*

p.s. Hey. Herewith my usual page loading time apologies. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Thanks for speaking to Rewritedept. ** Cobaltfram, Hi. I think 4 pm and slightly onwards would work for me, if that's best. Email me a time asap, and it should be fine on my end. I did the post deletion, noting that it was due to a request/threat by the person/company who made the request/threat, and then I got a follow-up email complaining that I referred to his/their threat as a threat. People need to chill. ** Thomas Moronic, Thanks a lot for putting your big brain power to work on Rwdpt's piece, man. It was wonderful and instructive to read from the sidelines too. ** Sypha. Hi, James. Thanks for reading/sharing. ** Rewritedept, Hey, man. Seemed like it went quite well, no? I hope everybody's input made the kind of difference you hoped. I really appreciate you putting the work on our line. Ah, I see, about your intention to cut some of the background eventually. Putting it in there as signposts for yourself while you're writing makes total sense. I'm glad you're planning do more with the Peter stuff because, as I said, I really like that character, that stuff, him, the relationship. Okay, if that's your intention/plan with the 'photos/video' part, I would flesh out the fact that Sam is inexperienced with hustlers more because, for me, that isn't there yet, and I would flesh out the narrator's jadedness more because, like I said, at the moment his reaction seems more blank and a bit undeveloped than jaded, to me. The hermetically sealed quality is very good, yeah, and I totally encourage your sticking to that and bringing that quality even more to the fore. Thank you again! ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks, Ben. ** Hyemin Kim, Much appreciation for your good and thoughtful thoughts on Rwdpt's excerpt. The panic attacks make sense. Or I can imagine feeling like I was being attacked by a swarm of abstract word bees, even if they're well meaning and just doing their outreaching thing. I'm with you on the reading and writing thing. That's one of the reasons I quit university. I preferred books talking to me. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. Popular? Mm, in my experience during the early heyday of that era's African music's discovery and 'coolness' among critics and forward thinking music makers and listeners in the US, Fela was never popular, per say. His tracks were too long to get on the radio, even on the more progressive radio stations except in rare instances, and it was too complex to be played in dance clubs. In my memory, his comrade King Sunny Adé was the more popular, and at least a couple of Adé's records got domestic releases whereas, I think, Fela's were mostly if not entirely available only on import. ** Kier, Hi, K. Thanks for talking to R/C! Well, it's okay about my brother because we're very estranged, so I never have to deal with him except in cross-family cc'ed emails. Swap meets. I miss them a bunch. There's a gigantic one on the fringes of central Paris every weekend or every other weekend, and I haven't metroed out there in years. I think I will. I don't think a guy selling Nazi memorabilia would last very long at a swap meet here. In fact, I think doing that would be totally illegal in France. Can we/I see the scans of your collages somewhere, he/I asked hopefully? Your dad likes Iceage? Wow! A dad who likes Iceage! Wait, I'm dad age and even, yikes, grandpa age, holy fuck, and so I guess that's not so weird. But it's cool. You leave for the north ... tomorrow, right? Are you packing and taking a lot? My weekend was pretty good. Zac and I did some film role interviews on Saturday, and one of them scored us a performer, and the other one hopefully did. We'll find out today. And we talked over the 'club scene', which is the last scene we're filming, and we figured out how to revise it into something workable and good, and I'm working on the first draft of that now. And we decided how to go on the 'music performance' thing, and now we're searching out the music maker and the performer who will play a music maker in the scene. And we hung out, ate, etc., which is the best. And on Sunday, I mostly did film related thinking and emailing and stuff. It was good. I guess your Monday is probably heavily involved in trip prep? Fill me in, pal. ** Keaton, Hi! If only, ha ha. Thanks for worm-holing Rwdpt's thang, man. ** Dennis Cooper, It's always so awkward to see you here. Uh, ... how are you? ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron. Thanks a lot for seeing to Rwdpt's work. Yeah, it's actually really fun to change things on the fly when you and your collaborator are so on the same page and telepathic about things, like Zac and I are. It's just weird. One scene was changed so much on the fly that I'm not even sure what we've got in the footage. It'll be curious and exciting to go back into it and find out and try to shape it. I think letters are a really good way to put things, to allow yourself the thoughtfulness and privacy to really try to say what you feel and want and etc. with that safety zone. I also like it because it respects the autonomy and power of the recipient. It's scary, though. I don't know, of course, and I'm as confused about this stuff as anyone, but it seems like you have to think long-term with him, and it seems like you have to wait and see if your feelings are true enough to have the patience to wait for what could be quite a while. Yeah, ugh. It's tough. Sucks that you didn't get the funding. Sorry, man. Wow, it would obviously be really awesome if you get to do a Fucked Up video! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thank you kindly for your thinking and words for Rwdpt. I'll check out the Lucy Corin book, thanks. I don't know it. Oh, yeah, I listened to your Bookworm interview that day that it launched. I think you might have been in NYC doing the theater piece or something at the time, which is why we didn't talk about it. I thought it was really good. Yeah, I was mentioned a lot, which was, you know, kind and self-conscious making. Maybe we can have a phone/Skype conversation about it. The only thing I'll say for now is that I think Michael, with the greatest of intentions no doubt, made way too big a thing about my stuff's supposed influence/earmarks on yours. I don't think that's so true at all, but I think that was Michael's way into your work or something. It would be interesting to chat about it sometime if you want. My novel has been forcibly neglected by all the film work for too long, and I'm trying to get back into working on it in a hands-on way right now. I've been developing it in my head constantly, and that's been very good, I think, but the actual writing has been interrupted by the film process more than I had anticipated. But, that said, I think it's going really well, and I'm still excited about it. I still see it hopefully as the first book in a cycle, yeah. Time will tell on that one, but, yes, I do. Having that cycle plan and concept is helpful. I don't want to say too much about the novel 'cos I'm superstitious about that, but what I'm writing about feels too massive to be represented in one novel, so having that possible future set out before me lets me not try to overload the novel or think it's my one shot at trying to get everything in. Thanks, Jeff! How's yours going? ** Flit, Hi, man! Excellent to see you! Those were some super interesting and kind of thrilling thoughts for Rwdpt. Very cool to read from the sidelines here. You good? What's up? ** Misanthrope, Hey, G. Fantastic, detailed, smart response to the excerpt. That was fascinating to read, and it was really great of you. Wow. I'm glad you weren't being alarming. I wasn't, like, alarmed per say, just, hm, intrigued with a dollop of concerned mixed in. Anyway, glad the loop that was thrown has landed elsewhere. Yes, my b'day post offer was the real deal. If you can tell me by tonight, I'll get whatever you want up by your b'day, meaning, I guess, the weekend slot. Sweet. That tall glass filled in the way you descried is some good shit right there. Now you're talking. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! Very happy to see you even amidst running around. I'm running around too. Hugs from the fly, man. ** Cap'm, Cap'm, my cap'm! What lovely, lovely words for Chris. Thank you, sir. Are you good? What's going on, if you don't mind saying? ** Fin. Spiders. Are you guys afraid of spiders? I guess I'm not since I didn't shudder once while making that thing up there. But I thought about fear and how it works. See you tomorrow.

There are some bands and musicians that, once one discovers them, one falls in love with, and this love will then endure for the rest of one’s life, without interruptions. Then there are other bands and musicians that one will become intensely interested in for a time, then gradually drift away from, only to then rediscover their love for them years later. Certainly I can think of many bands and musicians that fall into that second class in my case: just off the top of my head, I would say groups like Wire, Sonic Youth, Dead Can Dance and, more pertinently to this day’s topic, the American singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega.

One of the tragedies in the world of pop music is how many bands/musicians get written off as one-hit wonders, with people essentially ignoring the music that should get more attention (consider Soft Cell, who most people only know for their cover of “Tainted Love,” but whose 80’s albums are often criminally ignored). I think Suzanne Vega falls into this trap. Mention her to most people and they can only think of two of her songs: “Tom’s Diner” (specifically the 1990 version remixed by the British dance production team DNA: the original 1987 version was a simple a cappella track) or “Luka,” these two songs being her only real hits (and even “Luka” never hit #1 in the US, stopping at #3). But as good as those singles are, her discography does not begin and die with them, as I hope this day will show.

There are certain musical acts out there that, in my mind, are impossible to divorce from the city of New York, such as Sonic Youth and the Velvet Underground. I would also add Suzanne Vega to that list. Ironically, she was not even born in New York City. Suzanne Nadine Vega was born in Santa Monica, California, on July 11th, 1959 (thus making her 55 years old today). At the age of 2 and a half, her family moved to New York City, where she spent her childhood growing up in the Spanish Harlem and Upper West Side areas. At the age of 9, she wrote her first poem, entitled “By Myself.” At the age of 14, she wrote her first song, entitled “Brother of Mine.” And at the age of 24, she signed her first major label recording contract, in 1984 (with A&M Records, who had originally twice passed on the demo she sent them, before changing their mind the third time). And the rest, as they say, is history. Her musical style is primarily a cross between alternative rock and folk rock (indeed, prior to signing her first major contract, she was a fixture in the New York City folk music scene in Greenwich Village, and some of her earliest songs appeared on the Fast Folk anthology albums). However, in the course of her career she has dabbled in many other genres, and has thus proved hard to pin down sonically.

I first discovered Mrs. Vega’s music in the spring months of 1998. Having seen the film The Truth About Cats& Dogs during that time period (a very enjoyable romantic comedy, by the way), I eventually purchased the film’s soundtrack as well, and one of my favorite songs off the soundtrack had been Suzanne Vega’s “Caramel.” So when CD shopping one day, I decided to buy one of her CDs. Unsurprisingly, I picked the one that had “Caramel” on it, which was at that time her most recent album, Nine Objects of Desire. I quickly fell in love with it, and began to get some of her other albums. But then, sometime around the year 2001-2002, I seemed to lose interest in her music. That was the time of my life when I was really getting into power electronics and bands like Whitehouse, groups with a brutal sound and “extreme” subject matter: and the albums of Suzanne Vega are almost at the opposite end of that spectrum. So even though I would listen to her stuff every now and then, I no longer considered myself much of a fan, or only a casual fan at best.

Still, times change and so do people’s tastes. While reading the Life section of USA TODAY earlier this year I happened to read that Suzanne Vega had a new album out, Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles. Intrigued by that prog-sounding title, I decided to not only check it out, but also start to listen to her music again, eventually going on to buy the few albums she had put out that I didn’t own yet (mainly her earliest stuff). And lo and behold, I’ve become a big fan again. What is it exactly I like about her work? Well, for starters, I really like her voice, and find it quite soothing, even when her subject matters veers towards the dark (her 1992 song “Blood Makes Noise” is about a patient getting bad news from a doctor, possibly an AIDS diagnosis, while “Luka,” one of her biggest hits, is sung from the perspective of an abused boy). She projects a sort of quiet intensity, a deceptive frailty, and though she always appears to be in control, one sometimes gets the impression that she’s standing on the brink of an emotional abyss and is in danger of falling in at any time. I find her songs and melodies quite catchy, and like her lyrics, many of which (especially on her earlier albums) read less like songs and more like poetry.

Unlike many of the bands I like who have been around for awhile, Mrs. Vega can hardly be called prolific. She released her self-titled first album in 1985. Her most recent album, as already mentioned, came out this year. In that nearly 30 year span of time, she has only released 8 albums, and these albums have a conciseness I find admirable: not one of those albums hits the 50 minute mark in terms of running time, and only 3 of the 8 crack the 40 minute mark. Her body of work is impressive: 8 studio albums, 2 greatest hits/singles collections, 4 acoustic albums that feature stripped-down arrangements of many of her songs (I haven’t heard these yet), 2 live albums, and, in 1999, a book: The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writings of Suzanne Vega, which includes the lyrics of her first 5 albums, along with various poems, essays, journal entries, and an interview with Leonard Cohen (it’s a must read for fans of her music, in other words). Those who would like to explore her world would probably be best off buying one of the greatest hits collections (A&M Records’ Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega might be the best starting point) and, if they like it, move on to her studio albums.

For this Day, I have assembled here 9 of Mrs. Vega’s songs: 8 from her albums, and one that she wrote for a film soundtrack (this methodology obviously being inspired by the name of her 5th album). I will now go through each one, shedding a bit of light on the albums from which they were extracted in the process. After that will be a few assorted videos, some pictures (as I’ll be the first to admit that I find Mrs. Vega to be very photogenic), and a few links of interest. But first, a few random fun facts about Mrs. Vega:

-she is a practicing Nichiren Buddhist
-with Duncan Sheik, she once co-wrote a play about Carson McCullers
-in 2006, she was the first major recording artist to perform in the virtual world Second Life
-her song Tom’s Diner is about the real-life NYC diner named Tom’s Restaurant (which was also a stand-in for the fictional Monk’s Café on the TV sitcom Seinfeld)
-her favorite painters are Francis Bacon, Edward Hopper and Egon Schiele
-some of her favorite writers include Anne Dillard, John Steinbeck, e.e. cummings, Franz Kafka, T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, Carson McCullers and H.C. Anderson
-her musical influences include Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Laura Nyro, The Smiths, and The Beatles
-she was the very first performer to take the stage at the very first Lilith Fair
-one of her nicknames is “The Mother of the MP3,” on account of the fact that the a cappella version of her song “Tom’s Diner” was used as the reference track in an early trial of the MP3 compression system.
-in a deleted scene from Pulp Fiction, Suzanne Vega is namedropped, when Uma Thurman asks John Travolta’s Vincent Vega character if he’s related to Suzanne Vega the folk singer. Tarantino is a big fan of Vega’s work and once listed her first album in his top 10 favorite albums list.



Nine Objects of Desire





1: Small Blue Thing (from the album Suzanne Vega, 1985)

Spare. Ethereal. Clean. Sharp. Dry. Abstract. Impressionistic. Detached. Just some of the words people have used to describe the first album released by Suzanne Vega. Suzanne Vega’s eponymous debut album was released by A&M Records in 1985. Produced by Steve Addabbo and Lenny Kaye (of the Patti Smith Group fame), this pop/folk rock album was a big success with music critics in the USA, and even reached platinum in the UK: since its release, it has sold close to two million albums worldwide, and often pops up on “best albums of the 1980’s” lists. Two singles would appear off this album, the finely crafted but somewhat generic pop song “Marlene on the Wall” and the far superior “Small Blue Thing.”

The album’s opening track, “Cracking,” sets the tone of what’s to come: sharply plucked acoustic guitar, an airy New Age-style keyboard, and Suzanne’s flatly delivered, practically spoken word vocals, done in a style somewhat like Laurie Anderson. It creates a sensation that is somewhat soothing: one can easily picture Patrick Bateman listening to this song in his Wall Street office on his Walkman headphones, chilling out after the brutal chainsaw murder of an escort girl. It pretty much sets the stage for the rest of the album, though there are a few quirky surprises (such as the medieval ballad “The Queen and the Soldier”). Critics were quick to compare Mrs. Vega to Joni Mitchell, but more obvious influences would be Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Lou Reed (Mrs. Vega will cop to being greatly influenced by Lou Reed; the album’s final track, the funky and jerky “Neighborhood Girls,” which deals with prostitutes, wouldn’t sound out of place on a Lou Reed album). I would probably rank this record in Mrs. Vega’s top three: I quite enjoy the lush 80’s pristine sound and what Rolling Stone referred to as the “cathedral-like ambience,” and though some people complained about the Windham Hill-style New Age production, I can’t think if too many Windham Hill albums that had lyrics such as “I believe right now if I could/ I would swallow you whole/ I would leave only bones and teeth/ We could see what was underneath” (that’s from the song “Undertow,” in which Mrs. Vega casts herself as the voice of the ocean itself). In a decade of sonic excess, this album has a sort of Calvinist austerity that I find appealing. To represent this album, I’ve selected the song “Small Blue Thing,” a masterpiece of self-absorption. I especially like the way Suzanne sings the lyrics “scattering like light,” a fractured image for a fractured album.










2: Gypsy (from the album Solitude Standing, 1987)

When Suzanne Vega’s second album was released in 1987 (again by A&M Records, again produced by Steve Addabbo and Lenny Kaye), some of the fans of her first album saw it as a sell-out, thought it was too “pop,” while some critics noted the more “in your face production” and the emphasis on synthesizers and electric guitar. Some even saw it as a less-focused album than her debut, and I’ve heard that supposedly Mrs. Vega had writer’s block during that period, which might explain why she resorted, in a few cases, to using some songs that were written before her first album. This didn’t stop the album from being a smash success: it’s easily her best-selling record, having gone triple-platinum, mainly thanks to the success of its first single, “Luka.”

To be honest, even though many people say this is their favorite Suzanne Vega album, it’s probably the one of hers I would rank the lowest. As previously noted, it lacks the focus of her first album, and the production style doesn’t interest me as much, being a bit too conventional; also, too many of the songs just don’t grab me, even on repeated listens. This isn’t to say that the album isn’t without merit. It’s interesting to hear the original version of “Tom’s Diner,” before it was remixed into a dance song 3 years later (also intriguing is the closing track, an instrumental version of “Tom’s Diner,” this being the only instrumental to appear on any of Suzanne Vega’s albums), and the song “Gypsy” is a nice, laid-back, folky song that sounds somewhat like something that wouldn’t have been out of place on her first album. And then, of course, there’s “Luka,” which was her biggest hit. I’ve chosen the track “Gypsy” to represent this album, however. It’s one of her older songs (written in 1978, but not recorded till 1987), but it has a nice soothing sound.










3: (from the album Days of Open Hand, 1990)

Challenging. Difficult. Cerebral. Mystical. Enigmatic. Pale. Words one often finds associated with Days of Open Hand. With her third album (once again produced by A&M Records, but this time produced by Anton Sanko), Mrs. Vega was under a lot of pressure (both internally and externally) to replicate the success of her second album. She herself felt the need to craft the “perfect record.” The result was Days of Open Hand, an album that she herself admitted went way over people’s heads, and which took around a year to record. I’ve often seen the opinion expressed that this is one of her worst albums, but in my own opinion, I would say it’s one of her best, maybe even her second best. This was one of the first albums of hers I’ve ever purchased, and it’s long been a favorite of mine. It’s a difficult art rock album, to be sure, one that you must listen to a few times to really start to appreciate. But I’ve always enjoyed such albums, really. In some ways I would say it’s one of her darkest albums, despite having one of her poppiest and most upbeat songs (“Book of Dreams”). Admittedly, the slightly eerie photography and assemblages that can be found in the CD booklet (curtesy of Geof Kern) don’t help matters in this regard. Really, the best way to sum the album up is as a dream set to music.

The first track, “Tired of Sleeping,” seems pleasant enough at first, with an impassioned vocal performance by Mrs. Vega, though some of the lyrics give one pause: what to make of “That man he ripped out his lining/ Tore out a piece of his body/ To show us his ‘clean quilted heart’” or “The bird on the string is hanging/ Her bones are twisting and dancing/ She’s fighting for her small life.” The second track, “Men in a War,” a slightly aggressive pop-folk song, seems to be about Phantom Limb Syndrome. The third track, “Rusted Pipe,” opens with a moody Fairlight organ sequence (played by Vega herself), before launching into a bouncy marimba-heavy percussive groove, though the lyrics are still somewhat bleak, with Vega comparing herself in the lyrics to a rusted pipe that is utterly unable to articulate what it wants to say, being only able to “Gurgle, mutter/ Hiss, stutter/ Moan the words like water/ Rush and foam and choke.” The fourth track is “Book of Dreams,” which was a fairly successful single and is easily the most upbeat song on the album, and it’s a nice and catchy number. Track 5, “Institution Green,” is, at 6:15, one of her rare longer songs (and also one of the few songs on the album that doesn’t have her playing acoustic guitar). An atmospheric song that features various violin instruments and echoed percussion, it seems to be about a girl being admitted into a mental hospital of some sort, and the lyrics are marked by a vague Kafkaesque uneasiness. It’s followed by a shorter song, “Those Whole Girls (Run in Grace),” which I’ve always found unnerving, even though the lyrics seem innocuous enough: it’s kind of chilling when Vega keeps repeating the words “run in grace” in an extremely detached tone at the end of the song. Track 7, “Room Off The Street,” has an almost Middle Eastern-sound to it. Track 8, “Big Space,” seems to be about the void that exists between a couple (or maybe men and women in general). Track 9, “Predictions,” simply consists of Mrs. Vega listing various means of divination, yet it’s still quite haunting. The tenth track, “Fifty-Fifty Chance,” features a string arrangement by Philip Glass, and revolves around a woman who tried to kill herself but survived the incident. The final track, “Pilgrimage,” ends the album on an elegant note. All in all, I’d say that Days of Open Hand is one of Vega’s best albums, and would highly recommend it to anybody. It’s really hard for me to pick just one song to represent this album, but in the end I’ve gone with the unsettling “Those Whole Girls (Run in Grace).”










4: In Liverpool (from the album 99.9F°, 1992)

If Mrs. Vega’s original fans were mystified by her third album, lord knows what they made of her 4th. For once, Mrs. Vega wanted to do an album where the music matched the dirty and grittier aspects of her lyrics, and this album certainly accomplished that. 99.9F° was released by A&M Records in 1992, this time produced by Mitchell Froom, who took a more hands-on approach to Mrs. Vega’s music, playing instruments himself on many of the songs. Entertainment Weekly referred to the album as “Industrial Folk,” and while that’s a slight exaggeration (a few of the songs are still relatively conventional and traditional in arrangement, such as “Blood Sings” and “Song of Sand,” both of which are mostly just Suzanne playing her guitar and singing), certainly the lead-off single “Blood Makes Noise” owes more to Nine Inch Nails than Joni Mitchell, with its tribal-like drum beat and bass, its grinding synthesizer, and Mrs. Vega’s harshly whispered and sonically distorted voice. The album is a masterpiece of production, with its clattering percussion, techno beats, tinny keyboards, odd sound effects, distorted guitars, and carnival-like melodies. Even the album cover was different from most of her other works: rather than feature a black and white photograph of her hanging out in NYC (like her first album) or a pleasant-looking soft focus portrait like her second, here it looks as if her hair is on fire and she’s trying to chew a Band-Aid off her finger with her teeth. Pretty much her most experimental and discordant album, it was a critical and commercial failure. But what do they know? I think the album’s great. “Blood Makes Noise,” “Fat Man and Dancing Girl,” the title track, “Bad Wisdom” (the latter of which has a pastoral, almost medieval-like atmosphere), are all great tracks, but my favorite is probably “In Liverpool,” which has an absolutely epic and soaring chorus hook.










5: Caramel (from the album Nine Objects of Desire, 1996)

1996 saw the release of Suzanne Vega’s fifth album, Nine Objects of Desire (again released by A&M Records, again produced by Mitchell Froom). By this point in time, Mrs. Vega and Froom were a married couple (having gotten married the previous year): in fact, they even had a daughter, Ruby (who had been born in 1994). For the album’s 12 songs, Mrs. Vega decided to focus on nine specific objects (with some objects being covered in more than one song). These nine objects were:

1. Suzanne Vega's daughter Ruby ("Birthday", "World Before Columbus");
2. a man ("Headshots");
3. man 2 ("Caramel");
4. a woman ("Stockings");
5. man 3 ("Casual Match");
6. the figure of Death ("Thin Man", "Tombstone");
7. Vega's husband Mitchell Froom ("No Cheap Thrill", "Honeymoon Suite");
8. Lolita, the "nymphette" of Nabokov's book ("Lolita");
9. a plum ("My Favorite Plum").

As noted earlier, this was the first Suzanne Vega album I ever purchased, and is probably the one I’ve listened to the most. Is it her best album? Probably not. Yet, I still consider it my favorite of hers, and is another one I would recommend highly to people. It’s by far her poppiest (and perhaps even most conventional) album, its sound nowhere near as discordant as the previous one, and I find it to be one of her most diverse albums, one that embraces many different musical styles, such as jazz, blues, bossa nova, Latin, lounge, and so on (indeed, one fan on Amazon liked it to being her Abbey Road). The first song, “Birth-day (love made real)” is a somewhat aggressive rocker, “Headshots” has an almost spaghetti-western feel (with its moody guitar work and its repeated sample of a man whistling), the jazzy “Caramel” has a nice and soothing samba sound (it’s also one of Mrs. Vega’s favorite songs of hers, and features one of her most sultry singing performances), “No Cheap Thrill” is one of the most straightfoward and catchy pop songs she’s ever done, “Lolita” has an interesting tribal rhythm, and “World Before Columbus,” which sonically harkens back to her 1980’s material such as “Small Blue Thing,” is one of the most moving songs she’s ever recorded, with one of her most emotional and passionate vocal performances. Oddly enough, despite the fact that this is pretty much her most catchy and upbeat album, the issue of mortality figures in a few of the songs, mainly “Thin Man” (which seems to be about the Grim Reaper) and “Tombstone.” I had a really hard time picking just one song to showcase from this album: I almost went with “Headshots,” “No Cheap Thrill,” or “World Before Columbus,” but in the end, decided to go with “Caramel,” simply because it was the first Suzanne Vega song I ever heard (and still a great song in its own right).










6: Widow’s Walk (from the album Songs in Red and Gray, 2001)

In 1998, Suzanne Vega’s marriage with Mitchell Froom ended in a divorce, an event that went on to inform much of the lyrical content of her sixth album, 2001’s Songs in Red and Gray, which turned out to be her final album for A&M Records. Perhaps her most personal work, one could call this her “divorce album” and not be too far off the mark, as with this one she mostly disperses of the technique of writing about herself through the medium of characters or objects and focuses more on the first person in her lyrics. In some ways it almost seems like an invitation to fans of her older albums to return to her fold, mainly those fans who were alienated by her Froom-era albums, as this album features more of her trademark acoustic guitar work. Having said that, in some ways I agree with some of her fan base who find this album playing it a bit too safe after the adventurous three albums that came before it: the sound is very adult contemporary, and wouldn’t sound out of place as background music in a coffee house or a mainstream bookstore. Some of the blame has to be laid at the feet of producer Rupert Hine, who bathes many of the songs in an overly mellow, syrupy, and somewhat lifeless sound. Still, there are some very good songs on it, such as the very catchy “Last Year’s Troubles,” the quirky “Machine Ballerina,” and of course, “Widow’s Walk,” one of the album’s singles, and one of my favorite of Mrs. Vega’s songs, with a really great chorus.










7: Ludlow Street (from the album Beauty & Crime, 2007)

2007 saw the release (through the EMI-owned label Blue Note Records) of Suzanne Vega’s 7th album Beauty & Crime, which is perhaps her most NYC-ccentric record. Produced by Jimmy Hogarth and featuring an impressive array of guest musicians (including KT Tunstall, Tony Shanahan from the Patti Smith Group, and Sonic Youth’s Lee Renaldo, the latter of whom contributed guitar to a few tracks, including the song I’ve chosen to represent this album), I won’t say this is one of my favorite Vega albums but it does have some good tracks. “Zephyr & I” is quite catchy, “Pornographer’s Dream” has a smooth bossa nova sound that harkens back to Nine Objects of Desire, “Frank & Ava” (which is about Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner) is a cool rock song, and “Unbound” (a spiritual song about a plant) has a techno dance beat that evokes the spirit of her Froom albums of the 1990’s. The album is dedicated to her deceased brother, Tim, who lived on Ludlow Street in real-life and who is the subject of this touching track, where Vega sings that “Love is the only thing that matters/ love is the only thing that’s real/ I know we hear this every day/ It’s still the hardest thing to feel.”










8: I Never Wear White (from the album Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles, 2014)

In February of this year, Mrs. Vega released a new album on her own label, Amanuensis Productions, this album being Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles. It was her first album of new material in 7 years. Produced by her friend and longtime collaborator Gerry Leonard (who is also David Bowie’s musical director), I won’t say as much about this album as it’s still fairly new and I haven’t heard it as much as some of her other albums. I will say it has a few tracks that I would rank with her best, such as the single “The Fool’s Complaint” and “I Never Wear White,” which I’ve chosen as the song to showcase for this album. It’s probably the closest she’s ever come to punk rock, and has her singing lyrics like “I never wear white/ White is for virgins/ Children in summer/ Brides in the park” and “My color is black black black/ Black is for secrets/ Outlaws and dancers/ For the poet of the dark” over a swaggering rock beat (with bass provided by King Crimson’s Tony Levin). Quite a fun track, in other words, and a fan favorite at live shows. As the title suggests, the album abounds in Tarot-related imagery, not only in the song titles (such as “Portrait of the Knight of Wands”) but also in the lyrics; in “The Fool’s Complaint,” Vega writes about her hatred of the Queen of Pentacles, and identifies her card as the Fool, “That merry rootless man/ With air beneath my footstep/ And providence as my plan.” This makes sense, seeing as The Fool is a tarot card that some people see as symbolizing beginnings, and when one considers Mrs. Vega’s habit of reinventing herself from album to album. And as always, Mrs. Vega’s quirkiness shows up every now and then, such as on the song “Don’t Uncork What You Can’t Contain,” which samples rapper 50 Cent’s song “Candy Shop” (it’s also one of the only times I can think of where she name drops another band/musician in a song: in this case, Macklemore).







9: Woman on the Tier (I’ll See You Through) (off the Dead Man Walking soundtrack)

As a 9th and bonus track, here’s the song “Woman on the Tier,” which was an outtake from the Nine Objects of Desire sessions that later appeared on the Dead Man Walking soundtrack, though in truth it sounds more like a 99.9F° outtake. This was pretty much the last song she did in the “Industrial Folk” style, and I really love it… kind of wish she had done a whole album like this, really.







So, if I had to rank Suzanne Vega’s albums from favorite to least favorite, I would probably say:

1. Nine Objects of Desire (1996)
2. Days of Open Hand (1990)
3. Suzanne Vega (1985)
4. 99.9 F (1992)
5. Tales From the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles (2014)
6. Songs in Red and Gray (2001)
7. Beauty & Crime (2007)
8. Solitude Standing (1987)

(Yes, I tend to favor the 1990’s albums. Don’t be scared away by what some of the old school fans say about her Froom-era albums, they’re great).




Videos


Lou Reed interviews Suzanne Vega in 1986 for 120 Minutes.



Another Suzanne Vega interview, again from 1986.



Suzanne Vega’s music video for the song “Left of Center” (1986)



Suzanne Vega’s music video for “Luka” (1987)



Open Hand documentary part 1 (1990)



Open Hand documentary part 2 (1990)



Open Hand documentary part 3 (1990)



Suzanne Vega’s music video for “99.9 F” (1992)



Suzanne Vega performs her song “Blood Makes Noise” on the David Letterman Show (1992?)



Suzanne Vega’s music video for “No Cheap Thrill” (1996)



Suzanne Vega performing “World Before Columbus” live (1997)



Homer Simpson sings “Luka” (1997)



Suzanne Vega’s appearance in Second Life (2006)



Suzanne Vega’s appearance on the album Dark Night of the Soul (2010)



Suzanne Vega performing “Marlene on the Wall” with Richard Thompson (2010)



Suzanne Vega covers Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” in a concert from earlier this year.




Pictures


Suzanne Vega as a child.



Suzanne Vega in 1979.



Suzanne Vega in the 1980’s.



Suzanne posing on the cover of the “Luka” single in 1987.



Suzanne Vega with Leonard Cohen in 1988.



Suzanne Vega around 1996.



Suzanne Vega in 2003.



Suzanne Vega in 2007.



Suzanne Vega posing in the real-life model of Tom’s Diner in 2012.



Suzanne Vega today.



Another recent picture of Mrs. Vega.




Links of Interest

Suzanne Vega’s official website
a Suzanne Vega fan site
analysis of Suzanne Vega’s Days of Open Hand
Leonard Cohen interviews Suzanne Vega
nice fan site with lots of pictures
info on Suzanne Vega setlists
Suzanne Vega discusses some of her songs







*

p.s. Hey. Today the master guest-post maker plus writer extraordinaire plus a guy who puts the d in d.l. i.e. Sypha makes a triumphant return to the fold of the front page to share his considerableness with the works of songster Suzanne Vega. So, a great chance for you guys today in a bunch of ways, and I hope you make full use of it and direct your responsiveness at the maestro in change, thank you. And major thanks to you, S! ** Tomkendall, Whoa, Tom! Buddy! How sweet to get to see you! Thanks so much for bursting out of the silence with such great news! Your novel is ready for its sprucing and polishing at long last! That's super great and exciting, man! Where can one find this completing masterwork? Man, that's so great! You good? I see fragments of you and yours on FB sometimes, and it's always a joy. Please burst out, or, I guess, burst in, in here again before too long. Lots of love to you! ** David Ehrenstein, That is true about 'O.C. & Stiggs', huh, a film that, yeah, I haven't thought about in ages. How is it? Oh, link. That looks promising: the K.S.A/O.C. clip. Thank you. ** Sypha, Hi, James! The post rules, naturally, and I'm going to spend some of my day getting to know her stuff beyond the stuff I already know, which is basically the stuff MTV used to promulgate back in the, uh, 80s. Thank you! There was a bee in there, but it was dead, so I guess that was okay, right? Yeah, see, I've had this burning instinctual feeling that RS was just taking their unsweet time to say yes! I just couldn't imagine a no in that case. Awesome! Any idea when? ** Kier, Hi, K. Ooh, those are pretty spiders. Yeah, I'm cool with spiders except kind of not cool with tarantulas because when I was a little kid, and when my family was visiting Texas, and when I was wandering around on some farm that I think my dad owned or something, a tarantula saw me and scared me and chased me for literally half a mile as I ran terrified across the farm looking for shelter. So, I still get pangs when I see tarantulas. Photos and gifs are okay, though. I did see your scans. Facebook is so revealing. Well, or I guess 'liking' is so revealing. What?! He doesn't like Guided by Voices?! Then he is dead to me. Dead, I tell you! Kidding, obvs. So, you leave for the north today, no? Safe trip. How are you getting there? My day was basically consumed by film prep stuff, contacting people for Zac and me to meet with re: roles, setting up the appointments, working on scene revision, asking a certain great, known music maker/composer if we can use a couple of tracks by him in our film and getting a happy yes, etc. That was kind of my day entirely. It was good, though. Went well. Kind of more of the same today, I think, plus, I hope, work on my novel. Have safe and even fun travels, if that's your day ahead. How was your day ahead? ** Steevee, Hi. Yeah, I read that manifesto yesterday. It's very refreshing indeed. Everyone, Steevee says, 'Here's a refreshing manifesto from Palestinian youth who are both anti-Israeli and anti-Hamas.' Ade did get a push to some degree. I don't think it worked all that well. Rightly or wrongly, I remember people I know who were into that music considering Ade's work to be a more 'acceptable', 'friendly' version. I haven't listened in Ade in ages, so I don't know if that's fair or not. ** Hyemin Kim, Hi. Bees would have been more scary. I might try a bee one. To see if I can scare people or, more interesting, to see if I can not scare people. You weren't/aren't being bland. I know bland when I see it. Yeah, totally understood about the panic attacks and the very reasonable reason that they happen. That sounds really stressful. I wrote a remembrance of Bresson for Artforum when he died. It's in my book 'Smothered in Hugs'. Let me see if it's online. Hold on. Oh, wow, I guess it's on that Dennis Cooper official website even. I had no idea. This is it. ** _Black_Acrylic, That's pretty cool if I managed to makes spiders scarier than they inherently are even if I don't find them particularly scary. Oh, shit, so sorry to hear about the stalling out, Ben. I don't suppose you could find another editor? I don't know. I hope that guy gets on the ball and comes to his fucking senses. ** Keaton, Thank you, man! I think things that have spider in the title tend to be good for some reason. Or wait, let me think. 'Spider Stratagem', ZS & the Spiders from Mars, 'Boris the Spider', ... But wait, the 'Spiderman' movies are mediocre crap. Never mind my poor theory. I remember that movie 'The Guardian'. I think, wow, I might even remember that video store cardboard display? Is that even possible? ** Statictick, Hi, N! How very, very, very welcome it is to see you! Understandable, man. Ongoing love and hugs. Wow, the Odd Hours post. Yeah, that would be very sweet and welcome, thank you! Awesome that you have so many projects on your plate. And about the personal stuff, and the interpersonal okayness. Oh, Nick Cave. I really liked the Birthday Party and his early solo stuff. I just stopped paying close attention at some point, I don't know why. Cool that he was great live. I would think so. I saw a couple of early Bad Seeds era shows, and they were great. Questions, okay. Man, take care! ** Joshua nilles, Hi, man. Whoa, nice sentence. Did I miss your take on Chris/Rewritedept's excerpt? Shit, I'll go back and find it. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Huh, okay, a Cormac McCarthy post. I didn't expect that. Not that I expected anything. I don't think I've done one, true, or, if I did, it would have been on my old, dead, ghost town of a blog. All right, that's a challenge. Hm, I'll try to do something that isn't just the usual or overly familiar CM thing. Interesting. I'll do my best. You'll see whatever it ends up being on the weekend. Nice reasoning on his part there about 'funny marks all over the page'. What a card, and, yet, he has a point. Doesn't like Proust. I find that very refreshing. Ugh, about the allergies. Was last night the second Benadryl night, I hope? I'll take a tiramisu on you. I like it too. Not the frozen supermarket kind, though. Yuck. Hella yuck. But the real thing, nice. Thank you! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Thanks, Jeff. Later this week or next should be okay for me. Let's sort it. I have film stuff to do, but I should have some windows. I'll know better what my windows are tomorrow. But if you want to suggest a day/time, we can start there. I guess novels need to be on ice at times. That can even help. I'm trying to defrost mine at the moment. I like Silver Jews. I've never been head over heels about him/them. I think the album I listened to the most was 'American Water', actually. He/they are one of those artists I always want to concentrate on more than I have. ** Kyler, Yes, you shall, you did. Oh, you might do a reading or readings? That's a good idea. I better you're really good at reading. Checking to see if there are less of your books on bookstore shelves can drive you crazy, man. Be careful. I used to do that in my early, uh, 'career'', but then I decided to never check. Neither solution is a happy one. I don't mind semi-colons. I just don't like to use them myself is all. They have their power. All respect to their thing and to their power. I'll enjoy my Mardi. You enjoy your Tuesday. It's, like, in the upper 70s here. Not bad. ** Rewritedept, Hi. That's a good theory. I do that sometimes. I love cutting and editing back, so it's not scary to put too much in at first. 'Assisted Living' is a goodie, yes. My Monday was productive. See my report to Kier if you're interested, but it's not that interesting to hear about. We start rehearsals for the next scene on the 21st and start shooting on the 24th. My novel is still a very incomplete first draft. I'm still getting the first draft down. I edit all the time, though, first draft or not. Cool, nice about your pals. All right, enjoy your Tuesday to the max. ** Okay. Go see, read, hear, and watch what Suzanne Vega is all about through the magnificent filter of Sypha's fandom and powers of persuasion. See you tomorrow.

'I created this abstract scheme of permutations of situations in which A meets B, B meets C, and so forth. There’s no point in looking for it now because no one will ever figure it out, including me. Anyway, I stared at this for a year, and in time people started appearing, then situations, then stories.'-- Harry Mathews


'Novelist, poet and essayist Harry Mathews is one of literature's great modern treasures. The deft experimentation which characterizes his work must at least in part be attributed to his association with the Oulipo, a group of French writers and mathematicians devoted to exploring the potential of literature by applying sets of rules, simple and complex, to texts, with the thought that a series of logical steps can lead to surprise. And surprise, as the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan -- among others -- has pointed out, is perhaps the most convincing proof of our unconscious. (Incidentally, out this month from Atlas Press, is the excellent oulipean resource, The Oulipo Compendium, which Mathews co-edited.)

'Last year Dalkey Archive Press, another modern treasure, started to reissue a selection of Mathews' out-of-print works, including most recently Cigarettes, his 1987 masterpiece. An immensely readable, densely plotted, slyly subversive novel, Cigarettes is full of surprises. Its chapters center on pairs of relationships between the book's characters who operate in New York City's art and business world in the early 1960s. Chapters are titled after the relationship pairs: Alan and Elizabeth; Oliver and Elizabeth; Oliver and Pauline ...

'Mathews weaves remarkable hues of compassion and coercion into his cast of personalities: passively naive, hugely generous or pathologically fearful of being swindled, excluded or duped. Some are able to dwell satisfyingly in ambivalence; others are so frustrated by ambivalence they lunge toward an extreme of kindness or cruelty. The narrative's subplots, which involve scams, seductions, friendships, forgeries and love affairs, are staged against a backdrop of bars, art galleries, country homes, S&M clubs, artist studios and horse-racing tracks -- and are tantalizingly drawn out without being resolved.

'There is much to praise in this elegant book, which is wicked and warm at once: the casual introduction of complex ideas, the humor, the Herculean scaffolding of its structure, the skilled blend of language -- gorgeous description, detailed narration and speech. Its direct dialogue ranges from natural (an artist to his assistant: "You are crapping all over the canvas. You know better.") to bizarrely clichéd (a woman discussing horse track betting with the man she's courting: "Wrong nick-name toots. The point is, so far my system's no answer to a virgin's prayer."), to frighteningly incomprehensible (a young artist debilitated by an undiagnosed illness: "Then a nice older piece of lettuce for salad days full of suggestions & spinal trappings.").

'For Mathews, language mirrors human conduct and, specifically, communication -- an activity often structured by misreadings of oneself and therefore others. Language and behavior are interconnected enterprises with vast possibilities; both can be executed creatively; both can be played out as unthinking responses to received information. It's a process which sets in place a stubborn assortment of destructive behaviors -- such as parents' possessiveness toward a "favorite child," younger siblings' anger at the older ones who cared for them, and miserable self-absorption -- which require concerted efforts, if not extreme measures, to break.

'Among the ways Mathews' characters break that conditioning include: sadomasochistic games (which come off somehow touching and hilarious); physical and mental illness (sickness being an especially violent form of destruction); and the more conventional teacher-student relationships, as between these two writers: "Morris was showing him what writing could do. He advanced the notion that creation begins by annihilating typical forms and procedures, especially the illusory 'naturalness' of sequence and coherence."

'But changing habits isn't just about obliterating patterns; it's also about allowing new knowledge in -- and understanding that it dwells nearby -- as the exquisite meditation on death at the novel's end suggests: " ... the dead stay everlastingly present among us, taking the form of palpable vacancies that only disappear when, as we must, we take them into ourselves. We take the dead inside us; we fill their voids with our own substance; we become them."

'In Cigarettes, life is a kind of play whose capacity for rapture, longing and pain are limitless. Engaging with it can prove to be achingly joyful.'-- Lynn Crawford



_____
Gallery















_____
Further

'TCH, TCH: NOTES ON CIGARETTES' by Jeremy M. Davies
'THE NARRATIVE ARTISTRY OF HARRY MATHEWS’ CIGARETTES'
'THE MANY FALSE FLOORS OF HARRY MATHEWS'
'Harry Mathews's Al Gore Rhythms: A Re-viewing of Cigarettes'
'Quotes About Harry Mathews's Cigarettes (1987)'
'Composing: Harry Mathews' Words & Worlds'
'Recognizing the Thing Itself in Harry Mathews's "Cigarettes"'
'Should Writing Hurt?: Joseph McElroy interviews Harry Mathews'
Harry Mathews interviewed by Lynne Tillman @ BOMB
Harry Mathews, The Art of Fiction No. 191 @ The Paris Review
'25 Points: 20 Lines a Day'
HARRY MATHEWS IN CONVERSATION WITH LAIRD HUNT @ The Believer
'In Quest of the Oulipo' by Harry Mathews
'HYMNS TO MISUNDERSTANDING: HARRY MATHEWS’ FIRST THREE NOVELS'
'EXTRAVAGANT TABLECLOTHS: HARRY MATHEWS, POET'
'SOLVING (AND NOT SOLVING) THE CONVERSIONS'
'More Harry Mathews (fewer numbers this time, I promise)'
'How French Is It?'
'The Curse of Coherence: Cold War CIA Funding for Oulipo’s Confidence-Man'



____
Extras


Lecture Oulipo, Harry Mathews aux Récréations 2011 à Bourges


Harry Mathews on Bookworm


Marie Chaix and Harry Matthews | The New School for Public Engagement




Lecture / Reading Harry Mathews, 10.10.11, galerie éof, Paris


Harry Mathews Quotes



______
Interview
from EOAGH




Barbara Henning: I reread Cigarettes a few weeks ago and the characters are still in my mind.

Harry Mathews: How was it?

BH: It was great. I especially liked the characters Phoebe and Lewis. They are the characters that are the most alive, the most suffering …

HM: Yes, and Lewis turns out to be the narrator in the end and that changes everything. It makes him a much more sympathetic and humane character than he seemed before.

BH: I was wondering how you invented this narrative. Somewhere you talk about how the structure enabled you to work with some autobiographical material.

HM: Not so much autobiography, but my early milieu. New York, and the Hamptons, disguised in the book as Saratoga Springs. When I was writing Cigarettes I found myself confronted with this abstract list of events that had no meaning at all. But it finally gave me access to the circumstances of my early life. I didn’t know that was going to happen. I had set up a series of five-item lines of events, moronically simple events like A meets B, B dislikes A, A falls in love with B, B flees. . . and you have no idea who A or B is and they are not the same always. Anyway, I’ve spent years concealing this.

BH: Tell us.

HM: Well, let’s say there are five lines and then you transpose the things. You take the first item from the first line and put it into to the second line, and the third item into the third line, and so forth. You get a completely different story. I had this whole thing laid out in front of me, but there was no indication of who anyone was or where it was happening….

BH: How did you come up with that?

HM: I just kept looking and little by little and situations and characters started emerging. It was extraordinary. I had had no idea what I was going to do.

BH: It reads like a Victorian novel.

HM: Well, that was deliberate.

BH: When I finished it, I thought that it almost invites a structural analysis, and maybe that’s what you started with. Or maybe the critics would come out with something totally different.

HM: (laughter) They would come out with the detective aspect of it. What seems to have happened didn’t happen, it turns out he and she were not behaving the way you thought they were. That’s what people think is Oulipian about it, but it has nothing to do with it. It was just something that grew out of the structure. It was arbitrary in the sense that I lined up the different events, but they were after all very basic. They didn’t signify anything substantial.

BH: It wasn’t really a mathematical structure—

HM: It was because the situations were permutated, as in a sestina; their order changes in a precise way. The sestina, by the way, is a wonderful form. The Oulipo has done lots of work with not only the sestina but with what we call n-inas or queninas: that is, the principle of the sestina extended to poems whose stanzas have any number of lines (not merely six). This was the work of Roubaud, something not conceivable thirty years earlier.

BH: My students are writing sestinas this week, using sentences instead of lines. I’ve been doing this every semester in the flash fiction classes I teach.

HM: Do you know my prose sestinas?

BH: Yes, you gave them to me long ago. They are in the course packet with your assignment. I’ve been using them for years. What was the relationship between the New York School and Oulipo? You were involved with both groups.

HM: There is no connection, except for me. Incidentally, the original members of the New York School denied its aesthetic existence. I got involved because I had met John Ashbery, we became friends and soon started the magazine Locus Solus; Kenneth Koch and James Schuyler were the other two editors, also charter members of the New York School. Look at those three poets: they don’t have much in common.

BH: Yes, they are very different from each other.

HM: They had something basic in common, like “clean” writing. I don’t know how to define it. There was some unspoken rule perhaps that warned against self-indulgence.

BH: But with O’Hara and Jimmy Schuyler, there’s this intimate voice… I think that’s what a lot of the poets in the second generation New York School picked up on.

HM: You’re so right. I particularly like what Ron Padgett has done with that. Have you seen his last book, How Long? In fact his last two books are packed with rare jewels.

BH: It’s sitting on my to-read shelf. What you were doing with Oulipo was quite different from what they were doing. I’m thinking there is this experimental edge to the New York School, an interest in collage and . . .

HM: I don’t think there really was, certainly in the case of John Ashbery and we’ve discussed it often enough. You know he isn’t really interested, I mean occasionally he’ll use a formal procedure but it’s exceptional.

BH: What about his pantoums?

HM: True enough. The Oulipo was also interested in the pantoum. Jacques Jouet was the one who led the way; he eventually wrote an article on the pantoum, including its oriental traditions, that is as useful as such things can get.

BH: And you wrote a sequence of haiku in your latest book, The New Tourism.

HM: Oulipians have been writing haiku for years. The haiku has become like the sonnet, something you can do in your sleep. I mean it is not a really demanding form. Some people find it difficult, but all you need is five plus two fingers. However, I discovered a mistake among my own haiku, one of them is missing two syllables in the second line. Let’s call it a clinaman.

BH: I wrote a sequence of sonnets for a Leave Book pamphlet long ago and I was looking at them recently and noticed one was only 13 lines.

HM: It is still a sonnet. By the way, Ron Padgett wrote a great self-definitional haiku: “First five syllables,/ Second seven syllables,/ Third five syllables.”

BH: Richard Wright wrote a book of haikus at the end of his life, a terrific book.

HM: I wrote them because they are so short. At the end of the day I’m usually sozzled and sleepy; it was interesting to see what emerged from the day. Was it you that said they were little glimpses into my life?

BH: Yes, I did say that in a letter to you.

HM: I don’t know why I stopped, but I’m glad I did since there are so many of them already. It’s thanks to the guys who run this little press that I put them in; I’d found many of them defective as poems, but that doesn’t matter: it’s having the long sequence that matters.

BH: I like to collect haiku images either in my notebook or with my camera. It keeps me sane, in a yogic way of speaking.

HM: It was at the moment of the day when I couldn’t . . . well they probably did, kind of relief and abandonment of ego, which is half way there.

BH: Did you know Laura Riding when you were with Robert Graves in Majorca?

HM: No I never met her. She was long gone by then. They broke up in 36. And I met Robert in the fall of 54. No, I wrote this long piece on her, it’s in my collected essays, The Case of the Persevering Maltese.

BH: I remember reading that essay some time ago.

HM: At the time, they had just republished a wonderful book of hers, called Progress of Stories. I wrote this enthusiastic review, it must have been the most enthusiastic review she ever received.

BH: She was still alive then, wasn’t she?

HM: Yes, oh alas, and I really figured the whole thing out and not in an ah ha way I’ve caught you, but in a respectful way, but unfortunately this was the pretext for her grousing. I said, you know, her name has changed so much, the only thing that is consistent is Laura, so I’m going to refer to her as Laura.

BH: You must have known how she would respond to any critical writing about her. Did she write you letters?

HM: She wrote a letter to The New York Review of Books, an absolutely loathsome letter which I answered with three lines. I wasn’t going to argue with her. She was too insane. But I love her all the same. I love The Telling, too. Did you ever read that? It is a terrific book. I pay tribute to that in this review, too.

BH: Yes, years back Lewis Warsh gave me a copy of The Telling. That’s the first time I read Riding. I also wrote a piece on her (after she died) that I presented at a panel for The Poetry Project. It’s on-line. I’ll send you a link. I spent quite a bit of time in the library reading all her letters to the editors and made a poem-essay in response.

HM: I have a student who has become a very good art critic and historian, Rafael Rubenstein. When I was his tutor at Bennington, he wanted to write on Laura Riding. In the end he sent her his thesis; I said, if I were you I wouldn’t. She just stomped on it.

BH: She created her own empty spot in literary history. Even now she doesn’t show up in lots of anthologies where she should. I may be almost out of questions today, but let me ask one last thing about Cigarettes. When you were writing it, when you got involved in these two scenes, the one with Phoebe’s terrible mental suffering and then the sadomasochistic sex scene with Lewis, how emotionally involved were you?

HM: In the case of Phoebe I was very emotionally involved because among other things, even though she is unlike Niki de Saint Phalle, Niki suffered from hyper- thyroidism and the description of Phoebe’s disease was really a replica of Niki’s. It was a ghastly, terrible experience to witness, and I was happy to be able to write about it in fiction, about someone who wasn’t Niki, rather than writing about her. In the case of Lewis, Lewis appears on the first page of the book. He’s the one who is saying I want to write a book about these people. They are showing him a letter from Owen and he can’t believe that anyone wrote this and he’s there speaking as “I” and . . .

BH: And then the reader completely forgets about it until in the end you realize you have been listening all along to Lewis. There’s one tiny reference at the very end that made me realize that. What was it?

HM: It was some reference to Morris. So my heart went out to him. He seems to be a creep but actually he is the person remembering everything so he can tell the story. I felt sympathy for Lewis. I suppose I was thinking about myself in my less sociable days.

BH: That’s all the questions I have, Harry, except—how did you hurt your finger?

HM: There was another French writer, Hélène Cixous, a feminist whom years ago I was ridiculously pursuing –– she was obviously gay. One evening friends of mine started making fun of her and I got very mad and swept my hand across a table full of glassware and cut my finger open very nastily. I went to an emergency ward up the street. They put me in front of this woman doctor. She was relatively young, but she had a solid older nurse standing behind her. She looked at my finger and said, But you are bleeding terribly! Oh, no, I said, this is perfectly normal. I spent my whole time reassuring this woman who was scared shitless of sewing me up. She took a hooked needle –– she was chain smoking through this –– and got it into one flap of my gaping wound, then she got it through the other, then she pulled the thread right through both flaps of skin and out the other side. It was extremely painful. I learned how many nerves there are in the extremities. Of course she had to do it all over again. Are you suffering pain? she asked and I said, Oh, no, nothing at all.

BH: So now your finger is bent like this because you were defending Hélène Cixous.

HM: Yes

BH: I have one more question. Why did you call the book, Cigarettes?

HM: That’s a very good question. Everyone asks it.

BH: You didn’t lay out cigarettes as you were laying out the permutations, did you?

HM: There’s no explanation. The explanation is that it’s a good question. After looking at that title every page after page after page, people wonder, why is it called, Cigarettes.

BH: I never thought about it until we were sitting here talking about Obama smoking. So you chose it because there would be no possibility of connecting it with the novel in a meaningful way.

HM: Only in a clichéd way, life or love is like a cigarette, you finish one, you start another, all that kind of junk. And I don’t see that. I think the title is getting better and better because no one smokes anymore, well, only two-fifths of the population.

BH: The sidewalks are now full of people who smoke.

HM: It reminds me of Tlooth. Here you are in the middle of the Venetian episode and the guy goes out to the prophetic marsh and sinks his or her leg and pulls it out and the marsh says, Tlooth. What happens at that point is interesting because the reader looks at the top of the page and realizes this has been there all the time and for a moment the book becomes an object, calling the reader back to reality.

BH: It’s already four o’clock and I have to head downtown. Thanks Harry for sharing your afternoon with me. And thanks for lunch, too.



___
Book

Harry Mathews Cigarettes
Dalkey Archive


'Cigarettes, more than any of Mathews’s other works, is about characters and their relations, how the networks of people knit together over a life. Compared to his previous novels, it feels like a more traditional, almost Elizabethan mode of style. But again, just under the surface, it is clear the author is up to something different: the characters are presented almost like icons in a chess set, played out in Mathews’s imagination in a series of formal integrations. Each of the novel’s 15 chapters—titled, simply, Allan and Elizabeth, Oliver and Elizabeth, Oliver and Pauline, etc.—explores the connection between two recurring characters over a stretch of 40 years. Slowly the manias, evils, desperations, illnesses, and all other sort of hidden human issues manifest themselves and combine over the framework of something larger about death and money and fraud and art. While Mathews is masterful at mimicking the serial manner of 19th century novels, he constantly injects his little puzzles, small sticky scenes, and knobs of language that throw the balance off of itself over and again. Opening sentence: “What’s he mean, ‘I suppose you want an explanation?’”' -- Blake Butler



_____
Quotes

She was disgusted with herself...and the disgust permanently cured her of suicide. Her piddling life did not deserve dramatic remedies.

*


While at the New School Irene met Mark Kramer, ten years her senior, a prosperous public accountant with a weakness for high culture. He persuaded her to leave the Bronx. From their brief marriage she learned that the sexual sincerity of the male may have capture and imprisonment as its covert goal.

*


So Pauline’s resentment lived on, a ponderous beast dormant in its gloomy trough. Twenty-five years after her marriage, her friend Owen Lewison told her one evening that Allan and Maud, for reasons unknown to him, had sequestered a valuable painting by Walter Trale, improbably claiming that it had been stolen. He asked Pauline to find out if the painting had been hidden in Allan’s apartment. ‘High Heels’ accepted, with a vengeance, with no illusion about her task: she would seduce Maud’s husband and implicate her sister in a dubious scheme.

*


Pauline never interested Oliver except as a prize. He soon neglected her. He discouraged her from working, from having children—when he learned the truth about her inheritance, he declared that in such difficult times children cost more than they could comfortably afford.

*


Oliver’s self-esteem did not lessen when he learned, much later, the facts of Pauline’s inheritance. He never overtly reproached her, and in truth the revelation left him almost grateful. After all, it confirmed that he had the right to manage things, the right to show condescension and pity, the right to control.

*


Morris had imagined a prodigious book: for that place and time, The Book. It was to include fiction as well as criticism, theory as well as poetry, using the most appropriate medium to explore each facet of its subject: the finiteness of intellect and language confronting the infinity of the intuited universe. During the spring weekend they spent with Phoebe in the Hudson River valley, Morris invited Lewis to collaborate on the project. They would begin work on May 24, Morris’s thirtieth birthday. The task would take at least three years.

*


In a clump of copper beeches by the stables, on a tablecloth spread on the ground, Phoebe set out lunch: two club sandwiches, four pears, a slab of rat cheese, a frosty thermos of martinis. They ate and drank. . . . Owen felt pleasantly restless: “Let’s go take a look.”

“This is no time for camp followers,” Phoebe told him. “We’d be in the way.”

“Well, I feel like joining the party.”

“They thought of that. You get to bet.”

*


At another time [the voice in Phoebe’s head] repeated an inexplicable succession of letters inside her docile ears: b.s.t.q.l.d.s.t., b.s.t.q.l.d.s.t. . . . Phoebe could not decipher the series. After making it yield “Beasts stalk the question lest demons sever trust,” and “But soon the quest lured drab saint thither,” she rejected the possibility that the letters were initials. She found it even harder to make words out of them, especially without a u for the q.

*


During her trip, Phoebe learned something about the series of letters. B.s.t.q.l.d.s.t. signified an old train careening down an old track. At slower speeds, the train said,

Cigarettes, tch tch.

Cigarettes, tch tch.

*


Lewis, anything but dull, suffered from an excess of misguided cleverness: he could disparage himself brilliantly in a matter of seconds. He knew literature, art, the theater, history; and his knowledge surpassed what a college normally provides. His knowledge led nowhere, certainly not into the world where he was supposed to earn a living. Lewis had once gone to work in the bookstore of his school because he loved handling books and looked forward to being immersed in them. He was then instructed to keep careful accounts of merchandise that might as well have been canned beans. He soon lost interest in his simple task, failed to master it, and quit after three days. Eight years later, he was still convinced of his practical incompetence. College friends familiar with his tastes would suggest modest ways for him to get started: they knew of jobs as readers in publishing houses, as gofers in theatrical productions, as caretakers at galleries. Lewis rejected them all. While he saw that they might lead to greater things, they sounded both beneath and beyond him--the bookstore again. Other chums who had gone on to graduate school urged their choice on him. Lewis harbored an uneasy scorn for the corporation of scholars, who seemed as unfit for the world as he. He remained desperate, lonely, and spoiled.




*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Really? Until quite recently, I had never met anyone who disliked Proust in my whole life, so the quibbling is refreshing to me. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. ** Hyemin Kim, Hi. Oh, that's okay. Those letters I wrote to Bresson were an extremely rare thing for me to do. (Every time I type Bresson, Blogger's spellcheck corrects it to Breton, ha ha). I'm terrible about responding to mail and email from people who are expressing their liking of my work. It's really due to my terribleness with correspondence that has been a result of doing the p.s. every day. Good luck dealing and warding off the 'back to school' signals. ** Mikel Motorcycle, Hi, Mikel. Excellent to see you, man! Oh, you posted your top songs back in that thread? I'll go find them straight away. Cool. I never look at previous comment threads unless someone alerts me. Bad habit. Ha ha, an "Awkward 80s/90s MTV Interviews" Day. Not a bad idea at all. You good? What's up? ** Bacteriaburger, Hi, Natty. Thanks for being here and for chiming in. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Thank you again so much. I did some exploring of her oeuvre. Yeah, very interesting. Not hugely my thing, I guess, but it's nice to now know why she's held in high regard by people I hold in high regard. I figured it was a little too early for a release date, yeah. I just got greedy there for a minute. ** Kier, Hi, Kier. You're up there now. And you're here too. All is okay with the world. It sounds really nice. I love foggy, but foggy is super, super rare in Paris. Awesome about the heavy likelihood of good days ahead! My day was kind of stressful. The rewriting of that scene was very tough, and I still don't think I've gotten it right, But it was productive. It was pretty much a day eaten up by scene revision. Not much else. Today should be pretty good, I think. We'll see. I'll let you know. Let me know how Wednesday happened up there. ** Steevee, Hi, S. Thanks a lot for the good words to James. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oh, well, the late summer completion pledge is heartening. I mean, it'll be late summer in about two weeks, if it isn't late summer already. It's pouring rain here today, which, in Paris, usually means summer has shot its wad. Hope so. Interesting about the debate. So the 'no's' are ahead? That's disappointing. I mean, it is, isn't it? I'm definitely not at all versed in the details of what will happen if the 'no's' triumph. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Um, it's possible that later Friday my time could work. I can't really say yet because we have film-related meetings that day, but earlier, I think. I'll let you know. If not, Monday should work, I think. Sorry for the vagueness. We have a big meeting with our production manager tomorrow, and I'll have a better sense of what's ahead in detail after that. Yury's fashion line is pretty far along, and I think right now he and his colleagues are looking for orders and starting to do press and stuff. There's a lot of complicated business stuff going on that he doesn't really share with me and that I'm not really clear about. But I think it's going well. ** Keaton, I remember 'Kiss of the Spider Woman'. Kind of a pretty good novel too. Ha ha, VHS horror movies. Tomorrow's post might be of interest to you. The video store I used to go to in LA back when had an excellent porn room. Somebody who worked there was very into it and had fairly excellent tastes in the genre. I'm good. You sound pretty good. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Hm, really hard to believe that a Safeway bakery could make edible tiramisu, but, on the other hand, my local Albertsons bakery wasn't too shabby when it came to eclairs, which always shocked me. Feel better? Yeah, it's going to be an odd CM post, but that's okay, right? You're okay with 'odd', historically speaking, if memory serves. I watched the trailer for Franco's 'Child of God' yesterday. Yeah, hm, really hard to tell. I think I saw some test footage he shot for the 'BM' movie, and I think it was pretty fucking awful, if I'm remembering. He was superb in 'Spring Breakers'. For me, that and 'Freaks and Geeks' remain his two high points. ** Bill, Hi, B. Welcome home! We're having Bay Area style weather here today. That show you saw does look interesting. John Miller had work in it. That's cool. Yay that you and Marc hung out, and so weird about Atau Tanaka's proximity. I had that kind of thing happen here at the Recollects when I only found out Aki Onda was living here two weeks before he was going to move out after a three month stay. I would love, and, in fact, I crave 'a visual gig/gallery' post, if you don't mind. That would be so amazing and welcome! Thank you, Bill! ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron. I know Picastro, yeah. I think I've heard some of them, but I can't remember. I'll go refresh myself re: them today. Cool. That Fall cover sounds awesomely insane. Difficult emotion avoidance is really tricky. Catharsis is always possible, but people can do that forever. My mom was a big avoider of emotions that would disrupt the way she had organized herself and her life, and she never changed. And people like that are prime candidates for drug addiction, which is eerie. Really hard to predict that one. If you give him a reason to feel like he can trust that your feelings are irrevocable, that and watching for inlets are all you can really do, I guess. Derek is super sweet and the best, yes! Great that you guys are getting to know each other! ** Joshua nilles, Hi, Joshua. Whoa, that's so great about David Berman's response. That means a lot, actually. That's very, very cool! Thank you for being awesome and approachable too. ** Right. I'm putting the spotlight on Harry Mathews and, especially, on his amazing and kind of fluke big hit novel 'Cigarettes'. Enjoy. See you tomorrow.

'Johnny Dickie is an extremely avid (and super-cool) VHS collector who not only runs his own website called Video Vendetta which is dedicated to showcasing and reviewing some of the grooviest and most obscure VHS flicks known to the Videovore, he’s also just completed two full-length feature films with oa third now in post-production, all written, directed and edited by Johnny himself. But you wanna know what’s even more groovy? Johnny’s done all of this before his 17th birthday, even though he’s quick to dismiss his age as a factor.

'We first met Johnny Dickie about a decade ago, when he was six years old and regularly running a path of wild, hilarious destruction after school at Molly’s Books in the Italian Market. (His mom, Molly Russakoff, owns the place, and it’s still great — in fact, better than ever.) Even back then, it was easy to see that Johnny was a gifted kid, whipping up an endless series of drawings and jokes and clearly inspired by the energy of the Market.

'So there’s not too much that’s surprising that, at 16, Johnny now has an IMDB entry that rivals that of many actor/directors three times his age. But Dickie isn’t on some corny child-star trip, oh no; since the age of 12, he’s been making his own homemade horror movies with pretty much whatever equipment is immediately available to him. As such, to enter the cinematic world of Johnny Dickie is to experience a place in the imagination where VHS is a viable option and the goopy grape-jelly fake blood flows like wine.

'And because there’s a community for everyone online these days, Dickie’s films have found an audience — in this case, a devout underground of splatter-obsessed, videotape-collecting horror obsessives. His last big feature, Johnny Dickie’s Slaughter Tales was released on DVD and VHS via Libra Verde Media. And of his newest, City of the Dream Demons, about a night-terror’d kid’s 16th birthday gone horribly awry.

'Dickie's films are not technically spectacular. You won't walk away wishing for an Oscar nod. You will walk away with a shit eating grin on your face. Those films are made by a horror fan. Specifically by a fan of the SOV sub genre that came out of the video store boom of the eighties/nineties. The acting is bad in all of the right ways. It has that hyper real, while being over the top feel. It almost was reminiscent of early John Waters, with long dialogues, over expression, and rapid eye movement.

'Dickie is an avid collector of VHS tapes, and everything about his films harkens back to that mid-to-late-eighties heyday when horror films ruled the rental roost (mostly due to low budgets and high demand for any kind of content). The flicks are shot on video, and look like they're trying to replicate those early shot-on-VHS efforts. Pretty much all of the effects are practical, including some stop-motion work, and the actors (besides Dickie) are all pretty much the kind of amateur performers one expects in these kinds of low-budget flicks.

'Dickie's films play like an adolescent take on Fellini's 8 1/2, autobiographical mind-fucks of boredom, repressed violence, gallows humor and sublimated lust, filtered through Raimi, Henenlotter and Cronenberg. Making the most of his infinitesimal budgets, these sharply-paced and fluently-edited films always have a wonderfully confident and charming performance from its adolescent auteur, who also designed the films' oozing array of practical effects. It's impossible not to be utterly endeared to this film from start to finish.'-- collaged



___
Stills
















































____
Further

Johnny Dickie's Video Vendetta tumblr
Johnny Dickie's youtube channel
Johnny Dickie @ Facebook
Podcast: Creep Show Radio - The Revenge of Johnny Dickie!
'Johnny Dickie Needs Your Help!'
'BLOOD ON A BUDGET HAS FOUR HEADS'
Johnny Dickie interviewed @ Daily Grindhouse



____
Extras


24HMM: The Reboot: Johnny Dickie - Unmasked


'The Door Is Open' composed by Johnny Dickie


Johnny Dickie reviews 'Murder Weapon' (1989)


Johnny Dickie reviews 'Violent Sh*t' (1987)



______
Interview
from Lunch Meat VHS




You just celebrated your 15th birthday, right? How was it? Get anything good?!

Johnny Dickie: Yes, I did! I had a lot of fun! I was sick for some of it, but I got to spend a lot of time with my family and friends. My mother made me maybe the best gift I have ever received: huge handmade VHS shelves in my room! I was running out of storage space before, and now all of my collection is displayed in my room. It is really a great sight to see, especially when it’s the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning.

Since you’re so young, most people wouldn’t expect you to be into VHS. Was it the format you had around you growing up or… ?

JD: I have actually not received a whole lot of interest in my age recently. I think most people can talk to me as just another collector, not someone trying to jump on a bandwagon. I had grown up around a lot of VHS and have very fond memories of looking at the gory DVD covers in the horror section of my now closed local TLA video store. I think the aspect of VHS collecting for me came in when I found out there were so many movies not available on DVD. I was very fond of VHS, but my family had moved on to DVD, so getting back into using them was very easy for me. There is a warmth I get from putting a VHS tape into my VCR and sitting down to watch. I don’t get that feeling from watching a DVD; something seems amiss… where are the scan lines!?!?! Why does it go back to the menu when the movie is finished!?! The cover and packaging differences between more modern formats and VHS should go without saying, but I have always found it much nicer to hold a VHS in my hand than say, a Blu- Ray or just looking at a file saved on my computer. It’s a different feel entirely, and I find it very easy to compare the VHS vs. DIGITAL FORMATS debate to the FILM vs. VIDEO debate in how they both have different looks and feels to them.

What were some of the first movies you remember seeing that totally blew you away or just made you think, “Man, I love this stuff!”?

JD: The first one that comes to mind is John Carpenter’s Body Bags. It was the first VHS I ever had to seek out. Since the first time I saw the movie I have been influenced. The film can be credited as the main inspiration for Slaughter Tales. Besides Body Bags, Unmasked Part 25 has made a very big impression on me and has become my favorite film of all time since I first watched it nearly two years ago. The whole SOV style of film making has really affected me; I still consider the films of Tim Ritter and Joel Wynkoop to be greatly under looked.

You’re really active in the VHS community. What do you think of the collector community as a whole? By that I mean, what’s the vibe you get from all the different personalities?

JD: I love all of the different people in the community of collectors! Pretty much all of them are very nice and all have very different senses of humor. I have rarely run into another collector that I have disagreed with, but when I have, it usually isn’t pleasant. Most people don’t mention my age when we are trading or talking, and when it does come up, it never gets in the way. It’s a great community and I am very proud and happy to be a part of it.

You’ve just completed your first full-length feature film SLAUGHTER TALES. What inspired you to take on such a huge project?

JD:Slaughter Tales actually started off as a proof of concept to see if I could make a short anthology, maybe around forty minutes long. After the original stories I already had for the film [were] destroyed when my first computer crashed (The best thing a filmmaker can do is back up their work), I had to restart. I was still aiming for about fifty minutes, but I just kept working on it till I was happy with each story. The last story of the film ended up being around a half hour. I’m really happy with how it turned out, because it was never meant to be a full length feature film; it just ended up that way, so there is no filler. I am really happy with the finished product, even though it ended up being more than two times as long as I originally intended it to be.

Could you tell a little bit about the process of making it: the writing, shooting, etc.?

JD: I had no script for Slaughter Tales, just a bunch of ideas and props. Most weekends I would invite my friend Joey over, pull out the camera and start pouring the blood. All the animation on the devil slugs was done in about a day. All of the explosions in the film were all done with models, a spray can of sun screen, and a candle. No digital effects were used. I edited the film in order, usually the same night as shooting [for a particular] story] was finished. I would get the blood wiped off the walls and sit down to start the editing. I have tried using scripts in the past, but I cannot write one successfully. I think the way the film was shot gives the finished product a very sincere feel.

What do your parents think about you making movies like this?

JD: My parents are very supportive of my film making! I know that horror or VHS is not their thing, but they support me to the point of letting me cover them in blood and make up. My mother and step-father both make appearances in Slaughter Tales. I still have half of my family asking me for copies. News really spreads in my family.

What’s in the future for you, Johnny? Do you plan on making any more movies? Any other cool projects? You recently did a toy commercial, right? Think you’ll want to further your education about film, maybe?

JD: Right now, I’m working on a new feature with my friends. I can’t say too much right now, but it’s going to be a labor of love, especially in the effects department. All I can say right now is it will put a new spin on the vampire genre. The toy commercial I did was for the film Blood Slaughter Massacre. It was a lot of fun to shoot and it was cool seeing how another group of low budget filmmakers work. It was shot the weekend of the Monster Mania Convention in Cherry Hill New Jersey. I actually shot the post ending credit footage [for Slaughter Tales] that weekend with some good friends, and some hack named Josh Schafer. Joking, of course!

I want to get into film school down the road, but for now I will continue to make features. Age has never stopped me, and if any other young filmmakers are reading this, don’t let your age stop you. I am still in high school and I am already having a full length feature released. Don’t let the business side get in your way either, because if it’s not your thing, it will suck the fun out of it for you. All ways shoot the movie, draw that picture, perform that song or whatever; [do it] for yourself. If you are happy with your final product, it was a success. Just don’t kill anyone.



___
Films

_______________
Johnny Dickie Slaughter Tales (2012)
'The directorial debut of 15-year old horror sensation Johnny Dickie, Slaughter Tales is a loving tribute to the no-budget horror video revolution of the 1980s. Johnny Dickie also stars, and the movie was made on a budget of $65. A teenager steals a mysterious VHS tape and finds himself tormented by the spirits that are trapped inside the tape and the horrible film within. Ignoring all warnings, he pops the tape in. What follows is a 90-minute fever dream horror anthology, where each story is worse than the last. But is this teen living out the worst story of them all? Slaughter Tales is more than a bad movie, it is a video nightmare you can't escape!'-- collaged



Trailer 1


Trailer 2


Mrparka Reviews "Slaughter Tales" (w/ clips)



__________________
Johnny Dickie The Hateful Dead (2012)
'The first official teaser trailer the newest splatter vampire film from Johnny Dickie (Slaughter Tales, 2012)! Shooting starts soon, and more info will be released as production movies on! Other vampires suck, this one maims..'-- JD



Trailer



___________________
Johnny Dickie Clampires and Other Stereotapes (2013)
'3 friends sit down to watch a film titled Vampires and other Stereotypes, but when they put the tape into the VCR, they are sent to hell and stalked by a horrific vampire clamshell case, a Clampire! The only way out is for the trio to watch the movie once and for all!'-- JD



Trailer



___________________
Jack Mulvanerty Creeps: A Tale of Murder and Mayhem (2013)
'I recently learned (rather recently) that Johnny Dickie held many roles in the new flick Creeps: A Tale of Murder and Mayhem by 15 year old director Jack Mulvanerty. When I found this out I had to see it and lucky for me the film just wrapped. Dickie hooked me up with a link to the online screener and for that I thank you and Mulvanerty so much! This film was fucking amazing. Plain and simple. The film blew my expectations out of the water then dick punched it repeatedly. This film was just that damn good. The acting, sadly, was really bad. The entire cast shows charisma but lacks the experience necessary to make the scenes and dialogue flow better. Finally, those looking for blood and on screen kills will find more than enough in this flick here.'-- Horror Society



Trailer


Teaser trailer


Watch & Review: Creeps: A Tale Of Murder And Mayhem, by Jack Mulvanerty



____________________
Johnny Dickie City of the Dream Demons (2013)
'Over the last 15 years I have seen so many filmmakers grow with each passing film. Some grow for the better while others take on a completely different style altogether ignoring the cries of their fans. However, that is not Dickie at all. Dickie grew tremendously from his first film, Slaughter Tales, to this one while keeping his style the same. Honestly, this S.O.V. look he gives his films is actually a breathe of fresh air when it comes to indie horror in general. The acting in this one is what you would expect when you think about a film starring teenagers with no real acting experiences other than acting in their own film. Most of the scenes consist of awkward dialogue and forced acting. Though the cast does show a lot of inexperience they still have heart and drive. With more experience the entire cast would be a force to reckon with.'-- Horror Society



Official trailer


Teaser trailer


deadbydawn93 Reviews: City Of The Dream Demons



___________________
Dan M. Kinem Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector (2013)
'ADJUST YOUR TRACKING: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE VHS COLLECTOR is a documentary and celebration of a format that is far from dead. VHS may not be at Best Buy, your Mom and Pop video store may be shuttered, but the passion for VHS is contagious and very much alive. “I realized how important VHS still is and how many people out there still love and collect it,” said Kinem. “We wanted to make a movie that oozed with this passion and informed people that VHS is more than just a cheap paperweight, it’s an important piece of film history that needs to be archived.” Featuring teen horror film auteur/sensation Johnny Dickie who is also one of the film's Execute Producers.'-- collaged



Behind the scenes: This Ain't Adjust Your Tracking


Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector screening & swap



___________________
Johnny Dickie The Robot Ninja (2013)
'He's not batman.... He's not superman..... He is The Robot Ninja.... AND HE KICKS ASS! A short film inspired by the 1989 action movie of the same name." This is something you can get behind. Remember when we reviewed Slaughter Tales, the Johnny Dickie SOV classic anthology horror flick made on no budget whatsoever but beloved by many in the horror community including myself because it embodies everything we love about our genre? Well he has a new short up and I demand you enjoy it. Part action. Part horror. Part Exterminator. Part comedy. Part VHS Collection display that had me jealous.'-- Doc Terror



the entire film



____________________
Johnny Dickie music video for 'Misery Date' by Local Cretin (2013)
'Official music video for Local Cretin by Misery Date. Directed by Johnny Dickie.'



the entire video



________________
Joshua Bruce Burn in Hell (2014)
'In a small town, gruesome killings have been plaguing the townspeople. Bodies are found torn apart and eaten. The authorities have no leads. After the death of his best friend, a young high-school football player, Brad, seeks out the help of local priest Father Damian, who is slaughtered by the killer before disclosing any information of the killings. The killer, revealed as the demon Beelzebub, sets out on a vicious killing spree to consume a steady supply of human blood in order to maintain a physical form. Brad recruits metal-head/stoner kid D.O. to assist him in his hunt for Beelzebub. Guided by the deranged, one-eyed demon hunting priest Father Lewis, the trio set out to rid their town of the evil demon, eventually leading them straight to hell. The film stars Johnny Dickie, Kenny Geiger, Joshua Bruce, Ken Brotis, Zack Sabat, Dylan McLarnon.'-- collaged



Trailer 1


Trailer 2




*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thanks for the basic insight. Yeah, letting a country head into the unknown and losing a power-mondering overlord and with the promise of positives like the ones you mentioned attached sounds like a risk worth taking for sure. Fingers crossed for the yesses. Really stressful for sure, on the Art101 thing, but ... wait, I just saw your second comment, and, wow, that sounds a lot better. Excited to hear what you'll find out on Monday. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Yes, I met their daughter once, which was, as you can imagine, a total thrill. 'Lancelot' is maybe my second favorite Bresson. Fantastic about your Salon piece! I'll get to read that later today. Everyone, Mr. David Ehrenstein has a new piece up at Salon about the new documentary 'The Dog' about John Wojtowicz, the real life role model for the most interesting character in the film 'Dog Day Afternoon', and it looks fascinating and rich, and you are highly advised to go read it asap and here. Oh, gosh, thanks about my little performance in 'L'Homme au Bain'. Christophe very kindly said I was his James Mitchum, ha ha. Yeah, I was sure my phone would be ringing off the hook with offers after 'LHaB' came out, but, uh, nope. The whole film was basically improvised around a loose pre-set structure. Mm, I'm forgetting the name of the Aznavour track. I'll ask Christophe when I see him next week. Thank you kindly, David. ** Kier, Hi, K. How cool that the house is your treasure trove. What is a knitted Batman hat? Like a knitted cowl? How pretty that walk you took sounds, and you know I would love to see the resultant photos somewhere. Sounds like a really nice time up there. That's so sweet. My yesterday completely sucked, to be frank. All film stuff. My life has been completely absorbed by the film. As briefly as I can because I know it's not very interesting and is necessarily vague, but a guy we were counting on to play one of the roles in a very upcoming scene said no, which leaves us very little time to recast the role, and it's not an easy role to cast, to say the least. Then one of the other performers in that scene broke his collar bone yesterday. He's still in, but his part was very physical, and now we'll have to revise/rethink that to some degree. And I was promised help with the rewriting of that scene, and I didn't get it, and we're auditioning someone for one of the roles in that scene today, and now we don't even have a clear role to audition him for. And other stuff. For the last month, I've been having to do all the planning and casting calls and organizing and pretty much everything for the film on my own because everyone else has been away on vacation and understandably wanting a break and not interested in helping, and yesterday was kind of the tipping point for me, and I'm burnt, but I don't have time to be burnt because there's so much to do with so little time left, and yeah, yesterday just sucked. I hope for a much better today. And, with apologies for that most unpleasant report, how was your Thursday? Love, me. ** Nicki, Hi, Nicki. I think they might have been pushed off the blog's front page by now. If it'll helping fight your cravings, I don't think anyone in the novel smokes a cigarette, if memory serves. I'm less than great at the moment, but I'll be fine. I read and very much admired and was grateful for Michelle's piece. Respect to her, and thank you. Why would two kisses at the bottom of your email bother her? 'Cos ... they're too friendly? Okay, your day might even have sucked more than mine did. High (or is that low) five and hugs in any case. Any Enlightenment Man vibes I give off are a ruse. I get embarrassed all the time. I don't know if I get theatrical when that happens, though. I'm sure I'll be embarrassed at some point today, and I'll try to pay attention to how I manifest that. Hope the spider was teeny weeny or nonexistent. Ha ha, I'm always really sorry when I say I'm sorry. I think it's an American thing maybe. Love, me. ** Sypha, It's fun to work on that peripheral stuff, yeah? ** Torn porter, Hey, man! Not until next spring/summer? Yikes. Well, there'll be a CD awaiting you. Really glad that things go well with your film. Our film is in a stressful period, but, I don't know, I think, I hope it'll all be okay. I can't say that I have thoughts about Morris/Treasure Island, or not thoughts wouldn't require a long, essay-like think piece that my brain is too wiped to think about composing right now. Why do you ask? ** Mikel Motorcycle, Hi, Mikel. Lucky you to just be discovering Oulipo. If you find it interesting, it's a pirate's booty of all kinds of exciting, amazing stuff. 'More film scoring/classical composition work': that's fascinating. Can you say more about that? Huge thanks for making me/here a Day! That's really great, and, man, I could sure use guest-posts right now, much less by the great you. Sure, if you have questions about the formatting or anything, just email and ask. Basically, if the post has a text base, you can send a doc or paste the text base into an email and indicate therein where you want the photos go in the post, and identify them by some name, and then you can send me the photos you want in the post to use as email attachments. You can either bold the fonts, etc., yourself or give me instructions about that, and I'll do it on my end. No, I haven't heard any of the new White Fence yet. I heard about the cleaner production, and that did make me a little wary, but I will for sure get it. Oh, you linked me to the single. Cool. I'll click that when I'm done here. Thanks. I like what I know and have heard of Ty Segall, but I haven't had a broad enough overview of his stuff yet to really know it or to know precisely what I think. I will investigate him thoroughly, Thank you again, man! ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. Mathews is pretty much always really good. Two big faves of mine are 'The Sinking of the Odalek Stadium' and 'Tlooth'. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. The first time I read 'Cigarettes' back when, I was kind of disappointed by it because I was really into his denser, trickier earlier novels, but then I read it again and got how differently dense and tricky it is. I think it's great. It's not my top fave of his, but it's up there. I'll know my next days' schedule pretty well, hopefully, after the big production meeting today. I haven't seen Benning's 'Desert'. Whoa, I want to. Thanks a lot for the tip. ** Jeffrey Coleman, Hi, Jeff. I haven't heard the Terrence Hannum album, no, and I'm excited to, obviously, and thank you a lot for the way in! ** Mark Gluth, Hi, Mark! It's wonderful to see you! I'm busy, yeah, a little too busy, but there are worse fates. Oh, man, 'No Other' comes out in October? Holy shit, so soon! Will you let me do a 'welcome to the world' celebratory post to mark its birth? MANCY trailer: very, very cool! I kew about your Kiddiepunk book, but I didn't know it was finished. Jesus, you're on fire, Mark! And, wow, audio rights! I didn't know that. That's crazy fantastic. Wowzer. You being a bundle of great news is super great and inspiring. Thank you a ton for slipping in here to brighten me and the place up! My novel is getting back-burnered by the film project I'm working on, which is driving me a little crazy, but it's continually in process and progressing in my head until such time as my hands are free again. Take care. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Oh, is that right? That makes sense. I do get what you mean about 'Masterminds', yes, indeed. Did you see 'The Counselor', the film McCarthy scripted for Ridley Scott? I haven't, but, in making your b'day post, I learned that it doesn't like many people liked it very much at all. ** Rewritedept, I had a shitty day too, so, yeah. Me? I was shitty, and hopefully I won't be shitty today. I'm all hopes about that. And I hope to be my chipper self tomorrow too. Race you to finish line. ** Aaron Mirkin, Thank you for the Picastro links. I didn't in fact get the chance to find that cover yesterday. Emotionally complicated people are the most fascinating and compelling in the world, I reckon. Or I agree. Glad to hear he's able to take care of himself with off-and-on good drugs only. I'm glad that ranting here has helped. It hasn't even been ranting, and it's most welcome on my end. ** Okay. I thought I would give a young VHS horror loving filmmaker the entirety of the spotlight today, and there you go. See you tomorrow.

New York City



Ferndale, Michigan



West Los Angeles



'Revolver Records', Bristol, UK



'Camelot Music', North Carolina



Paris



'Virgin Megastore', Paris



'Tower', West Hollywood



unknown, New York City



London



Kalamazoo



'Moby Disc', Sherman Oaks, CA



Melbourne



'Bleeker Bob's', New York City



New York City



'ethereal', New York City



New York City



New York City



New York City



New York City



New York City



New York City



New York City



New York City



'Ear Wax', Williamsburg



Hoboken



Savannah



'Graysons', Louisville



Seattle



Seattle



Buffalo



'Sound Exchange', Austin



'Oarfolkjopolis', Minneapolis



Minneapolis



Minneapolis



Minneapolis



Hollywood



New York City



Clarendon, Virginia



San Francisco



'Music Village', Mill Valley



London



Denver



State College, Pennsylvania



New York City



Los Angeles



Los Angeles



Tempe, Arizona



Detroit



Detroit



New York City



'Northern Lights', St. Paul



'Peaches', Los Angeles



Los Angeles



Buffalo



Boston



Newport Beach, California



Duluth, Minnesota



New York City



Elizabeth, New Jersey



Kirkcaldy, UK



Melbourne



Melbourne



Melbourne



'Au Go Go Records', Melbourne



'The Last Record Store', Melbourne



Seattle



'Disc World', Manchester



Cambridge



Cambridge



London



Chesterfield, UK



Dublin




Dublin



New York City



Haddon, New Jersey



'Asta Records', Oakland



Berkeley



'Rather Ripped', Berkeley



Grosse Pointe, Michigan



New York City



Binghamton, New York



Toronto



Stockton upon Tees, UK



Athens, Greece



Wellington, New Zealand



Vancouver



Hatboro, Pennsylvania



Chicago



Chicago



Rotterdam



New York City



'Turning Point', Glendale, CA



London



Leicester, UK



'Bonapart Records', Croydon



Philadelphia



Shreveport



East Lansing, Michigan



DeKalb, Illinois



Athens, Georgia



Saugus, Mass.



Buffalo



Brooklyn



Brooklyn



Dallas



Memphis



New York City



'Coconuts', Tampa Bay



'Turtle's', Augusta



'Turtle's', Atlanta



Pasadena



'The Tape and Record Room, Long Beach



Downey, CA



Apple Valley, CA



Dallas



Brockton, Massachusetts



Pittsburgh



'Stackhouse Records', Clarksdale



'Tower', San Francisco



'Rooks and Becords', San Francisco




*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, It's quite possible. Sagat is a nice guy, very shy and was pretty insecure in that context, what with being out of his comfort zone. Yeah, my monologue was deliberately challenging to him, in and outside the role. Christophe wanted me to surprise and shake him up a bit, so what I was saying to his character, rejecting him sexually and characterizing his signature giant gym body and tattooed hair by inference as kitsch, did throw him off, and it did do a number on him emotionally, and I think you can see that. I felt weird doing that to him, but Christophe was encouraging, and when the scene was shot, he said he was cool about it. But the discomfort and stuff in his reaction is pretty real. ** Sypha, Yeah, I figured you would. I used to try or at least want to try to control and organize my books' exteriors and stuff, but, with major publishers, they really don't let you do that. It's more that you can reject the approaches they suggest until they come up with something you can live with. Sorry about the badness of your lately. Things got better for me yesterday, and maybe somehow the upswing was contagious. ** Kier, Hi, K. Yeah, sorry for the complainy rap. Everything just kind of caught up to me, but yesterday was better. Progress was made, and there are routes to resolutions now, at least. Yeah, I spent the day with Zac working on the film and hanging out and doing meetings, and being with Zac is always a total joy, plus we did maybe find one of the performers we need, fingers crossed. Cool that you liked the Johnny Dickie post. Yeah, he's cool. A bonfire in the rain is, yeah, such a nice image. Really. Okay, I get you on the knitted cap. Sounds sweet. Ha ha, Kylie Minogue. That should do the trick. I'll luxuriate in it post-p.s. Thanks, Kier, How was today? Love, me. ** Steevee, Hi. Thanks. Oh, I wouldn't even try to do something like this film alone. I would have bailed ages ago. So, yeah I can totally understand how intimidating your film project must feel. Any thought of doing it as a collaboration in some respect? I don't know, with a cinematographer/cameraman or ... I don't know. It does seem like someone who would make a game called 'Bomb Gaza' would be someone who even craves negative publicity. I look forward to reading your review. Everyone, here's Steve 'Steevee' Erickson's 'review of Joaquim Pinto's excellent film WHAT NOW? REMIND ME.' ** Hyemin Kim, Hi. Well, it's a very, very Paris thing for people to go away for weeks either at the end of July or in August. Half of the stores here are closed for their owners' vacations. You don't really get that in the US at all, yeah, or not in my experience. But here, the population of Paris tilts way towards visitors and away from residents in the late summer. Most everyone involved in the film is finally back, so it's getting a lot easier. That's interesting about the protocol vis-a-vis academic conferences and related correspondence. I wouldn't even have noticed, but I'm from LA where 'hi' is about as formal as it gets, ha ha. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks a bunch for passing the post along to those guys. That's really great! Thank you about my day, and I'm sorry for the stress-out here. Things, as of this morning, are a lot better or at least clearer, and hopefully that will hold. Have an awesome day on your end. ** Thomas Moronic, My pleasure, and thank you, Thomas! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thanks, cool. Things are brighter today, thank you. I'm sure I'll love the Benning. I can't think of a film of his that I haven't loved. Pass along the word on the longer cut of 'The Grandmaster'. I haven't seen the earlier truncated version, so, if this version is a huge improvement, or, well, even a slight improvement, I'll angle for it. ** Misanthrope, Thanks, yeah, things are better today. There are a lot of possible problems and stress-creating things to do that we don't really know how we're going to do them, but optimism has made a very welcome return. Thanks, pal. ** Keaton, So cool that you dug the post. I was hoping/guessing so, as I said the other day. Horror story this weekend? Sounds fucking ace. ** Mikel Motorcycle, That's really exciting sounding stuff, man. That genre is one that interests me a lot, and I spend a fair amount of time investigating and listening to that kind of work, helped and directed immensely by the focus given to it by The Wire, which is sort of my only periodical Bible these days. So, yes, that's really exciting indeed. Whenever there's an opportunity to share any of the work or even talk about it here, if that interests you, that would be super interesting for me. Thanks much about the Day. Really appreciate it. ** Mark Gluth, Thanks, Mark. Yeah, bad days show up sometimes, what can you do, and luckily it was a 24-hour flu-like downer. It's not so much distance that helped as the fact that my collaborator Zac is back from being away, so we can lock into what's wrong and what we need to do together. It was really hard dealing with all of that singly. I love dealing with fiction singly, but this film stuff is gigantic and so social, it can get scary. I will definitely and with great honor do a 'welcome to the world' post for your book. Oh, you can send me anything you like. You can send me stuff -- excerpt, descriptions, images, links to relevant things, any video, etc. -- and I'll make the post, or, if you want to make a post yourself, you can do that too. Whatever is most fun and interesting for you. I'll see if KP will let me take an early peek at your KP book. Weird but entirely cool, it seems, about the audio book thing. Yeah, Johnny wrote to me about that yesterday, So interesting. You did brighten me, and I thank you muchly, Mark. ** Kyler, Fire Island, wow. I haven't been there since it was ... well, I was going to say since it was the big gay party zone/mecca, but it probably still is unless Provincetown has totally stolen its sunny gay thunder. Ha ha, good thing that problem got resolved 'cos, in my experience at least, your publisher, cool as they seem, would have to be Gandhi to agree to reprint the book because of one wrong word. So, whew! ** Rewritedept, Hi. Yesterday was better, yes, thank you. What a healthy snack. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Yeah, my keel has evened, for now at least, thank you. A piece that you're obsessed with, yum. With Cook and Hulson on-aesthetic-board? I like the tone of that! Pray tell when it's time to ... pray? Thank you very much for the news about the early week post arrival. Super, super appreciated. ** Right. Tons of dead record stores today for some reason. Interesting? See you tomorrow.

Cormac McCarthy and friends


The following violent passages in Cormac McCarthy's novels made me physically ill
by Maren Gillman

The judge sat with the Apache boy before the fire and it watched everything with dark berry eyes and some of the men played with it and made it laugh and they gave it jerky and it sat chewing and watching gravely the figures that passed above it... Toadvine saw him with the child as he passed with his saddle but when he came back ten minutes later leading his horse the child was dead and the judge had scalped it. -- Blood Meridian


The dead man was watching him from the floor of the car. Ballard kicked his feet out of the way and picked the girl’s panties up from the floor and sniffed them and put them in his pocket. He looked out the rear window and listened. Kneeling there between the girl’s legs he undid his buckle and lowered his trousers. A crazed gymnast laboring over a cold corpse. -- Child of God


At the farther end the bridge gave onto a small street that ran along the river. Here the Vandiemenlander stood urinating from a stone wall into the water. When he saw the judge commit the dogs from the bridge he drew his pistol and called out.

The dogs disappeared in the foam... The Vandiemenlander raised and cocked the pistol... The pistol bucked in his hand and one of the dogs leaped in the water and he cocked it again and fired again and a pink stain diffused. He cocked and fired the pistol a third time and the other dog also blossomed and sank. -- BM


The dead lay awash in the shallows like the victims of some disaster at sea and they were strewn along the salt foreshore in a havoc of blood and entrails. Riders were towing bodies out of the bloody waters of the lake and the froth that rode lightly on the beach was a pale pink in the rising light. They moved among the dead harvesting the long black locks with their knives and leaving their victims rawskulled and strange in their bloody cauls. -- BM


His neck had been broken and his head hung straight down and it flopped over strangely when they let him onto the ground. The hills beyond the minepit were reflected grayly in the pools of rainwater in the courtyard and the partly eaten mule lay in the mud with its hindquarters missing like something from a chromo of terrific war. Within the doorless cuartel the man who’d been shot sang church hymns and cursed God alternately. The squatters stood about the dead boy with their wretched firearms at rest like some tatteredemalion guard of honor. -- BM


The way narrowed through rocks and by and by they came to a bush that was hung with dead babies. . . These small victims, seven, eight of them, had holes punched in their underjaws and were hung so by their throats from the broken stobs of a mesquite to stare eyeless at the naked sky. -- BM


All about her the dead lay with their peeled skulls like polyps bluely wet or luminescent melons cooling on some mesa of the moon. In the days to come the frail black rebuses of blood in those sands would crack and break and drift away so that in the circuit of a few suns all trace of the destruction of these people would be erased. -- BM




Werner Herzog and Cormac McCarthy Talk Science and Culture




'Physicist Lawrence M. Krauss is joined in his exploration of the question Who are we, and what is our place in the universe? by the great filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World) and 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner Cormack McCarthy (The Crossing, The Road, No Country For Old Men). They discuss bottleneck theory, complexity science, the history of painting, and the upcoming rise of the machines. High point: Herzog reads a passage from McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses (38:00).'-- Open Culture



Listen here




Some people who hate Cormac McCarthy and why




'Back in 1977 when I was working for Salomon Brothers, the programmers took a workshop on writing memos that was better than any writer’s workshop class I ever took at Bard or NYU. We learned to avoid the passive voice, number one (you’ll rarely see them in my articles.) The next thing was to understand the Gunning Fog Index that rated prose on the basis of readability, including the average number of words in a sentence, etc. Running a typical Cormac McCarthy sentence against a Gunning Fog Index calculator returned a rather feverish reading of 102.2. Wikipedia states that texts for a wide audience generally need a fog index less than 12 and those for universal audience require an index of less than 8.'(much more)-- Louis Proyect

'I tried to read a Cormac McCarthy book and thought, Why doesn’t this cocksucker use quotation marks? I picked up another Cormac McCarthy book and saw that there were six or seven consecutive pages in Spanish. I didn’t know what it meant. The New York Times ... what did they say about me ... "Reading Ellroy can be like deciphering Morse code tapped out by a pair of barely sentient testicles," but they love this McCarthy's motherfucking shit.'-- James Ellroy

'I checked out the back cover blurbs of all the McCarthy novels I could find (and there are many, including Suttree, Cities of the Plain, All The Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian, No Country For Old Men). Almost every book is described as taut. Taut, taut, taut. Cormac McCarthy has been publishing novels since 1965 -- how long can a guy be taut before he finally snaps? Or, more to the point, how long can he be taut before I snap? Because McCarthy keeps turning these taut books out, year after year, with characters from Central Casting and props left over from Heaven's Gate, and I'm sick of hearing top critics talk about how great they are.'(more)-- Levi Asher

'Blood Meridian is Horrible. This is probably the most pulpy, overwrought, melodramatic cowboy vs. Indians story ever written.'-- Nicholas Sparks

'Let’s get this straight out of the way: Cormac McCarthy doesn’t really know how to write a screenplay. The McCarthyisms are all present, the themes and fixtures are there, but the coherence is lacking and much of the chaff remains unseparated from the wheat. You’ve probably heard about the car-fucking scene, right? There is a car-fucking scene. Somehow this made it into the final draft. Cormac McCarthy presumably wrote several drafts of this screenplay, his bony, churchyard-gray knuckles pounding out the tarnished keys on his vintage 1913 typewriter, dust pluming upwards, the typewriter’s Ford V8 engine hacking out bits of itself on the floor – and a scene that made it to the final draft is one where the character of Malkina fucks a car.'(cont.)-- themenaceofonjects

'A friend said "oh gee, you should sell it, they sold Cormac McCarthy's typewriter." And I said, "yeah, Cormac McCarthy who ripped off my story "A Boy and His Dog" to do The Road. I said how much did they get $20?" And he said "they got $220,000 because they gave it to charity and I said "that's nice."'-- Harlan Ellison

'I love cumulative syntax if done properly, but 245 words is unnecessarily long for a sentence. It may make grammatical sense, and it may conjure up some interesting imagery, but is it well-written, was it necessary, did it add to the story? The answer, for me at least, is a resounding no. I wish that this was the only example of an unnecessarily long exercise in creative writing, but the book is littered with descriptions like this on every other page. It gets quite trying, and is quickly rendered redundant by its own pomposity. It is almost as though McCarthy is desperately screaming to his readers: “this is literature!”' -- (more)-- Jon Crenshaw





Painter, writer and filmmaker Peter Josyph paints "Cormac McCarthy's House."




Cormac McCarthy Attempts To Write A Seinfeld Scene
by Brandon Gorrell

Kramer staggered erect through the entrance and the man inside looked at him once or twice in familiar acknowledgment before returning to his pen and sheaf of papers, a cynical goblin emerged out of some alien trance of alchemist figures or comedic lines.

Hell-ooooo, Kramer said.

Seinfeld studied him.

Hell-ooooo, he said. A voice that went from room to room and back again.

A fearsomely bald squatter bespectacled and grinning from a blue upholstered sofa that had seen better days observed with something like amusement the avian newcomer, a gigantic egret no less a child of this city than the ragpicker begging for change, the bodega immigrant selling his wares. Hell-ooooo, Costanza said. His nosed twitched and he corrected his spectacles.

Kramer was looking at him crazily. He made his way in past Seinfeld and his jesternotes to the eastern facing window. Outside curried clumps of refuse set in motion by slow moving street sweepers and an ashen breeze. A family of trashpickers were packing flat cartons into a derelict shopping cart, the children scurrying among the rancid cans like rats and as graylooking. None spoke. A buzzing at the door.

Yeah, said Seinfeld.

(cont.)





"Eternal Ash" an ambient track inspired by The Road by Cormac McCarthy




A Concordance to Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

Words that occur more than 471 times are not included in this concordance:

a(4823) all(483) and(7621) at(1298) back(731) by(502) dont(489) down(904) for(614) from(998) had(624) he(4643) her(741) him(1195) his(2873) i(1617) in(3696) it(1847) like(716) looked(655) no(507) of(3895) old(742) on(1597) one(669) out(1017) said(1768) she(918) suttree(1577) that(893) the(13175) them(551) there(677) they(952) to(2812) up(1175) was(1493) went(578) what(643) where(476) with(1827) you(1969)

Right margin hyphens in single words have been removed. In all other cases brackets mark such hyphens since, whether hyphenated or compounded, the manuscript form is unknown.

Words containing special foreign language characters may not appear where expected alphabetically. The special characters are alphabetized as if they come after the letter Z.

11 386
1504 304
18 433
1884 433, 454 1942 75
1952 220
20 386
21505 85, 462 32 403
87 220
9 220
aaangh 56
ab 79, 112, 131, 200, 205, 226, 228, 230, 246, 374, 440, 446, 465
ab's 107, 226, 446
abandoned 3, 91, 150, 161, 211, 367, 416, 421, 441
abandonment 3
abbatoir 67, 299
abdomen 16
abednego 29
aberrant 3, 290
abet 200
able 273, 367, 442
ablutions 404
aboard 8-9, 107, 127, 214, 250, 309, 313, 319-320, 324, 363, 371, 381
about 3-4, 7-8, 10-11, 15, 17-20, 22-24, 26-27, 31-36, 38, 40, 42, 44-45, 48, 50-51, 54-55, 57-61, 64-65, 68, 70-71, 73-77, 86- 88, 91-93, 95-101, 103, 105, 108-110, 114- 118, 121, 123-127, 134, 138-141, 143-145, 148, 152, 154-157, 160, 162, 164-175, 177, 180-183, 186, 189, 191-196, 198-203, 205- 207, 209-213, 216, 218, 225, 227-231, 233, 235, 237, 239-244, 247-249, 251, 253-254, 256, 259, 261, 264-266, 268-270, 273-274, 276, 278-281, 284-285, 288-289, 291-292, 294, 296, 298, 300-302, 304, 307, 309-314, 319-321, 323-326, 328-329, 331, 334, 336- 339, 344-345, 347-348, 350, 352, 355-362, 364-367, 372, 375, 378-379, 381-386, 389,
391, 394-397, 400, 404, 406-409, 412, 414, 416-423, 425, 431, 433-434, 438, 440, 442, 444-445, 447, 450-451, 453-454, 456, 458, 462, 465-466, 468, 470
abouts 141
above 3, 11, 13, 21, 23, 29, 51, 54, 57, 63, 68, 79, 90-92, 99, 107, 113, 120-121, 135- 139, 144, 149-150, 153, 162, 168-171, 177, 186-188, 190, 192, 207-208, 210, 215, 220-221, 223, 228, 238, 249, 256, 261-262, 268, 272, 275, 280-283, 285-287, 290-296, 300, 307, 317, 319-320, 330-331, 337, 351, 353, 361, 363, 371, 375, 382, 388, 392, 395, 397, 400, 402, 405, 408, 410, 419, 426-427, 431, 441-442, 448, 457, 460, 467 abreast 58, 181, 225
abroad 66, 455
abrogate 4
abruptly 79
abscission 80
absence 157
absent 386
absently 274, 321
absolute 275, 440, 458
absolutely 345
absolutes 372
abstractions 453
absurd 409
absurdities 423
abutment 140, 411, 421
accents 386
accommodate 7
accompanied 285
accomplish 470
accomplished 246
accordioned 95
accosted 28, 366
account 212, 242-243, 349, 366, 370, 401, 409
accresced 262
accretion 67, 102
accrue 228
accrued 9, 346 accumulate 149 accumulated 116, 357 accuracy 368 accused 454 accustomed 66 acetylene 262
ache 50
ached 327
acheron 190
acidic 223
acknowledged 229
aclatter 162, 455
acnefaced 254
acolyte 253
acolytes 348
acoustic 90
acquaintance 204
acquainted 344
acrid 137, 254
acridity 28
acrimony 129
across 3, 5, 8-12, 14, 19-21, 29-32, 36, 40, 43, 45, 48, 54, 56, 61, 63-65, 72, 79-80, 82-83, 88, 94, 98-99, 102, 106, 108, 116, 122-123, 125, 132-135, 140, 142, 144, 148-149, 153-154, 156-157, 159, 172-173, 177, 183-184, 187-188, 190-191, 194, 197, 200-201, 206-207, 209, 212, 217, 219, 234, 236-238, 242-243, 247, 251, 254, 257, 263, 265-267, 271, 274, 279, 283-284, 287, 289-290, 292, 294-295, 302-303, 309, 312- 314, 320-321, 325, 328, 331, 337, 340-342, 344, 348-349, 352-356, 358, 361-362, 367, 370, 374, 377, 380-381, 385, 392, 395-396, 398-400, 407, 410-411, 413-414, 417, 421, 425, 434-435, 438, 440-442, 445-446, 458- 460, 462, 465, 467, 469-471
act 375
active 33
actors 391
acts 246

(cont.)




















A Few Thoughts on Missing Thumbs in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

'The thumb is very versatile, it is a universal signifier which crosses language barriers and it’s the most flexible part of our hand; we use it to grip things, to steady the barrel of a gun as we take a shot, manacled in chains you would need it to turn a key in a lock. In Shakespeare, to bite one’s thumb was considered an insult, for children it’s a pacifier, for others (when sucked) it’s a sign of cowardice, there’s also the ubiquitous thumbs up – everything is a.ok. But in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, things couldn’t be further from the truth, because the thumb or rather lack of, signifies that something terrible has happened in the character’s past.'(more)-- The Poplar Tree




Cormac McCarthy's ex-wife Jennifer McCarthy in bizarre arrest




'THE FORMER wife of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy has been arrested in a bizarre domestic dispute over space aliens that escalated when she pulled a gun out of her vagina.
Jennifer McCarthy, 48, was arrested in Santa Fe, New Mexico on suspicion for aggravated assault and released on $5000 bail.

'A statement of probable cause, obtained by The Smoking Gun , details the argument that broke out on January 4 between McCarthy and her 53-year-old boyfriend, whose name was redacted.

'They were arguing about space aliens in the morning. McCarthy left the house, then returned and went into her bedroom.

'She came out of the bedroom wearing lingerie with a silver handgun inserted into her vagina.

'McCarthy started to have intercourse with the gun and said "Who is crazy, you or me?", then pulled the gun out of her vagina and pointed it at her boyfriend's head, the boyfriend told police.

'He was scared she would pull the trigger so he took the gun out of her hand and put it in the toilet. McCarthy got the gun out of the toilet and put it in a bin outside.

'Arresting officer Chris Zook found a silver Smith and Wesson in the rubbish outside.

'Jennifer McCarthy and Cormac McCarthy, who wrote The Road and No Country For Old Men, divorced in 2006. They have one son together.'-- news.com.au





Steve Davis talks about the Cormac McCarthy Archives




The Balzac of Human Trash: Novelist Cormac McCarthy

'Ragged transients on horseback. Cave dwelling necrophiles. Stalkers, bums, dregs, exiles and living rot. Humans gone feral, ancient throwbacks, latter day Neanderthals, Homo erecti. Hobbling dobbins, putrescent pooches, vultures, pigs and maggots. These are the life forms on Cormac McCarthy’s fictional planet, crawling across a purposeless no-man’s-land of betrayal, showdown, and death. Like the novelist Honoré de Balzac, who minutely chronicled every aspect of 19th century French society, McCarthy examines exhaustively the reptile brain of Appalachian hillbillies, and assorted Sonoran flotsam. From the 1840s of Blood Meridian, to the 1950s of Suttree, his characters exist in an eerie periphery to anything civilized. Everything about them, from their clothes, to their food, to their very selves, comes right up out of the same clods cuffed by canny knuckle walkers from the dawn of human origins. The landscape is either arboreal, as in Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark, Child of God, or xerophytic as in Blood Meridian, The Crossing, and All The Pretty Horses. The only urban setting is the skid row jungles of Knoxville in the autobiographical Suttree.'(cont.)-- John-Ivan Palmer






Kodi Smit-Mcphee in 'The Road'




Cormac McCarthy's The Road: an early draft with cross-outs and author's notes

A memory unbidden and sudden burst into the man’s ken. He buckled over the handle of his cart as laughs and coughs poured forth in prolific tandems that ceased only when exhaustion had made rendered more of either impossible.

What’s so funny? the boy asked.

Nothing, the man said. Uh, hahaha! Shit. Ahh-ha! Cough. Ha, ha—cough, cough. Keep walking.

The man composed himself with a final grunt. The boy turned away. The man spat. A plume of red spittle marred the ash-caked road between his feet.

A moment later the memory returned with a speed so fast most people would be like, Wha? to grip the man like a seizure. He took not three steps before collapsing in a fit of antic chuckles.

(cont.)





The Hidden Messages in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian




Exclusive: Cormac McCarthy To Write New James Bond Novel

'It is a natural fit. Bond is already a classic McCarthy character. He has a tortured past. His wife was murdered at the end of On His Majesty’s Secret Service, the only time the cadger ever said “I do.” He has been betrayed by women as many times as he has betrayed them. His moral code is flexible, yet faded. The nagging sense that he is an anachronism is never far below his steely exterior.

'There will be blood. McCarthy always marks his characters for death from the start. His doomed are as visible as black characters in horror films and the jobbing actor who beams down to explore planets in Star Trek. In McCarthy’s world, their dying is their reason for living. Bond, in many ways is similar. You always know which of the two girls he tangles with will die under a layer of gold paint and who will just get in the way during the climactic showdown. They are mere ciphers. Fleming never could write women. McCarthy, however, will let us love them both, fear for them both, then kill them both in the bleakest possible manner. It will be enough to inspire a surge of applications to MI6 based purely on revenge.' -- (more)-- Edd McCracken





Cormac McCarthy & Richard Pearce's 'The Gardener's Son' (1976)




10 Insane Things from Cormac McCarthy's The Counselor Script That Didn't Make It On Screen

'The Counselor is one of the most cinematic and uncinematic movies of the year. It’s the former because director Ridley Scott used the production to craft a beautifully uncomfortable atmosphere, truly evoking the themes, ideas, and visuals of scribe Cormac McCarthy‘s writing. Yet, it’s uncinematic because, to no one’s surprise, McCarthy loves to do things his own way. The movie doesn’t give you conventional exposition, backstory, or whatever else audiences might expect from easily digestible and normative filmmaking. The lead, The Counselor (Michael Fassbender), isn’t given a name. Why? Because he doesn’t need one.

'The script itself is a slightly different matter. The people who loathed The Counselor, of which there are many, based on its D Cinema Score and a current rating of 37% on Rotten Tomatoes, would have torn the screen apart if Scott used everything that McCarthy provided for him on the page. The script is just that good. Scott’s final product contains both minor and major deviations in McCarthy’s script (which reads more as a novel than a traditional screenplay), and following are ten of the most notable changes.'(cont.)-- Film School Rejects



















Here are just some of the words I couldn't find in a dictionary while reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy
by Flipping Pencils

"Oil for their little slutlamp to light the long gray dusks, the long gray dawns." (p. 7)

"He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time." (p. 11)

"In an old batboard smokehouse they found a ham gambreled up in a high corner." (p. 17)

"The new snow lay in skifts all through the woods, along the limbs and cupped in the leaves, all of it already gray with ash." (p. 76)

"The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities." (p. 88)

"They were signs in gypsy language, lost patterans." (p. 180).

"They wrapped their feet in sailcloth and bound them up in blue plastic pampooties cut from a tarp and they left strange tracks in their comings and goings." (p. 243)

"The salitter drying from the earth." (p. 261)

"Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts." (p. 273)

"A veteran of old skirmishes, bearded, scarred across his cheek and the bone stoven and the one eye wandering." (p. 282)




If Cormac McCarthy Wrote Toy Story 3



(more)




A mixtape to read a Cormac McCarthy novel
from Tiny Mix Tapes

01. Set Fire To Flames - “Your Guts Are Like Mine” (Telegraphs In Negative/Mouths Trapped In Static)
02. Six Organs Of Admittance - Spirits Abandoned (Dark Noontide)
03. Set Fire To Flames - “Wild Dogs Of The Thunderbolt , ‘They Cannot Lock Me Up… I Am Eternally Free…’ (From Lips Of Lying Dying Wonder Body #2)” (Sings Reign Rebuilder)
04. Earth - “Raiford (The Felon Wind)” (Hex, Or Printing In The Infernal Method)
05. Richard Thompson - Treadwell No More (Grizzly Man Soundtrack)
06. Ernst Reijseger - “Child’s Footprint Duo” (Cave Of Forgotten Dreams Soundtrack)
07. Eyvind Kang - “Rabianara” (Athlantis)
08. Odetta - “Another Man Done Gone” (Sings Ballads and Blues)
09. Wolves In The Throne Room - “Permanent Changes In Consciousness” (Celestial Lineage)
10. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - ‘Piphany Rambler (Kollapz Tradixionales)





Blood Meridian - AUDIOBOOK - by Cormac McCarthy




Devastation of Earth: an Ecocriticism Study in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

'The Road greatly represents a study of Ecocriticism. It portrays the colourless world because of devastation of earth. This devastation issue is common object of the Ecocriticism study. The Road continually reminds us of the bleakness of the landscape in the earth. As readers, we only experience bright colours through the characters' dreams or memories, if someone happens to bruise or bleed, or through fire or flare guns. The rest of the time we see a gray ash covering the landscape. As a reality, our landscape is actually green and natural. However, The Road shows the possibility of devastation of earth when humans did devastation to the nature and they can’t live in harmony with the nature. Therefore, there is no doubt that The Road becomes the most influencing novel toward environment. It proves from the acclaim written in the novel by George Monbiot, an environmental campaigner that says "It could be the most important environmental book ever. It is a thought experiment that imagines a world without a biosphere, and shows that everything we value depends on the ecosystem."'(more)-- Fahmi Lesson




Cormac McCarthy Flaunts Sexy New Beach Body




'CABO SAN LUCAS—Acclaimed novelist Cormac McCarthy, 79, wowed Cabo beachgoers Wednesday after debuting his sizzling new summer physique in a light-blue Vilebrequin swimsuit that showed off at least 20 extra pounds of lean muscle. “I got into this routine where I was just hitting the gym every morning, writing some of my novel in the afternoon, and then hitting the gym again later that day, and it paid off,” the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Blood Meridian told reporters as he massaged his washboard abs with deep tanning oil. “I didn’t go in for any of that carve-and-starve stuff, so I just upped my cardio, did two-a-days, and took an Isagenix whey protein shake every morning. Feels good to look good, you know?” At press time, the prose master was performing a surfside workout sequence of lunges and squat thrusts.'-- The Onion

















Cormac McCarthy's House Burns






'KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- The boyhood home of Pulitzer-winning author Cormac McCarthy, long abandoned and overgrown, has been destroyed by a fire even as preservationists tried in recent months to save it. Neighbors reported the fire around 5 p.m. Tuesday. The cause was under investigation, said Bill Kear, spokesman for the Rural Metro Fire Department. Investigators say a homeless person may have been staying there, although nobody was in the home when firefighters arrived.

'The house, which may have been built around a pre-Civil War log cabin, was McCarthy's home for at least a decade until he graduated from Catholic High School, and possibly while attending the University of Tennessee for a year before joining the Air Force in 1953. He came back to UT for two more years in 1957-1959, but left before graduating.

'A group of McCarthy fans were interested in buying and restoring the house, which her organization listed among the city's most endangered local places in 2008. But she said she could never locate the owner. McCarthy's parents sold the house in 1967 and moved to Washington, D.C. The fire was a blow for a city that also failed to save the early homes of Pulitzer-winning writer James Agee and poet Nikki Giovanni.'-- Knoxville News





Lookalike, name-alike folk singer Cormac McCarthy sings 'Great Big Day'




Cormac McCarthy Ruined My Sex Life

'Congratulations! If you are a high school guidance counselor or health teacher, you can pretty much retire now. All the hours spent discussing the dangers of teen pregnancy, handing out condoms and worrying about your students’ future are over. Just show these impressionable young gents and ladies The Counselor. Cormac McCarthy’s screenplay certainly made me abstinent.

'The film is loaded with eroticism. It kicks off with an awkward scene where Penelope Cruz essentially awards Michael Fassbender the Nobel Prize for oral sex. But that is just the start of this odd endeavor. The tipping point comes about another hour into the show when Cameron Diaz’s carnal desires are quenched by a Ferrari. Specifically, the car’s windshield.

'It was at this point where I found my phone and started shopping for a plastic bubble to live inside. Director Ridley Scott and screenwriter McCarthy’s depiction of erotic automotive acrobatics made me never want to come into contact with another human being again for fear we might sleep together.'(cont.)-- Patrick Wensink




James Franco's Tossed Off And Drab Cormac McCarthy Adaptation Child Of God




'Franco doesn't appear to be sure of the tone to take. There's a lacing of black comedy through much of the second half, but Ballard's acts are so repellent (without ever quite being as transgressive as they're perhaps meant to be) that it's hard to find it funny. It's not that the director is lacking in compassion towards his subject—there's some in there—but Ballard's clearly suffering from a mental illness, and Franco seems to want the audience to find that amusing somehow. The film's final sequence, set in his cave hideout, is easily the film's strongest because it's happy to play it straight.

'That scene is unfortunately hampered by an unnecessary and distracting cameo from the filmmaker. He's flat and unconvincing, traits which extend to most of the supporting players. But more critically for a movie that centers so tightly on one figure, Scott Haze simply isn't good enough as Ballard. His rodent-like physicality and thick drawl (incomprehensible enough that the film is presented with English subtitles) are effective, but it's a very mannered and theatrical turn. Flaws with the filmmaking could perhaps have been forgiven for a tour-de-force central turn, but there's little to learn about the character once the first couple of reels are through.

'The whole thing feels sort of tossed off, like it was made by film students over a couple of weekends. And that's the root of our problem with Franco's directorial work. His restless and experimental nature is to be lauded to a degree, and you feel that if he were to focus his considerable energies on a single project, then he might be able to come up with something special. Because otherwise, if he can't make a piece of material like Child Of God into something worth watching, we'd probably rather see him spend his time in other people's movies if necessary.'-- Indiewire





Strange dog




An Unpublished Novelist's Week as Fake Cormac McCarthy

'Michael Crossan, a hard-working, unpublished writer from Scotland, got the literary introduction of a lifetime last week--almost. His tweets had caught the eye of novelist Margaret Atwood, who alerted fellow A-list authors and “T-pals” William Gibson, Amy Tan and Neil Gaiman. Alas, it wasn’t Crossan she thought she was introducing but rather the universally-lauded novelist and newbie screenwriter Cormac McCarthy and his improbable new Twitter account. After all, McCarthy is a famous recluse and not only does he refuse to talk about his work -- unless in the warmth of Oprah's cameras -- he doesn’t even have a computer.

'But Atwood could be forgiven for biting hard on the fake account, created, in Crossan’s imagination, on a mobile phone by McCarthy’s young son. (Crossan let us log into the Gmail account that he used to register the fake account where an email was waiting from Twitter: "Hi, CormacCMcCarthy. Please confirm your Twitter account by clicking this link.") His tweets about children and dogs and family time were laconic, earthy, and punctuationally-iffy enough that they could have issued from a 78-year-old trying to grasp a smartphone. Sample: “Please stop. This phone is a toy I should have scorned. All the rest is decency.” Also: “Already finger waggers spit envy and spite and doubt. On a beautiful day this stranger was just saying hello.” And, in a deft admission of the fakery: “Sidewalk starers may soon sneak aboard. Is it him. He had no blue badge. So it is not him then.”

'By the time McCarthy's publisher Vintage Books announced that they had confirmed the account was fake, five hours after Atwood's welcoming tweet, there were many who were fooled. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey gave @cormaccmccarthy a warm welcome, quickly withdrawn, and, in the week before the account was suspended, Crossan accumulated more than 6,000 followers. Once Twitter HQ cottoned to the ruse and the account took a captive bolt to the forehead, Crossan issued apologies from another account, which is how we connected. Here is our interview with Michael Crossan--writer, portrait photographer and now, to Margaret Atwood’s mind, “leg puller.”' (cont.)-- Matt Creamer, The Wire




*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. My turntable is in LA, and I've had however many ... almost eight years sans home vinyl playing, and it's much missed. I still buy vinyl, but now it just sits there looking big and square and sweet. ** Jonathan, Hi, J. I wondered whether you would know Road Records. I read a little about it while making the post, and it seemed very cool and loved. You're coming to Paris? Whoa. That's news. Actually, Paris totally sucks for record stores, or it has. I'll ask Stephen if he has found anything recently, but, after the great and sublime Bimbo Tower closed, it seemed to become a wasteland, and I can't figure out why Paris wouldn't have a flurry of great record stores the same way they do bookstores. The filming goes well. A little bunch of problems at the moment that we have to solve quickly, but I think we will. No, I hadn't seen that PAF or heard of it. I'll go check it out in depth in a bit. Nice to see you! Awesome that I'll get to see you right here! ** Bitter69uk, Hi, man. True, very. You good? ** Hyemin Kim, Hi. That one Buffalo record store, I can't remember the name, was at one time the biggest polka record store in America, which, weirdly, was a big deal back when polka was a hipster thing, a status which is so hard to imagine, but there you go. Thanks about the good luck for all my work, and the same to you for yours. We're getting closer to feeling like we'll be able to manage the film's future somehow. ** David Ehrenstein, Me too, about Tower Sunset. Oh, right, Vinyl Fetish. Holy shit, I forgot all about it. I used to pop in there a bunch. Their prices were a little high, but the selection and vibe were awesome. Is that the 'MaB' Aznavour song in that clip? It sounds like it. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Yeah, that area between Los Feliz and Echo Park has become a kind of scattered vinyl record store mall. It's interesting. Tokyo had some very cool, very large record stores when we were there. There's a newish little vinyl record store literally across the street from where I live, all older stuff, mostly American and British, and all, no surprise, insanely priced. But it's a cool place. ** Steevee, Not sure why the stores died. There wasn't a lot of detailed info. I remember almost all of the NYC stores except the early, early ones. I think that's probably true about collaborations happening organically. Mine have. Well, when I started working with Gisele, it was a proposal from her, and I didn't know her, but as soon as we met, it was like clockwork or whatever. I can't imagine collaborating with someone I don't feel super connected with. There's a lot of stress in projects in any case, and I think it helps immensely if a collaboration is always as much about the excitement of working with someone as it is about the end result. No, I haven't heard the new Andy Haas. I read something about it and was intrigued. The Muslimgauze connection is certainly a lure. Yeah, I'll check it out. Thanks a lot for that, Steve. ** Sypha, If you get the 'Trinity' book with a big publisher, you will be incredibly lucky to get to control the cover. People I know who write fiction that can be categorized as 'genre' seem to have even less control than weirdo or art or literary fiction writers do. The publishers seem to have a look for their genre books, and you get slapped with a variation on that whether you like it or not. But, hey, who really knows. I don't watch 'True Detective', and I've barely read Ligotti, so I'm not paying attention to the plagiarism thing, just the headlines and some of the commentary. ** Nicki, Hi. Oh, I love collaborating, or I love collaborating with the people with whom I get to collaborate. It just got stressful because everyone was away and incommunicado on their vacations for while, and I'm okay at getting things done and being diligent, but it was too much. But everyone's back, and all is gradually becoming well. Ha ha, what a poem, ha ha, thank you! ** Jebus, Hi, Jebus! Wow, very nice to see you! I figured there would be some mistakes in there, given the way I searched them out. Well, that's good news, and, yeah, I think I did mix up the Chicago/Denver thing. Really glad you're out there reading. If you ever feel like catching me up on what and how you're doing, please do. It would be a happy thing. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Nice news about Reckless. I used to go and buy there whenever I was in London. It was cool. No, I didn't see the new Jodorowsky. I think it must have already opened here, but I seem to have missed the run. I'll catch it somehow. Let me know what you think. I think I've mostly heard mostly upbeat things about it. ** Robert-nyc, Hi, Robert! Yeah, me too, about the NYC shops. Thank goodness that Other Music is still there and really healthy seeming. Cool about the mutually acquired turntable. I miss mine something awful. We'll finish shooting the film in early September, but it won't be edited and in shape until early next year. Then I think it starts with festival screenings. So, it'll still be a while. You good? ** MANCY, I wondered if you knew those Seattle stores. 'Mark Arm's Vision Street wear shoes': those actually existed or still exist maybe? Weird. Thanks a bunch about the posts. I'm excited that you're doing the trailer for Mark's book! And do post me/us an alert about your new video when it's real, please. Great! Take care, man. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Yeah, I kind of liked how that transition worked out. Cool. Bimbo Tower closing is a really sad thing. It was one of the great treasure of Paris. You were at a nice little international array of those dead places. Cool. Me too, I guess, but a different array. I never did stick my head in Bleeker Bob's even though I walked by it a million times, I don't know why. ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi. Sam The Record Man looked to be really exciting. I ended up reading a bunch about it while making the past, initially because I liked its facade. Oh, yeah, that replacement is a depressing thing. Ugh. ** Etc etc etc, Hi. No, I hadn't seen that site. That's cool. That'll be useful. Thank you! NYC has a slew of sites charting the dying NYC of the past, and I was hoping to find an LA equivalent, but I couldn't find anything comprehensive, which seems very weird given the constant changeability of LA's shell. Yes, perhaps my favorite place in all of Paris is Musee de la chase et de la nature. It's amazing, and, although not as deeply conceptual and detailed in its fiction-vis-non-fiction conceit, it has something of a 'MoJT' vibe and look and feel. That's a must. There awesome secrets in it that I should tell you about when you get here and before you go there. There are a lot of very cool musees and things to see in Paris, in addition to the obvious good places like Palais de Tokyo, etc. I can either try to think up a list before you come or fill you in when you get here. Do drop a line when you're about to head over here, and we'll make a plan. ** Kyler, Hi. Oh, it's POD, gotcha. I keep forgetting that that's how so many presses work and manage to make it work now. I did get my package the other day, no worries. I've only had time to fondle the cover so far, but I'm happy to have it! ** Mark Gluth, Hi, Mark! Things didn't turn on a dime exactly, but the mood is upbeat now and determination has replaced despair, so maybe things turned on a ... fifty cent coin? Or on a pizza pan, at least. Cool, great, send me stuff and I'll assemble the most regal post I can very happily! I'll peek at what KP has when I"m over there next. I'm too brain occupied/fried at the moment to do more than peek until the film is shot. Exciting! Have fun with Mancy, as you no doubt will. Thanks, Mark! Have a great weekend! ** Misanthrope, So, ... happy birthday! There's my weird idea of a version of a McCarthy post for you. I hope you like it at least a little. Poehemia sounds nice. At first I thought it was connected to Edgar Allan Poe, but it seems not. Which is more than fine. Take photos or write us a review or something. Sunday sounds like fun. Eat something that looks remotely like a cake and tastes somewhat like a cake too. I don't know why that seems crucial, and I hope it's not traditionalism setting in, yikes. Have a blast among blasts! ** Rewritedept, I actually looked specifically for dead Vegas stores, but, for some reason, I couldn't get anything to come up that seemed reliable vis-a-vis death. Our Virgin Megastore here in Paris hung on for the longest time before shuttering maybe, oh, two months ago? It kind of sucked, though. I hope the potentially good news transcends your feeling of bad luck re: good news and showers you with whatever the news has stored up in its cloud bank or some such thing. Do keep your mind-losing to semi- at worst, okay? Your mind is needed. ** With that, I send you into the weekend with this post whose basic premise was chosen by Misanthrope as an appropriate and desired form of blog-shaped entertainment for his birthday on this Sunday. Maybe you'll find something therein too. Find out, why don't you? See you on Monday.

________________
Aliona van der Horst Boris Ryzhy(2009)
'The Russian poet Boris Ryzhy was handsome, talented and famous. So why did he take his own life at the age of 26? A quest to find the answer takes the filmmaker to the criminal neighbourhood in the cold industrial city of Yekaterinenburg where Boris grew up. Through conversations with family and friends, she pieces together a picture of passionate and complex life of the poet. What emerges is a penetrating portrait of the perestroika generation, who lost all certainties, becoming a generation of criminals and bodyguards. Above all, it is a haunting film about Boris'love for life. Through his poems, pain is transformed into grace. Directed by Aliona van der Horst. Cinematography: Maasja Ooms. In co-production with VPRO.'-- VPRO


Trailer



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Jonas Mekas Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit(1997)
'This is a video record of the Buddhist wake ceremony at Allen Ginsberg's apartment. You see Allen, now asleep forever, his close friends, and the Buddhist monks conducting the cere- mony, preparing Allen for the travel into the spirit world. You also see Allen being wrapped up and removed from the apartment to the Buddhist Temple. I talk to Peter Orlovsky about Allen's last days. Later I tape the final farewell at the Buddhist Temple, 118 West 22nd Street, New York City, and many of Allen's friends, Patti Smith, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Le Roy Jones- Baraka, Hiro Yamagata, Anne Waldman, and many others who came to say last good-bye to Allen.'-- Jonas Mekas


Excerpt



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Kate Crash Eruptions of Poetry: Anna Homler, LA Woman(2011)
'Anna Homler is a poet and vocal, visual and performance artist who has been known to invent her own languages; she often plays her collection of antiques, toys and curios thru a variety of digital delays/FX. She is included in Kate Crash's current interactive documentary created with EZTV’s Michael Masucci. The film, LA Woman, (2011) premiered as part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative sponsored by the Getty Research Institute.'-- collaged


Excerpt



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James Brih Abee Full Blossom: The Life of Roberts Blossom(2000)
'Despite his long legit career, the poet and actor Roberts Blossom is probably best known for his role as Old Man Marley in the Chris Columbus film Home Alone. He also appeared in Slaughterhouse-Five, The Great Gatsby, Escape From Alcatraz, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Quick and the Dead, Always and The Last Temptation of Christ. He also starred in a horror film, 1974’s Deranged, that was based on the life of serial killer Ed Gein. He was also a published poet, writing every day for 60 years. A documentary on his life, Full Blossom: The Life of Poet/Actor Roberts Blossom, was made in 2000 and featured Ed Asner, Peter Brook and director Robert Frank, as well as members of Blossom’s family.'-- Variety


Trailer



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Aristede Craig Jr. Aristede the Poet Documentary(2013)
'Aristede Craig Jr. uploaded a video.'


the entire film



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John Dullaghan Bukowski: Born into This(2003)
'Director John Dullaghan's biographical documentary about infamous poet Charles Bukowski, Bukowski: Born Into This, is as much a touching portrait of the author as it is an exposé of his sordid lifestyle. Interspersed between ample vintage footage of Bukowski's poetry readings are interviews with the poet's fans including such legendary figures such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Fante (wife of John), Bono, and Harry Dean Stanton. Filmed in grainy black and white by Bukowski's friend, Taylor Hackford, due to lack of funding, the old films edited into this movie paint Bukowski's life of boozing and brawling romantically, securing Bukowski's legendary status.'-- Top Documentary Films


the entire film



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David Hoffman Michael Yetnikoff: Child Poet(1968)
'This 30-minute documentary that reveals the life and poetry of a ten-year-old poet, Michael Yetnikoff. Michael says that he has been a poet since he could write. He shares his thoughts and his poems with veteran documentary filmmaker, David Hoffman. The result is a tale about a ten-year-old boy whose poetry contains way with words and intelligence way beyond his years. Michael reads his poems and offers insight into what created them. He even writes a poem about the documentary.'-- DH


Excerpt



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Melanie La Rosa The Poetry Deal: A Film with Diane Di Prima(2012)
'She remains the most famous women poet of the Beat Generation; her friend Allen Ginsberg calling her "heroic in life and poetics". THE POETRY DEAL: A FILM WITH DIANE DI PRIMA is an impressionistic documentary about legendary poet Diane di Prima. The most well known female writer of the Beat Era, di Prima is fierce, funny, and philosophical, still actively writing in her late 70s in San Francisco, where she is poet laureate. She is a pioneer who broke boundaries of class and gender to publish her writing, and THE POETRY DEAL opens a window looking back through more than 50 years of poetry, activism, and cultural change, providing a unique women's perspective of the Beat movement. THE POETRY DEAL puts di Prima's life and work on screen in a unique, beautiful portrait using rare archival material, impressionistic scenes shot in Super8 and 16mm, stories told by friends and colleagues—and di Prima's powerful writing.'-- WMMNYC


Trailer



_________________
Ron Mann Poetry in Motion(1982)
'To say that Poetry in Motion, Ron Mann’s 1982 documentary, is the greatest poetry documentary of all time doesn’t really quite give the film its due. Thirty years on, the film still holds up as an anthology and time capsule, one that’s on a par with or even surpasses its print inspiration, Donald Allen’s New American Poetry: 1945-1960. It arrived in theaters and video stores at a time when poetry was reasserting itself as an oral and performance-based art, a synthesis of previous countercultural movements with free jazz, punk rock, and theater of cruelty cabaret. The 24 poet performers portrayed in the film read like a who’s who of late 20th-century American countercultural poetry: Helen Adam, Miguel Algarin, Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, John Cage, Jim Carroll, Jayne Cortez, Robert Creeley, Christopher Dewdney, Diane Di Prima, Kenward Elmslie, Four Horsemen, Allen Gingsberg, John Giorno, Michael McClure, Ted Milton, Michael Ondaatje, Ed Sanders, Ntozake Shange, Gary Snyder, Tom Waits and Anne Waldman.'-- collaged


the entire film



_________________
Danila Usov Graveyard Poet(2007)
'This is a story of Paul Berry, a grave yard tenant and a poet. In addition to Berry, the documentary includes Greg Berry and Mike Eagle as narrator. Gil Raitses and Morgan Denner also have contributed with cinematography. It was shot on a night of the big snow storm.'-- DU


the entire film



_________________
Matthew Furey Red Poet(2009)
'The film was accepted into 8 film festivals including the Rome Independent Film Festival in Italy & the Bradford International Film Festival (hosted by the British National Media Museum). Film Maker Matthew Furey's Red Poet paints a soulful picture of San Francisco's own Jack Hirschman and brings to the silver screen the singular life of this troubadour for modern times. A modest Bronx childhood first gives way to a shooting star career in academia. Controversial teaching stints at Dartmouth and UCLA make him anathema to the academy; he is fired for his opposition to the Vietnam War. Soon Hirschman finds himself penniless and homeless on the streets of San Francisco. Through it all, Hirschman perseveres, continues to write his poems and publish over 100 books of poetry. Red Poet recounts a tale of a life lived on its own terms: against all odds, a unique poetic talent finds personal redemption through his art and his poetry.'-- MF



the entire film



________________
Sara Sackner Concrete!(2006)
'Concrete! is documentary about the Sackner-Archive, in Miami, the largest private collection of concrete and visual poetry. Over sixty-thousand objects from around the world speak volumes about a compulsive and joyful life of collecting art, poetry, and artist books. Founded in 1979, this "archive of archives" initially focused on concrete and visual poetry—including rare manuscripts and published works by international luminaries such as Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, Oyvind Fahlström and Eugen Gomringer. The collection subsequently grew to encompass a broad array of historic and contemporary works that synthesize word and image. Rooted in the early to mid-20th-century European avant-garde, the collection provides a unique lens through which to examine the foundational movements of modernism, including Italian Futurism, Russian Constructivism, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Dada and Lettrisme, among others. The Sackners’ contemporary holdings are also expansive, with special strengths in artists' books and "assemblings" (limited-edition groupings of materials by numerous contributors), as well as various subgenres such as typewriter art, performance poetry and micrography (abstract or representational designs comprised of minuscule lettering).' -- Ubuweb


Trailer



_________________
CrimeTV William Bradford: The Death Row Poet(2003)
'William Richard "Bill" Bradford (1948–2008) was an American murderer who was incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison for the 1984 murders of his 15-year-old neighbor Tracey Campbell and barmaid Shari Miller. In July 2006, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department released a compilation of photos found in Bradford's apartment in the 1980s, depicting 54 different women in modelling poses. As Bradford had used the promise of a modelling career to lure his victims, and taken pictures of Miller before murdering her, police believe that Bradford was in fact a serial killer and that the photos depict Bradford's other victims in the moments before their deaths. Bradford died at the Vacaville prison medical facility on March 10, 2008, of cancer. In 1998, Bradford dropped all of his appeals, claiming that life in San Quentin had become unbearable. Having had no legal representation for the past 10 years, Bradford hired a lawyer to help speed the process of his execution, and began writing poems about life in San Quentin. His poetry attracted attention from the press, who dubbed him "Death Row Poet". Five days before his scheduled execution, Bradford said that he had changed his mind, professing his innocence and declaring that he wanted the execution process to be halted.'-- collaged


the entire film



__________________
Gustave Reininger Corso: The Last Beat (2009)
'Although hailed by Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg as an exceptionally gifted mind and poet, Gregory Corso is, by comparison, the unsung Beat, never achieving the same renown as the movement's three most celebrated icons. But he probably was the most colorful of the bunch, and Gustave Reininger's 10-years-in-the-making documentary, Corso: The Last Beat, finally brings him to the big screen. The film's somewhat uneven style -- at once an artistic documentary, home movie and sometimes overly conventional for such an unconventional subject -- might hamper its chances for traditional television platforms. But Corso should be seen, not simply because Reininger's respect and love for his subject obviously run deep, but because the film is a moving portrait of an artist of unwavering loyalty to his artistry.'-- Hollywood Reporter


Trailer



_________________
Bradley Gillespie Frick(2014)
'Roughly a year ago, I had the opportunity to meet one of my idols, Steve Roggenbuck. Steve is an alt-lit poet that is actively embracing new techniques of spreading his awe-inspiring words across the globe. Gaining popularity through use of his quick, comedic videos via YouTube, Steve disorients you to a point where you're not sure how to take his art, but regardless, leaves you with a deep feeling in your stomach to better yourself. My deepest apologies for taking so long on getting the video out. Thank you Steve for taking the time out to make this video, which turned out to be one of my favorite I've shot in my entire career as a director. Boost!'-- BG


the entire film



___________________
Richard O. Moore USA: POETRY, FRANK O'HARA(1966)
'USA: Poetry was produced and directed by Richard O. Moore for National Education Television. The twelve part documentary series which was produced in 1965-66, showcased many poets including, Anne Sexton, John Wieners, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, John Ashbery, William Everson, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Kenneth Koch, Ed Sanders, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Richard Wilbur, Denise Levertov, and Louis Zukofsky. The program featuring Frank O'Hara was filmed on March 5, 1966 and originally aired on September 1, 1966.'-- poetry foundation.org


the entire film




*

p.s. Hey. Dedicated silent blog reader BrianWallis asked me if he could use the post space to recommend some documentary films on poets to you, and I said, Sure, of course! If the formatting looks familiar that's because he curated and I set the thing up, but I'm just the bricklayer, and Brian gets all the credit. There's everything from the invaluable to total weirdos in there, so check it out, please, and speak to our shy but diligent guest-host if you will. Thanks, and thanks very much, BW. ** gucciCODYprada, Ah, ha! Codester! I have started reading but I haven't gotten very far yet due to an overwhelming load of film work, but yes, the thing is cracked! I'll read as swiftly as my crunching schedule will allow. Are you in India? How the heck is it? I send you my love too! ** DavidEhrenstein, I ... think he really exists? ** Sypha, Hi. I can see you liking that about him, yeah. Makes total sense. That's real whirlpool of a back cover description, by which I mean it seems to work like a charm. ** Bill, Hi, B. We like what we like. Ain't no right or wrong about it. So says me. That does look like a fine book. Huh. I'll see what I can do to find and invade it. Thank you, Bill. Nice weekend? ** Grant maierhofer, Hey, Grant. Cool, thank you. 'Altmann's Tongue' is awesome. This blog is long overdue some kind of Evenson post, wow. I'll do that. 'Child of God' is a goodie. Great rambling, which wasn't rambling, man. Very cool that you did the Cutty Spot interview. I'm a CS addict. Pass along the launch date when you know it. Uh, ... I think I read Eliaz Tezapsidis' review. Link me up, if you like, so I can make sure. You came back with the thing. Cool! I'll .... Everyone, Grant Maierhofer, a fine writer if there ever was one, shares a link to a location (the nearly always cool Vol. 1 Brooklyn site) where an excerpt from his hotly anticipated new novel has been revealed for our reading pleasure. Hence, clicking and reading are a highly recommended 1-2 punch of an activity at this very moment, and here's how you can do that. ** Misanthrope, That's because Self is a pretentious smelt pot, and Mccarty isn't. Anyway, I'm so glad you liked it. Happy post-Birthday? Was it fun? Did you blow the fucker out? Was that cake as delish as it sounded? Are you as fat as a pig now? Are you as piggie as a slave now? Tell me. ** Kier, Thanks, Kier! Sitting by the sea watching the mountain get pink as the moon came up sounds like way more than enough to have done. That was a really nice sentence. It was like a sentence-long contemplative novel. Yeah, reading about your weekend made me feel serene and very alert at the same time, which is kind of possibly the best possible feeling one could have, now that I think about it. My weekend was, let's see, full of work and planning, basically. There's too much to be done to do anything much but try to begin to get things done right now. So, yeah, a lot happened, but I can't think of anything that would be at all interesting to hear or even write about it. Oh, except that Zac, Kiddiepunk, Oscar B, and I made form plans to go to Disneyland Paris on Wednesday to ride the new and hugely, lengthily anticipated 'Ratatouille' ride, so that's coolness. So, the weekend was fine, all in all. Did you have anymore serene, alert nature-based adventures today? ** Kyler, Thanks. Hope your weekend was a fully upbeat stretch. ** Steevee, That's weird. About the cease and desist, Oh, and it was their mistake or their bullshit? What is their greedy deal? I don't know Khaled Hosseini's novels. His work doesn't sound very up my alley from your description. I'm not a huge fan of either Rushdie or Marquez. ** Jonathan, Hi. 'The white building on rue de l'Hôtel de Ville': I'll look for a white building the next time I'm down there, which could even be today. Lorrie Moore is cool. I need to read more of her. She's very liked by writers I very like. My weekend did some of the tricks needed. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Glad you dug the thing! ** Etc etc etc, Hi. I really, really don't think Franzen is doing anything remotely very interesting under there. McCarthy, though, yes. In my opinion, I mean. Paris has a ton of lost spaces, but, well, maybe not lost in LA sense, more like hidden away, camouflaged, that sort of thing. No, I haven't had a chance to look at the stuff yet for which I greatly apologize. Everything I want to do/read is being way back-burnered by the film work, which is overwhelming at the moment, but I look forward to reading it greatly when my brain gets released. The film is in a difficult, trying to figure out very hard things really fast by necessity phase right now. Oh, no, we're ages away from trailers and anything like that. The film isn't finished filming yet, and it won't be finished being edited until January. Yeah, see you soon, right? Keep me updated. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I think start with 'Blood Meridian'. Some of the later novels are more user-friendly, but you should start with the pure, probably best thing. I hope today had the payoff you so hope. What happened? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Thanks, bud. Skype thing should work. When is good? I have heard some Seaford Mods. It sounded really fresh. I've been meaning to find out if remains fresh sounding in relative bulk. I'll do that. Thanks, J. ** I guess we're done. If you want to find out about poet documentaries and even watch one or more of them, today is your day, thanks to Mr. BrianWallis. Have a good time. See you tomorrow.

Preface








Chapter 1
















Chapter 2












Chapter 3












Chapter 4












Chapter 5













Chapter 6












Chapter 7










Chapter 8












Chapter 9













Chapter 10













Chapter 11
















Chapter 12












Afterword







*

p.s. Hey. Page loading time apologies. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. That's very interesting about Bill and Roberts Blossom, and thank you for the 'Early Plastic' quotes. Sometimes I feel like Bill has known everybody. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. I'm sure Mr. Wallis saw your thanks, and I thank you/him too. Oh, re: your FB thing yesterday, I think a strong case could also be made for the greatness of 'Bits and Pieces'. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Ah, a brief 24 hour delay. May your fevered anticipation pay off big time. Yes, if I didn't already offer a prime spot to announce and celebrate Art101 here, let me do so now with bells on. Cool, excited to hear how the meeting went! ** Steevee, Hi. Then it turns into 'The Corrections'?! Wow, it's sounding less compelling by the moment. Me, a picky reader? Ha ha, probably. I'm just not much of a fan of magic realism, in fiction, in movies, etc. Don't know why. My imagination hits a wall in that case. I like Marquez more than I like Rushdie, but I gave up on the latter pretty quickly. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thursday or Friday should work, I think. Let's check in as those days approach to figure it out, There's a never ending batch of impending film stuff to do, but it should be just fine. Getting the Sleaford Mods album is on today's agenda. My music listening has been hampered of very late, and it's been mostly involved in finding some music we need for an upcoming scene which takes place at a somewhat apocalyptic electronic music gig. Oh, I o have an advance of the Sunn0)))/Scott Walker album, and it is quite fucking incredible. So, there's that. Interesting about the new Gibson. I must admit I haven't read the last number of his novels, but I adore his early books, so, despite its daunting length, I think I'll go page through it at Shakespeare & Co. and hopefully pick it up. He's great, and such a sweetheart of a guy. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G! Super glad to hear that your birthday was so much fun even without the originally hoped for context. Wedding cake are the magic words. I wonder if the French make or eat wedding cakes. I don't think I've seen a real, old fashioned wedding cake since I've been here. Yummy. I love mashed potatoes. I mean truly love. You can keep the seafood, of course. Yeah, I don't think you would make a very convincing sow. But I suppose that's for others to decide. Enjoy your first day of suddenly being one year older. There's something kind of magic about that first older day. You just have feel it or something, man. Or I don't know what I'm saying. ** Sypha, Hi. RS is such a funny press. Listing your book before signing the contract. It's kind of crazy, but I like it. Next few months? Like I said, they're funny and crazy. Crazy like a fox or whatever. Great news! ** End. I made another horror novella out of gifs for Zac today, and you're highly invited to see if you'll enjoy it too. So do that. I'm going to Euro Disneyland tomorrow, but I should be able to do the p.s. before I split, so see you then!

'An efficient test of where you stand on contemporary art is whether you are persuaded, or persuadable, that Chris Burden is a good artist. I think he’s pretty great. Burden is the guy who, on November 19, 1971, in Santa Ana, California, produced a classic, or an atrocity (both, to my mind), of conceptual art by getting shot. “Shoot” survives in desultory black-and-white photographs with this description: “At 7:45 P.M. I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket .22 long rifle. My friend was standing about fifteen feet from me.” Why do such things? “I wanted to be taken seriously as an artist,” Burden explained, when I visited him recently at his studio in a brushy glen of Topanga Canyon, where he lives with his wife, the sculptor Nancy Rubins.

'“Shoot” was one of a number of perfectly repellent performance pieces of the early nineteen-seventies in which Burden subjected himself to danger, thereby creating a double bind, for viewers, between the citizenly injunction to intervene in crises and the institutional taboo against touching art works. (Such, at any rate, was my analysis of the distinctive nausea that I felt in thinking of those things, which I avoided witnessing in person.) He spent five days in a small locker, with a bottle of water above and a bottle for urine below; slithered, nearly naked and with his hands held behind him, across fifty feet of broken glass in a parking lot; had his hands nailed to the roof of a Volkswagen; was kicked down a flight of stairs; and, on different occasions, incurred apparent risks of burning, drowning, and electrocution.

'Usually performed for small audiences, these events became word-of-mouth sensations on a radically minded grapevine in art schools, new contemporary museums, and grant-funded alternative spaces—an emerging academy of the far out. Anti-commercial sentiments held sway in those circles, although not altogether heroically, given the concurrent slump in the art market and the flow of patronage from such sources as the National Endowment for the Arts. (Between 1974 and 1983, Burden received four N.E.A. grants.) Earthworks, executed in remote locations, were the conceptual art that came closest to being popular. They had in common with Burden’s performances the fact that almost nobody saw them, except by way of documentation. The avant-gardism of the time wasn’t only reliant on publicity; it was effectively about the mediums of information—specialized magazines, insider gossip—through which it became known. Burden strummed the network like a lyre.

'He was immediately taken very seriously, as the most extreme and enigmatic of provocateurs in a subculture that, in highly educated ways, reflected the political disarray of the nation during the seemingly eternal Vietnam War, and prefigured the swing-barrelled rage of punk. By 1977, he had created performance pieces in two dozen American and European cities. They constituted a theatre of passive-aggressive cruelty. For one, in 1972, in Newport Beach, he sat immobile in a chair, wearing dark glasses, facing two cushions and an inviting box of marijuana cigarettes. Visitors naturally assumed that he was watching them, but the insides of his glasses were painted black, and he refused to speak. He reported, in his record of the work, “Many people tried to talk to me, one assaulted me and one left sobbing hysterically.” Plainly, Burden was not in sympathy with his supposed community.

'Since the late seventies, Burden has specialized in one-off wonders like “A Tale of Two Cities” (whose details yield a wealth of technological and social history) and insouciant engineering feats like “Hell Gate,” as well as technological stunts involving self-designed cars, boats, and laboratory equipment. (He reconstructed a primitive early television and a nineteenth-century apparatus for measuring the speed of light.) Some works have had political content, such as a chilling response to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial: three million Vietnamese names, symbolizing the native dead of that war, engraved on hinged copper panels. (Made in 1991, it belongs to Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art.) Others have been hoots: a rubber-band-powered model plane launched in the aisle of a Concorde in flight, to attain a ground speed of Mach 2.05 plus ten miles per hour. (Burden sells relics of such actions; in this instance, the little plane mounted in a glass case.) In his studio, he showed me a work in progress: parts of what will be a huge model city crisscrossed by roller-coasters of hundreds of track-racing toy cars. The cars will run continuously, until they wear out, at the equivalent, for their size, of well over a hundred miles an hour. (A smaller version, shown in 2004 in Kanazawa, Japan, provoked acute anxiety in its viewers, Burden remarked happily.) There is an inevitable slackness, conceptually, to these works, which colonize the “free spot” that Burden’s daring carved out. The history of the avant-garde comes down to this: a boyish gimcracker diverting us by diverting himself. Worse things have happened.'-- The New Yorker











___
Show




Shoot, 1971
'At 7:45 p.m. I was shot in the left arm by a friend'. -- Chris Burden







Match Piece, 1972
'Chris Burden’s performance took place in the large room on the right side of the gallery. Most of the floor was covered by white butcher paper, with a space near the entrance left for the audience to occupy. The whiteness of the paper, reflecting the whites of the walls and ceiling, created an all-white space. The performance began a little after eight o’clock and the activity of the piece got under way before the audience was allowed to enter. At that moment Burden was kneeling directly on the floor, with his right side facing the audience, toward the back of the space. He was wearing a white T-shirt, off-white Levi’s, no belt and bare feet. He stared intently at two tiny black, transistorized black-and-white TV sets that sat side by side in front of him. At least one TV was on throughout the whole performance, with sound. Burden periodically switched from one to the other, or had both going at once. The sound was quite loud. About ten or fifteen feet away, between him and the audience, a naked girl lay on her back with her eyes closed and hands at her side. As he watched the TVs the artist was wrapping aluminum foil around the heads of matches and heating them until they lit. The jet pressure caused by igniting the match heads shot them into the air, and he used a makeshift launcher made from two bent paperclips to fire these little missiles in the direction of the girl. The direction and distance the matches flew varied greatly and did not seem very accurately controllable by Burden. In all probability fewer than fifteen matches hit the girl. When hit by the hot matches she usually flinched, and when one landed directly on her she swept it off. The average range of the cardboard matches was about the distance to the girl while the wooden ones were more powerful and more difficult to control. Many of them misfired, but a few flew forcefully into the audience space. Because Burden prepared and fired each match separately the overall pace was very slow, about one match per minute. The artist at no time showed any interest in the audience or the girl. His face had the sort of unself-conscious and disinterested expression one might expect from someone who was alone. He looked calm and absorbed in what he was doing.'-- East of Borneo






747, 1973
'At about 8 am at a beach house near the Los Angeles International Airport, I fired several shots with a pistol at a Boeing 747'. -- Chris Burden






Through The Night Softly, 1973
'By buying ten seconds of television advertisement time on a local Los Angeles channel and using it to show, without any comment, an excerpt from Through the Night Softly, 1973, in which Burden, nearly naked, crawled through fifty feet of broken glass, the artist brilliantly subverted commercial television.'-- Middelheim Museum






Icarus, 1973
'At 6 p.m. three invited spectators came to my studio. The room was fifteen feet by twenty-five feet and well lit by natural light. Wearing no clothes, I entered the space from a small room at the back. Two assistants lifted onto each shoulder one end of six foot sheets of plate glass. The sheets sloped onto the floor at right angles from my body. The assistants poured gasoline down the sheets of glass. Stepping back, they threw matches to ignite the gasoline. After a few seconds I jumped up, sending the burning glass crashing to the floor. I walked into the back room.'-- Chris Burden






Trans-Fixed, 1974
'In 1974, performance artist Chris Burden was nailed to the back of a Volkswagen Beetle, which was pushed out of a garage, the engine revved for two minutes, and then pushed back into the garage.'-- wtfarthistory






Velvet Water, 1974
'In Velvet Water Chris Burden repeatedly inhaled water and broadcast his self-torture to a remote audience.'-- artsy.net







C.B.T.V., 1977
'In this work, Chris Burden recreated and demonstrated John L. Baird's original apparatus - the first television. Burden says, "I believe that, as a technological invention, television is of extreme significance as it is a most successful solution to man's historic desire to 'see beyond' his immediate surroundings, and it has made instant visual communication possible. As technology becomes more and more complex, fewer and fewer people have any understanding of how anything really works. By reduplicating and demonstrating television in its original mechanical and relatively simple form, I hope to enable people to understand the principle behind today's electronic television."'-- Ronald Feldman Gallery







The Big Wheel, (1979)
Three-ton, eight-foot diameter, cast-iron flywheel powered by a 1968 Benelli 250cc motorcycle, 112 × 175 × 143 inches.







The Reason for the Neutron Bomb, 1979,
50,000 nickels and 50,000 matchsticks, 30 ft. 8 in x 17 ft. 6 in.









A Tale of Two Cities, 1981
'Burden's A Tale of Two Cities is an installation of 5,000 toys set up on a sand and coral landscape, showing two cities at war. Since it was conceived in 1981, however, it has fallen into ruin, so much so that Burden wanted to just get rid of the thing once and for all and blow the motherf**ker up. According to Burden, such an act would just change the state of the work: “That was more metaphoric—I was trying to illustrate the fluid nature of the work. The work of art would still exist, but it would be rubble.” Conservators at the Orange County Museum of Art in California, the institution that purchased A Tale of Two Cities in 1987, were able to convince Burden to let them fix the decaying piece.'-- Complex






The Flying Kayak, 1982
'It consists of a fabric-covered frame in the shape of a little one-person boat. it hangs suspended about four feet above the gallery floor on three thin but sturdy steel cables. The kayak is unusual because it possesses a tail assembly reminiscent of a glider plane. Its vertical member can be moved with a foot pedal inside the kayak. Wing-like horizontals are controlled by handy hand levers. Several large fans are set in motion behind and one soars into a tame blue yonder consisting of a film-loop of sky projected on the wall ahead.'-- William Wilson






Samson, 1985
'A museum installation consisting of a 100-ton jack connected to a gear box and a turnstile. The 100-ton jack pushes two large timbers against the bearing walls of the museum. Each visitor to the museum must pass through the turnstile in order to see the exhibition. Each input on the turnstile ever so slightly expands the jack, and ultimately if enough people visit the exhibition, SAMSON could theoretically destroy the building. Like a glacier, its powerful movement is imperceptible to the naked eye. This sculptural installation subverts the notion of the sanctity of the Museum (the shed that houses the art).'-- Zwirner & Wurth






Exposing the Foundation of the Museum, 1986
' Chris Burden dug three large trenches in one corner of the Museum Of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, exposing the dirt and rock underneath the modern museum floor. Underneath the posturing and pretense of the art world, underneath our amazing ability to create art, these trenches looked like beautiful altars where one could contemplate spirituality, sensuality, art or dirt! Video after the jump.'-- Sam Phillips







Medusa's Head, 1990
Plywood, steel, cement, rock, model railroad trains and tracks, 14′ (426.7 cm) in diameter.







L.A.P.D. Uniforms, 1993.
Wool serge, metal, leather, wood, plastic, Berretta handguns, ...






Nomadic Folly, 2001
Wood Platform, 4 Cloth and Metal Umbrellas, Woven Carpets, Braided Ropes and Pillows, Silken Fabrics, Glass and Metal Lamps, and CD Player & Speakers, 11 1/2 × 20 × 20 in, 29.2 × 50.8 × 50.8 cm






Gold Bullets , 2003
10 gold bullets and 2 wood Plexiglas vitrines, 6 1/4 × 10 1/4 × 5 3/4 in






Ghost Ship, 2005
'On 20th June 2005, Ghost Ship, a crewless self-navigating sailing ship set sail from Fair Isle in remote north-eastern Scotland on an eight-day voyage to Newcastle upon Tyne. Audiences were able to track the boats progress via a live, daily updated website.'-- collaged






The Flying Steamroller, 2006
'A steamroller was connected to a large, counterbalanced pivot arm. When driven at speed the streamroller left the ground, centrifugally flying.'-- MoMA






What My Dad Gave Me, 2008
Appx. 1,000 stainless steel reproduction Mysty Type I Erector parts, nuts and bolts
65' x 11' 2" x 11' 3" (19.8 x 3.4 x 3.4 m)






Beam Drop, 2008
'Part-installation and part-performance, "Beam Drop," involves hoisting steel I-beams high up in the air with a crane and then dropping them climactically into a pit of wet concrete. Burden does not know exactly where his I-beams will fall, so "Beam Drop" forms by chance. Burden relies on a crane to randomly place the I-beams.'-- Complex






Metropolis II, 2011
'Chris Burden's Metropolis II is an intense kinetic sculpture, modeled after a fast paced, frenetic modern city. Steel beams form an eclectic grid interwoven with an elaborate system of 18 roadways, including one six lane freeway, and HO scale train tracks. Miniature cars speed through the city at 240 scale miles per hour; every hour, the equivalent of approximately 100,000 cars circulate through the dense network of buildings. According to Burden, "The noise, the continuous flow of the trains, and the speeding toy cars produce in the viewer the stress of living in a dynamic, active and bustling 21st century city."'-- LACMA




*

p.s. Hey. You know .... no, never mind. ** gucciCODYprada, Hey, Cody! So awesome that you're loving India so much, and the crazy of it is what I'm also imagining. Cool. Shit, about your computer, but writing by hand is highly recommended. It's like swimming versus sailing or something. Check in whenever you can and feel like it please. Big love, me  ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks for riffing on my thing. ** Sypha, I forget what NecronomiCon is, but I'm going to look it up because I like the name. 'Kraken', okay. Maybe I'll make that the crack of my determined foray someday into Mieville? ** Steevee, I've only heard the obvious stuff by Common, and it didn't insinuate itself into me. I'll try something from the new one, though. The source material is an appeal. The Robin Williams stuff I saw on my FB wall yesterday was fairly respectful of who it was spinning itself off from, but today, very predictably, it has become mostly an excuse to squabble and conspiracy-theorize, and I'm staying away. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thank you, Ben. I really appreciate that. The magical ingredient is decode-able, but not easily. Superb about the palpable Art 101 buzz, and it's really nice to read/ hear/ feel your excitement! October or any time in any fashion that you like, maestro. It will be this place's honor, for sure. ** Kyler, Thank you muchly, sir. ** Misanthrope, I'll ask a French person today what the sweet thing is that people eat at French weddings, and if I get a clear answer, I'll let you know. You just made me want wedding cake so bad. I only think about how old I am when someone asks me how old I am, and then I usually can't remember exactly. It's a future date re: your mom's mashed potatoes. Now you've made me want mashed potatoes so bad. They eat those here in France. No, it's not consciously connected to my novel except in the sense that everything I'm thinking and making and doing somehow probably is connected without my thinking deliberately about it. ** Bill, Falling, landing or not landing, the speed of the fall, the visual organization of the body as it falls or lands, the cause or lack of cause for the fall and for the landing, what happens upon landing if there is a landing, what will seemingly happen or not when there isn't a landing,  the rhythm of the gif, the color, the image gradation, illustrative vs. photographic, etc., etc. Lauren Bacall had such a weird career or acting trajectory or something. ** Okay. The p.s. always goes so fast on days when people mostly don't bother. I guess that's their plus? See if you find Chris Burden's gallery show more comments-worthy. I'll be at Paris Disneyland. See you tomorrow.

Saturday, 10 March 2007, 2:30pm: a cinema located in the basement level of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. It is a screening of rare German short films dating from the 1960s and ’70s, as part of the 29th Cinéma du réel International Documentary Film Festival. Included in the programme is the 15-minute film essay, Einleitung zu Arnold Schönbergs ‘Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene’ (Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to an Animation Scene, 1972), made by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. As the encouragingly large number of spectators settles into their seats, a commotion can be heard from outside. Suddenly, a group of fifty or so activists bursts forcefully through the doors. Dispersing what look like pre-Photoshop-era leaflets throughout the audience, the group, made up largely of self-identifying unemployed young people, demands to be permitted to watch the film programme for free, incensed that a publicly-funded festival should be charging admission to its screenings, and advocating a more generalised divorce between art and commerce.

Affronted by this protest, the Festival director, after ordering the projectionist not to proceed with the screening, and enlisting physically intimidating security guards to make their presence felt in the theatre, intervenes personally, declaring to the crowd (to their credit, the paying audience sides almost unanimously with the protestors, despite the inconvenience) that she will not be “terrorised” into allowing the screening to go ahead, thus provoking a prolonged occupation of the salle. In the end, the planned programme of films never takes place.

Perhaps the Festival director should have been more careful with her words when equating the protestors with terrorists. Straub himself would no doubt have enjoyed the irony. Less than a year earlier, he had explained his and Huillet’s absence from the 2006 Venice Film Festival, where their last film, Quei loro incontri (The Meeting, 2006), was to be honoured, with the following missive: "I wouldn’t be able to be festive in a festival where there are so many public and private police looking for a terrorist – I am the terrorist, and I tell you, paraphrasing Franco Fortini: so long as there’s American imperialistic capitalism, there’ll never be enough terrorists in the world." The statement shocked the festival-goers so much that Cameron Crowe, a member of the jury panel, even suggested that their prize for “invention of cinematic language in the ensemble of their work” be rescinded.

Such controversy was never very far away from the work of Straub-Huillet, whose collaboration was terminated with Huillet’s death due to cancer in October 2006, an event which caused an outpouring of grief from members of what Serge Daney dubbed the “Internationale Straubienne”. In 1976, West German television refused to air their adaptation of Arnold Schönberg’s Moses und Aron (Moses and Aaron, 1974) without excising the dedication to Holger Meins (a cameraman and imprisoned member of the Rote Armee Fraktion) appended to the start of the film. Their particular brand of Marxism, exhibited in films of theirs such as Les Yeux ne veulent pas en tout temps se fermer, ou Peut-être qu’un jour Rome se permetta de choisir à son tour (The Eyes do not Want to be Closed at all times, or Possibly Rome will allow itself to choose in its turn, more commonly known as Othon, 1969) and Geschichtsunterricht (History Lessons, 1972), incited fervent debate within European film circles. Even earlier, Straub-Huillet were mercilessly attacked for dedicating a film on the life of Johann Sebastian Bach to the Viet Cong, while the inaugural screening of their first feature, Nicht Versöhnt ode Es hilft nur Gewalt wo Gewalt herrscht (Not Reconciled, 1965), at the Berlinale provoked such an antithetical response from the audience of left intellectuals that Richard Roud was to say it made “the reception of L’Avventura [Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960] at Cannes seem like a triumph by comparison”. The film so baffled author Heinrich Böll, on whose story the script was based, that he stood by while his publishers threatened to burn the film’s negative.

Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle HuilletSuch opposition was matched by equally passionate defence of their work in other corners of the European cultural milieu. Darlings of the Cahiers du Cinéma journalists during their Marxist turn, as well as journals such as Screen and Filmkritik in the 1970s, Straub-Huillet also had significant portions of Gilles Deleuze’s seminal Cinéma books devoted to their work. Even today, critics such as Jonathon Rosenbaum and Tag Gallagher have made passionate pleas for the recognition of their contribution to the seventh art. And yet their output has had a singular failure to find even the kind of niche audience enjoyed by Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Pier Paolo Pasolini. Encouragingly, though, a revival of interest in their films is occurring. Recent DVD releases in the French-, German- and English-speaking markets have made their work far more accessible than it was even a couple of years ago. In France in particular, Straub-Huillet are presently the focus of unprecedented academic interest, with numerous monographs dedicated to them, and this interest is bolstered by continued retrospectives and public appearances by Straub.

And yet, while those critical of their work are quick to pounce on it as “unintelligible, inaudible”, or simply “boring”, even supporters of “the Straubs” are often ready to concede that their films are “intellectual, dry, difficult”. Adjectives such as “ascetic”, “rigorous” and even “Jansenist” preponderate in critical reviews, and their work is invariably conceived as combining a Brechtian politico-æsthetic programme with the cinematographic austerity of Robert Bresson and Carl Th. Dreyer. But, while these figures are certainly important influences on Straub-Huillet, such a conception unjustly narrows the scope of their work. D. W. Griffith, Kenji Mizoguchi and, as Gallagher has gone to great lengths to detail, John Ford are just as important precursors to Straub-Huillet as Bresson or Dreyer, while Schönberg, Friedrich Hölderlin and Cesare Pavese have featured just as prominently as Bertold Brecht as source material. Focussing purely on the rigour and anti-spectacular quality of their work overlooks the intense viscerality of the performances of their usually non-professional “actors”, and the equally sensual role of the material environment in their work: insect noises, mountainous backdrops, ruins of the ancient world, the rushing of a stream, the sun, the wind. Straub is fond of quoting Griffith that, “What the modern movie lacks is beauty – the beauty of moving wind in the trees.” -- Senses of Cinema



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Stills
































































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Further

Straub-Huillet Website
'Authenticity as a Political Act: Straub-Huillet’s Post-War Bach Revival'
Obituary: Danièle Huillet
Visual identity, book and website for the 'Straub-Huillet' film show
Serge Daney on S-H's 'Too Early, Too Late'
Serge Daney 'Une Morale de la Perception'
S-H interviewed @ Jumpcut
S-H Facebook page
'Resistance: Danièle Huillet Tribute'
'Encountering Elusive Cinema: Tati, Straub-Huillet and Antonioni'
'One Frame Apart: On Straub and Huillet and Pedro Costa’s Where Does Your Secret Smile Lie?
Jonathan Rosenbaum's 'Once it was Fire'
'Class Relations' @ cineaste
'Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet talk about Ford, Fassbinder and their own films'
'"Danger menaçant, peur, catastrophe". Huillet-Straub-Farocki: une éthique du cinéma documentaire'
INTERNACIONAL STRAUB-HUILLET
'Sound: Moses and Aaron' @ Film Comment
'A propósito de Straub-Huillet'



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Extras


Straub & Huillet interviewed about 'Klassenverhältnisse' (1984)


Straub & Huillet at work


Jean-Marie Straub et Danièle Huillet in debate with Paul Virilo & Philippe Quéaut (French)


Pedro Costa films Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet during their editing of Sicilia!


Danièle Huillet by Gérard Courant - Cinématon #343


Jean-Marie Straub by Gérard Courant - Cinématon #342



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Materials



Annotated script for Une visite au Louvre (Visit to the Louvre) (2004)


Camera position for Act II of The Death of Empedocles, based on Straub's screenplay sketch.



Shooting notebook for 'Klassenverhältnisse' (Class Relations) (1984)



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Interview: Direct Sound
from douban




Italy has, to the rest of the world, the reputation of being the country that dubs ‘the best.’ The Italians don’t just dub the foreign films, but Italian ones as well: they are shot without sound, or with an international sound track, then they are dubbed. You are members of that group – and they are few enough – who film directly with sound; that is, who film the images and record at the same time the sounds of those images.

Straub: Dubbing is not only a technique, it’s also an ideology. In a dubbed film, there is not the least rapport between what you see and what you hear. The dubbed cinema is the cinema of lies, mental laziness, and violence, because it gives no space to the viewer and makes him still more deaf and insensitive. In Italy, every day the people are becoming more deaf at a terrifying rate.

Huillet: The thing is still sadder when you think that it’s in Italy that, in a certain sense, Western music, polyphony, was born.

Straub: The world of sound is much more vast than the visual world. Dubbing, as it is practiced in Italy, does not work with the sound to enrich it, to give more to the viewer. The greatest part of the waves that a film contains come from the sound, and if in relation to the images the sound is lazy, greedy, and puritan, what sense does that make? But then, it takes courage to make silent films.

Huillet: The great silent films give the viewers the freedom to imagine the sound. A dubbed film doesn’t even do that.

Straub: The waves that a sound transmits are not just sound waves. The waves of ideas, movements, emotions, travel across the sound. The waves that we hear in a Pasolini film, for example, are restrictive. They do not enhance the image, they kill it.

There are filmmakers like Robert Bresson or, better, Jacques Tati who use dubbing intelligently. Certain Tati films would be much less rich if they didn’t have artificial sound.

Straub: You can make a dubbed film, but it is necessary to use a hundred times more imagination and work to make a direct-sound film. In effect, the sonorous reality that you record is so rich that to erase it and replace it with another sonorous reality (to dub a film) would take three or four times the amount of time needed to shoot the film. On the contrary, the films are usually dubbed in three days, and sometimes in a day and a half, there is no work. It would make sense to shoot without sound and then make an effort with the sound, in counterpoint to the image. But filmmakers tend to paste the background noises to the silent images that give the impression of reality, the voices that don’t belong to the faces we see. It’s boring, vain, and a terrible parasitism.

Filming with sound costs less than dubbing.

Straub: Yes, but that would kill the dubbing industry and it violates the local customs.

Huillet: Directors prefer to dub out of laziness: if you have decided to make a film with direct sound, the locations that you choose have to be right not only in terms of the images but also in terms of the sound.

Straub: And that is translated into a thorough analysis of the whole film. For example, our last film, Moses und Aron, the Schoenberg opera, we shot in the Roman amphitheatre of Alba Fucense, near Avezzano, in Abruzzi. But we weren’t looking for an ancient theatre. What we wanted was simply a high plateau, dominated, if possible, by a mountain. We started to look for this plateau four years ago, in a borrowed car, and we put 11,000 kilometres on it, driving more on back roads and country lanes than on paved roads, through all of Southern Italy, down to the middle of Sicily. In the course of this research, we didn’t see one plateau, no matter how beautiful, that was good for the sound, because when we found ourselves on a plateau, everything was lost in the air and the wind. And, if there was a valley, we were assaulted by the noises from below. We were therefore obliged to reconsider our intentions and we discovered what we wanted, which was a basin or crater. And in the end, we saw that to film in a basin, in our case the amphitheatre, was better for the images also, because we had a natural theatrical space in which the subject, instead of being dissolved, was concentrated. We followed the opposite course of the Taviani brothers or Pasolini, who look for pretty spots, postcards such as you see in magazines, in which the subject of the film is dissipated instead of being localised. For us, the necessity of filming with direct sound, of recording all the singers you see in the frame, of getting at the same time their songs and their bodies that sing, led us to discoveries that meant we arrived at an idea that we would never have had otherwise.

Filming in direct sound means also editing in a certain way, rather than in another.

Straub: That’s obvious. When you film in direct sound, you can’t allow yourself to play with the images: you have blocks of a certain length and you can’t use the scissors any way you want, for pleasure, for effect.

Huillet: It’s exactly the impossibility of playing with the editing that is discouraging. You can’t edit direct sound as you edit the films you are going to dub: each image has a sound and you’re forced to respect it. Even when the frame is empty, when the character leaves the shot, you can’t cut, because you continue to hear off-camera the sound of receding footsteps. In a dubbed film, you wait only for the last piece of the foot to leave the range of the camera to cut.

Many filmmakers don’t believe in an empty frame with sound that continues off-camera, because they want cinema to be a frame: it should have nothing outside. They deny the existence of a world outside the frame. In your films, the off-screen space is something that exists and is materially felt.

Straub: That’s another illusion of the dubbed film. Not only are the lips that move on the screen not the ones that say the words you hear, but the space itself becomes illusionary. Filming in direct sound you can’t fool with the space, you have to respect it, and in doing so offer the viewer the chance to reconstruct it, because film is made up of ‘extracts’ of time and space. It’s possible to not respect the space you are filming, but then you have to give the viewer the possibility of understanding why it has not been respected and not, as in dubbed films, transform a real space into a constructed labyrinth which puts the viewer into a confusion from which he can no longer escape. The viewer becomes a dog who can’t find its young.

In sum, direct sound is not merely a technical decision but a moral and ideological one: it changes the whole film and especially the rapport that is established between the film and the viewer.

Huillet: I must say this: when you arrive at the conclusion that you must do a film like that, you cut yourself off from the industry, more or less completely. If you refuse to film with just a general sound track, if you refuse to dub your film, if you refuse to use such and such an actor because he’s been seen too much and it’s absurd to always use the same faces, it’s over. You cut yourself off completely. In fact, the main reason for dubbing is industrial: only by accepting the dictatorship of dubbing can you use two or three stars from different countries in the same film.

Straub: And the result is an international product, something stripped of words, onto which each country grafts its respective language. Languages that don’t belong to the lips, words that don’t belong to the faces. But it’s a product that sells well. Everything becomes illusion. There is no longer any truth. In the end, even the ideas and emotions become false. For example, in Allonsanfan, and I mention this film because it’s not worth talking about Petri’s or Lizzani’s, there is not a single moment, not one instant where there is a true, human emotion. Not even by accident, by chance. It’s trash. It has only the illusion of a comic book.

Many filmmakers identify the international aesthetic with the popular aesthetic, and accept dubbing, stars from different countries, and the rest, because they think it’s the only way to make successful films.

Straub: The international aesthetic is an invention and weapon of the bourgeoisie. The popular aesthetic is always a personal aesthetic.

For the bourgeoisie, there is no art that is not universal. The international aesthetic is like Esperanto.

Straub: Exactly. Esperanto has always been the dream of the bourgeoisie.



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13 of Straub-Huillet's 24 films

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Not Reconciled or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules(1965)
'Not Reconciled (Nicht versöhnt) is a 1965 West German drama film directed by Jean-Marie Straub. It has the subtitle Only Violence Helps Where Violence Reigns (Es hilft nur Gewalt wo Gewalt herrscht). The film is an adaptation of the 1959 novel Billiards at Half-past Nine by Heinrich Böll. Richard Brody of The New Yorker reviewed the film in 2008: "Straub and Huillet make the layers of history live in the present tense, which they judge severely. The tamped-down acting and the spare, tense visual rhetoric suggest a state of moral crisis as well as the response—as much in style as in substance—that it demands."'-- collaged



the entire film



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The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach(1968)
'In February 1968, a fateful year perhaps better remembered for its political upheavals, student uprisings, assassinations and the escalation of the Vietnam War than its cinematic achievements, a curiously backward-looking film premiered at the 1968 Cinemanifestatie Festival in Utrecht. The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, directed by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, reconstructs the life of Johann Sebastian Bach through an examination of his music and documents, and stars the Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt as the composer. The film, which consists mainly of musical performances of Bach’s music, is narrated from the perspective of his second wife, portrayed by Christiane Lang-Drewanz, who recounts the activities of their day-to-day life in Cöthen and Leipzig. How could an austere film about Bach’s life and music, set in a remote eighteenth-century sound- and landscape, have been produced in the midst of the ferment and discontent of the late 1960s?'-- Kailan R. Rubinoff



the entire film



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Der Bräutigam, die Komödiantin und der Zuhälter(1968)
'Three sequences are linked together in this short film by Straub; the first sequence is a long tracking shot from a car of prostitutes plying their trade on the night-time streets of Germany; the second is a staged play, cut down to 10 minutes by Straub and photographed in a single take; the final sequence covers the marriage of James and Lilith, and Lilith's subsequent execution of her pimp, played by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.'-- IMDb



the entire film



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History Lessons(1972)
'Set in contemporary Rome, the film shows through a series of encounters with “ancient” Romans, how the economic and political manipulation by ancient Roman society led to Caesar’s dictatorship. The end of history. Analog and digital recordings have forced history to produce its own history, thus turn it into a very mortal thing: like a person who lives and passes. There’s no longer a writer and myth in between. History Lessons shows this loss and conflict ruthlessly. One of the true wonders of cinema that came out of the Straub/Huillet collaboration. History as labyrinth and cities as the realization of that maze.'-- muni



the entire film



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Moses und Aron(1973)
'Moses und Aron is based on the unfinished opera of the same title by Arnold Schoenberg. During its 1975 run at US festivals, it was also known as Aaron and Moses, and was frequently reviewed as such. It is one of three films based on Schoenberg works Straub and Huillet directed, the other two being Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene, a short film made directly before Moses und Aron, and, over two decades later, an adaptation of the one-act comic opera Von heute auf morgen. The film retains the unfinished nature of the original opera, with the third act consisting of a single shot (with no music) as Moses delivers a monologue based on Schoenberg's notes.'-- collaged



Excerpt


Excerpt



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Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice(1977)
'For spectators who don't know what to do with their films, Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet offer a rigorous program that's all work and no play--a grueling process of wrestling with intractable texts, often in languages that one doesn't understand, without the interest provided by easy-to-read characters or compelling plots. But in fact every one of Straub-Huillet's 15 films to date (10 features and 5 shorts) offers an arena of play as well as work, and opportunities for sensual enjoyment as well as analytical reflection. In Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice, (1977) a group of nine men and women recited Mallarme's "A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance" while seated in Paris's Pere Lachaise cemetery near a plaque commemorating the Paris Commune victims of 1871; but the delivery was comically poker-faced.'-- Chicago Reader



the entire film



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From the Cloud to the Resistance(1979)
'Straub/Huillet’s From the Cloud to the Resistance has been summarized by Straub as follows: "From the cloud, that is from the invention of the gods by man, to the resistance of the latter against the former as much as to the resistance against Fascism. The film is based on two works by Cesare Pavese, falls into the category of History Lessons and Too Early, Too Late as well. It, too, has two parts—a twentieth-century text and a text regarding the myths of antiquity, each set in the appropriate landscape. Pavese’s The Moon and the Bonfires looks back on the violent deaths of Italian anti-Fascist resistance fighters; Dialogues with Leucò is a series of dialogues between heroes and gods, connecting myth and history and returning to an ambiguous stage in the creation of distinctions, such as that between animal and human, which are fundamental to grammar and language itself."'-- worldscinema.org



Excerpt



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En rachâchant(1982)
'En rachâchant is a comic tale based on Marguerite Duras’ story Ah! Ernesto, about a young boy who refuses to go to school because they only teach him things he doesn’t know. 1982, France, in French with English subtitles, 35mm, 9 minutes.'-- Walker Art Center



the entire film



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Too Soon, Too Late(1982)
'Opening upon one of the most memorable shots ever filmed, Too Soon, Too Late is an essay on the often tentative, yet urgent conditions of revolution. Shot in France and Egypt, the film employs a diptych structure as it attempts to (quite literally) catch the wind of past revolutions, using the writings of Friedrich Engels and Mahmoud Hussein. Too Soon, Too Late inverts the usual relationship in a Straub-Huillet film between landscape and text – the landscape becoming the film’s central text, the verbal text becoming the film’s “setting”. Practically speaking, this reduces the relative importance of the verbal texts in the films – although when I mentioned this notion to Straub, he countered that nevertheless the film could never have been made without those texts.' -- collaged



Excerpt


Excerpt



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The Death of Empedocles(1987)
'Noted modernist German filmmakers Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub are behind this evocative minimalist retelling of the tragic story of Empedocles, a Greek philosopher and statesman who lived in the fourth century BC. To prove himself a god and therefore, immortal, Empedocles hurled himself into the burning caldera of Mount Etna and survived. There are four slightly different versions of the film available.'-- worlds cinema.org



Excerpt



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Sicilia!(1999)
'A dude (credited as “the son” but I believe named Silvestro) talks with an orange seller about meals. A man on the train complains about the poor. Yelling, always yelling! Everyone is yelling. He’s on a trip, stops to have conversations with people he meets (appropriately, this is based on a book called Conversations in Sicily) which sound like recitations. It wasn’t until I rewatched some scenes from this within Pedro Costa’s documentary on the making of the film that I appreciated the recitations, their strange cadence – the first time I was just reading the subtitles, following the conversation, but apparently there’s more to it than the words being spoken. More on the fate of Sicilians, and some over-my-head philosophy. The sound sometimes disappears.'-- deeperintomovies.net



Excerpt



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Une visite au Louvre(2004)
'Une visite au Louvre begins with a long panning shot along the bank of the Seine, then moves on inside to examine works by Ingres, Veronese, Giorgione, David, Delacroix, Tintoretto and Courbet. The soundtrack consists of a text by the poet Joachim Gasquet, which evokes comments attributed to Cézanne. His words are spoken in a deliberately artificial manner by Julie Koltaï. The imaginary Cézanne is gruff, quarrelsome and inspiringly meticulous as he comments on his colleagues’ paintings. He attacks the period painters, and purposefully takes sides with the modernists, whose work is characterized by their realist power of expression, light and use of colour.'-- argosarts.org



the entire film



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Quei Loro Incontri(2006)
'“It’s come too soon for our death —too late for our life”. The statement which Danièle Huillet (1936) and Jean-Marie Straub (1933) gave the day after they were honoured at the youngest film festival of Venice for “innovation in the cinematographic language”, still resounds, albeit even more bitterly: on 9th October 2006 Danièle Huillet came to her end. Their most recent film Quei loro incontri (‘Those Encounters of Theirs’) has turned into a worthy testament, through which a number of the basic elements from their lifework resound: the references to the philosophical materialismo of Marx and Engels, the visual asceticism, the use of direct sound and the adoption of existing work.This film, like Dalla Nube Alla Resistenza (‘From the Clouds to the Resistance’, 979), is based on Dialoghi con Leucò (‘Dialogues with Leuco’) by the Italian author Cesare Pavese. In five chapters two characters are presented, reciting philosophical conversations from the book.' -- collaged



Documentary about the film




*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Oh, I don't agree with you about that. There continue to be extraordinary conceptual artists doing fascinating work in countries all over the world. The good thing about the conceptual is that it is essentially infinite. That Walter Benjamin book looks super interesting, as was the piece of writing about it. Thank you! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Great stuff about Burden. Thank you! 'TTNS' kind of changed my life when I saw it. I was one of the lucky people who happened to be watching TV on the right channel when it suddenly appeared in the midst of a bunch of commercials, and it was a big a wtf moment as I've ever had. Interesting about Beam Drop and the sexual. I had never thought about that, but, huh, interesting. Ha ha, funny about your thinking of Burden re: my 'Graduate Seminar'. I made that from scratch, but Burden could have been whirling in my head somewhere. Everyone, Thomas Moronic offers you a little field trip re: yesterday's Chris Burden post. To wit, via him, here are two songs by Jim O'Rourke that are named after Chris Burden pieces: Through The Night Softly and Movie On The Way Down. I saw the match piece at Pomona College, yes. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Me too, about missing 'EM'. I think some version of it is coming to Paris, which I'm very excited about. Mm, I've been sworn to complete secrecy about the Scott/Sunn0))) album. Even saying it's amazing yesterday was pushing it. So, I have to keep mum or Stephen will literally kill me, I think. I think sometime today would work vis-a-vis Skype. Can we try to sort that out in advance by email or something? ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. As I told Jeff, Stephen has my brain under house arrest about the album, but we can talk about it once it's out. One of the cancelled checks in that show was my cancelled check! I participated in that piece, i.e. sent him money when he asked for it, I think on the radio. Maybe on KPFK?  ** Jonathan, Hi, J. Really? I don't know why I'm suspicious of that FKA Twigs album, but I'll try it. I think the many James Blake comparisons in the reviews turned me off. Thanks about the gif novella. Ooh, that artist's tumblr makes me feel ticklish with excitement. Thank you! I predict an addiction. The Mickey shaped pizza, which remains the worst pizza I have ever eaten, has been discontinued, enormously understandably. Paris Disneyland is not cheap, nope, but life is short, or something. ** Kier, Hi, K! You're back. Back home. Welcome home! Yes, I remember the art show! Great that it's happening, and so soon! Will you go to Oslo for it? That's very exciting! Damn, so wish I could be there for that. So cool. Tell me how the curator meeting went. I miss Stavanger. My day was spent at a combination of Paris Disneyland and the neighboring, crappy Disney Studios Park with Zac, Kiddiepunk, and Oscar B. It was fun, but kind of fiasco too because we went there specifically to ride the new 'Ratatouille' ride, which we've all been waiting to ride ever since they announced it years ago. Then we stood in the 100 minute line for forever. Then the ride broke down and we stood immobilized in that same line for over hour while they 'fixed it''very soon', and then they announced that the ride was broken, and we all had to leave. Then, an hour later, they fixed it, but by the time we found out, the line was 100 minutes long again, and we just couldn't take another one of those line experiences, and, if we had, we would have been fucked even more because the ride subsequently broke again, so we didn't end up riding it. Big drag, but being there was big fun otherwise. How was your day? Love! ** Steevee, Hi. Yeah, I saw that particular reaction to the RW death too. I thought that was probably the most thoughtless and knee-jerk and superficial reaction of them all. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. It would be hard to overestimate how powerful that early performance work of Burden's was at the time. To me, obviously. We didn't rock the big D 100% due to its technical flirt, we sure gave it the old college try. ** Hyemin Kim, Hi. Despite the above mentioned problems, the Disneyland experience was a lot of fun. We won't be getting more funding for our film, but we're going to try to use the remaining funds as wisely and weirdly as we can. Of course I would accept them, happily and with great honor. Interesting about the poetry retrieving. I hope that goes well, and I'm severely honored to be in that company. A wind chime! Just the idea is so wonderful! Thank you! Have a lovely day. ** Misanthrope, Mashed potatoes and wedding cake will be my last meal request if I ever end up on death row. Yeah, Cody's in India with one of my bros exploring that place. It's great! Sad that LPS's time with yours finally running out. But great that it lasted as long as it did, obviously. But, yeah poor LPS.  **  Sypha, Book of samples: That's a very interesting idea. I'm more intrigued than ever. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Thanks about the Burden post. Okay, I've read, I think, two (?) short stories by Mieville, but it's been a while. Maybe I'll go ahead and spring for a book of them. Thanks! ** Alan, Hi, Alan! Really great to see you, man! Thanks, and totally my super pleasure about the 'Cigarettes' post. I hope you're doing great! I would love to know how and what you're doing. ** Jared, Hi, J! A great and rare pleasure to see you! That was a Schjeldahl piece, yeah. Oh, hm, I think, based on my vibe and conversations and reading and stuff, that Burden's work is actually more of an important touchstone now than it has been in a long time. I feel like most the artists I know have been talking about him as an influence and role model in the last couple of years. I love 'Metropolis II'. Whenever I go to LA, I spend hours with it. Oh, well, ha ha. I guess Burden has been on my mind and in my thinking lately. Yeah, I'm actually really excited that they're going to tear LACMA down and build that Peter Zumthor building. It looks crazy, and Zumthor designed this spa, Therme Vals, in Switzerland that I love and which is an incredible building/space. I still find it hard to believe that the Zumthor building will actually happen, though. We'll see. I didn't know that COUM story re: Burden and Baldessari. That's completely fascinating. And, yeah, what you said about it is so true. I'm going to do some research on that. That's so interesting. Thank you, J! How are you doing? What's up? ** Okay. Today I attempt to draw your attention to the great filmmaker duo Straub-Huillet. See if it does any kind of trick for and/or in you, yes? See you tomorrow.

_________________




SilentDeath1601, 24
Leipzig

So if your reading this you've probably like or thought my photos looked good I guess

I want to sell my virgin ass to the highest bidder. I have never been a bottom before, so I guess my ass is very tight and a good fuck

Well settled men and specially business people come forth as Im interested in knowing business tactics as well

NO BEARBACK

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Position More bottom
Kissing Consent
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Client age Users older than 30
Rate hour 150 Euros
Rate night 350 Euros



________________










Dameer, 18
Doha, Qatar

I will ripe hee in fe minit

Guestbook of Dameer

acideaminet - 17.May.2014
cutest guy ever

Parti-san - 16.Apr.2014
Phantasie mit Schneegestöber...

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I want you as soon as possible KISS

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Why not 700$/h if he has customers? He is so cute.

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He is out of his mind
$700 Us for 1 hour

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beatufuel i want to meet you kiss

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roberto007 - 11.Dec.2012
Just WoW

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Kissing Yes
Fucking More bottom
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Rate night 4000 Dollars



_________________




SwenLang, 19
Portland

Good day Gentleman,
Let me start off by welcoming you to my profile; I hope you find that all is in order. I want to be here for you and make your experience as ideal as possible. As an escort, I get great satisfaction when you're pleased and in pure ecstasy and if you're not, I know that I've failed my mission.

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With peace, love, and bliss,
Swen

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Kissing Consent
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Fisting No
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__________________




chor-escort, 23
Zurich

chor....chor....chor..........beware of this chor..chor.....he is really dangerous ....if u call him he can stole all ur money and run away
and he has already done with so many guys.......so beware
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Fucking No entry
Oral No entry
Dirty No entry
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___________________





foracustomer, 23
Dubai

if u worship me, u don't deserve to be with me. i am not choosy & i can do everything u like, except fuck me @ my ass. for me there is no bush to beat around. look at me, wealthy gentlemen, and find i'm the one all you need to say the word satisfaction, and satisfaction is imp.

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Client age Users between 18 and 85
Rate hour 1000 Dollars
Rate night 10000 Dollars



__________________





MoneyWanted, 21
Leipzig

I am a call boy. My cock size is 9 inc. It is too long and thick and big. Fuck me please.

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Kissing No entry
Fucking More bottom
Oral No entry
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Fisting No
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Client age Users between 30 and 64
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HIVpositiveDog, 24
Vlissingen

Im a hiv positive dog who used to use sex as a medicine for everything. boredom, lonelyness, happiness etc. But since i got hiv positive i stopped having sex at all. It made me scared and i retreated and hide myself at home. Now with medication i got my virusload to undetectable, and finally i am getting out of my shelf again. I know for sure there are more guys out there with the same problem. not only hiv positive, but also lonely and scared guys, or guys with wishes anbd fetishes they rather not share. That is why i offer my service, to share my huge sexlust and hiv positive ass. Don't knock it till you had it.

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Position Versatile
Kissing No
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Oral Bottom
Dirty Yes
Fisting Active / passive
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Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 100 Euros
Rate night 500 Euros



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Shorty, 21
Fredrikstad, Norway

Tall (5'10), gifted (8 inched, huge), boyly, and TRUSTED.
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Big boner here, can ease your mind.
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Get ready to live an amazing love story!

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position More bottom
Kissing Yes
Fucking More bottom
Oral Versatile
Dirty WS only
Fisting No
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Skater, Rubber, Underwear, Boots, Uniform, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Drag
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 100 Dollars
Rate night 600 Dollars



___________________





Parisianstreet, 18
Prishtina, Kosovo

hey hi to all here we are accepting massage....which is totally nude massage.. YOU CAN ENJOY THE HEAT OF HOT GUYS SKIN....IT TOTALLY EROTIC

WHO WANTS TO BE FIRST?...new in business and ready to go.......be my teacher... I know how to treat women in bed...but i still need some lessons how to treat or serv men in bed. Can't wait for my first lesson.

it's a great honor and opportunity to be a prostitute....I will serv you a 101% service... I have good stamina last for more than half an hour....I LOVE CARS AND I LIKE TO BE DRIVEN LIKE THEM

Dicksize L, Cut
Position More bottom
Kissing Consent
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting Active / passive
S&M No
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Skater, Underwear, Uniform, Formal dress, Jeans, Worker
Client age Users younger than 55
Rate hour 50 Euros
Rate night 250 Euros



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Escort_Boy75, 18
Demandé-Moi, France

Men over the age of 50 T.. this is the moment .. I want to use you as my toy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fuck suck kiss are my best and best satisfaction personal services !

I work for my dream as a fram lady .. Because is my dream to live in the farm and be happy wiht my life !! Thats all i want !!

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Position Versatile
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Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty Yes
Fisting Active / passive
S&M Yes
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Client age Users between 50 and 99
Rate hour 160 Euros
Rate night 360 Euros



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PUSSYBOY, 22
Wien

MACHO GOD is my 'PIMP' and sends me to be purchased!

HE WANT ALL OR NOTHING FOR ME 100% ...!
COLD HEARTED SNAKE!

- BAREBACK ONLY!
- FUCK ME ONLY ON TINA!
- WILD DEEP ASS (ITS NICKNAME IS OCTOPUS)!
- POSSIBLE ALSO WITH PARTNER MACHO GOD

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Position Bottom only
Kissing Consent
Fucking Bottom only
Oral Top
Dirty WS only
Fisting Passive
S&M Yes
Fetish Leather, Underwear, Skins & Punks, Boots, Uniform, Formal dress, Jeans, Worker
Client age Users older than 30
Rate hour 100 Euros
Rate night 500 Euros
Locations Out Call, Hotel Call, Companion



__________________







blond, 19
Aachen

Escort to the jetlagged tourist and the cutest boy so far.

I also speak German and therefore I am German.

Can't wait to taste your cum. Kisses on your lovely cock. You can shoot your sperm in my mouth many many times.

No agencies please. The only boss I listen to is Bruce Springsteen.

Dicksize XL, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M No
Fetish Sportsgear, Underwear, Jeans
Client age Users older than 25
Rate hour 100 Euros
Rate night ask



__________________




SexWithMe, 19
Bucharest

I am a sweet and nice guy if I want and want to talk to me then we'll talk

I want to meet a man because I need money, not big money but a little

I want to meet a man who would invite me to visit EU because I am in Kiev

I have many problems with me mentally but thats a different story

We pray for those who feel like mistourile to go elsewhere I am honestly not lie can not stand people who say that doing something changed his mind after no exception to exaggerate nor to give money to small amounts thank you for your understanding

Dicksize XL, Cut
Position More top
Kissing Yes
Fucking Top only
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting Active
S&M No
Fetish Leather, Rubber, Underwear, Uniform, Formal dress, Jeans, Drag
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 50 Euros
Rate night 200 Euros



_________________



realbiggie, 19
Kansas City

if u want to suck me ..den pay me ..charges will be 4 thousand ..per hour ..you would have a very exciting experience.

Dicksize XXL, Uncut
Position Top only
Kissing No
Fucking No entry
Oral No entry
Dirty No entry
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 4000 Dollars
Rate night Ask



_________________




slavemaso4rent, 22
Ludhiana, India

there for u to load out yout stress
fuck me till u done n no more left

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position Bottom only
Kissing No
Fucking Bottom only
Oral Top
Dirty Yes
Fisting Passive
S&M Yes
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Rubber, Underwear, Boots, Uniform, Formal dress, Jeans, Worker
Client age Users older than 32
Rate hour Ask
Rate night Ask



__________________




BrandoItalian, 18
London

EVERYONE IS WELCOME BUT BE CAREFUL I TALK A LOT!

FRESH, GENUINE, CLEAN, AND LAST BUT NOT LESS IMPORTANT ITALIAN WITH ALL THE QUALITIES AND DEFECTS!

I GET ASKED A LOT IF I WAS ACTUALLY BORN IN ITALY, AND THE ANSWER IS NO, I WASN'T! I WAS BORN IN ROMFORD. I ALSO GET ASKED IF I'M ACTUALLY 5'3" TALL. AND TO THAT, THE ANSWER IS YES! MY FEET ARE A SIZE 5.5 - 6, FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ENQUIRE ABOUT MY FEET!

OF COURSE SEX IS IMPORTANT AND DON'T BE SCARED: IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR PURE AND EASY SEX I WILL DO MY BEST TO GIVE YOU A FANTASTIC PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE. BUT I LIKE TO INSTARE ALSO A MENTAL FEELING WITH YOU AND USING THAT TIME TO LET YOU ENJOY EVERYTHING YOU LIKE ABOUT LIFE!

IF YOU WANT TO HAVE ALSO A MENTAL EXCHANGE AND NOT ONLY A SEX ONE I THINK I AM THE RIGHT PERSON. BUT IN CASE YOU DON'T WANT IT YOU CAN JUST LET ME SHUT UP AND MY BODY WILL MOUTH MY WORDS OR I MEAN NOT MOUTH THEM!

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking No entry
Oral Versatile
Dirty No entry
Fisting No entry
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Sportsgear, Skater, Underwear, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans
Client age Users between 27 and 55
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



__________________



BodySharer, 20
Orchard, Singapore

New in town ... to make things feel better in town .... looking to spend a nice hour that keep you think of me ... even after i left .... right my fragrance and more .... they said it smell awsome .... hot .... try to fuck me if you want .... have no problem with erection at all

Dicksize No entry, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing No entry
Fucking Versatile
Oral No entry
Dirty No entry
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 300 Dollars
Rate night ask



__________________




forever_young, 20
Cwmbran

Anything for anything.

Trampling and run over by Motorbike for you.

If I don't answer, it's because I'm not here.

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position Bottom only
Kissing Consent
Fucking Bottom only
Oral Bottom
Dirty WS only
Fisting Active
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Sportsgear, Underwear, Formal dress, Jeans, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 150 Pounds
Rate night ask



_____________






danut97, 19
Oradea, Romania

PLS..READ CAREFULLY!# I NEED MONEY RIGHT NOW, SO I DON'T HAVE CHOICE. I WILL FILL UR NEED AT ANY HOW. I CAN FUCK U DEEP AND FURIOUS LIKE TIGER. OR REQUEST MY UNCONSUMED FRESH YOUNG HOLES TO MAKE THEN OPEN WITH YOUR TOOL. IF U LIKE TO TALK INSTEAD OF KISSING, GO AHEAD I LIKE TO TALK MUCH. I SING AND DANCE, I JUST LOVE DOING THAT. IM JUST HAPPY TO BE WITH MY FELLOW HOMOSEXUALS. TELL ME HOW MUCH BUGET U HAVE.

Dicksize S, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting Active / passive
S&M No
Fetish Leather, Rubber, Underwear, Boots, Jeans, Drag
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 50 Euros
Rate night 100 Euros



______________




girlassboy, 19
New Delhi

Hey you.. Yes you! If you want to fuck me, or if you want me to write you fucked it.
When I find it, I will no it.
Wont stay long here just need some few clients.
Always with the hard cock, have it in my own apartment.
Refer anything I will do .. I am about to have it .. Please say those words and I will.
Message me and I will revert.
My English is poor so kindly speak in Hindi. A friend is helping me set up this profile.
Hi I'm his friend.. He has great ass like girl, I fuckked him all time when I met. After you know him better it's diferent but you won't know him.
HAVE A GOD DAY.

Dicksize L, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing No
Fucking Versatile
Oral Bottom
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M No
Client age Users between 20 and 30
Rate hour 150 Dollars
Rate night 800 Dollars




*

p.s. Hey. ** Kier, Hi! Yeah, it kind of sucked about the ride, but I guess we'll go back at some point, which isn't a horrible prospect. Zac and I rode Space Mountain, yes! It was reliably big fun, and it only had a 10 minute line, weirdly. Hm, I don't know why I miss Stavanger exactly. It's true that it didn't seem that exciting. Maybe I just miss Scandinavia. We mostly walked around, ate pretty good pizza, stayed in a kind of ugly, cool hotel with this ridiculous, towering indoor atrium in the middle. I can't remember what else we did. Cool that you're going to Oslo! I miss Oslo too, but that's not so hard to figure out, I guess. A hairless cat named 'Goth' is a poem. Yesterday was just me doing film stuff at home, basically. Revising the script of a scene, trying to find a solution to 'the song' that one of the characters has to sing, and deciding, at least until I get Zac's yay or nay, on a music-accompanied spoken word thing instead. Yeah, film stuff almost entirely, as usual. And more today, but involving meetings with Zac there, so that'll be more pleasurable. How and what was your Friday? ** Jonathan, Hi, J. If you buy the cheapest, most basic frozen pizza and cut it into a Mickey head shape, and barely microwave it, you'll almost know what my experience was like, if that helps. Hm, okay, you make it sound more interesting. I'll try it just to find out what an R&B Grimes could sound like. I'm making one of my new music gig posts for very soon, so that'll show off what I've been listening to. Bon day all day. ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, sorry for my misunderstanding. Oops about the wrong stills. That Fassbinder one was misattributed, and the other mistake is all mine. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. That is a wonderful film. No, weirdly, Straub-Huillet films are very scarce on DVD with English subtitles. This 3-pack is the only thing I could find, and it's PAL only. Most of their films are on DVD in France, but with no English subtitling. ** Steevee, Oh, sorry, strange re: the crash. I'll go read your 'The Dog' review, natch. Everyone, a few days ago you got to read David Ehrenstein on the new documentary 'The Dog', and now you read to read our other writer/master of film-related thoughts, Steevee, on 'The Dog' right here. ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, Grant. Glad you enjoyed it, man. Worth your investigation, yes. You have so much going on and going out there, or, I guess, out here. Very cool. Everyone, One of my personal favorite writer interview series takes place on Matthew Sherling's site Cutty Spot, usually videos, and our own honorable writer/d.l. Grant Maierhofer just got the Cutty Spot treatment, and you can watch him address his work and himself here, and please do, and then, if you like, you can go read a new review of GM's recent and awesome novel 'The Persistence of Crows' on the berfrois site here. A post by you re: "Altmann's Tongue' would be so welcome. If you can, thank you! Lish was clearly a whole heck of an editor. I remain highly skeptical of his fiction, but ... shrug. Later! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi. Glad you were intrigued by the S-H stuff. Mm, to start, ... maybe with 'Class Relations (Klassenverhältnisse)'. I think that might be my favorite. I so envy you on your novel writings days. I'm so desperate to get the time to get back into working on mine all the time. Really glad that yours feels like it's going so well. ** Jared, Hi. Yeah, I guess it's just which artists you ask, which is you know, how it should be. It's true, what you say about the lessening of darkness in newer performance art, and your reasoning is, of course, way solid. There's still great performance art happening all the time, but it's so often about personalizing entertainment now, and the fact that the grotesque and banal narcissism of Abramovic could be elected the form's god is a shocking sign of something. There's enough of a mindfuck or weirdness/wrongness in Zumthor's building to excite me, and the current buildings feel so easy to lose. LACMA doesn't own the May's building anymore. They just got rid of it recently. It's going to be a movie museum, as you probably know. All the more reason for your invasion idea. Yeah, S-H are great, and I feel like it's a really good time in the world to talk about them and to ry to get their work more discovered, especially in the US. And, yeah, so true about their scripts. Really, really nice reading you, man. It's being really awesome to have you back. ** Hyemin Kim, Hi. Oh, but I am severely honored. Buffalo does have a very strong or well known/regarded poetics program, and it is heavily invested in 'Language' poetry and its precedents and poetry familia, I think because Charles Bernstein teaches there or at least did? Obviously, I'm pleased you read and liked 'Shadow Train'. ** Misanthrope, 'Madden 25' is a football video game, I guess. Well, obviously. Does that mean there were 24 of them before the version you're playing? Good, God, if so. Nice Lesnar/Angle thing. Weird, I thought Angle died. But I think I was thinking of, uh, what's-his-name. One of the performers in our film is completely obsessed with American pro wrestling. It's cool. Probably at least a little spike. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Yeah, really great talking to you! 'Too Soon, Too Late' is definitely one of their very best, or, in my opinion, I mean. Yeah, you should check it out. I saw your email this morning, I'll get to it shortly. Thanks, Jeff! ** Right. Need I even say a word regarding the absolutely predictable appearance of the post today? I think not. See you tomorrow.

'Brian Evenson’s five short-fiction collections and four novels are wonderfully difficult to categorize. Recognizable as literary fiction, but with strong undertows of horror and mystery, his style is all the more intriguing for defying classification. The stories in Fugue State will not disappoint, for Evenson extends his obsession with the uncanny and the unhinged that has won him a small but loyal following.

'The cannibals, murdered ex-wives, and abandoned little girls who people these stories are not intended to titillate but instead point up Evenson’s chilling insight: that true terror stems from our dependence on language to communicate the murky stuff in our minds. He takes this Wittgensteinian despair a step further, suggesting that language is worse than inadequate—it is dangerous. In “An Accounting,” a fake messiah survives a harsh winter on the flesh of his companions, an act that is misinterpreted by his followers as a holy sanctioning of cannibalism. Evenson’s mostly first-person male narrators occasionally try written communication but quickly realize it is only a temporary solution. They likewise discover that the imagination, instead of providing solitary respite, becomes a prison that can—quite literally in one story—trap them.

'What forms of expression does that leave? Zak Sally’s art (a series of title drawings and the fully illustrated story “Dread”) offers a possible answer. But while Sally’s aesthetic is appropriately spooky, his representations are resolutely literal (the outlines of a greenhouse for “In the Greenhouse,” the outlines of a box for “Invisible Box”). “Dread”—his chance to respond to the narrator’s growing fear of the oppression of language—fails to more than illustrate those very untrustworthy words.

'Perhaps this is intentional, as added proof of the relentless pressure we put on words and images to generate meaning beyond themselves, a critique Evenson makes throughout the collection. “In the Greenhouse” finds a critic visiting an author, significantly named Craven, whose work, he has found, contains not a single original idea. They circle each other, “excessively formal,” the critic resisting Craven’s attempt to make him into one of his characters, to reduce him to a literary referent, until finally the critic gives in and they switch roles. Several of the stories explicitly address the violence at the heart of transactions between critic and creator, reader and writer, student and mentor, all of whom are bloodied by tussles around the intention, meaning, and interpretation of language.

'The fugue state of the title story results from a contagion that makes one unable to derive meaning from words. The infected protagonist, when asked about his use of the term fugue state, replies, “It doesn’t mean anything. . . . I just wrote it.” He finds that it is “too much to force [an] image into actually meaning something as well.” Evenson’s is an immensely powerful collection, itself a little dangerous, and readers should take heed of the plight of Craven’s critic: The syntax of the sentences might rewire your head.'-- Ceridwen Dovey, Bookforum



_________________
Blake Butler on 'Younger'
(see excerpt below)




Having been effected so much by Evenson's work, particularly (if I had to pick just one) his last collection The Wavering Knife, which to me is among the top 5 of all text art objects on a sentence and style level of all time, I realized it would likely do me a lot of good to savor each this time, thinking about each piece on its own, rather than tearing through books in my want, as I often do, which will be a good test of self control, and hopefully be worth reading here as I go along.

As a matter then, of this being a book that isn't out yet, I'll do my best to keep from giving away the stories in themselves, but more in the manner they reflect, and how they propel, and will hopefully let this reviewing stretch into the book's release in July, where others can join in as it comes.

To kick off the book, then, is 'Younger,' a 9 page story that originally appeared in Conjunctions.

The tone is immediately surprising, perhaps, if not totally, in the hemisphere of Evenson's past work, in that it does not utilize present action, and is more the reeling of a woman inside her body, looking for semblance in a defining moment of her life, a moment she can not figure out particularly why it is defining.

What is so amazing about this story is not what is said, perhaps, or even what is not said, but how things are said around other things, that then give illumination to both in the contrast, and by the leaping of implication and potential energy.

As in: in this story, moments loom. They are present, even given a frightening edge, but then allowed to bubble, to lock, and remain crystallized, beyond the idea of resolving, or even moving on from unresolved, a potent moment.

In a brilliant reflection of the actual propagation narrative of the piece, the woman attempting to figure out a moment in her childhood that she has not been able to move forward from even years and years later, the language of the story manages to trap the reader in that moment as well, gifting the reader not with the understanding of why that moment affected her, but how it felt to be affected in that way.

The result, then, is much more potent than the simple recreation of scarring childhood events, an awful thing that happened, etc., but a much more visceral and psychic kind of terror, which of course is the much more potent and everlasting kind, and in Evenson's crystalline and ultimately visercal to the point of being in-brain sentences, resounds so much more than it would have had it simply walked on the brunt of its imagistic impact or brutal feat. It is a psychological study akin to the subtle moments I love most in Lynch and Poe, and other brooding masters.

If this story is any kind of indicator of what we're in store for here with Fugue State, which I am beyond 100% steel that it is, this book will prove to be another monolith in black, cerebral and yet ultimately wholly enthralling fiction, another change in the game of what text can do.

For my favorite sentence, or at least most representative sentence, from this text, check out my sentence-based counterpart in post at HTML Giant.



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Interview
from Rain Taxi




John Madera: The first time I read Fugue State, I was riding on a late night bus to New York City. And once again I learned that it’s unwise to read terrifying stories when all the lights are out save two tiny bulbs above your head. One scary moment hit me while I was reading “Wander.” I had zoned out from fatigue and came to the point where the harried company are in the hall and see “a hole brimmed with water, and through that hole came a bluish light and heat, and looking closer one could see the shape of a blinking eye.” At that moment, I felt—in a kind of faint echo of that episode of The Twilight Zone, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”—that if I turned to look outside my window, I would have seen that eye staring at me. This all brings me to my first question: why do you write scary stories?

Brian Evenson: The story you tell reminds me of a semester when I was in college when I was taking seven classes (all of them English courses) and working the night shift at a 24-hour taco place. Six of the seven classes met in the same room, so I’d just sit at the same desk as the classes flowed in and out around me. I was getting more sleep on the two days of the weekend than I was getting during the whole rest of the week and began genuinely to feel like a) I was going crazy (which I probably was), and b) the entire world was a hallucination. There were times, sitting in that classroom, when I felt like the desk itself was opening in front of me like a hole that I was about to fall into. Weirdly enough, all that didn’t scare me (though it’s probably good that my girlfriend at the time talked me into dropping the job). Instead, it fascinated me, and caused me to revise notions I had had about consciousness, about what it was and what it could do, and about what it had to do with me. On one level, many of my stories are attempts to investigate a consciousness that has undergone stress or trauma or collapse, because I really think that consciousness reveals things about itself in that state that it doesn’t when the armor is up and it’s protected. As a reader, I like stories that change me, that open me up in ways that I don’t expect, that worm their way through my armor and keep on working virally on me long after the story is over. I’m trying to reproduce that effect in my own fiction.


JM: Sometimes, when I reflect on how destructive our militarist, consumerist, sexist society is to most of the world, and how diminished the possibility there is for any kind of substantial change, especially when the post-industrial world may be likened to an elevator where, if one person lights up and smokes there, everyone leaves it smelling like an ashtray, I almost yearn for some kind of giant reset button, some terrible cataclysm, where almost everything is wiped away—a clean slate, a new beginning. It’s one reason why I enjoy post-apocalyptic novels, from A Canticle for Leibowitz to Dhalgren to The Road, and why I will watch any film with this theme no matter how schlocky, from Planet of the Apes to I Am Legend. This is most likely a residue of my evangelical upbringing, which was filled with stories of plagues, floods, and the like. What post-apocalyptic fiction teaches us, among other things, is that the idea that paradise ensues after the fallout is a fallacy on many levels. In Fugue State the post-apocalyptic theme serves as a backdrop for several of your stories, sometimes explicitly (“An Accounting,” “Wander,” “The Adjudicator”) and sometimes hinted at (“Desire with Digressions” and “Fugue State”). So what is it that attracts you to writing this kind of story? What stories, novels, and films in this genre have affected you deeply?

BE: It probably has something to do with my own religious background as well (Mormonism), and the way that’s become oddly fused with/complicated by an intense philosophical nihilism. I think there’s a constant struggle in me between a kind of relentless optimism and an exhilaratingly bleak worldview; in life I tend to default to the former, and in my work to the latter, and that somehow creates a very workable, albeit potentially schizophrenic, balance. But I think also it’s because my formative years in the late ’70s were a heyday for post-apocalyptic movies. There was a sense in general then, at least among my peers, that the world was ending, that the ecosystem was collapsing, that things were likely to break down completely. Then people were distracted by things like the introduction of the kiwi fruit and the frozen bagel and swoopy hair, and we stopped being people and started being consumers, and through the ’80s and a good part of the ’90s we seemed just to forget about these fears, to repress them. But those fears have started to surge back up again with a vengeance both in popular and literary culture. I think they were always present for me and have always been at the heart of my work.

Two movies that I watched when I was eleven (in 1977) have always stuck with me, though I’d guess if I went back and watched them again I’d probably think they were awful. One was Day of the Animals and the other was Damnation Alley. Around the same time I was playing Gamma World and watching the gas lines (the latter was a little earlier, when I was seven or eight, but it made a huge impression on me). Philip K. Dick was a big influence on me in terms of post-apocalyptic work as well, as were a lot of other SF writers, and I think that Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast did a lot to cement a certain worldview for me. Also David Ohle’s Motorman. More recently, I was impressed by The Road, which initially I wasn’t sure about but which worked on me for months after I finished it. But I’ve watched and read a lot of post-apocalyptic stuff over the years. Each of the stories you mention above tries to take on post-apocalyptic themes in a different way, playing with different genres and subgenres.

JM: Many of your protagonists are either trying to break down blocks in their consciousness, or they are struggling to maintain their identity, their sense of self, in the face of its fragmentation. These are psychological portraits without feeling like case studies. How do these kinds of stories evolve for you? When I read that Sindt had failed in his critical examination of Roger Craven’s work, its “concern with dislocation and possession, its insistence on postulating all human relations as a form of torture,” I thought it might have been a winking self-deprecatory jab, as it might also serve as an apt description of many of your stories in Fugue State. There are sisters’ fragmentary relationships with their parents in “Younger” and “Girls in Tents.” The narrator in “The Third Factor” finds himself “alone and adrift.” In “A Pursuit,” the paranoid, perhaps delusional, narrator admits that his own psychology is “a decidedly murky affair.” How much psychology have you studied? And where do your interests and allegiances lie? What schools of thought do you privilege over others, if any?

BE: I think my stories tend to evolve eccentrically; I never know exactly where they’re going to take me until I’m almost done with them—if I figure that out too quickly, I don’t end up finishing them. I’m very interested in the way that consciousness structures itself and also interested in the way that we, as consciousnesses (if that’s what we are), interact with the world, about what it feels like to be embodied in a particular situation. I never took a psychology class in college but have read a lot of psychiatrists and philosophers who deal with similar issues: Freud, Jung, Klein, Kristeva, Bachelard, Foucault, Ferenczi, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Deleuze and Guattari, etc. I’m also very skeptical of a lot of generally accepted notions about the structure of the mind—I’m not convinced, for instance, that there is such a thing as a subconscious, at least not in the way that Freud and others discuss it. That model leaves a lot to be desired. I find Deleuze and Guattari provocative and feel they move in a more productive direction, particularly in 1000 Plateaus. More recently I’ve been reading Thomas Metzinger, and find his models very compelling.

JM: What is the short story form for you? Do you find yourself working on them as separate entities in between novels? Do you begin stories without regard for what they are going to be until you’ve made a lot of progress within them—that is, is there a certain point when you realize, “This has the makings of a short story,” and then take it from there to completion? Or do you begin with the idea of a form?

BE: I’m always working on three or four things at once and usually have a few stories I’m working on as I’m trying to write a longer piece—a novel or novella. Some of them never get finished, and some get finished and then put into a drawer to be revised later and some actually work. I’ve got pages of notes of ideas for stories that I’ll probably never get around to writing, and which say things like “man looking for his brother so as to prove that he's not him.” I once knew what I intended by that but no longer know. With most of these notes I no longer have any idea what I was actually thinking when I wrote them.

Sometimes a story will start from those notes or from a fleeting thought or in response to something I’m reading or listening to. Other times, I’ll simply sit down to a blank page and try a few starts at random until something clicks. Still other times, I’ll have a mood or a character name or something else in mind and I’ll try to tease something out of it. It’s a very random and organic process for me and never works in exactly the same way twice.


____
Extras


Reading Brian Evenson to my Toddler


Reading Brian Evenson to my 4 year old


&Now Conference: Brian Evenson, 10/16/09


Brian Evenson introduces Samuel Delaney



____
Further

Brian Evenson Website
Podcast: Brian Evenson reads from 'Fugue State'
'Fugue State' reviewed @ The Los Angeles Times
'Fugue State' reviewed @ Open Letters Monthly
'EXISTENTIAL MYSTERIES: FUGUE STATE BY BRAIN EVENSON'
'Laureate of Violence'
'FUGUE STATE: How Brian Evenson upends the conventions of realism'
Book Notes - Brian Evenson ("Fugue State") @ largehearted boy
'5X5: BRIAN EVENSON'
Brian Evenson interviewed @ Bookslut
FUGUE STATE: ART FOR SALE
'Fugue + State: Brian Evenson
‘The short story equivalent of when Jon Stewart says ‘BOOM!’ on The Daily Show’
'THE LAST BOOK I LOVED, FUGUE STATE'
'Interview: Brian Evenson and the Weird'
'A Sentence from “Helpful” by Brian Evensong'
Buy 'Fugue State' @ Coffee House Press




__
Book

Brian Evenson Fugue State
Coffee House Press

'Brilliant...Evenson manages to capture madness with a masterful tone. The specific genius of Fugue State rests in subtlety, in Evenson’s ability to maintain suspense, dread and paranoia through utter linguistic control.'-- Time Out New York

'19 satisfying and surreal stories...packed with subtly hilarious sentences.'-- Cleveland Plain Dealer

'Brian Evenson is one of the treasures of American story writing, a true successor both to the generation of Coover, Barthelme, Hawkes and Co., but also to Edgar Allan Poe.'-- Jonathan Lethem

'The stories in this collection will thrill, unsettle, and captivate. Like lanterns in dark rooms, paper boats carried down on subterranean waters, they lead the reader into mysterious and perilous territory. Read at your own risk.'-- Kelly Link

'Illustrated by graphic novelist Zak Sally, Brian Evenson’s hallucinatory and darkly comic stories of paranoia, pursuit, sensory deprivation, amnesia, and retribution rattle the cages of the psyche and peer into the gaping moral chasm that opens when we become estranged from ourselves. From sadistic bosses with secret fears to a woman trapped in a mime’s imaginary box, and from a post-apocalyptic misidentified Messiah to unwitting portraitists of the dead, the mind-bending world of this modern-day Edgar Allan Poe exposes the horror contained within our daily lives.'-- Coffee House Press


_____
Excerpt


Younger

Years later, she was still calling her sister, trying to understand what exactly had happened. It still made no sense to her, but her sister, older, couldn’t help. Her sister had completely forgotten—or would have if the younger sister wasn’t always reminding her. The younger sister imagined, each time she talked to her sibling on the telephone, each time she brought the incident up, her older sister pressing her palm against her forehead as she waited for her to say what she had to say, so that she, the older sister, the only one of the sisters with a family of her own, could politely sidestep her inquiries and go back to living her life.
    Her older sister had always managed to do that, to nimbly sidestep anything that came her way so as to simply go on with her life. For years, the younger sister had envied this, watching from farther and farther behind as her older sister sashayed past those events that an instant later struck the younger sister head-on and almost destroyed her. The younger sister was always being almost destroyed by events, and then had to spend months desperately piecing herself together enough so that when once again she was struck head-on, she would only be almost destroyed rather than utterly and completely destroyed.
    As her mother had once suggested, the younger sister felt things more intensely than anyone else. At the time, very young, the younger sister had seen this as a mark of emotional superiority, but later she saw it for what it was: a serious defect that kept her from living her life. Indeed, as the younger sister reached first her teens and then her twenties, she came to realize that people who felt things as intensely as she were either institutionalized or dead.
    This realization was at least in part due to her father having belonged to the first category (institutionalized) and her mother to the second (dead by suicide)—two more facts that her older sister, gliding effortlessly and, quite frankly, mercilessly, through life, had also sidestepped. Indeed, while the younger sister was realizing to a more and more horrifying degree how she was inescapably both her mother’s and her father’s child, her older sister had gone on to start a family of her own. It was like her older sister had been part of a different family. The younger sister could never start a family of her own—not because, as everyone claimed, she was irresponsible but because she knew it just brought her one step closer to ending up like her mother and father. It was not that she was irresponsible, but only that she was terrified of ending up mad or dead.

The incident had occurred when their parents were still around, before they were, in the case of the mother, dead and, in the case of the father, mad. There were, it had to be admitted in retrospect, signs that things had gone wrong with their parents, things her older sister must have absorbed and quietly processed over time but which the younger sister was forced to process too late and all at once. The incident, the younger sister felt, was the start of her losing her hold on her life. Even years later, she continued to feel that if only she could understand exactly what had happened, what it all meant, she would see what had gone wrong and could correct it, could, like the older sister, muffle her feelings, begin to feel things less and, in the end, perhaps not feel anything at all. Once she felt nothing, she thought, knowing full well how crazy it sounded, she could go on to have a happy life.
    But her older sister couldn’t understand. To her older sister, what the younger sister referred to as the incident was nothing—less than nothing, really. As always, her older sister listened patiently on the other end of the line as the younger sister posed the same questions over again. “Do you remember the time we were trapped in the house?” she might begin, and there would be a long pause as her older sister (so the younger sister believed) steeled herself to go through it once more.
    “We weren’t trapped exactly,” her older sister almost always responded. “No need to exaggerate.”
    But that was not how the younger sister remembered it. How the younger sister remembered it was that they were trapped. Even the word trapped did not strike her as forceful enough. But her older sister, as always, saw it as her role to calm the younger sister down. The younger sister would make a statement and then her older sister would qualify the statement, dampen it, smooth it over, nullify it. This, the younger sister had to admit, did calm her, did make her feel better momentarily, did made her think, Maybe it isn’t as bad as I remembered. But the long-term effect was not to make her feel calmer but to make her feel insane, as if she were remembering things that hadn’t actually happened. But if they hadn’t happened the way she remembered, why was she still undone more than twenty years later? And as long as her sister was calming her, how was she ever to stop feeling undone?
    No, what she needed was not for her sister to calm her, not for her sister, from the outset, to tell her there was no need to exaggerate. But she could not figure out how to tell her sister this—not because her older sister was unreasonable but because she was all too reasonable. She sorted the world out rationally and in a way that stripped it of all its power. Her older sister could not understand the effect of the incident on the younger sister because she, the older sister, had not let it have an effect on her.
    For instance, her older sister could not even begin to conceive how the younger sister saw the incident as the single most important and most devastating moment of her life. For her older sister, the incident had been nothing. How was it possible, her older sister wanted to know, that the incident had been more damaging for her than their mother’s suicide or their father’s mental collapse? It didn’t make any sense. Well, yes, the younger sister was willing to admit, it didn’t make any sense, and yet she was still ruined by it, still undone. If I can understand exactly what happened, she would always tell her older sister, I’ll understand where I went wrong.
    “But nothing happened,” her older sister said. “Nothing. That’s just it.”
    And that was the whole problem. The sisters had played the same roles for so many years that they didn’t know how to stop. Responding to each other in a different way was impossible. Every conversation had already been mapped out years in advance, at the moment the younger sister was first compelled to think of herself as the irresponsible one and the older sister was first made to be a calming force. They weren’t getting anywhere, which meant that she, the younger sister, wasn’t getting anywhere, was still wondering what, if anything, had happened, and what, if anything, she could do to free herself from it.

•


What she thought had happened—the way she remembered it when, alone, late at night, she lay in bed after another conversation with her sister—was this: their mother had vanished sometime during the night. Why exactly, the younger sister didn’t know. Their father, she remembered, had seemed harried, had taken their mother somewhere during the night and left her there, but had been waiting for them, seated on the couch, when they woke up. He had neither slept nor bathed; his eyes were very red and he hadn’t shaved. Somehow, she remembered, her sister hadn’t seemed surprised. Whether this was because the sister wasn’t really surprised or because, as the calm one, she was never supposed to appear surprised, the younger sister couldn’t say.
    She remembered the father insisting that nothing was wrong, but insisting almost simultaneously that he must leave right away. There was, the younger sister was certain, something very wrong: what exactly it had been, she was never quite certain. Something with the mother, certainly, perhaps her suicidal juggernaut just being set in motion—though her older sister claimed that no, it must have been something minor, a simple parental dispute that led to their mother going to stay temporarily with her own mother. And the only reason the father had to leave, the older sister insisted, was that he had to get to work. He had a meeting, and so had to leave them alone, even though they were perhaps too young—even the older sister had to admit this—to be left alone.
    Her older sister claimed too that the father had bathed and looked refreshed and was in no way harried. But this, the younger sister was certain, was a lie, was just the older sister’s attempt to calm her. No, the father had looked terrible, was harried and even panicked, the younger sister wasn’t exaggerating, not really. Do you love me? the younger sister sometimes had to say into the phone. Do you love me? she would say. Then stop making me feel crazy, and just listen.
    So there was her father, in her head, simultaneously sleepless and well-rested, clean and sticky with sweat. He had to leave, he had explained to them. He was sorry but he had to leave. But it was all right, he claimed. He set the stove timer to sound when it was time for them to go to school. When they heard the timer go off, he told them, they had to go to school. Did they understand?
    Yes, both girls said, they understood.
    “And one more thing,” the father said, his hand already reaching for the knob. “Under no circumstances are you to answer the door. You are not to open the door to anyone.”

And after that? According to the older sister, nothing much. The father left. The sisters played together until the timer rang, and then they opened the door and went to school.
    But that was not how the younger sister remembered it. There was, first of all and above all, the strangeness of being alone in the house for the first time. There was a giddiness to that, a feeling they had stepped beyond the known world, a feeling the younger sister never for a moment forgot. A feeling which made it seem like not just minutes were going by, but hours.
    “But it was just a few minutes,” her older sister insisted.
    “Like hours,” said the younger sister. “Not actually hours but like hours.” All right, she conceded, not actual hours—though she knew that when it came down to it, there was no such thing as actual hours. But for all intents and purposes she had already lost her sister, once again had rapidly reached a point where she could no longer rely on her sister to help her understand what exactly had happened. But she kept talking anyway, because once she had started talking what could she do but keep on?
    The point was, time slowed down for the younger sister and never really sped back up again. There was a giddiness and a sense that anything could happen, anything at all. There were only two rules: the world would end when the timer rang, and under no circumstances were they to answer the door. But within those constraints, anything could happen.

What did they play? They played the same things they had always played, but the games were different too, just as the girls, alone, had become different. Her older sister, as always, went along with what the younger sister wanted to play, playing down to her level, but this time anything could happen. The small toy mustangs they played with dared do things they had never done before, cantering all the way across the parents’ bedroom, where they gathered and conferred and at last decided on a stratagem for defeating the plastic bear, which, once bested, was flushed down the toilet and was gone forever. The two girls watched with sweaty faces and flushed cheeks as the bear disappeared: anything could happen. The younger sister pulled herself up on the bathroom counter and opened the cabinet and used the mother’s lipstick on her own lips, something she was never allowed to do, and then used the lipstick to paint red streaks on the horses’ sides, bloodied from where they had been gashed by the bear in battle. The most injured mustang limped slowly away and found a cave to hide in. He lay down inside it and hoped that the cool and the dark either would help him get better or would kill him. At first the cave was just the space under the couch, but the mustang wasn’t getting better, so the younger sister stuck him in her armpit and called that a cave and held her arm clamped to her side. When, later, she reached him back out, the blood had smeared off all over inside the cave, and the horse was miraculously healed and allowed to return to the pack.
    “It’s not called a pack,” her older sister told her over the telephone. “It’s a herd.”
    But the younger sister knew they had called it a pack, that anything could happen and that pack was part of it too. They had known at the time it was a herd but they had called it a pack, and they had said it wrong on purpose. They were building a whole world up around them, full of things more vivid and slippery than anything the real world could offer. Just because her older sister couldn’t remember didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.
    And the sisters had become mustangs as well, had joined the pack as well—couldn’t she remember? They took the two biggest rubber bands they could find and stretched them from their mouths over the back of their heads like bridles. They took old plastic bread bags their mother had saved, and filled the bottoms with paper napkins and rubber-banded them to their legs and then slipped shoes over their hands. And suddenly it wasn’t just pretend but something was happening that had never happened before. Couldn’t she remember? It was ecstatic and crazed and like they were fleeing their bodies—it was the only thing like a religious experience the younger sister had ever had, and she had had it when she was six.
    And then suddenly it all went wrong.

They heard the timer go off and ran to turn it off but they were still wearing shoes on their hands and neither of them wanted to take the shoes off, so they tried to stop the timer by trapping its stem between two shoes and turning it, but the timer stem was old and too smooth to turn like that. So while the timer buzzed on, the younger sister had neighed at her older sister and together they had cantered to the dining-room table and taken a chair, supporting it between them with their hooves, and brought it to the stove. The younger sister stood on it and leaned over the burner, feeling the enamel warm in one spot from the pilot light, and turned the timer off with her teeth, by twisting her head.
    That was, the younger sister knew, the sign that the world had come to an end, that it was over, that now they had to go to school. Only it wasn’t the end, for as soon as the timer was turned off, the doorbell rang. It froze both of them and they stood there, bread bags on their feet and shoes on their hands, and kept very still and very quiet. They were not to answer the door, their father had been very clear about that. But they were also supposed to go to school. How could you go to school when someone was at the door, ringing the doorbell, trying to come in?
    My older sister, the younger sister thought, will know what to do.
    But her older sister was standing there not doing anything. The doorbell rang again, and still they waited, the younger sister nervously rubbing her hooves together.
    They waited awhile for the doorbell to ring a third time. When it did not, her older sister leaned close to her and whispered Come on. But they had taken only a few steps when they heard not ringing but a hard, loud knock: four sharp, equally spaced blows right in a row. And that stopped them just as much as if someone had yanked back on their bridles.
    It was like that for hours—for what, anyway, seemed like hours. Her hands were getting sweaty in the shoes. Her feet in the bread bags were much, much worse, the napkins at the bottom of each bag grown damp. Her mouth, too, hurt in the corners because of the rubber band. Her older sister took a few steps and the younger sister, not knowing what else to do, followed. Her older sister, she saw, had taken the shoes off her hands without the younger sister noticing and had gotten the rubber band out of her mouth and was now creeping very slowly past the door. The younger sister followed, trying not to look at the curtain-covered window beside the door, trying not to see the shadow of whatever was on the other side, but seeing enough to know that, whatever it was, it was big, and seeing too, when the knocking started once again, the door shiver in its frame.
    In their bedroom, her sister helped her get the shoes off. They had been on long enough that they felt like they were still on even once they had come off. The rubber-band bridle got caught in her hair so that her sister had to snip it out with a scissor, which made the bridle snap and raised a red stripe of flesh across her cheekbone and almost made her cry. The rubber bands holding the plastic bags to her legs had left purple grooves on her calves, and her feet were hot and wet and itchy. She dried them off on a hand towel and put her shoes on while her older sister stood on a stool by the bedroom window and tried to see out.
    “He’s still there,” she said.
    “What is it?” asked the younger sister.
    “I don’t know,” said her older sister. “Who, you mean.”
    But the younger sister had meant not who, but what. She wanted to climb on the stool beside her sister and look out as well, but was too scared.
    “What do we do?” she asked.
    “Do?” said her sister. “Let’s play until he’s gone.”

So they had begun again, with the plastic horses again, only this time it was a slow negation of everything that had happened before. Before, it had seemed like anything could happen; now all the younger sister could think about was about how they were trapped in the house, how they couldn’t leave, how they were supposed to leave but couldn’t. The mustangs were just ordinary horses now and could no longer move their plastic legs but simply stayed motionless as they were propelled meaninglessly across the floor. The bear was gone for good and she and her sister weren’t horses anymore, just two trapped girls. Everything was wrong. They were trapped in the house and she knew they would always be trapped. The younger sister kept trying to play, but all she could do was cry.
    Her older sister was comforting her, telling her everything was fine, but the way she said it, it was clear nothing was fine. Everything was hell.
    “What is it?” she asked again.
    “He’s probably not even there anymore,” said her older sister. “I bet we can leave soon.”

And, to be truthful, it probably was soon after that, though it didn’t feel that way to the younger sister, that her older sister went back into the bedroom and climbed up on the stool again and looked out and said that it was safe now and everything was fine and this time seemed to mean it. They gathered their books and their lunches and opened the front door and darted out. The whole street seemed deserted. The older sister, who hated to be late, made them both run to school, and the younger sister reached her class even before Mrs. Clark had finished calling roll. When you looked at it that way, almost no time had actually passed. When you looked at it that way, as her older sister in fact had, really nothing at all had happened.

But for the younger sister there was less of her from there on out. Part of her was still wearing shoes on her hands and a rubber band in her mouth and was somewhere, sides bloody, looking for her pack. And part of her was still there, motionless, trapped in the house, waiting for the door to shiver in its frame. She was still, years later, trying to figure out how to get back those parts of her. And what was left of her she could hardly manage to do anything with at all.

“So what do you want me to do?” her sister finally one day asked, her voice tinny through the telephone. “Play mustangs with you again?” And then she laughed nervously.
    And yes, in fact, that was exactly what the younger sister wanted. Maybe it would do something, it was worth a try, yes. If her sister would only do that, perhaps something—anything—could happen.
    But after so many years, so many telephone conversations burning and reburning the same paths through their minds, so many years of playing the same roles, how could she ask this of her older sister? She knew her role enough to know she could never bring herself to ask this of her older sister. Not in what seemed like a million years.




*

p.s. Hey. ** James, Hi, James! Whoa, really good to see you! And with so much new and great news! You're in Seattle, for example. Wow, huge change. And naturally I'm incredibly super happy to hear that your novel has a home! And at Nine Banded Books! That's a really interesting context. Man, that's great, and it's way beyond fucking time that everything, or almost, comes up roses for you. Yeah, Chip seems cool. It's funny 'cos I did this post here a long time ago called something 'People Who Hate Me', and his mega-slam of my work was in there. But bygones and all that. Anyway, that's all heartening to read, and, yeah, major congrats and welcome back as far as here goes. I look forward to hearing more when you have the time. Love, me. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. I would love to know what the real story is, if there even is one, about Dameer. That was his third, I think, appearance in the escort posts. I keep hoping someone will actually explain what his deal is in his 'guest book', but it's all just either gush or wtf about his prices, and always by guys who don't seem to have actually been with him. There's something about him, his story, his location, his lack of convincing reality, that interests me the way 'Brad' did when I was writing 'The Sluts'. Yeah, I think novels in progress feel like that even at their best of times, or I guess I feel like they should feel like that. At least with mine, when they feel like a cakewalk, I always get really suspicious of the relief that brings. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. Oh, I think I felt thanked or didn't feel like I needed to be thanked or something, so no worries. Writing over politics always! Yeah, nice couplet there. Nice contrast with the photos. I'm always looking for the ultimate contrast between pix and words. Take care. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. That's a very interesting looking TPR piece. I'll read it later on. Thank you! Jules Feiffer is someone whom you, or, rather, I hardly hear about anymore. When I was young, younger, whatever, I really liked the film made of his 'Little Murders'. Don't how it would seem or play now. ** Steevee, Hi. I listened to a bit of FKA Twigs album yesterday. Hm, not sure. Might try a bit more. I saw that FB post where that guy made the statement about trans, and it made my blood boil a little too. That was one of those situations where you end up thinking something as obvious and banal but true as, 'Jesus, get a life!' ** Bill, Hi, B. Space Mountain was, of course, a very riveting minute and a half. It rained off and on while we were at the Disney place. But it was quite refreshing. I noticed that about Leipzig. The location patterns that arise in those posts are always so interesting and inexplicable. I want to see 'Mr. X' a lot. Huh. Torrent, I guess. He's working on his new film collab. with Sparks, in the early stages, very excited! ** Hyemin Kim, Hi, Hyemin. I don't think I know Myung Mi Kim's work, but maybe I'm spacing out this morning. Steve McCaffery is cool. Very unique guy, figure, and even writer to some degree. I find the poetics approach of Bernstein and colleagues very interesting, and I like reading their essays, but I'm very interested in work generated by emotion and confusion, and so there's a schism in their notion of how deformation is best generated and my own. But I admire them. I'm intrigued by Brown's poetics program as well, or at least what I know about it, which is a kind of glancing but magnetized knowledge, I guess. I can see if I can get the 'Pyre' booklet from Gisele for you. I assume there are still some. With 'Gone', other than the stuff that's gotten shared online, it's just the book now. I think they might reprint it in the nearish future, or I've heard that rumor. ** Kier, Hi, K. Yeah, that was an awfully nice escort phrase. I envied it. Oh, gosh, it was some chain hotel. Hm, don't remember. About a three minute walk from the harbor's edge. There's an Astrup Fearnley Museum? Ooh, I'm going to google that. Did that guy ever reopen his little Black Metal Museum? I felt sad that I missed it. I eat vegan hotdogs virtually every day for dinner, so big up on that. I want to see your photos! Yes! And your photobook if possible! Mac and cheese! Your comment had all my senses in a whirl. Yesterday was good. Film stuff. Zac and I cemented a performer for a role, whew! Now all the major roles are cast at last. And we Skyped with another performer. And we both worked on refining the scripts of the two scenes we're about to shoot, and now they're ready. And we hung out. It was a pretty good day. The rest was just eating and trying to make blog posts because I'm so incredibly far behind, and this and that. Not bad. Tell me everything that's interesting to tell about your weekend, please. ** Jared, Hi, J. Very glad to hear it's a likewise. Well, yes, definitely, about the differing quality of opinions. I feel very lucky not to have too many artist friends who lay the career graph over their ideas and opinions. Not that negotiating the professional and trying to decode one's work's future in advance in a pragmatic way is inherently uninteresting. I love the strict, controlling futures inside video games as much as the next guy. But making second-guessing taste and the market in your practice is so dumb and done and generalizing. Or something. That kind of vision is severely lacking in many cases in visual art, yeah. Not in almost every other medium that I can think of this morning, and it's a flummoxing situation. Ha ha, re: your attributes as a prostitute. Sold! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Like I told someone, Dammer fascinates me. In the escort world, or at least in the online escort market, he has a particular sparkle. If I ever wanted to write a sequel to 'The Sluts', which I definitely don't, I think he'd be its generator. Sorry I didn't get to your email yesterday, It was a busy one. I will very shortly. I have done a post on Curtis Harrington, yeah, not too, too long ago. Craig Baldwin, no, but that's such a good idea, so don't be surprised if you see that very soon. Thanks! ** Jon Reiss, Hi, Jon! How swell to see you! That is weird: the coincidence. Mm, I think google is on the blog's case. According to the blog's stats, google searches are how people find this place by a huge margin. 'The Enemy'? No. Didn't know about it. I'll go look for it very shortly, Thanks, Jon! You good? What's happening? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. That (((echo))) event sounds really nice. Oh, I like that NGLY a lot. I've been listening to it frequently. High five on that one. ** Jonathan, Hey. I did hear about the new Grouper, only last night in fact. And I listened to the 49 second teaser, and it sounded good. You enjoy your weekend too. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Why did I sort of think while making that post, I bet James will like Dameer. I must be psychic, ha ha. I never get into those discussions on FB, ever. Life's stressful enough. But I find giddy discussions on there of trivial entertainment news just as stressful if not more so, ha ha. True, though. ** Misanthrope, Well, much happiness for you on the Madden thing. I'll take your word and happiness for that. I mixed Angle up with that other kind of anonymous-looking guy who died a couple of years ago. Right, Angle, USA!, USA!, American hero, rah rah. I couldn't stand that fucker. ** Right. I'll ask you to consider the wonderful Brian Evenson and one of his many excellent books this weekend, if you like. See you on Monday.

T’Spookhuys Restaurant
St. Lucia Hattem, Belgium










'This Belgium restaurant had a theme meant to creep people out and was abandoned in 2008. T’Spookhuys Restaurant/Bar is also known as House of 1,000 Ghosts and an occult bar. This bizarrely spooky restaurant had a menu to make you shiver as well as a mummy’s lounge. It had served “mud pie” to be eaten out of a skull, featured rattling chandeliers, smoke pumped down from the ceiling and moving paintings. Entertainment had performances from transvestite Draculas and cameos with illusionists and devil-worshiping dancers. People dined in hell and had drinks at the occult bar. It’s rumored that there were satanic rituals held upstairs, leaving angry spirits to roam the premises. This is Spookhuis in Belgium, rarely photographed as there are few urban explorers who are brave enough to enter the haunted restaurant.'-- Trigger Pit




Monsterland Bar & Grill
Mesa, Arizona






'Monsterland was originally conceived of as a horror museum and not a restaurant. The restaurant/museum’s owner, Kevin Wynn, first opened the two-story, 15,000-square-foot space to the public as a haunted attraction last Halloween. Following the Halloween season, the plan was to reopen Monsterland as the area’s first year-round horror attraction and museum. However, after considering the venture’s potential, Wynn did not believe a horror museum could make it on its own. Instead of abandoning the idea altogether, he decided to transform the space into a one-of-a-kind themed restaurant.

'Guests at Monsterland are actually dining in a professional-quality haunted house. The sets throughout the dining area and downstairs haunted house attraction were designed by Wynn’s daughter and boyfriend, who he has admitted to Fox Phoenix are really the ones that are “into this stuff.” For Wynn’s daughter and her boyfriend, terrifying creations are not just a hobby. The sets are Hollywood caliber and the figures frighteningly realistic.

'The dinning area is home to over 50 animatronic figures and props, guaranteeing that everyone in the restaurant will be getting a first-rate show; that is, if you don’t mind being stared down by grimacing werewolves, blood-thirsty vampires, and disemboweled zombies while you dine on Batwings or a Bleeding Heart steak. Naturally, this isn’t going to be everyone’s ideal dining environment and Wynn is the first to admit it: “Even if you’re not into it though, you’ve got a lot of eye candy here to look at. It’s not going to scare you out of your mind.”

'On the other hand, the 8,000-squre-foot haunted house downstairs may do just that. It is closed off to the public for now, but come the haunting season, the doors will be thrown open. If getting spooked is not your thing, or you are afraid of losing your meal, there are TV monitors set up in the bar and restaurant on which you can watch other guests screaming and jumping in the haunted house.'-- Entertainment Designer




Stabbed Lovers Haunted Restaurant
Mesilla, New Mexico






The spirits of two tragic teenage lovers complement the menu in this restaurant in Old Mesilla. They were stabbed to death with sewing shears, and reportedly like to sit in the chairs. Once a night customers are "treated" to the unearthly sight of a petite transparent young woman, dressed in a maid`s black and white uniform of the 1840s, moving about from room to room. The restaurant's owner, C.W. "Buddy" Ritter, swears the sightings are real and are not an illusion perpetrated by the restaurant. The bravest diners are invited to eat in the "death room", as it's called, although they have to sign a waiver agreeing that the restaurant bears no responsibility for what happens. According to Ritter's estimate, 50% of the customers who eat in the "death room" flee screaming from the premises before their meals are finished.'-- collaged





Homer Mill
Calhoun County, Michigan








'The owner of the Homer Mill wanted to be back in business by this Halloween, his attorney said Tuesday. The historic mill, owned in part by Lance Cuffle, burned to the ground on May 15. “His plan all along has been to rebuild,” said Kenneth Hotchkiss, attorney for Lance Cuffle. “He wanted to get a structure up, especially by this time of year.”

'The haunted house and restaurant would typically open on weekends in mid-September and stay in operation through Halloween. Cuffle also owns and operates Jackson’s Underworld, a haunted house inside what was Shaw's Furniture Galleries on Wildwood Avenue, northeast of Westwood Mall. Jackson’s Underworld is open on Fridays and Saturdays in September and Thursdays through Sundays in October.

'Cuffle would not comment recently. In May he said he was “looking into seeing what we can rebuild.” Hotchkiss said the haunted house, bar and restaurant did well, calling it his client’s “golden goose.” “It does not make any sense for him to have set it,” Hotchkiss said, referring to the early morning fire.

'According to police reports, Cuffle was inside the mill when the fire started and called 911. Cuffle told to Hotchkiss he was upset the Homer Fire Department and other responding departments did not do more to save the mill, his attorney said. Firefighters instead focused on protecting neighboring homes, Hotchkiss said.'-- mlive.com




The Crypt Café
New York City





'Times Scare, a new New York City gore extravaganza, was, for its brief two year lifespan, aimed at attracting much more than just the zombie apocalypse obsessed set. The venue featured a restaurant called The Crypt Café — entrees included the “Bloody Good Tomato Soup” and “Graveyard Nachos” — and operated a haunted house in which the cafe is the entrance. It was an icy cafe with clinical white seats and a frosty bar that featured a display of frightening surgical instruments. There were also nightly performances by a creepy magician whose act involved “using razor blades, buzz saws, broken glass, blunt objects, blood, mutilated babies … and candy to create a whimsically entertaining non-stop roller coaster ride of pure mayhem.”'-- Digital Dying




The Haunted House Restaurant
Oklahoma City





'Marian Thibault's query is a trademark at the Haunted House Restaurant, where she said she's worked as hostess, cocktail waitress, bartender and/or Girl Friday from 6 p.m. to close most Monday through Saturday evenings for 48 years. For the past 18 years — since the death of her husband Arthur Thibault — she's also served as sole proprietor.

'"I've never been scared," says Thibault, "never felt vibrations and, even so, am not afraid of dead people. But there are some customers, especially women, who won't go upstairs by themselves. Years ago, there was a psychics convention in town and about a dozen came for dinner. They said they saw an old woman in the big room upstairs, sitting by the window and crying. Art bought the former private home, which was built in 1935, in a sheriff's sale, following the deaths of the three previous residents. Martin Carriker, a 74-year-old automobile dealer, allegedly was shot in the head by his stepdaughter and two handymen here. Before his stepdaughter was tried for the murder, her mother died and then she, after her acquittal, died here of an apparent drug overdose."'-- NewsOK




Horror Bar
Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic






'Entrance to the bar and restaurant is down a narrow staircase from the street into a cavernous stone cellar that is actually a 500 year old cave. If you look up as you enter, you’ll see the first of the many ghouls who will be your drinking partners for the next few hours. The bar itself is at the far end of this cavern, but take a seat at one of the benches along the right and a witch or zombie will be along to take your order as promptly as can be expected from the undead.

'Horror bar offers a little bit of halloween all year round; with blood red drinks (vodka and cranberry juice?) served in test-tubes, plenty of human bones lying around and a scary-as-hell bar manager who is actually quite nice if you’re not too scared to get to know her. Tunnels lead off to back rooms and up to the toilets, and it’s just mazelike enough to be interesting.'-- outsideprague.com




Spookers
Karaka, New Zealand







'Have you ever had the feeling that you are being watched? The feeling of being in danger? Your heart starts pounding… a cold and clammy sweat builds and your hair stands on ends. Your surroundings are unfamiliar and you feel lost. You can hear screams in the distance and it is clear that you are definitely in danger. Your heart pounds. Your breaths are short and fast. Your gut sinks. The feeling of fear has set in… Welcome to Spookers Haunted Restaurant, New Zealand's only scary restaurant attraction. And now... NEW FOR 2-14 ... Spotters is PITCH BLACK! 50 Spookers spooks will be dressed up and waiting for the you in total pitch black darkness as you make your way into the Haunted Restaurant with only the light of one glow stick per group! What will you eat? You will NEVER KNOW!!!!'-- Spookers




LHOTEL54
Quebec City






'LHOTEL54 is a one-of-a-kind place. Located in Sabrevois, in the Montérégie region of Quebec, Canada, the restaurant can welcome 170 people and features dinner shows where scares await. If you are feeling brave enough, you can tour the restaurant's thematic hallways haunted by welcoming zombies. LHOTEL54 is the largest haunted house restaurant in Canada with a menu of frightening items, breathtaking décors and 18 rooms to tour. It is also possible to rent the restaurant for 100 or more people for weddings, private evenings or other events. Don’t miss the Festival du fantastique et de l’horreur. LHOTEL54 is a must-see, one-of-a-kind experience!'-- collaged




Jekyll & Hyde Club
New York City







'D.R. Finley is the proprietor and creator of this unique entertainment and culinary experience. He opened the first Jekyll and Hyde at 91 7th avenue in 1991. With the success of this pub as well as The Slaughtered Lamb, and Night Gallery, D.R. made the move uptown. In 1995, just four years later, the Jekyll and Hyde Club opened on the Avenue of the Americas. Every detail in the club is carefully planned. Only the highest quality props, animatronics and scenic elements have been chosen. New animatronics from Life Formations have been installed on the various floors.

'The careful design makes it so that no matter where you sit in the restaurant you can experience at least three events close by. Other shows including the main show on the grand salon level can be seen via monitors placed appropriately around the seating areas. The idea here is that " Its always fun and always different". Walt Disney once told his team working on the Haunted Mansion that he wanted so much for the audience to look at that they would have to come back again and again to see it all. That is true here at Jekyll and Hyde’s. The walls are filled with interesting artifacts, heads, antiques, and science gone wrong. It would take you at least four visits to see each of the floors!

One of my favorite shows is in the attic. It is a little doll that stands quietly in her display box. Delilah is her name. Suddenly the box opens and slides off and she starts to speak. I love you. I love you she says... suddenly she begins to speak and tells us about her uncle needles. He is the psychotic clown in the cage on the other side of the room. She tells us she would like us to meet her friend Mr. Pointy. Suddenly her head spins and her hands raise and turn into claws as a rendition of the Psycho music blares at us. Then as suddenly as she turns evil, she turns back to the delightful little doll again. Very well done. There are other new animations on the attic level including a creature in a crate that sounds like golem. He wants out of his captivity but changes his mind when he sees what’s... I mean who’s for lunch.'-- hauntworld.com




La Maison Hantée
Montreal










'La Maison Hantée was an Icon in Montreal. For years locals and tourists crowded the premises for a spooky theatrical experience. Guests were greeted by spirits who escorted them to their tables through a spooky maze of unpredictability. Ghosts waited on tables and served food cooked by more ghosts in the kitchen. Once the presentation was over, guests had the chance to relax with an after dinner drink as they enjoyed a Tarot reading. Once a month a lunch hour show was presented for a younger audience.

'The Haunted House Restaurant has been closed for over three years. The building was rated as unsafe and forced a permanent closure of the establishment. The building was originally erected in the 19th century as a fur trade counter for the Hudson Bay Company. It later served for commercial boutiques and was even used as a residential property prior to the opening of the Theatrical-Restaurant. If rumors hold true, the property has since been sold and an eighteen story tower building is slated for construction in this very same site.'-- Steve Troletti







*

p.s. Hey. An early-ish heads up that, starting on Thursday and lasting through September 5th, I'll be very preoccupied rehearsing and shooting the last two scenes in Zac's and my film. I should be able to do the p.s. during that time except on the actual shooting days. You're pretty much guaranteed to see quite a number of rerun posts during that period because I'm already behind my usual pace re: my post construction duties, and, as of now, I have no guest-posts in the pipe, but I'll do my best, and apologies for the likelihood of so many pre-viewed posts in advance. ** Thomas Moronic, Hey monsieur. It is, isn't it? Yeah, he's cool, and he seems very cool as a guy too. I really hope to meet him and get to talk lit and stuff someday. Wow, nice unearthed treasure trove of Dameer stuff. Cool. I feel a scrapbook coming on. I remember when he called himself Snow White everywhere. I remember when he was based in Ukraine. I remember when he charged $1000 an hour. What a curiosity. Thank you for stoking the fires! And, obviously, big congrats on finishing your novel's draft! And I'm keeping my envy and longing for the same victoire as under wraps as I can. But, yes, awesome! Anything you can say about it? ** Sypha, Yeah, he really super hated me back then. I don't know what happened. Maybe he still does, and he's just diplomatic now. Whatev'. ** David Ehrenstein, I can imagine that Evenson's eyes have taken a stroll through 'Two Serious Ladies', yes. ** Hyemin Kim, Hi. I'll try re: the 'Pyre' booklet. I'll ask Gisele when she gets back from vacation. Happy to. And, yes, feel free to remind me. My memory is weird. It's like 3/4 really sharp, but there's a very hazy 1/4 too. 'Fugue State' is very good. Everything I've read by him has been really good. I've never read Bernanos, strangely. I think I don't want to have anything interfere with my imagination's grip on Bresson's films, but everyone I know who has read the Brenanos books that Bresson adapted says lovely things about them. Very beautiful pre-windchimes materials! They're so shiny in just right way. Generally, my neck and wrists are empty, I guess, yeah, it's true. Have a fine day. ** Steevee, Hi. I haven't read Evenson's Zombie film adaptation books, but I've really, really wanted to for quite a while. I need to spring for them. The idea fascinates me. I'm not surprised to hear that the new St. Marks is not up to speed yet re: their inventory. I know from friends who do or have worked at bookstores that that's the hardest thing to do since the guarantees on sales are so iffy. I hope they get the money to restock, but, yeah, that's no surprise and it's no doubt as hard for them as it is for shoppers. ** Jeffrey Coleman, Hi, Jeff! Oh, cool, I don't know French well enough to read that book or any serious French fiction in French, but let me pass along your very kind offer. Everyone, the honorable Jeffrey Coleman has a really great and kind offer for you, so listen up and take advantage if you like. Here he is: 'Yesterday I got a copy of Brian Evenson's 'Baby Leg' in the mail. Unfortunately for me, it's in French, which I don't speak. If anyone here would like it, speak up, and I'll mail it to the first person who asks for it, free of charge. A pretty good deal if you know French and like Evenson, I'd say.' Thank, Jeff. Hope you're doing really well. ** Kier, Hi, K. Don't you just hate when your bank account is a sad affair? I get stressed even thinking about mine. So I avoid checking it as much as I can -- sort of like avoiding going to the doctor -- and then my ATM card bounces and yikes. Bad plan. Oh, wow, cool about the Black Metal Museum. Stephen went by the place, which, as you probably know, is also an apparently very cool Black Metal record store, and he said the guy was hoping to relaunch it, and maybe he did. Yeah, it's very nice to have the entire cast now. Now we have to finesse a whole bunch of details in the next three days, which won't be easy, but we will. Wednesday ... try to be more psyched than nervous, even though the two often go hand in hand. You've got the serious goods, and he'd be a pumpkin head not to know that and get greedy. I still haven't listened to the new Swans. I must have a block or something, although I don't know why I would. Very nice book scoring there obviously. Impeccable, I'd say. My weekend was not too weekend-y. I was mostly home working. I did manage to restart working on my novel, which was exciting. Made some blog posts. Mostly it was film prep stuff: writing/getting emails to/from performers and co-workers, phone calls, conferring with Zac about what was being done and what needed to be done. Important stuff, but too detail-oriented to be interesting to anyone who's not head long into the project. Read a little, listened to music a little, got a very long needed haircut. Blah blah. Not so exciting, but good. Oh, those photos of Kongeparken are great! Beautiful! I miss that place. I love that ride where you sit in a little boat and then it slides down a ramp and gets propelled across and into that little lake. And that ride next to it where you do kind of the same thing but in a little gondola thing suspended in the air. Did you do those? Scary dream. I'm glad I hardly ever remember mine 'cos, when I do, they're always pure terror. How was Monday for you? ** Keaton, Buddy! New writing, sweet! I think I should be free to read that at either around 3 pm today or else after 7 pm today. Yes! Everyone, a rare treat for the d.l.s and looky-loos: new fiction of an undoubtedly high, exciting, challenging quality by the one and only Keaton is at your fingertips so please tap them in that blue spot a few words back from these words. ** Bill, Howdy, Bill-ster. It's such a fine, fine book, right? Cool and thanks for the alert on the new Evenson story. He seems to have just released a new graphic novel, which I'm very curious to read. My weekend also involved getting some work done (sigh) but with no visiting cousins to distract me, fortunately or unfortunately. Do you like your cousins? What are they like? ** Etc etc etc, You're here! Holy shit! Yeah, I want to see you obviously. Friday might be possible, but things go into very high gear for me re: the film starting on Thursday. Any chance of you being free tomorrow or Wednesday? If not, we'll sort something for Friday. It would have to be later in the day/evening because we have all day rehearsals that day. Let me know what's good, and welcome! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. 'FS' is real good, no surprise. 'The Wavering Knife' is really wonderful too, I think. Thanks re: the Harrington post. And thanks for suggesting a Craig Baldwin post. I made one, and you'll see it in the new few days. I do read books in that abandoning fashion a lot. Mm, maybe I'll pick up the new Gibson in a store and see what's what. Really long books are so hard for me to get an appetite for. ** Torn porter, Hi, man! Good to see you! Very good news on the ready-to-go status of your film. We're three days away from being in the same position, I hope. One of the performers in the scene we're shooting first is being flown in from Vilnius, Lithuania on Wednesday. Excited to share film-in-progress news with you, if you're so inclined. Here things are good just crazy busy and a combination of highly stressed and excited about the imminent start of the final phase of our film. It doesn't feel like anything else is happening right now, although I suppose even my world is bigger than that, logically speaking. Take care! ** Right. What's today? Oh, haunted house themed restaurants. Don't ask me how the blog ended up in such an odd place because I honestly don't remember. See you tomorrow.

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OOIOOAtatawa
'OOIOO has always created a musical language all its own. Under the leadership of Yoshimi, also a founding member of Boredoms, the group has recorded six albums that have subverted expectations and warped perceptions of what constitutes pop and experimental music. Four years of work went into to making Gamel, their bold new album inspired by the Javanese style of gamelan and the first new music from Yoshimi in over five years. Gamelan is an ancient form that has inspired a great many composers and musicians over the past century, from Erik Satie and Claude Debussy to Mouse on Mars and Sun City Girls. The introduction of this traditional form transformed the group into a super tribe, side-stepping the road between the past and the future. Their focus is not to replicate these ancient styles, but to incorporate them into their consistently inventive, constantly shifting musical frameworks. They take their love of indigenous music into an entirely new dimension by freely weaving organic and electric tones into a vivid tapestry, employing their keen sense of color and texture.'-- Thrill Jockey






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Puce MaryThe Course
'Once in a while an artist comes along who manages to both cherish the tradition of industrial music and at the same time walk their own path, choosing their own route to truth: Experiment. With her first solo full length, released last year, Puce Mary managed to do exactly that - and now with the follow-up Persona, she proves herself to be one of the most interesting projects around today. Persona manages to balance the hyper personal universe of the artist with enough care for presentation to make it valuable for everyone to listen to, and take part in her experience. And she does that through six tracks, that each take their own place while corresponding beautifully with its neighbors. From primitive rhythmic patterns to elaborate drone pieces and pain stricken vocals. Insisting on finding new routes for the work and with a rare honesty, "Persona" holds its listener captive from start to finish.'-- Posh Isolation






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PallbearerThe Ghost I Used to Be
'With the groundwork laid upon with Sorrow and Extinction, Foundations Of Burden essentially takes the PALLBEARER creative oeuvre to new realms that not only takes their doom metal pedigree even further, but also sees the them harness their prog and traditional heavy metal influences even more. The result being an album much more than its predecessor with the melodies and harmonies being more massive, the music more progressive and layered, the overall atmosphere and sonic weight even more earth shattering. Production and sound wise, Billy Anderson’s expertise behind the control boards has helped PALLBEARER flesh out and highlight their sound even more through massive crushing tones, attention to deteail and defined clarity while still maintaining that classic almost vintage-like production feel.'-- Profound Lore






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TlaotlonCassini Tubs
'Rather than qualifying Tlaotlon as one of the innumerable acts that direct themselves toward the stimulation, sharing, and settling of emotion, its music's sleek burbling and erratic turns of phrase lump Coubrough in that marginalized niche of soundmakers who chase after emotion’s suppression or even dissolution, who want to make its expression nigh on impossible. This is why the steady measurements of an artificial kickdrum are unceremoniously disturbed by out-of-step snares, hiccup’d synths, and irregularly phased samples, creating multiple trains of thought and affect that, in cancelling each other out, thereby prevent themselves from enjoying a concerted or continuous effect on the listener’s moodscape. And without their mutual coordination, even though this listener might momentarily recognize the shimmied, heavy clinking of a PC-generated riff as evoking maybe a futuristic wasteland or soulless HTML interface, any development or consolidation of her initial reaction is going to be quickly stifled by the arrant percussion and static-infused textural flourishes, leaving her stranded in a psychically indeterminate limbo.'-- Tiny Mix Tapes






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Tashi DorjiThrottle
'One fascinating paradox about art is that limits can prove freeing. Narrow your parameters and you might find solutions you wouldn’t have if your choices were infinite. It’s why entire movements have been based on self-imposed restrictions: take the Oulipo group, whose Georges Perec wrote an entire novel without the letter e. ... It might seem odd to compare those contrivances to the simple act of making solo instrumental guitar music. After all, the form is not exactly unusual, having been around longer than jazz ensembles or rock bands. Still, to play guitar alone is to submit to restrictions—not only in the finite number of sounds you can make, but in what little innovation is still available. So much has been done and so many legends loom large—especially, for anyone picking strings now, the two-headed monster of John Fahey and Derek Bailey—that playing something new seems nearly impossible. I’m not sure Tashi Dorji has made anything completely new yet, but the range of creative solutions he’s found while trying to avoid the well-worn paths of instrumental guitar music is thrilling.'-- Marc Masters






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MartyrdödEn Jobbigt Jävel
'Swedish wrecking-crew Martyrdöd have done enough to separate themselves from the crust-pack over their decade-plus existence. By combining the raw intensity and hardcore punk ethos of Käng forbears Anti Cimex and Totalitär with the twin-guitar attack of classic rock and the epic Scandinavian metal of Bathory, the independence borne from this blend of influences and the overall ambition of Martyrdöd – who boast members of Agrimonia, Skitsystem, and Miasmal – has never been in dispute. With their politically-charged 2012 debut for Southern Lord, Paranoia, Martyrdöd managed to announce themselves to a larger, albeit still underground audience. The album was well received by critics and crust fans alike; its incendiary spirit and ever-increasing melodic mindfulness proved to be salacious bedfellows. As a result, there's greater anticipation surrounding Martyrdöd's new album, Elddop, than on any of their previous four full-length albums. And unsurprisingly, Elddop proves itself to be just as good, if not better, than its predecessor(s).'-- The Quietus






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Cannibal MovieFame
'This Italian duo, consisting of Donato Epiro on organ (an old Italian one, according to the band) and Gaspare Sammartano on drums, cranks out some serious music that seems improbable given the number of players. If you want to talk about something being way beyond the sum of its parts, this is it, because at any given time, thanks to some creative layering and manipulation, the organ sounds like it could be three or four instruments playing at once, piling up riffs, effects, and reverb in scattered, pulsing, propulsive collages of sound. Still, the organ would be nothing without the solid drumming behind it — simultaneously loose and locked-in, the drumwork manages to both ground the music but also add to the overall wild atmosphere of the music. Put this together, and you get some incredible sound voodoo that evokes free-form psychedelia, krautrock, jazz improv, and a little bit of Suicide for good measure.'-- Secret Decoder






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MoiréAttitude
'Moiré’s Shelter opens with a rising clatter. The moment when the bassline and loping kick join the thrum is a neat microcosm for both the album and the producer’s name: a first pattern onto which a second seems superimposed, creating a whole in a constant state of flux. Claps and stabs on ‘Attitude’ lag, while a skeletal, gloomy bassline anchors everything deep without adding much by way of a groove. As elements flutter in and out of the mix, it becomes increasingly apparent that concern for the dance floor is peripheral to Moiré’s introspective take on club music. In that sense, it owes a small but definite debt to the nebulous dance-not-dance music of Actress et al; but where that was an obvious touch point for earlier Moiré singles, the similarities are far less pronounced on Shelter. Moiré doesn’t search for perfect beats as much as he allows them to wander in and out of his tunes, so grooves are as apt to slip away just as suddenly as they appear.'-- Fact Magazine






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MoonfaceCity Wrecker
'Hello everyone and anyone. I recently made some more recordings under the name Moonface, which take the form of a 5 song EP called City Wrecker, and run at around half an hour. “City Wrecker” is the title track of the EP. I wrote it before Miley Cyrus released “Wrecking Ball,” but I cannot prove it. Oh well. In describing the song (and maybe the whole EP) I would say it’s the aesthetic opposite of “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus, which is not to say that’s a good thing or a bad thing, just an apple for you to hold up beside your orange. Regardless of all that, my friend Eetu, who recorded this EP, still likes to call the song “Wrecking Ball” and to sometimes call me Miley, but that’s okay cuz we’re buddies. I lived in Finland for a couple of years, but now I live in a little town nestled in the woods of Vancouver Island. This is a recent move, and so City Wrecker represents the last album I completed in Helsinki. Maybe I will go back to that big icy lighthouse, and all the lovely weirdos within I have come to love, one day, but for now I have used it up.'-- Spencer Krug






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Foxes in FictionRearrange
'Toronto-native Warren Hildebrand began his Foxes in Fiction project in 2005, during his sophomore year of high school, as an outlet for his drug-induced, experimental sound collages. In 2011, Hildebrand hunkered down in his Toronto apartment, writing and recording what would later become his second Foxes in Fiction full-length album entitled Ontario Gothic. “The running theme throughout Ontario Gothic is how I picked up the pieces of my life after the death of my younger brother Drew in 2008, but each song references specific and discreet experiences,” says Hildebrand. “Personal loss and dealing with anxiety and depressive issues that I’ve struggled with my most of my life have played into my music and the way I work for as long as I can remember. Growing up gay on a small farm in rural Ontario was part of the reason that I got into writing and making music as a young kid, and the isolation and loneliness that I went through because of that helped to shape the conditions under which I usually make my best work.”'-- First Avenue






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uncertainthe cycle of tears (moon) - the high priestess
'uncertain is a music project started by artist, composer, poet, occultist, and androgyne Florian-Ayala Fauna in the WinterSolstice of 2007 during a dark night of the soul + Florian was later joined by vocalist and percussionist Felix Keigh in SummerSolstice of 2013 after revelations + visions through scrying with an obsidian black mirror. Their work seeks to collect, arrange, dissect, create, disfigure, beautify, set fire to, seed, and manipulate delicate, fragile sounds that vary from the organic to the unearthly. Sound sources frequently found in their music include natural field recordings, the noises of animals, processed acoustic instruments, synthesized and mangled electronics, and sounds found on decaying magnetic tapes.'-- collaged






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Pharmakon@ The Print Shop (MOMA PS1)
'Unlike other experimental projects, Pharmakon does not improvise when performing or recording. She is concise and exact; each song/movement is linear with a clear trajectory. Perhaps more than any other style of music, noise is a genre almost exclusively dominated by male performers. Spin Magazine is apt to point out that her,“perfectionism might explain why her recordings are few and far between — a rarity in a scene where noise bros are want to puke out hour after endless hour of stoned basement jams into a limitless stream of limited-edition tapes. Her music may be as cuddly as a trepanning drill, but it’s also just as precise: She glowers in measured silence as often as she shrieks, and every serrated tone cuts straight to the bone, a carefully calibrated interplay between frequency and resistance.”'-- Sacred Bones






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Mai Mai Maiεὐφρόνη
'Instantly, the UK "hauntology" scene of Demdike Stare and others springs to mind, but there is a playfulness behind Mai Mai Mai that many a British act seem to lack. Tracks bubble with wobbly analogue synthesiser lines and drones, consistently disturbed and unsettled by bursts of gristly noise. Beats are dropped casually into tracks, deployed sparingly but with subtle rhythmic force. Delta feels alchemical, a smartly distilled collection of sounds brewed together into a heady cocktail of genre-less, arrhythmic post-everything.'-- collaged






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CollarbonesToo Much
'Collarbones are a long distance Australian electronic pop/r&b collaborative duo, comprised of Adelaide’s Travis Cook and Sydney’s Marcus Whale, beginning in 2007. Debut album Iconography was released in March 2011 on Two Bright Lakes, who also put out the followup, Die Young in 2012. "Last night, a few more Collarbones fans from overseas made fan accounts and spammed us dozens of times until we followed them. We like to joke around about being a boy band, but it doesn’t make it any less ridiculous when it actually happens."-- Collarbones.'-- collaged







*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha, nice. ** James, Hi, James. I'm like Jimmy Hoffa with my emails. I have read the new Levé. It's great, of course. Short, linked works. Very, very good. If you like his writing, you'll like it a lot, I think. It was his first book in France. And there are only those three books by him, although apparently he left some unpublished mss. along with a stated wish that they not be published, so I don't know if they ever will be. ** Thomas Moronic, Thanks so much again for the gp! Uh, now that you mention it, there was this inexplicable phenomenological event in the air at one point yesterday, huh. So that's what it was trying to tell me. Cool riff on those restaurants. I feel pretty confident in saying that they must be far more interesting in theory than in practice, not that I won't swoop in given my first proximity. I think a really great faux-haunted restaurant could definitely be devised and realized, by me, given the funding, but whether anyone who would want to eat there, I don't know. Probably not. Of course I love what you say about your novel's surface. I mean, wow, totally, what an amazing goal. Yeah, it sounds incredible. That didn't sound like a mess at all. My novel is very exciting and very different and quite difficult to figure out how to write in the right way, and I'm pretty confident about it, but I haven't been able to do more than dip in and scribble a bit for a couple of months. But as as soon as the film shooting is over, it'll get the great majority of my attention. Thanks, T! ** Keaton, Yeah, I noticed you were away. I'm sorry that it involved a wreck. I didn't actually get to read your thing yet because yesterday ended up being involved in a couple of sudden crises, but, as soon as I go out to the Paris suburbs this morning to buy a tent for our upcoming scene, I'll get to savor it. Big time. Welcome back, pal! ** Jared, Hi. You would really and totally think so, wouldn't you. It's positively bizarre that there isn't and, I think, never has been, given LA's status as the world leader in Halloween spooky attractions. Oh, I would very much love either a Tory Dent Day, which, no, I've never done, or one on Arabic calligraphy, which is a really exciting idea and thing to imagine. Yeah, would be invaluable and very helpful if doing either of those would suit you. Thanks, J! You're ruling. ** Kier, Hi, Kier! Me too, about the not knowing what you're eating, being a vegetarian and all. There's an eat-in-the-dark restaurant here in Paris with blind waiters, which is a fun idea, but no way would I enter it. No, I haven't been to many themed restaurants, for the above stated reason. Zac and I almost went to a robot themed one in Tokyo where robots serve your food and do a big robot show and stuff, but it ended up seeming too intense to do or something. Yay for the great and generous and multi-talented -- my spellcheck just corrected 'multi-talented' into 'mutilated', which I think he might enjoy conceptually -- Bill! Wait, and yay for the great, generous, not mutilated but multi-everything you in return! What a lovely exchange! Good about your excitement trumping your nervousness. I'm getting that way about the film shooting finally. Sucks that 'Still Life' sucks. I like the title. I'm anxious about the film shooting, for sure, but I'm feeling weirdly calm, and Zac's very nervous since he's the director and everything, so I'm trying to maintain my calm and exude it in his direction infectiously. Love from me. How was Tuesday? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I just googled 'Dundee "weird restaurant"' but nothing came up, sadly, other than some restaurant what had 'weird' waiters, but not weird in an interesting way. Cool and fingers twistedly crossed about the post-work meeting with Andrew tomorrow! Or, wait, today! ** Matthew, Hi, Matthew! How really great to see you! Thanks about the thematic slide between the weekend post and yesterday's. I guess if one finds experimental dark music horrific, and I know many around here do, ha ha, today might even qualify. Or at least the gif at the post's head does. Hm, house horror, interesting. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything other than the obvious 'House of Leaves', which I wasn't so into. My 'Marbled Swarm' has some of that, I guess. I'll think, though. Everyone, Matthew asks for 'some recommendations or directions on how to find some good books that experiment with house horror, like [Blake Butler's] "There Is No Year".' Any ideas? Thank you! ** Turn porter, Hi. Yeah, Vilnius sounds really far away and exotic, but it's only a couple of hours by plane from Paris. Europe is weird. Sorry about the reluctant composer but, yeah, you'll find another. Wow, the shoot sounds like a lot of fun. You're shooting the whole thing in three days? Yikes. We have three-day shoots for each of our scenes, and it has never been as much time as we really wanted. I will give progress updates when we start again. On Sunday, for the actual shooting. Thanks about that old dog 'Closer'. You sound really up and excited. It's really nice to hear, read, and feel! About half of those 'haunted' restaurants are still open, and, no, I haven't been to any of them. ** Etc etc etc, Hi. That sounds nice: the wine and Seine thing. Wednesday should work. Do I have your email address? Hm, why don't you send your phone number by email, and I'll send you back mine and try to call you. Mine is: dcooperweb@gmail.com.  I don't know what 'viber' is, but I'll ask someone. Cool, hopefully see you right away! ** Misanthrope, Oh, man, that's so sad about LPS's return to hell, or, well, hopefully not hell, but, yeah, it sounds hellish. Oh, man, it sucks to be young enough to have no real power over your life. I hated that. So Lesnar is still a monster? I guess that's cool. I never liked Cena, not one little bit, so that's cool except for if his neck is actually fucked up in the real world. I'm sure he's nice.  ** Steevee, Hi. ** Hyemin Kim, Your description of Bernanos's style makes it sound like something I would like. It's really nice that you like his work. It's so exciting to find a writer one likes enough that his or her work becomes a future path. ** Kyler, Hi, K. Really, it surprises you that I did Space Mountain? Theme park rides and roller coasters are very prominent on my menu of things I love to do. Fire Island, cool. A bunch of people in my news feed on Facebook seem to be there right now. That German guy sounds like a tasteless jerk, yeah. The period just after the excitement of the initial publication is always really confusing and rough. Always. You have to find a way to transition into feeling the ongoing, back burner pleasure that the book is alive and mysteriously having a life, reaching people you don't know by means you don't know, leading to reactions that you'll never hear. I like that, but it took me a while to learn to like it. ** Rewritedept, Hey! Nice to see you, man! It's been a while! What's been up? Frisco, cool. And for lovely reasons on both counts. Shooting starts on Sunday, and rehearsals start on Thursday. Actually, both of those are mostly really fun. The cray cray part is the build up and getting ready part. I'm good. There isn't a whole lot going on that isn't film-related. But I am starting to plan an upcoming trip to Iceland with Zac. That should be amazing. I hope your trip to No. Cal. eases the semi-crazy thing a ton. ** Right. Today you get another gig of music I've been listening to lately and really liking. Great stuff in there if you're game to watch and listen. See you tomorrow.

* texts collaged from numerous sources.










Chronologically



8 AD.— The First Sex Doll Story Told. In Metamorphoses, Ovid wrote of a myth involving a woman sculpted from ivory by Pygmalion. Her name was Galatea and he became so obsessed with her, bathing her feeding her and of course sleeping with her, eventually Aphrodite made her into a real woman.





11th to 12th Century— Touching of Naked Statues Encouraged. Naked women made of marble, called “Sheela-na-gigs,” were carved into the sides of English and Irish churches to ward off evil spirits. The carvings had exaggerated vulvas and a legend at the time said caressing these sexy busts gave you the power to heal others.





15th Century— The First Sex Dolls at Sea. Called “Dame De Voyage” in French, “Dama De Vinje” in Spanish or “Seemannsbraut,” in German, these female dolls made out of sewn cloth were used by sailors aboard their ships to occupy their time (and bodies) on long trips at sea.





1941— Nazis Invent the Modern Sex Doll. The world’s first sex-dolls as we know them were created in Nazi Germany at the request of the SS leader, Heinrich Himmler. Called the “Borghild Field-Hygiene Project,” Himmler came up with the concept to stop the “unnecessary losses” of Nazi soldiers due to STD’s. The Project was considered ”Geheime Reichssache,” translated: ”More secret than top secret.”

The sculptor on the project, Arthur Rink, created three dolls. Typ A: 168 cm bust. Typ B: 176 and Typ C: 182 cm. According to Rink, The SS wanted the breasts “round and full” and SS Dr. Olen Hannussen insisted on “a rose hip form, that would grip well.” As for the face, the team agreed it needed a cheeky and naughty look. They asked to borrow the face of an actress of the time, Käthe von Nagy, for the doll, but she declined. Dr. Hannussen suggested an “artificial face of lust”, which he thought would be more appealing to the soldiers. Technician, Franz Tschakert agreed saying, “The doll has only one purpose and she should never become a substitute for the honorable mother at home… When the soldier makes love to Borghild, it has nothing to do with love. Therefore the face of our anthropomorphic sexmachine should be exactly how Weininger described the common wanton’s face.”

Going along with the Nordish Nazi vision of beauty, a tall leggy blonde rounded out the form. The first model of Borghild, Typ B, was completed in September 1941. Later, this blonde life-sized woman would inspire Ruth Handler to create the Barbie Doll for girls.





1955 -- Bild Lilli. The first sex doll is marketed, which is 11.5 inches of plastic and is named Bild Lilli.





1975— The Stepford Wives. A film about the quaint town of Stepford, Connecticut where men have beautiful robot wives that are all absolutely perfect … except for the fact that they’re creepy. Trivia: Diane Keaton turned the role of Joanna down the night before signing her contract, because her analyst got “bad vibes” from the script.





1977 -- Hohoemi. The history the best Japanese sex dolls brand started in 1977 when the future CEO of Orient Industry decided to make the kind of doll that he knew men needed. He came up with Hohoemi. She's a simple lady compared with the sophisticated silicone dolls of today but she certainly was a popular and durable creation. Made from urethane and PVC, Hohoemi was essentially a head, bust and waist with hole ... and that's it.





Early 80’s— The First Sex Robot is invented. British Company, Sex Objects Ltd. creates a sex robot, named “36C,” for obvious reasons. “She” also had a 16-bit microprocessor and voice synthesizer that allowed primitive responses to speech and push button inputs.





1985 — The Term “Gynoid” Coined. The term “Gynoid” was a name given to a female robot designed to look like a human female. It was given to us by Gweyneth Jones in her 1985 novel, Divine Endurance.





1987– Britain Lifts Prohibition on Importing Sex Dolls. In 1982 a blocked attempt to import sex dolls into Britain began a court case about whether or not to lift the import ban on all “Obscene or Indecent” items. The sex companies finally won the case in 1987, lifting all prohibitions. This opened the floodgates to all perversity in England.





1994 - Fleshlight. Back in 1994, Steve Shubin had a problem -- his wife was pregnant with twins and, being over 40, her health was a concern. Sex was off limits during the course of the pregnancy so Shubin had to take matters into his own hands. But not by using his hand. Deciding he needed something else to use, he started daydreaming. Eighteen months and $750,000 later, the Fleshlight was born.





1995— The Inflatable Sex Sheep Sold. Muttonbone Productions, Inc. creates a life-sized, anatomically correct inflatable sheep called the Love Ewe. It is sold mainly as a gag gift.





1996– First “Realistic” Sex Doll Created. At 29 years-old, Matt McMullen stops making scary Halloween masks for a living and creates the first female sex doll that is anatomically correct in look and feel. Her name is Leah. McMullen goes on to create the company Real Dolls, one of the most popular sex doll companies in the world. The dolls have a poseable PVC skeleton with steel joints and silicone flesh, which is advertised as “the state-of-the-art for life-like human body simulation”. They are now available in 10 customizable body styles, with a choice of 15 faces and five skin tones. Prices begin at around $6500, with some models costing over $10,000.






2001 -- Joe.





2002 - Guys and Dolls. The BBC produces a documentary called "Guys and Dolls." It chronicles the industry and the men who buy life-size dolls them. A California company called Realdoll began making realistic, lifesized dolls back in 1996. Since then, they've sold thousands of them for upwards of $10,000 each. The men interviewed in the documentary talk about how the dolls influence their lives. While they sometimes feel isolated from real life, they say the companionship they feel with the dolls is worth it.





2004 - Inflatable Sex Doll Raft Race. Today (August 21st, 2004) the second annual Inflatable Sex Doll Raft Race will be organized in North Russia/Leningrad region. Anyone over 16, and of either sex, is allowed to take part in this second competition. The participants will have to swim in the complicated Losevsky rapids of the Vuoksa river near St. Petersburg. The rapids are usually used for rafting in canoe and catamarans. This competition isn't a sexually chauvinistic event; in last year’s edition (real) women rafted on the dolls. All participants stated that these rubber ‘products’ are economical in usage, they float wonderfully. They gave some pet names to their dolls: Mary and her Poppins; Speedy Sterlet, Cleopatra... All participants must wear a helmet and a life vest. They also have to remain sober and those who are seen drunk are disqualified.





2005— Japanese Company Begins Renting Out “Dutch Wives.” Dutch Wives is the Japanese term for high quality silicone sex dolls. By the end of 2005 the Japanese company Forest Dolls had over 40 shops nationwide. The hourly rental rate, in 2005 was 13,000 yen an hour, or $146.00. Wigs and costumes were also available to rent.





2007— Lars and The Real Girl. A film about a man in relationship with a sex doll, nominated for an Oscar for its screenplay written by Nancy Oliver.





2007— The “Sexual Audio System” Is Invented. A Japanese company adds an mp3 player attached to a built-in pressure sensor in the chest of its sex dolls. It takes 4 AAA batteries. The dolls also come with real pubic hair and detachable heads.





2006 - 2008 - Sex Doll becomes Art. Artist Amber Hawk Swanson commissioned the production of a life-like sex doll, a RealDoll, made of a posable PVC skeleton and silicone flesh, in her exact likeness. Her doll, Amber Doll, began as a Styrofoam print-out of a digital scan of her head. Her face was then custom-sculpted and later combined with the doll manufacturer's existing, "Body #8" female doll mold. After completing, "The Making-Of Amber Doll" and "Las Vegas Wedding Ceremony" (both 2007), Amber Doll and Swanson went on to disrupt wedding receptions, roller-skating rinks, football tailgating parties, theme parks, and adult industry conventions. In the resulting series, "To Have, To Hold, and To Violate: Amber and Doll," ideas surrounding agency and objectification are questioned, as are ideas about the success or failure of negotiating power through one's own participation in a cultural narrative that declares women as objects. Swanson's work with Amber Doll, herself a literal object, deals with such themes through an oftentimes-complicated feminist lens.





2009— The First Male Android-Sex Doll. Germans make the first male Android-Sex doll, named “Nax.” It has an “automatically soaring penis” and “artificial automatic ejaculation.” It costs $10,000.





2009 - Air Doll. Air Doll is a 2009 Japanese drama film directed by Hirokazu Koreeda. It is based on the manga series Kuuki Ningyo by Yoshiie Gōda, which was serialized in the seinen manga magazine Big Comic Original, and is about an inflatable doll that develops a consciousness and falls in love. The movie debuted in the Un Certain Regard section at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. It opened in Japanese cinemas on 26 September 2009. Director Koreeda has stated that the film is about the loneliness of urban life and the question of what it means to be human.





2010— The First Sex Doll with a “Customizable Personality.” At the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, Doug Hines, owner and designer for TrueCompanion, revealed Roxxy. She costs a mere $7,000 and reacts to tactile and verbal stimulation. Personalities range from “Wild Wendy,” an outgoing party girl to “Frigid Farrah,” the shy librarian type. Her interests can be modified according to the owner’s conversation preferences.





2010 - Sex Doll Fashion. A Dutch artist named Sander Reijgers is recycling inflatable sex dolls into the most bizarre clothing. Perfect for a rainy weather, these waterproof hoodies were made by customizing existing tracksuit tops with heads, breasts and other pieces from 50 blow-up dolls that Sanders received from a “sponsor”.





2011 - A music teacher has been arrested after he was caught in a sex act with a child-like doll outside an elementary school. Officers were called to the school in Tennessee, following reports of a naked white male on school property. Daniel Torroll, 56, a private music teacher, was seen performing sex acts on the doll under a bridge that links the Spring Hill school from the main road. The responding officer said he could be seen by people driving to the school. Police later discovered Torroll had cut holes into the doll, News 2 reported. Torroll claimed he did not know he was on school grounds.





2011 - These high-heeled shoes that look like inflatable sex dolls are part of a collection of footwear by Tel Aviv designer Kobi Levi. The Blow shoes were designed to highlight how high heels are synonymous with sex and accompany a second pair where the heel illustrates the act of sex itself.





2012 - Just-in Beaver. US adult toy manufacturer Pipedream Products has produced an unofficial Justin Bieber blow-up sex doll. Named 'Just-in Beaver', the not-related-to-Mr-Bieber-in-any-way product retails at around $26. The company's advertising blurb – which rather dubiously fixates on 'Beaver' recently turning 18 – describes 'Beaver' as a "barely legal boy-toy who’s waited 18 long years to stick his lil’ dicky in something sticky! When he’s not busy beating up paparazzi or beating off, he’s up to his high-tops in hot Hollywood tail!" The company also produces a 'Dirty Christina' doll modelled on Christina Aguilera, and a doll named 'Finally Miley' modelled on Miley Cyrus.





2012 - Dollstories.net."Doll fetish is the desire to be transformed in to a doll or transforming someone else into a doll. This can be a living being such as a rubber doll or an inanimate object such as a lovedoll. The attraction may include the desire for actual sexual contact with a doll, a fantasy of a sexual encounter with an animate or inanimate doll, encounters between dolls themselves, or sexual pleasure gained from thoughts of being transformed or transforming another into a doll. This website was born out of a love of reading doll stories, and the thoughts, fantasies and desires to become one. Whilst this site deals mainly with Doll transformations and people turning into dolls, there are a few mannequin, fembot & objectification stories here."





2012 - Turkish rescue workers rushed to retrieve an inflatable sex doll from the Black Sea after panicked residents mistook it for a woman’s body floating offshore. The country’s Milliyet newspaper said police cordoned off a wide stretch of beach in northern Samsun province and sent a team of divers into the water to rescue what appeared to be a drowning woman. The team quickly discovered it was in fact a blow-up doll, which they tactfully deflated before throwing it away.





2013 - Missy is launched into space. An inflatable sex doll named Missy was recently launched into space making history as the first sex doll to have entered the earth’s outer atmosphere. Check out the video and watch Missy being hooked to a hydrogen-filled balloon then shot towards the cosmos at a speed of 426 metres per minute when, at an altitude of 31,090 metres, her balloon burst and she shot straight back down to the ground.





2013 - Student arrested for posing by Russian WWII memorial with an inflatable sex doll. A university student has been jailed in Russia for posing for a photograph in front of a Second World War memorial – arm in arm with a blow-up sex doll. Anastasia Polnikova, 23, was charged with hooliganism after she and three friends took the inflatable sex aid to the memorial near the Federal University in Stavropol, Russia. Wearing WWII head gear and waving a Russian flag, the drunk students borrowed the doll from a friend and walked through the park to take the pictures before posting them on the internet. Detectives are hunting Miss Polnikova’s three unnamed friends who went on the run after police issued arrest warrants for them all. Stavropol’s Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesman Eugene Nuykin said: ‘The identities of all the people who appeared in this photo are known to us and they will all be punished.





2013 - Sex Doll Commits Suicide In Czech Online Dating Ad. An ad for the popular Czech dating site Lidé is called "the bleakest thing you’ll see this side of an Ingmar Bergman film". It features a sex doll, devastated now that her man has found a real human to have sex with, jumping off a balcony as she replays in her mind the bittersweet moments the two of them had shared.





2013 - Chinese Site Sells 'Child-Sized' Sex Doll: Protest Group Launched. A Chinese website is under fire for selling disturbingly life-like child-size, sex dolls. The disturbing advert, spotted by an advocacy group on Facebook called Dining for Dignity, shows the model of a girl, who does not look much older than 9 or 10. Described as a “beautiful young girl sex doll for men,” the item costs $178 and is available to ship worldwide. Worryingly 57 of them have been sold so far to customers in the US, UK, Japan, Germany, and more, the advert shows. The product listing boasts that it is highly flexible, and that "all three holes can be used." Dining for Dignity has now set up a protest page to pressure DHgate – one of China’s top global merchants platforms – into removing the item or banning the seller. Its petition reads, ”This negligence is fueling human sex trafficking, pedophilia, violent rape, and more.”





2014 - Synthetics. Synthetics launches a new line of male sex dolls with removable parts depicting the various boner stages. "We are proud of the beautiful, hand-crafted items we produce," writes Synthetics publicity department, "and we want them to be appreciated as multifunctional rather than simply pigeon-holing them into the easy go-to connotation of the word 'sexdoll.' We view our products as usable art, and our clients as art collectors."





2014 - Sexflesh Full Sized Sammy Sex Doll. There are a lot of positive things going on with this sex toy. First of all, washboard abs. While not structurally relevent it’s a nice touch and speaks to the meticulous detail molded into the rest of the toy. The penis is stiff but moldable, which is a VERY nice touch. It’s 7.5 inches in length, 5.75 inches in circumfrance and 1.8 inches diameter – a nice large penis without being a monster! There are two holes for fucking. The anus and mouth. Both are ribbed and both have “exit holes”. This means the tubes you fuck on the doll are open ended. This makes cleaning it VERY easy and is definatley something you should look for in any high end sex doll (ie. more than $150). The anus is tight and gives a great amount of pleasure. One of the best things about it is that when it gets lubed up, SexFlesh feels very close to the real thing. The outer layer is covered in it, which gives the whole thing a nice skin like feel. Admittedly, the eyes are a little shocking, but if you’re looking for a high end men’s sex doll, this is the one.





2014 - New Japanese sex doll looks just like a real woman with ‘new level’ of realistic artificial skin. A new sex doll has been created in Japan that is so realistic they are ‘barely distinguishable from real women’. The £1,000 doll, made by Orient Industry, is made from a high-quality silicon, hailed as the ‘next level’ in artificial skin. This gives each figure an unbelievably realistic look, especially in the eyes – previously a problem area for doll-makers. The fake women also have moveable joints so they can be placed in any position and owners are even able to tailor their woman in bust size, hair colour, and physical appearance. Company spokesman Osami Seto said: "The two areas we identified as really needing improvement were the skin and the eyes. We feel we have finally got something that is arguably not distinguishable from the real thing."




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p.s. Hey. ** Jeffrey Coleman, Hi, Jeff. Ian William Craig: Thank you! I don't know his stuff at all. I'll start with whatever's at the end of that link. Much appreciated, man. ** L@rstonovich, Larsty! What a great pleasure! Hey, man! I still haven't read Bolano. It's getting pathological or something. Ugh, on the maladies that your summer brought along. But awesome about the inspiring newcomers, and the new poetry and continued novel attention. Great! Yeah, that ooioo track is very cool. It's a fresh album in general. I will check out that podcast and look for familiarity. Thanks! Yeah, L., very, very nice to have you here. I've missed you. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Yeah, I think I'm raring to go on the novel. That's the good thing about being forced to put it aside. I've built a lot of stuff in my head for the novel that hopefully I can just start implementing. Glad you dug the gig. Yeah, Warren rules in so many ways, through his music and of course through his label Orchid Tapes, which is just about the mostly reliably interesting label going. Thanks about that TAR thing. I appreciate it. Cheers to you! ** Hyemin Kim, Hi. In the interviews I've read, Ashbury never talks much about 'Shadow Train'. It's like a shadowy piece of his oeuvre. I agree about the hard cover jacket, yeah. Well, Zac and I are going to NYC for the 'Kindertotenlieder' shows at the end of October, so we'll go to Iceland either on the way there or on the way back, depending on whether one time slot or the other is preferable for any reason. My only contact with Starry was around the blog post. Hopefully, we'll get lucky and she'll get a new guest post idea. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. ** Etc etc etc. Hi! I emailed you back this morning. It looks like we'll able to sort it out for later today. Like I wrote therein, I'll be in touch again this afternoon. ** Kier, Aw, thanks a lot, K-ster! The Pallbearer album is really good. Fantastic that the referral is almost done! Was the eating disorder diagnosis one of the things that was preventing the referral from happening? Films in development! I love that you develop your films and don't just iPhone everything, even though that's what I do, and it serves my non-artistic purposes, I guess. So maybe you're with the curator right now. I mean as I type. Okay, how did it go? How deeply did he bow? We don't start filming until Sunday. Today's our last full get-ready day, and it's full of meetings and last minute errand running, and then tomorrow we start three days of full day rehearsals. The scene we're shooting on Sunday through Tuesday is the 3rd scene. Then, at the beginning of September, we'll be shooting the 2nd scene. Love, me. ** Steevee, Hi. The Pallbearer album is excellent. Probably their best, I think. ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien! Excellent to see you! Lucky you to have seen Puce Mary and Pharmakon live. I almost got to see Puce Mary when they opened for Iceage here, but we ended up getting there just as the applause at the end of her set subsided. Wow, so cool about PM yelling at you. If you ever feel like scanning that photo, I'd love to see it. Me too, about the new Pharmakon. Oh, man, thank you a lot about 'My Loose Thread'. That's super kind of you. It's up there among my very favorites of my novels, but it's kind of been my most overlooked one as far as readers and critics go for whatever reason. I'm glad you're trying not to fall. Big strength to you in that preventative effort. Have you been writing? I hope the money stress hasn't interfered too much. Money stress has a horrible habit of killing off creativity or whatever, or it does for me. Have there been positive things about the move? Is there anything new that's been, I don't know, exciting or promising in the change for you? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thanks about the gig. Cannibal Movie is really cool. The only organ plus drums thing works strangely well and has such an odd quality. Hooray about the Art101 progress at long fucking last! May the exciting updates continue. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thanks re: the gig. For some reason, I'm particularly really loving the new Martyrdöd album. Its fierce and pretty-ish in some very addictive way for me. The new Eno with Karl Hyde, you mean? I really need to get that. The new Spoon didn't do much for me on one listen, but I'm not done with it yet. Things are feeling more settled with the film, yeah. Not settled, mind you, but more so. Awesome re: the guest post if that pleases you and is okay, time-wise. ** Misanthrope, I didn't know that about Lesnar's ups and downs. I'm way behind on him. I think the last time I saw Lesnar do anything was when he pushed that kid with one leg down the stairs. Ages an ages ago. I've never found Cena to be anything but totally irriating. Like Kier said, LPS's knowing you're there if he needs you is huge. ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Thanks, man. It's always happy to me when you and I are on the same musical page. Developments? Everything has pretty much been about the film project for me, and that's been a situation of unending developments, I guess. Relevant to yesterday: we've finally figured out the live music component of the club/concert scene, which is the scene we're shooting. That was incredibly hard. We started out long ago wanting Iceage to appear/play in the scene. But our very limited resources killed that off. Then we wanted an Iceage-like band, since the scene was originally written to be kind of Iceage gig gone apocalyptic. But we couldn't find a band. Then we changed it to a laptop/noise guy with a singer. But we couldn't sort that out either, so now it's a guy playing laptop/noise guy with a great donated track and a spoken word accompaniest, which we hope will work. That scene has been a virtual hell to figure out and cast and organize. Anyway, that's happening. Thank you so, so much about 'My Lose Thread'! That's so good to hear. Like I said to Damien, it's one of the two novels of mine that I'm proudest of (along with 'The Marbled Swarm'), and, for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be much of a favorite outside my own head, which is partly the fault of it having been completely fucked over by its publisher maybe. Anyway, blah blah, thank you a lot! I did read through the Pitchfork list, yeah. It's very Pitchfork-y. I remember being pleasantly surprised a few times, but I can't remember why at the moment. What do you think of it? Have a superb day! ** Matthew, Oh, I felt weird mentioning my own book, but, yeah, thank you for seeing why I did. I still haven't come up with suggestions, but my head is not at its clearest right now. I'll keep thinking/trying, and if something springs to mind, I'll shoot it out. Best to you! ** Kyler, Nice re: your beautiful day. Oh, sure, I ride everything that doesn't spin in a circle because I get motion sick when things revolve. But, yeah, I'm all over the rides. I'm not creaky at all. I'll tell you for sure when the film comes out, but it'll be quite a while from now. ** Sypha, Hi. Yeah, I tend limit my intake when I'm making something, but, in my case, of course, it's fiction I limit rather than music. Cool that you're recording new stuff! ** Bill, Hey! Ha ha, yeah, about the ooioo, kind of, that's good, I want to go find that deserted Belgian restaurant. Belgium is strangely good and full of abandoned cool things: chateaux, buildings, theme parks. I imagine that Zac and I will be doing a Haunted Belgoum tour at some point. Oh, man, no sweat about the blog post. I understand things being 'crazy around here' very, very well. ** Okay. I'm off to a day of film prep stuff. Today's post is another one where I can not remember for the life of me how and why it happened, but there it is. Cool or not, you decide. See you tomorrow.