----
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Filmography:
Variety (1983)
Smithereens (1982)
Downtown 81 (1981)
Polyester (1981)
Subway Riders (1981)
Underground U.S.A. (1980)
Seduction of Patrick (1979)
Final Reward (1978)
Desperate Living (1977)
Female Trouble (1974)
Pink Flamingos (1972)
Multiple Maniacs (1970)
Books and Stories:
1. How To Get Rid Of Pimples: The Actual Cure
2. Garden Of Ashes
3. Fan Mail, Frank Letters, and Crank Calls
4. Putti's Pudding (w/ Vittorio Scarpati)
5. Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black
6. Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings Of Cookie Mueller (anthology)
Tribute Sites:
Dreamland Girl
www.angelfire.com/md/cookiemueller/home.html
Courage, Bread and Roses: A Tribute to Cookie Mueller
http://www3.sympatico.ca/brooksdr/jw/cookie/main.htm
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Quotes About Cookie:
1) “Cookie Mueller was a writer, a mother, an outlaw, an actress, a fashion designer, a go-go dancer, a witch doctor, an art hag, and above all, a goddess. Boy, do I miss that girl.”
--John Waters, 1996
2) “The first time I saw Cookie she was having a yard sale on her front porch in Provincetown. She was a cross between a Tobacco Road outlaw and a Hollywood B-Girl, the most fabulous woman I’d ever seen….
Cookie was a social light, a diva, a beauty, my idol. Over the years she became a writer, a critic, my best friend, my sister. We lived throught the peaks and the dread together in Provincetown, New York, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Positano.
… in 1988 Cookie got sick. …in August 1989 the effects of AIDS had robbed her of her voice… On September 14th her husband Vittorio Scarpati died from an AIDS-related illness and after that Cookie kind of gave up. She died on November 10th in the hospice of the Cabrini Medical Center.”
--Nan Goldin, 1990
3) Any time she walked out the door, her life was a story. I mean, everything she did. I mean, she'd say 'I'm going to go get the milk' and something lunatic would happen to her. So her life was like that all the time.
Cookie in her own Words / Quotes and Passages from her stories:
1)Yeah, life is tough in the real world. Actors wait on tables, ballet dancers work as topless go-go girls, artists wash dishes, and that’s not even the worst part. Someday you might bring your garbage on the subway, someday you might even shit in your own bank. (“Another Boring Day”)
2) A few weeks later, I accidentally got a job working two days a week as a housekeeper. The house was spacious and warm with all kinds of stuff to make work easier…. The only real problem was Wendy, the woman who lived there with her husband, Chris.
She was there most of the time, so I couldn’t totally relax when I cleaned. She stayed in bed though, all day, lying in her flab…
I didn’t blame her for lying in bed. She couldn’t walk. She was crippled from an accident in Mexico when her husband Chris haphazardly ran over her legs with the Volkswagon camper.
I felt sorry for her. Had it been me I would have divorced and sued this Chris person. He kept insisting that the reason she couldn’t walk was a psychological disturbance. He sounded like that misogynist idiot Sigmund Freud….
I cleaned around her.
One day I found some wild photos of Wendy and Chris. I think one of them left them out especially for me. There was a picture of Wendy spread-eagled, inserting huge bowling pins into her vagina. There was a picture of Chris trying to stick silver balls up his ass. There were pictures of the two of them and some other girl. She was tied up and they were all over her….
Because of these snapshots, I was prepared for anything, and sure enough, the day after… Wendy called me up to her bedroom….
“Cookie,” she said, “you might as well know that Chris and I aren’t getting along very well.”
“Oh?”
“I think it’s my legs. They’re not really pretty anymore…. Anyway, I want you to help us put our marriage back together again. You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, sure, whatever I can do to help,” I said, and thought oh no.
“Well, I’d like you to come over here tonight, around 2 in the morning, and get in bed with Chris. I’ll be sitting in that chair over there, and I’ll just watch. We’ll play it by ear, okay?”
“I don’t know, Wendy…” I said. Wild horses couldn’t drag me into bed with that husband of hers.
“Please, it would really help out,” she said.
I went back downstairs and stood there for a couple of minutes. Was she joking? I hated threesomes. Somebody was always getting left out. I didn’t want to fuck her husband, I didn’t want to fuck her. I didn’t want to be an upstairs maid!
…I went back upstairs.
“Look, I don’t think that’s my cup of tea,” I said.
“I thought you were wild,” she said.
Why does everyone think I’m so wild? I’m not wild. I happen to stumble onto wildness. It gets in my path.
“You’re supposed to be so wild,” she almost screamed.
“Well, I’m all finished for today,” I changed the subject. “I relined the stove with tin foil, and…”
She sighed, “Oh, go away.”
I did. I went home and didn’t go back… Too bad. I needed that money for Christmas. I wanted to buy everybody something special. Oh well.
(“Provincetown—1970”)
3)“The worst part is there’s no flattery involved in rape; I mean, it doesn’t much matter what the females look like; it doesn’t even seem to matter either if they have four legs instead of two. Dairy farmers have raped their own cows even.
‘It’s great to fuck a cow,’ they say, ‘you can fit everything in… the balls… everything.’
So I guess it just depends on your genital plumbing as to how you see the following story.
(“Abduction & Rape—Highway 31, Elkton, Maryland, 1969”)
4) “I accidentally burned a friend’s house to the ground once. The friend didn’t approve.”
(“British Columbia—1972)
5)“Aren’t you supposed to do some scene where you get fucked by a chicken?” Divine asked me.
“Fucked by a real chicken?” Mink asked me.
“How?” asked Bonnie.
“In the script it says Crackers cuts off the head of a chicken and he fucks me with the stump,” I said.
“Oh that sounds easy,” Divine said.
“Yeah, that’s pretty easy compared with what you have to do,” I said to Divine.
“Chickens scratch pretty bad,” David said. “Even without their heads.”
“Bird wounds can be dangerous,” Van said.
I thought about Hitchcock’s The Birds, but those were seagulls and I knew just how powerful seagulls could be. Compared to them, chickens were jellyfish.
“I’m not worried about some little scratches,” I said.
(“Pink Flamingos”)
6) I met all the German film stars, people I’d always wanted to have beers with: Udo Kier, Bruno Ganz, Klaus Kinski, and the German filmmakers (Fassbinder, Herzog, Schroeder). I was in Aryan heaven.
(“The Berlin Film Festival—1981”)
7) Biography and Education: I received most of my education traveling and working various inane jobs such as: clothing designer, racehorse hot walker, drug dealer, go-go dancer, underground film actress (otherwise known as independent feature actress), playwright, theater director, performance artist, house cleaner, fish packer, credit clerk, barmaid, sailor, high seas cook, film script doctor, herbal therapist, unwed welfare mother, film extra, leg model, watercolorist, and briefly as a bar mitzvah entertainer, although I’m not even Jewish.
I started writing when I was six and have never stopped completely. I wrote a novel when I was twelve and put it in cardboard and Saran Wrap, took it to the library and put it on the shelves in the correct alphabetical order. When I was eighteen, I left college for Haight-Ashbury and wound up a drug casualty, not unlike a bag lady. I learned a lot in the mental hospital, where I had shock therapy that didn’t work except for eradicating from my memory all the contents from novels I had read in the last twelve years.
A few of the films I appeared in have attained a cult status and I am told that I have a fan club in Los Angeles.
I have a twelve-year old son, who I believe has taught me the most.
I used to write poetry, but now I feel that poetry is archaic unless written specifically as song lyrics. I believe that my short stories are novels for people with short attention spans.
I live with my son in Manhattan and pay the rent as a journalist.
(“Cookie Mueller, born 1949, Baltimore, Maryland”)
Photos:
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Clips
Sylvia Miles, Ronee Blakley, Cookie Mueller at The Chelsea Hotel
Cookie Mueller I GOT A KNIFE
Cookie meets Edie the Egglady
cookie mueller "secrets of the skinny"
COOKIE- a new film by Liz Rosenfeld
Justin Vivian Bond Reads Cookie Mueller at Low Life
People remember actress and writer Cookie Mueller
*
p.s. Hey. As forewarned, here's the first of at least one or two more reruns that you'll be seeing this week as I get the blog back up to speed. I'll be going back into the blog's dawn, 8 years ago in today's case, in hopes the reruns will feel new to at least some of you. Apologies. ** Jose Acevedo, Hi, Jose! Thanks so much for the kindness. I would agree that in the case of a lot of the best fiction, the line between it and poetry is blurry. Not so much the other way around, though, which speaks perhaps to poet's superiority. Great words about Tosh's work. So nice. I'm in he middle of a big cup of coffee myself. Good morning! ** Hyemin kim, Hi. I'm glad you're snug and safe. My hurt, ribs-related specifically, is ever so slowly becoming invisible. Thanks! Let me see if I can find those posts. Hold on. Okay, I think the 'artificial islands' post is this one called 'What islands'? I don't remember what 'In France' was, and I did a search of the blog using those words, and, of course, a ton of posts showed up. Can you tell me more precisely what that post had in it? That will help. ** Tosh Berman, And once again thank you! Remember to report how the Marjorie Cameron show is, if you don't mind. I'm very curious. I liked 'The Player'. I really need to watch it again. All I remember about it is Malcom McDowell. I'm generally not so into the later/last Altman films, and I really don't like 'Short Cuts', but I do (barely) remember 'The Player' brightly. Sometimes I've had conferences with my translators here, sometimes not. It's actually been a big problem that I haven't done that with the 'TMS' translators. That novel has a big, complicated substructure that makes the novel work, and, if it's going to be translated, the translator really needs to have at least a basic understanding of that system. I asked the first translator many times to please meet with me about that, but she never did, and that was surely part of the translation's problem. Exact same thing with the second translator. The third translator said she's going to meet with me so I can explain the substructure, but I haven't heard a thing from her. I get it that they know it will make their work much harder, but, given that a translator is kind of like a secondary author, 'TMS' requires an understanding of how it works, and, without that, I don't see how a translation could be any good at all. So we'll see. ** Will C., Hi, Will! Too long time no see! Great! I've been very good, thank you. Sorry to hear about the longness of your months. If you want to say why, know that I'm all ears. But very awesome that you're writing and submitting again! What have you been working on? Can you say? Oh, yes, I need to start putting together my 2014 faves list, don't I? Okay. ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. Altman, yeah. So cool that you met him. That film you described does indeed sound most weird in the best possible way. You've seen it, yes? Did you go to the screening? ** Steevee, Oh, cool, about MoMA's Altman retro. I didn't know that. Fingers very crossed that you don't get sicker, man. How is that new Dumont? I haven't seen it yet, but I'm a real fan of his work. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Thanks. My fave Altmans are 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller' and '3 Women', both of which would be in my all-time fave films list. I didn't get 'Gosford Park' when I saw it, but I was still looking for the qualities of Altman's earlier films, and it seems like I should see it again. ** Sickly, Hi. Yeah, gonna watch 'The Player' again for sure, cool. ** Kier, Hi, hi, hi! '3 Women' is totally amazing! I like 'Popeye'. It's really nuts, and Shelley Duvall is one of my gods, and her Olive Oyl is one of very best performances. I remember Pret-a-porter' being kind of bad, but I haven't seen it in ages. How was it? My faves, as I told Bill, are '3 Women' and 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller'. I really like that the farmer is named Bjarne. I like that name. I know it from somewhere. Oh, maybe because of that artist Bjarne Melgard. I was going to say that Brulle didn't look big in the photo, but it wasn't him! Wow, your work day sounds really strenuous. But, from the outside, that's exciting. I like that word feisty. Cool. Uh, my day ... the art world guy wanted to talk about all kinds of stuff -- guy is a big, big talker -- but I think the meeting was 'cos he wants me to do an event at the Paul McCarthy Chocolate Factory show, and I said okay, so he's going to interview me onstage about Paul and the LA art scene on December 23rd. I kind of don't like doing that kind of stuff, but the guy talks so much and so fast that I said okay before I even realized I had. So, that happened. Then I tried to hook up with my two visiting LA friends, but we misconnected, so I wasn't able to see them, which sucks. Then Zac and I went to Palais de Tokyo in the evening and saw the pretty good show there called 'Silence' and we just hung out for a while, and that was bliss, of course. Then I did some work before pooping out. Yeah, it was actually a good day, but I didn't make it sound very colorful. Oops. I'll try again tomorrow, and, until then, how did the current day sit with you? ** Zach, Hi. My pleasure, of course. Oh, God, 'statement of purpose', what a horrible form. To me, anyway. Demonic sounds about right. Ugh. I guess it's an interesting mental exercise to try to see yourself objectively. But then self-hyping is no fun. Or maybe it is, or maybe it could be. Sounds gross. Anyway, I hope you figured that out. 'Popeye' is a super weird movie, for sure. ** Tomáš, Hi again! Yeah, I still have my gmail address -- dcooperweb@gmail.com. I would love and could really need something for the blog, so that would be kind and amazing, man. Thank you! ** _Black_Acrylic, Xmas is sneaking in here. Some lights up, the windows at Galeries Lafayette are Xmas-tized, etc. Ooh, that 'The Magical Journey' scandal is so up my alley, obviously, I'll pore over that pronto. Yum. And I'll check out the video too. Everyone here's _B_A: 'There's an inspiring new video clip here of the weekend's Radical Independence conference in Glasgow. Cat Boyd has sure got some star quality.' The Ferguson verdict is both shocking and completely unsurprising. Horrible. Just fucking insane. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff! I've only seen clips from 'Quintet', and I couldn't tell if it was amazing or a pretentious mess or something, but it did look like it was worth trying, for sure. It's from his peak, inspired period. I'm glad you're feeling better. Ugh. Dramatic news ... yikes. Sure, let's talk. I'm around and pretty free/talkable right now. When's good? I meet with Gisele tomorrow for feedback, and then I'll know if I've nailed down what she wants or whether I have more work to do. The eBook is being put together right now, and hopefully it'll get published soon, but it's kind of technically complicated, so hopefully there won't be delaying glitches. ** Keaton, Hey. Yeah, I'm not a big painting fan, but I always try, and I do get swept away at times. I like things that repeat but only if they're obsessive and if the repetition is intense and believable. I've never been to Dublin. Zac was there recently, and he liked it. ** Misanthrope, No rub or sauces, wow. That's quite a compliment to him. Nah, I mean, the Recollets let me live here a lot, lot longer than the rules allowed, so I'm grateful and all of that. That's exciting about painting your house. Are you going to participate? Does everybody need to sleep in tents in the backyard while that's happening? ** Sypha, The post is so great! Thank you again, James. Well, if I do this cycle, they'll be one work collectively, and that'll count as the last, 'tenth' novel. That's the idea, anyway. ** Right. Spend time with Cookie Mueller as she was presented 8 years ago please. She's awesome. See you tomorrow.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Filmography:
Variety (1983)
Smithereens (1982)
Downtown 81 (1981)
Polyester (1981)
Subway Riders (1981)
Underground U.S.A. (1980)
Seduction of Patrick (1979)
Final Reward (1978)
Desperate Living (1977)
Female Trouble (1974)
Pink Flamingos (1972)
Multiple Maniacs (1970)
Books and Stories:
1. How To Get Rid Of Pimples: The Actual Cure
2. Garden Of Ashes
3. Fan Mail, Frank Letters, and Crank Calls
4. Putti's Pudding (w/ Vittorio Scarpati)
5. Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black
6. Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings Of Cookie Mueller (anthology)
Tribute Sites:
Dreamland Girl
www.angelfire.com/md/cookiemueller/home.html
Courage, Bread and Roses: A Tribute to Cookie Mueller
http://www3.sympatico.ca/brooksdr/jw/cookie/main.htm
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Quotes About Cookie:
1) “Cookie Mueller was a writer, a mother, an outlaw, an actress, a fashion designer, a go-go dancer, a witch doctor, an art hag, and above all, a goddess. Boy, do I miss that girl.”
--John Waters, 1996
2) “The first time I saw Cookie she was having a yard sale on her front porch in Provincetown. She was a cross between a Tobacco Road outlaw and a Hollywood B-Girl, the most fabulous woman I’d ever seen….
Cookie was a social light, a diva, a beauty, my idol. Over the years she became a writer, a critic, my best friend, my sister. We lived throught the peaks and the dread together in Provincetown, New York, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Positano.
… in 1988 Cookie got sick. …in August 1989 the effects of AIDS had robbed her of her voice… On September 14th her husband Vittorio Scarpati died from an AIDS-related illness and after that Cookie kind of gave up. She died on November 10th in the hospice of the Cabrini Medical Center.”
--Nan Goldin, 1990
3) Any time she walked out the door, her life was a story. I mean, everything she did. I mean, she'd say 'I'm going to go get the milk' and something lunatic would happen to her. So her life was like that all the time.
Cookie in her own Words / Quotes and Passages from her stories:
1)Yeah, life is tough in the real world. Actors wait on tables, ballet dancers work as topless go-go girls, artists wash dishes, and that’s not even the worst part. Someday you might bring your garbage on the subway, someday you might even shit in your own bank. (“Another Boring Day”)
2) A few weeks later, I accidentally got a job working two days a week as a housekeeper. The house was spacious and warm with all kinds of stuff to make work easier…. The only real problem was Wendy, the woman who lived there with her husband, Chris.
She was there most of the time, so I couldn’t totally relax when I cleaned. She stayed in bed though, all day, lying in her flab…
I didn’t blame her for lying in bed. She couldn’t walk. She was crippled from an accident in Mexico when her husband Chris haphazardly ran over her legs with the Volkswagon camper.
I felt sorry for her. Had it been me I would have divorced and sued this Chris person. He kept insisting that the reason she couldn’t walk was a psychological disturbance. He sounded like that misogynist idiot Sigmund Freud….
I cleaned around her.
One day I found some wild photos of Wendy and Chris. I think one of them left them out especially for me. There was a picture of Wendy spread-eagled, inserting huge bowling pins into her vagina. There was a picture of Chris trying to stick silver balls up his ass. There were pictures of the two of them and some other girl. She was tied up and they were all over her….
Because of these snapshots, I was prepared for anything, and sure enough, the day after… Wendy called me up to her bedroom….
“Cookie,” she said, “you might as well know that Chris and I aren’t getting along very well.”
“Oh?”
“I think it’s my legs. They’re not really pretty anymore…. Anyway, I want you to help us put our marriage back together again. You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, sure, whatever I can do to help,” I said, and thought oh no.
“Well, I’d like you to come over here tonight, around 2 in the morning, and get in bed with Chris. I’ll be sitting in that chair over there, and I’ll just watch. We’ll play it by ear, okay?”
“I don’t know, Wendy…” I said. Wild horses couldn’t drag me into bed with that husband of hers.
“Please, it would really help out,” she said.
I went back downstairs and stood there for a couple of minutes. Was she joking? I hated threesomes. Somebody was always getting left out. I didn’t want to fuck her husband, I didn’t want to fuck her. I didn’t want to be an upstairs maid!
…I went back upstairs.
“Look, I don’t think that’s my cup of tea,” I said.
“I thought you were wild,” she said.
Why does everyone think I’m so wild? I’m not wild. I happen to stumble onto wildness. It gets in my path.
“You’re supposed to be so wild,” she almost screamed.
“Well, I’m all finished for today,” I changed the subject. “I relined the stove with tin foil, and…”
She sighed, “Oh, go away.”
I did. I went home and didn’t go back… Too bad. I needed that money for Christmas. I wanted to buy everybody something special. Oh well.
(“Provincetown—1970”)
3)“The worst part is there’s no flattery involved in rape; I mean, it doesn’t much matter what the females look like; it doesn’t even seem to matter either if they have four legs instead of two. Dairy farmers have raped their own cows even.
‘It’s great to fuck a cow,’ they say, ‘you can fit everything in… the balls… everything.’
So I guess it just depends on your genital plumbing as to how you see the following story.
(“Abduction & Rape—Highway 31, Elkton, Maryland, 1969”)
4) “I accidentally burned a friend’s house to the ground once. The friend didn’t approve.”
(“British Columbia—1972)
5)“Aren’t you supposed to do some scene where you get fucked by a chicken?” Divine asked me.
“Fucked by a real chicken?” Mink asked me.
“How?” asked Bonnie.
“In the script it says Crackers cuts off the head of a chicken and he fucks me with the stump,” I said.
“Oh that sounds easy,” Divine said.
“Yeah, that’s pretty easy compared with what you have to do,” I said to Divine.
“Chickens scratch pretty bad,” David said. “Even without their heads.”
“Bird wounds can be dangerous,” Van said.
I thought about Hitchcock’s The Birds, but those were seagulls and I knew just how powerful seagulls could be. Compared to them, chickens were jellyfish.
“I’m not worried about some little scratches,” I said.
(“Pink Flamingos”)
6) I met all the German film stars, people I’d always wanted to have beers with: Udo Kier, Bruno Ganz, Klaus Kinski, and the German filmmakers (Fassbinder, Herzog, Schroeder). I was in Aryan heaven.
(“The Berlin Film Festival—1981”)
7) Biography and Education: I received most of my education traveling and working various inane jobs such as: clothing designer, racehorse hot walker, drug dealer, go-go dancer, underground film actress (otherwise known as independent feature actress), playwright, theater director, performance artist, house cleaner, fish packer, credit clerk, barmaid, sailor, high seas cook, film script doctor, herbal therapist, unwed welfare mother, film extra, leg model, watercolorist, and briefly as a bar mitzvah entertainer, although I’m not even Jewish.
I started writing when I was six and have never stopped completely. I wrote a novel when I was twelve and put it in cardboard and Saran Wrap, took it to the library and put it on the shelves in the correct alphabetical order. When I was eighteen, I left college for Haight-Ashbury and wound up a drug casualty, not unlike a bag lady. I learned a lot in the mental hospital, where I had shock therapy that didn’t work except for eradicating from my memory all the contents from novels I had read in the last twelve years.
A few of the films I appeared in have attained a cult status and I am told that I have a fan club in Los Angeles.
I have a twelve-year old son, who I believe has taught me the most.
I used to write poetry, but now I feel that poetry is archaic unless written specifically as song lyrics. I believe that my short stories are novels for people with short attention spans.
I live with my son in Manhattan and pay the rent as a journalist.
(“Cookie Mueller, born 1949, Baltimore, Maryland”)
Photos:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Clips
Sylvia Miles, Ronee Blakley, Cookie Mueller at The Chelsea Hotel
Cookie Mueller I GOT A KNIFE
Cookie meets Edie the Egglady
cookie mueller "secrets of the skinny"
COOKIE- a new film by Liz Rosenfeld
Justin Vivian Bond Reads Cookie Mueller at Low Life
People remember actress and writer Cookie Mueller
*
p.s. Hey. As forewarned, here's the first of at least one or two more reruns that you'll be seeing this week as I get the blog back up to speed. I'll be going back into the blog's dawn, 8 years ago in today's case, in hopes the reruns will feel new to at least some of you. Apologies. ** Jose Acevedo, Hi, Jose! Thanks so much for the kindness. I would agree that in the case of a lot of the best fiction, the line between it and poetry is blurry. Not so much the other way around, though, which speaks perhaps to poet's superiority. Great words about Tosh's work. So nice. I'm in he middle of a big cup of coffee myself. Good morning! ** Hyemin kim, Hi. I'm glad you're snug and safe. My hurt, ribs-related specifically, is ever so slowly becoming invisible. Thanks! Let me see if I can find those posts. Hold on. Okay, I think the 'artificial islands' post is this one called 'What islands'? I don't remember what 'In France' was, and I did a search of the blog using those words, and, of course, a ton of posts showed up. Can you tell me more precisely what that post had in it? That will help. ** Tosh Berman, And once again thank you! Remember to report how the Marjorie Cameron show is, if you don't mind. I'm very curious. I liked 'The Player'. I really need to watch it again. All I remember about it is Malcom McDowell. I'm generally not so into the later/last Altman films, and I really don't like 'Short Cuts', but I do (barely) remember 'The Player' brightly. Sometimes I've had conferences with my translators here, sometimes not. It's actually been a big problem that I haven't done that with the 'TMS' translators. That novel has a big, complicated substructure that makes the novel work, and, if it's going to be translated, the translator really needs to have at least a basic understanding of that system. I asked the first translator many times to please meet with me about that, but she never did, and that was surely part of the translation's problem. Exact same thing with the second translator. The third translator said she's going to meet with me so I can explain the substructure, but I haven't heard a thing from her. I get it that they know it will make their work much harder, but, given that a translator is kind of like a secondary author, 'TMS' requires an understanding of how it works, and, without that, I don't see how a translation could be any good at all. So we'll see. ** Will C., Hi, Will! Too long time no see! Great! I've been very good, thank you. Sorry to hear about the longness of your months. If you want to say why, know that I'm all ears. But very awesome that you're writing and submitting again! What have you been working on? Can you say? Oh, yes, I need to start putting together my 2014 faves list, don't I? Okay. ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. Altman, yeah. So cool that you met him. That film you described does indeed sound most weird in the best possible way. You've seen it, yes? Did you go to the screening? ** Steevee, Oh, cool, about MoMA's Altman retro. I didn't know that. Fingers very crossed that you don't get sicker, man. How is that new Dumont? I haven't seen it yet, but I'm a real fan of his work. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Thanks. My fave Altmans are 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller' and '3 Women', both of which would be in my all-time fave films list. I didn't get 'Gosford Park' when I saw it, but I was still looking for the qualities of Altman's earlier films, and it seems like I should see it again. ** Sickly, Hi. Yeah, gonna watch 'The Player' again for sure, cool. ** Kier, Hi, hi, hi! '3 Women' is totally amazing! I like 'Popeye'. It's really nuts, and Shelley Duvall is one of my gods, and her Olive Oyl is one of very best performances. I remember Pret-a-porter' being kind of bad, but I haven't seen it in ages. How was it? My faves, as I told Bill, are '3 Women' and 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller'. I really like that the farmer is named Bjarne. I like that name. I know it from somewhere. Oh, maybe because of that artist Bjarne Melgard. I was going to say that Brulle didn't look big in the photo, but it wasn't him! Wow, your work day sounds really strenuous. But, from the outside, that's exciting. I like that word feisty. Cool. Uh, my day ... the art world guy wanted to talk about all kinds of stuff -- guy is a big, big talker -- but I think the meeting was 'cos he wants me to do an event at the Paul McCarthy Chocolate Factory show, and I said okay, so he's going to interview me onstage about Paul and the LA art scene on December 23rd. I kind of don't like doing that kind of stuff, but the guy talks so much and so fast that I said okay before I even realized I had. So, that happened. Then I tried to hook up with my two visiting LA friends, but we misconnected, so I wasn't able to see them, which sucks. Then Zac and I went to Palais de Tokyo in the evening and saw the pretty good show there called 'Silence' and we just hung out for a while, and that was bliss, of course. Then I did some work before pooping out. Yeah, it was actually a good day, but I didn't make it sound very colorful. Oops. I'll try again tomorrow, and, until then, how did the current day sit with you? ** Zach, Hi. My pleasure, of course. Oh, God, 'statement of purpose', what a horrible form. To me, anyway. Demonic sounds about right. Ugh. I guess it's an interesting mental exercise to try to see yourself objectively. But then self-hyping is no fun. Or maybe it is, or maybe it could be. Sounds gross. Anyway, I hope you figured that out. 'Popeye' is a super weird movie, for sure. ** Tomáš, Hi again! Yeah, I still have my gmail address -- dcooperweb@gmail.com. I would love and could really need something for the blog, so that would be kind and amazing, man. Thank you! ** _Black_Acrylic, Xmas is sneaking in here. Some lights up, the windows at Galeries Lafayette are Xmas-tized, etc. Ooh, that 'The Magical Journey' scandal is so up my alley, obviously, I'll pore over that pronto. Yum. And I'll check out the video too. Everyone here's _B_A: 'There's an inspiring new video clip here of the weekend's Radical Independence conference in Glasgow. Cat Boyd has sure got some star quality.' The Ferguson verdict is both shocking and completely unsurprising. Horrible. Just fucking insane. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff! I've only seen clips from 'Quintet', and I couldn't tell if it was amazing or a pretentious mess or something, but it did look like it was worth trying, for sure. It's from his peak, inspired period. I'm glad you're feeling better. Ugh. Dramatic news ... yikes. Sure, let's talk. I'm around and pretty free/talkable right now. When's good? I meet with Gisele tomorrow for feedback, and then I'll know if I've nailed down what she wants or whether I have more work to do. The eBook is being put together right now, and hopefully it'll get published soon, but it's kind of technically complicated, so hopefully there won't be delaying glitches. ** Keaton, Hey. Yeah, I'm not a big painting fan, but I always try, and I do get swept away at times. I like things that repeat but only if they're obsessive and if the repetition is intense and believable. I've never been to Dublin. Zac was there recently, and he liked it. ** Misanthrope, No rub or sauces, wow. That's quite a compliment to him. Nah, I mean, the Recollets let me live here a lot, lot longer than the rules allowed, so I'm grateful and all of that. That's exciting about painting your house. Are you going to participate? Does everybody need to sleep in tents in the backyard while that's happening? ** Sypha, The post is so great! Thank you again, James. Well, if I do this cycle, they'll be one work collectively, and that'll count as the last, 'tenth' novel. That's the idea, anyway. ** Right. Spend time with Cookie Mueller as she was presented 8 years ago please. She's awesome. See you tomorrow.