spooky houses, ha ha. ** Scunnard, Hi, J. A day at Amoeba, oh, sigh and drool and so forth. Dude, forking over more dough than is your want on records is okay in a hand-basket, as my grandma used to say. Yes, I want a copy. What do you think?!? Of course I do. Yeah, the film project is both gearing up and literally happening at the same time. It's pretty great! There isn't a whole lot of everything else right now. Some novel, some this and that. It's all really good. I'm a happy camper du jour. Enjoy another day in LA. What did you do? Tell me. ** Kier, Hi, K. If you click this, you'll see a map of Kongeparken. You see where the main entrance is at the bottom? If you walk in it and immediately turn left onto the first white path, it will be on your right pretty much as soon as you pass those buildings. Or that's where it was, if you want to check. If it's there, can you take a photo of it, or, I guess, if it's not there, can you take a photo of where it was? But, oh, I so hope it's still there. Scary. Wait, you said your day was scary. It seemed like maybe you mean scary in a good way? I hope so. Yeah, I'm very interested to hear about the big thing whenever you feel like talking about it. Love galore to you! ** Keaton, Hey, K-ster! Ooh, awesome, more you-generated memes. Can I offer you an official invitation to do a you-generated meme post for this here blog if that idea ever strikes you as a fruitful and fun one? Everyone, maestro of the emo stack turned maestro of the meme, Keaton, has a new display of his mighty wares up on his blog, and, yeah, I strongly suggest be with it. Love is awesome. You should totally fall into it. Why are you a fucking mess? I think my favorite Breeders album is 'Title TK', which is probably a weird choice. Thank you kindly! ** MANCY, Hey, buddy! So great to see you! How did school finish up? You good or even better? ** Chris Goode, Hi, Chris! It was so nice to see you with Skype's help, even if it was mostly seeing a slice of you bobbing and weaving in and out of the the left side of the frame. It was really nice to see everybody else too. Everybody's so nice and looks the nice part as well. I hope my blah blah was helpful. Trousers are coming off? Yowza! You guys don't say pants over there? That's interesting. Do people in your neck of the earth still call cigarettes fags openly and without fear of recrimination? I've been wondering that. You picked a real goodie there with 'Tractor Rape Chain'. I approve. Null Stern, right? Such a good name. For an album, for ... gosh, I can't think of a single thing whose public image wouldn't be improved upon by that name. More to come, awesome! Bring it on. Don't spare my or our anything! Know that I'm so into what you guys are doing that I literally almost just typed the words 'I'm with you in spirit', which is really, really a sign of something. Love from me to you and to the whole bunch! ** Schlix, Hi, Uli. The discrepancy between the awesomeness of the name Null Stern and the unpleasantness that would surely ensue were one to actually stay at that hotel is quite remarkable. I kind of think I would really like to stay in that public bathroom hotel for reasons I can not explain even to myself. ** Michael_karo, Whoa, Michael! Long time in-mega-deed! Everybody and his brother has copies of 'Gone', and here I am practically next door to its source, and I still haven't seen a copy yet. French post, I curse the day it was formulated in the form it has taken. I did not know that about Steven Stayner's brother. Wow, what a weirdly cursed family. There are, I think, maybe three Steven Stayner books? You sound really good, pal. That new Mac is going to feel so nice. Nothing like a new computer almost. Do try to de-stranger yourself around here. That would be cool! Big love from me. ** Misanthrope, Yeah, I loved 'Hogan's Heroes' as a kid for the same reasons. Not as much as I loved this now kind of forgotten show of the same era called 'F Troop'. I have no idea why I liked that one so much. Right, oldie stations. Like ... what's the one called ... TV Land? I loved 'Lost in Space' so much when I was a kid too. I used to have this poster on my wall of Dr. Smith teaching the robot how to paint. My address, right. Hold on. I'll send it to you right now before I forget. Hold on. Sent! ** Sypha, That makes sense. I mean that you would like that hotel. Dominic Savio is too Josh Groban or Charlotte Church or something for me. A science fiction series is a cool idea. Like a traditional one or like avant-garde or like perverse or like ... ? I know next to nothing about sci-fi fiction, as you know. Go for it. Huh, I like that you're handwriting a book about Providence. That idea is weirdly very exciting! ** Postitbreakup Hi, Josh! Thanks for answering Chris's questions. I'm a being a silent reader of people's answers for the obvious reason. I like you online, and I'm sure I'd like you even more in person. That just makes total sense. I don't think you'd try to blow me. I'm sure I'm less blowable seeming in person, ha ha. I'm sorry about the house. It was really weird when my mom sold the house I grew up in. But then it felt like an anchor being raised on the past or something positive after a while. No apology necessary, my pal. You know me better than that. I'm really sorry that you're feeling so low. I'll make you a cheer-up post. Anything you want. Name it. ** Steevee, Hi. Oh, shit, that sucks about the obstacle to making your film. Yeah, if you want experienced actors, that makes it tough. We're auditioning our first actual actor with screen credits and theater reputation and so on next week, and there are already hoops we're being told that we'l have to deal with and/or crawl through if we end up wanting to cast him. I hope you find a way through that and can make the film somehow, man. ** Derek McCormack, Hi, Derek! No, I haven't been to La Maison de la Magie Robert-Houdin. I don't think I even knew about it. Blois is a bit of a ways away from Paris, but not an insurmountable distance. Huh. If you come over let's go! There are, like, a billion little museums here. The exploration possibilities do seem as though they're never ending. I've never heard of Julian D'Ys, but I'm going to google that person straight away. That could make a really nice blog post, hm, yum. I'll try. I think ... hm, maybe I'm wrong, but I think maybe Gisele knows Martin Margiela. Or maybe, wait, she knows someone who dated him? Or still dates him? That might be it. I'll ask her. She knows everybody. She (and me too to some degree) is friends with Dominique Gonzalez-Forrester, the visual artist who designed all of the Balenciaga stores' interiors until I guess there was some horrible firing of their head designer a while back who everybody here likes very much, and I think she then ordered them to remove all of the interior designs she did because she was pissed off. But I don't if that removal happened. She's really, really cool: Dominique. Oh, you can be all 'moi, moi, moi' and I will gratefully and hopefully gracefully be all 'tu, tu, tu'! Oh, do you know about this: The Vent Haven ConVENTion. It's the annual big ventriloquists convention that takes place at the big/tiny ventriloquism museum in Kentucky every year. I might be going. It's in July. Gisele is going, and she wants me to go 'cos of the big ventriloquism theater piece we're working on, and I'm not sure if I can. It sounds like it would be kind of scary, but maybe good scary, I can't tell. Meta-love to you, dear Derek! ** Right. Go back up there and get mindfucked by Thomas Moronic, thank you. I'm about to go rent then sit inside a rental car heading towards Le Mans, France where Zac and I will spend the day scouting film locations. And you? See you tomorrow.

__________________




'If you’ve ever read Melissa Broder, or if you follow her on Twitter, you know her spirit is entrenched somewhere halfway between the club and the void. There’s an odd balance of metaphysical transcendence and material bling-brain to quite a number of her lines, and she is unafraid to have her idea of God bump shoulders with both blood and Tumblr.

'Broder says shit like: “Nobody bleeds white like I bleed white / Into a ditch the shadow of my bloodbag is white / I want a darker aura, like I want to be gorgeous.” There’s a weird brand of inner loathing mashed with inner haunting lurking here, but what I like best about Broder, oddly, is her morality. As coal-black as her imagery gets, and as overriding as the sadness in her ongoing personal desolation might be, there is an unrelenting sense that there’s a reason for it. That humans, perhaps, carry hell because they are hell, and that really the self is just a vessel toward something no one really has a name for.

'That Broder wields this, and isn’t just pumping out poems full of wry cartoon loathing and social exuberance, shifts the center of the book not onto the self but onto something larger, undefined. I don’t know what a book is if not a latch to elsewhere, and Scarecrone has pressed its skull against the hidden door. It is neither drunk nor ecstatic to be here—it is a state unto itself.'-- Blake Butler, Vice







Melissa Broder Scarecrone
Publishing Genius

'Scarecrone largely avoids poetic language — metaphors and similes are few and far between; sentences are largely in the present tense, declarative to the point of aggression. There is no circumlocution or retreat into artfulness here. A book that, at times, comes powerfully close to advocating for death, Scarecrone refuses to look its subject anywhere but squarely in the eye. The book’s conversational, un-prettified language reflects the urgency of its subject.

'One of the most immediate responses to Scarecrone is the desire to give Broder a hug, though that might be an unwelcome gesture for someone who views the body as a death, and the body’s death as freedom.'-- Open Letters Monthly


Excerpts


TEST FOR A FAULT

Every airplane is sleep.

I point my finger at a jetliner to rest my eye.

Boys smell holes in a neon blue banner I keep in my wallet.

The banner says RELAX GOD IS IN CHARGE.

Stephen Dedalus you are never on my mind.

You come to my island and I am the island.

You are well-traveled but that is arid.

My eye is on the sky.

I say Helios.

You say Brian Eno.

I say Charybdis.

You say I’ll show you hetero.

This instant must be sustained.

I pour black flower milk into a goblet but you refuse to hallucinate.

The breeze sounds an alarm.

I tongue your overlip in an air raid.

You go to the sea to swim with a nymph.

Crocodiles rattle shells.

I look at you long through my one eye.

You become the island.



REMOVE OBSTRUCTIONS SIMILAR IN SIZE

What are you looking

in the water for?

I am looking

to fall in love with

my opposite. Narcissists

are on their own side

so that is not me.

I would be a sensualist

if there was no such thing

as numbers. Get naked

it’s too much to count.

Hang me upside down

over the water

as a waif

whose pubic hair

is back in style.

Give me a year as her

to fuck who I want.

I will invent

a new style

of fucking

called fuck-your-wish

and still feel nothing.

Who would you be

with no body?

Fire. Next wave

Make me fire.



JUDGMENT

When the shaman comes to town I try to hump the shaman

I try to hump angels

My guardian angels are mine and all for me

When they leak they leak me

Still there are cracks between us

And you have to fill up cracks with candy

If I am not allowed candy I use my body

If I am not allowed my body I use the internet

Television is going to deliver me from the internet

The angels pray over my screens

My angels are probably lonely

Also disillusioned with me

I have always felt the presence of a disappointed being

The shaman says I am not dead

I am definitely dying

I am already digging out of my coffin

I dress in cicada skins

I go bright blonde

Above me is the blonde angel Raphael

And I try to make the blonde angel french me

The blonde angel has a thick tongue

He wants to talk about healing

The violence no one has done to me

Every violence I have done to me

When I leak I leak me

What was so hell that I violenced me?

There were eighty years of candy magick after all

There were also beautiful horses

There were cracks in all the horses

When I stuffed their mouths with candy they turned to rotten

I made candy luncheons in the pasture

It tasted very desire

I poured cherry soda into all my cracks

Tell the angels to give me sugar

If they do not want to hump me

A supreme being should heal me

But only for forever



Melissa Broder reads poems from SCARECRONE


MELISSA BRODER // CUTTY SPOT INTERVIEW


SEX TAPE




___________________




'As one ages, fond memories of times and places long since past become more and more precious. There are those memories I recall often: the first time I kissed my wife, my kids as small children when they were more fun than a bag of hammers, living in Tokyo at the height of the Japanese economic bubble ... And then there are those memories that return unbidden, triggered by a name, an image, a location. Lately, I’ve had many of those memories. Memories of a wonderful time in my life almost two decades ago, when I worked on EarthBound.

'When I localized EarthBound for the North American market in 1995, I could already tell it was a special game. The story and gameplay conceived of by Shigesato Itoi was nothing short of brilliant, and I worked hard to do his vision justice. But it was released in a big box with a high price tag, and just didn’t catch on with North Americans as it had in Japan.

'For a while after the game’s release, I didn’t spend much time thinking about EarthBound. It was certainly a game that I was proud of, and I would occasionally be happily reminded of a character or moment in the game. But then I would also remember the reception it got when released. Sometimes it can take a few years to get over melancholy memories.

'Then, more than a decade later, I slowly became aware of the EarthBound fan community. I occasionally looked at the forums and articles, and happily re- alized that EarthBound had a real impact on people’s lives. For players, the game brought back memories of childhood, when the world seemed big, odd, and full of potential. Fans would replay the game, recount-ing stories of favorite moments, lines, and characters through online forums. I was fascinated by the feel- ings that the game brought out in fans. They said the game was charming and had heart, which was so often lacking in other games. And my memories of working on the game came flooding back as I considered the circumstances surrounding a line, a name, or a detail. It made me happy, and I felt good about my work on the game.'-- Marcus Lindblom








Ken Baumann Earthbound
Boss Fight Books

'An RPG for the Super NES that flopped when it first arrived in the U.S., EarthBound grew in fan support and critical acclaim over the years, eventually becoming the All-Time Favorite Game of thousands, among them author Ken Baumann.

'Featuring a heartfelt foreword from the game's North American localization director, Marcus Lindblom, Baumann's EarthBound is a joyful tornado of history, criticism, and memoir.

'Baumann explores the game’s unlikely origins, its brilliant creator, its madcap plot, its marketing failure, its cult rise from the ashes, and its intersections with Japanese and American culture, all the while reflecting back on the author's own journey into the terrifying and hilarious world of adults.'-- Boss Fight Books


Excerpt


The original North American Super Nintendo looks like a pallid tank, a chunky glyph. The old consoles are undeniably utilitarian looking, as if the rush to get them to market necessitated nothing more than plastic housing and functional controllers. The evolution of gaming consoles is less obviously linear than the march of Moore's law—game console design has oscillated between geometric, slot-full bricks, and sleek, sportscar-esque parabolas.

The Austrian architect Adolf Loos gave a lecture in 1910 titled Ornament and Crime. It's a wild document, narcissistic and riled and a preachy, delivered by an architect-gone-ideologue who was in love with America. There's a line from the speech that went on to majorly impact architecture: The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects. In the Villa Moller, a house Adolf designed in 1927, I see the blocky origins of the Super Nintendo.

Might video game consoles might someday be purely utilitarian? Will screen-based media consumption someday be deemed necessary for psychological health?

•

As a kid, playing EarthBound felt like inhabiting a world as wide as human imagination.

Just typing that sentence makes me want to start the game on my Macbook Pro. I've ordered an original SNES controller and the necessary USB adapter. I plan on plugging my laptop to the TV in my living room, sitting on my The Shining-esque rug, and playing through the entire game for the first time as an adult.

“Final Fantasy VI had a bunch of different mechanics—it had the esper system, relics, custom moves for each character, real time input for certain stuff in combat—”

“Yeah. You're right—there's something really elegant about EarthBound. It's like they decided to ignore everything that took away from the characters and the story. And the really weird tone.”

“I mean, all you had to do is grind, and all you had to do to grind is level up, restore your health, upgrade your gear. Simple.” I feel impressed by Scott's breadth of video game knowledge and lingo. How casually he can deliver this shit.

The next line from the notes I took during our two hour conversation is this jot, written without context: “Local story”.

•

EarthBound's creator, Shigesato Itoi, became famous for his slogans.

My favorite advertisement of his came out in June 1982—about a year before Nintendo released the Family Computer in Japan, known as the Nintendo in North America—and it's stark. Presumably reacting to a combo of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and Japan's incoming Prime Minister—Yasuhiro Nakasone, the Ministry of Defense's director general—antimilitarism was rising among Japanese citizens. Published in the now-defunct magazine Kokoku Hihyo (literally “advertisement criticism”), the anti-war ad features a single white line of text and two Japanese soldiers. Helmets shade their faces into half-anonymity. They bow slightly, their far hands gesturing out toward the gray expanse of a painted soundstage wall. Their shadows are harsh convex half-circles, like a hand painted Zen ensō cleaved in two. Shigesato's slogan runs down the center of the image, ending between the men's hearts. “After you, Prime Minister.”

His copywriting career lasted decades, fueled by Japan's economic bubble of the 1970's and 80's. His other copywriting work is all over the place—selling cars, jewelry, Suntori liquor, makeup, clothes, rock bands, Studio Ghibli's animated films—hell, even Woody Allen shows up. Shigesato's most iconic campaign, promoting the multi-floored Seibu department stores, features Woody and the phrase “Delicious life”.

Japanese department stores are certainly sensual, and massive. My wife and I travelled through Japan for our honeymoon and our favorite store, Tokyo Hands, sports eight floors, the store's wares rising in sophistication while you ascend its behemoth levels. Second floor: suitcases and wallets. Eighth floor: stationary and “book reading supplies.”

I realize that the malls in Earthbound aren't like most American malls—they don't sprawl out, repping shopping corridors like malignant appendages. They're department stores.



Ken Baumann, Author of "Earthbound" Talks EB and More on Game Talk Live!


Ken Baumann « Live at 851


Book Review: "Earthbound" by Ken Baumann




__________________















Kalliopi Mathios Horse Girl
Plain Wrap Press

'Horse Girl is a shot across the bow, a notice of things to come attached to the leg of a horse made of stone and steel and meat and heart. Mathios must have found a secret vial of Kathy Acker's blood and done some form of ritual magick with it, because each line/image/knife contained within Horse Girl scars so beautifully.'-- Sean H. Doyle


Excerpts


My horse wears more name brands than I do, I’ve got arena sand in my boots, and everytime I pull my hand out of my pocket I find strands of hay.

*

Holding my hand up to the light, I see fifty thousand proud, well-balanced horses blazing through Target Stores filling shopping carts with anti-itch cream and every begging, crying child.

Hidden loudspeakers, a song plays overhead. A smooth crooner is ‘having a good time.’ I am a stick in the mud, in the middle of three sing-alongs, each having a good time, each adding items to carts, each in synch with the good time universe.

Eat a Magnum Double Caramel Ice Cream Bar, engage with a Starbucks employee, the Black Barbie still looks White. Imagine the dinner table. Imagine the main course. Imagine ultra-velvet dairy-free sour cream, pouring over my Morningstar Farms Asian Veggie Pattie. Fantasy to be shattered by equestrian take-over. Heard before seen, a spotted grey in aisle 4 holds a bike pump up to the sky and screams “victory!” His hoof has a canker, tufts of mane shaved: a real American money-shaking badass.

*

How many TVs must be sold on Black Friday for one Walmart employee to receive unlimited anything for all eternity. When the keepers come out with their frills, does anyone notice the pulsing behind their toenails? Is it impossible to wake from a dream and realize that you don't need them anymore? I know it is possible to wake up.




The Non-Facial Recognition Project feat. Kalliopi Mathios among many others


src3


Matthew Hillock 'Sweet Home Chicago': 'Alt Lit first attracted me because it seemed to be something that my friend, and his friends were doing for fun-not a highbrow, English major kind of thing; instead this small community of internet writers flew under the radar, and was full of talented, dedicated people creating experimental digital poetry and memes. Though my passion for writing often consumed most of my time, I noticed that the Net Art movement is similarly comprised of digital artists who not only circumvent the status quo, but also carry incredible talent with work ahead of its time.' -- K.M.




__________________




'The book comes out in a few days—publication date: May 13th, 2014. In celebration (or should I say in mourning?) of the book’s release, I’ll be sleepless and technically homeless, doing… something and I don’t know why.

'In a big way, being in an airport is a lot like being lost at sea. So many places and possibilities to drift, but not if you don’t already know where it is that you’re going.

'I don’t know where I’m going.

'That’s why I’m not going anywhere.

'I’ll be living in an airport for 48hrs.

'Beginning 10AM on Wednesday May 14th through Friday May 16th around 10AM: Going nowhere and probably getting into some shit. There’s a good chance I will no longer be human by the end of it. There’s a pretty damn good chance that I’ve never been human. Not to worry, I’ll be online and active during the entire thing.

'Odds are you’ll hear from me, be it a tweet, a post on Facebook, or a photo/video on Instagram. I’ll be calling out to everyone while I’m stranded in a state of flux. I’ll also have one of my best writer friends around, Kyle Muntz, hanging around, surviving this ridiculousness with me.

'Might as well repeat it; saying it more than a few times makes it sound less insane to me: I’ll be living in an airport for 48hrs in celebration, and mourning, of the publication of “The Fun We’ve Had.”

'Yes I’m serious. Look how serious I am.'-- Michael Seidlinger








Michael Seidlinger The Fun We've Had
Lazy Fascist Press

'Two lovers are adrift in a coffin on an endless sea. Who are they? They are him and her. They are you and me. They are rowing to salvage what remains of themselves. They are rowing to remember the fun we’ve had.'-- Lazy Fascist Press

'Michael Seidlinger is a homegrown Calvino, a humanist, and wise and darkly whimsical. His invisible cities are the spires of the sea where we all sail our coffins in search of our stories.'-- Steve Erickson

'Melding the static, high-concept premise of two humans floating alone on a coffin in a sea devoid of all else with stark and meditative prose, The Fun We’ve Had evokes a highly unexpected experience, somewhere between Beckett’s most hopeless solipsists and the mysterious energy of a child’s Choose Your Own Adventure-era dream.'-- Blake Butler

'It is obvious that Michael J Seidlinger had a great deal of fun writing The Fun We’ve Had. What more could a reader ask for?'-- Michael Kimball

'The best poets are writing poetry no matter what they are writing, creating entirely new and weird spaces. There is no doubt Seidlinger has made one of the weirdest spaces we will ever inhabit. In The Fun We’ve Had, every visible thing is a love of disturbing tremors, keeping ahead of our ever-curious eyes, hoping to savor every line. What a magnificent book.'-- CAConrad


Excerpt












My Pet Serial Killer by Michael Seidlinger Video Review Starring Hannah Lee at HTMLGIANT


Podcast: Episode 246: Michael J. Seidlinger on Otherppl w/ Brad Listi


my Pet Michael




*

p.s. Hey. ** Keaton, Hi. Well, love is def. complicated, I think. No way to prepare yourself. I guess objectification is one way in, but dropping that particular guard to some degree is probably something you should, ha ha, prepare yourself for. 'Pod' could be their best for sure. Seriously, you'll do a meme day? Score! Awesome! Jiggle away, man, thanks! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Kenny Loggins?!? ** Scunnard, Hi, J. Yeah, from over here where the tiny number of even okay record stores are the size of a bus stop, Amoeba's doors seem like a kingdom's. I saw your email this morning, thank you, and as soon as I am fully awake, which I am not yet, if you can't tell, I will inhale its contents. Seeing the Mike Kelley show seems like a very, very good decision, obviously. Lazy day in LA, aw, yum, whoosh, sigh, etc. ** Alan, Whoa, Alan! Hey! How are you? It's fantastic to see you! I've missed you! Thank you a lot about the Fanzine interview. Yeah, if you feel like catching me up on you and yours at all, that would be very sweet. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. The Kickstarter thing seems to work, but it working does seem to require a lot of self-promo and self-related cleverness, which seems uncomfortable to think about. Never even heard of Cock Sparrer, no. Oi! Wow, I can't remember the last time I dipped into Oi! Okey-doke, you're on, I'll test them out. That sounds really refreshing, Thank you! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yeah, we're happy with the location we found other than the lots and lots of insects we're going to have to deal with. It's in the woods along the side of murky river so it's like a bug world equivalent of Disneyland. You really think the phone hacking scandal is going to result in serious, actual, punishing verdicts? That would be crazy in the good way. Yes, many, many French people all around me are talking about nothing but what I guess is the World Cup match between France and Brazil tonight. I, of course, know nothing about nothing about it. I always root for Holland, if they qualified, and France winning would be fun. And I'm always cool with Scandinavian teams. ** Mikel Motorcycle, Wowzer, hi, Mikel! How cool to see you! You good, great, better even? Thanks a lot about our film project. It's looking good, so far, and I look forward to be being detail-y about it when I can. ** Bill, Yeah, I know, sucks about missing the gig/event, but the road trip/location scouting mission was a success, so, you know, sacrifice is a noble enterprise or something and all that. I might see Kevin Drumm tonight. Not the same thing, but I've never seen him live, and it could be something. ** Chris Goode, Hi, Chris! Your room does sound like it contained something very interesting yesterday, and I do wish I had been there, although I could so easily have been the straw that broke that camel's back, not that the camel's back wasn't broken anyway, but maybe it would have been irreparably broken had I been in tow, and that would not have been good unless you're looking for irreparability, which, hm, I can possibly imagine you could be in some dastardly way or something. I haven't had nearly enough coffee, can you tell? It blows my mind that Peter Brook is still making new work. His theater is just up the road from me. Man, it is a great, great space, I'll tell you that. I wonder .. I wonder if I asked all the commenters on the blog to take their pants off today in sympathy with their real world brethren, if they would do it. I know they probably would say they did. I'm trying to remember if I've ever felt creepy about anything I've ever asked the denizens of this blog to do, and I don't think I have, and I wonder if that means I'm being too much of a wuss or if ... something else. Throbbing Gristle! Interesting. Okay, I do wish I had been there yesterday. More to watch them watch Throbbing Gristle than to watch them remove their pants. I suppose that must really surprise people who don't know me very well. I used to really like cookie-cutter budget hotels a lot. And now they depress me. I don't know what happened. I think that ever since Zac and I started traveling together and trying to stay at the most interesting hotels, I've gotten spoiled. I don't really like the idea of actually staying at novelty hotels, though. I don't know if I could do Null Stern. I think I could do that fort one. Maybe the salt one. Probably the cruise ship on the hilltop one. Maybe the edible one. I don't know. Now I'm yapping. Love, me. ** Darren anderson, Darren! Holy shit! This is weird: yesterday I was thinking for a long time about you while I was traveling around by car and wondering where are you and how you are and everything, and wondering if you ever look at this place anymore, and wondering if you might ever return, even briefly, and, holy shit, you're here! That's amazing! And you sound/write just a genius as ever! Darren, hey! I've missed you a bunch! Any chance you might stick around a little? I'm so happy to see you! Tell me more, anything. I'll tell you whatever you want or whatever I think in return! Love, me. ** Nick salty lips, Hi, Nick! Is it weird actually being a text and being here, or is like second nature at this point? Is it like visiting your in-laws or something? It was beautiful to meet you too. Oh, yeah, it was weird that I said 'fuckable'. It's a word I never say normally. I don't know why I thought it would be interesting to not sound like myself for a moment. I think I was nervous. It's so weird to be older than most people's dads. It's the weirdest thing. I guess you'll find out someday. You'll see, it's weird. Homework? Really? Oh, why not, I guess. What was it? You can't tell me, right? Chris would beat you or make you take your trousers off again or something if you did, I guess. It sounds fucking crazy in your world. A lot crazier than it is in this world, just so you know. So, is Day 3 going to be about books? Is that how it works? I bet not, right. Hi! Love, me. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G-Man. I was obsessed with 'F Troop'. I have no idea why. When I read that it was going too be cancelled, I made a petition telling whatever network that it was on not to cancel it, and I asked all the kids at my school to sign it, an I think I got, like, 1000 signatures or something, and I sent it to the network, and they cancelled it anyway. Okay, what the fuck are you trying to send me, man. After all that build-up, I really, really want it, so find a way. ** HyeMin Kim, Hi. No, I was only ever curious about Zizek because reading him was so trendy for a while, and I wondered why, and I read some things by him, and I thought, Okay, I can see why he's the philosopher du jour among the young brainy or wannabe brainy readership, but I didn't find what I read all that interesting, but I was never against him or anything. I could see why he was kind of fun. Now I'm just kind of tired of his antics or something, and it sort of seems like a James Franco kind of thing or something. Paul Celan, yum. ** Kier, Thank you, thank you! For the Fabeldyrene (I hope) photo. I'm so glad it was good scary. Interesting. My day was really good. Zac and I accomplished our mission and had a lot of fun doing so. It was great! Enjoy your day to absolute max! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T! It was so beautiful! Thank you so much! ** Right. More books today that I've read/loved recently and that I hope will whet your appetites for books. See you tomorrow.