DC's

Slideshow Double Header: (1) Math t presents ... Kier in NYC, June 27, 2009; (2) DC presents ... 'Jerk' in London, July 1 - 3, 2009

2009-07-06T00:46:00.000-07:00

----

The day of the Voidoid release party, Kier calls me and says he's burning holes in books with Richard [Hell], Todd and Josh. Do I want to come over. I've taken the day off and I'm already quite stoned but I get my shit together in record time and arrive at 38 St Press in under 45. Unfortunately, by the time I arrive the burning is over, fortunately having produced 1000 approximate replications of this

The inside of 38 St Press looks like

Josh and Todd have made a lot of books

Kier is drawing individual original covers for the limited edition Japanese bound edition of the book. He is very kind to let me take some photos

Josh binds the limited editions in a simple manner that's sexy as shit. He calls it Japanese binding, evoking a certain type of bondage; plus it involves needles, slurp. Through research that night I learn the technique is originally Chinese and has also been widely used in Korea.

Josh binding the books

A finished copy

During this time I also attempt to draw something; however the faces become garbage. I am inspired by the allstar gang who did the Voidoid and I think I'll burn the faces out

The view from here. Let it be known that everything naughty depicted above was brought into 38 St Press by me. Josh, who hopes to design the Olympic mascot one day, was not involved whatsoever.

Next we go to Printed Matter. Inside

I only get one picture of Richard

Zachary German comes

So do JW Veldhoen and Nb, but unfortunately, I get too drunk to want to keep my camera in hand.

The last thing I manage to snap on 27 June are these zines by Kier onsale at Printed Matter, both bought by me both amazing

Bonus- next day, after pride, I take these pictures of Kier's tattoo

xx
your humble photographer

Buy The Voidoid, written by Richard Hell in 1973, illustrated by Kier Cooke Sandvik in 2008.

2.

The South London Gallery where 'Jerk' was performed is located in the Camberwell area of London and has been around for eons, as you can tell by the building's facade. In recent times, it's been an important venue for contemporary art -- showing big names like Tom Friedman, Brian Eno, Alfredo Jaar, Chris Burden, Gilbert & George, Steve McQueen, and Tracey Emin and young, emerging artists -- as well as film and performance art (or Live Art as they call it in England), which explains why our piece received an invitation courtesy of the SLG's awesome assistant curator Anne-Sophie Dinant. Here are images of some previous events and shows at the SLG:

And here's our gang taking over.

This is Gisele Vienne, Jonathan Capdevielle, our lighting designer Patrick Riou, Anne-Sophie Dinant, the unpictured me, and some of the SLG's staff and curators setting up the space, rehearsing, and applying Jonathan's make up on the afternoon of the first performance.

A small boatload of UK based distinguished locals * saw the show over the course of the three nights. I snuck out to meet with most of them for a little while before the performances, usually but not always with camera in hand. Since the SLG is rather isolated, no pubs or cafes were within easy walking distance, so we either stuck to the front of the building or walked down to a nearby gas station for snacks and bad coffee.
* in attendance but not pictured: Blake Wood, James, Chris Goode, Roger Clarke, a.o.

Wednesday, the 1st: (l. to r.) Kier, Thomas, Tomkendall, Oscar B, Rigby, Tender Prey, Wolf. (For a closer look, see: below)

Also on Wednesday: Jheorgge

Thursday, July 2: (top to bottom) Oliver w/ Jonathan; Paul Curran; Pascal & Andra

Friday, July 3: (top to bottom) Colin, left, with Reuben and Caroline; Dominic and Davidc.

In an ideal situation, and the SLG provided it, the room where 'Jerk' is performed should be completely empty apart from Jonathan and the audience. This means that Gisele, Patrick, and I are sitting in an entirely different room during the show, running the lights and sound with a video monitor of what's going on in the performance space as our guide. So, below you see how the London shows looked to me. First you join me in spying on the audience as they file in, and then, when everyone is seated and has been handed their 'fanzine', which includes two pieces of writing that they are asked to read at designated points in the show, Jonathan, who is already sitting in his chair 'onstage' when the audience enters, waits for a prearranged secret signal that tells him it's okay to begin. By then, we're in the control room. For the London gigs, after the performance ended there was a ten minute break followed by yours truly reading four pieces from 'Ugly Man' followed by a discussion of 'Jerk' with the audience. On the first night, the theater maker Chris Goode conducted a formal interview with Gisele, Jonathan, and myself. On the other two nights, the three of us fielded questions on our own. Here are a few links to British press about the shows:

The Times: 'Jerk: puppetry with blood on its hands', by Joseph Galliano
'Jerk' @ Things I Want You to Know About
'Jerk' @ The New MT
A squib @ Time Out

The first night, we went out for dinner after the show, but between the late hour and the extreme sparsity of places to eat in the area, we ended up spending more time wandering around looking for restaurants than eating. After that, we just gave up and ordered in from Pizza Hut. Below you see some of the SLG curators and staff digging in.

On the last day and night of the performances, something strange and quite terrible happened. It's even possible you saw it on the news . Just behind the SLG are two very large low income housing towers, and when Gisele, Jonathan, and I arrived at the venue on Friday, one of them was experiencing a very serious fire. The not very clear picture below was taken from the SLG's backyard area. We all watched the building burn, people clinging to their balconies screaming for help, desperately and hopelessly trying to lower themselves on tied together bed sheets. After several hours, the fire department seemed to have the situation under control, so we went ahead with the show. But as the q&a was coming to an end, the fire department entered the SLG asking to use the building as a hospital for the wounded. The staff quickly broke down the bleachers and cleared the gallery space. By then six people had died in the fire. The paramedics didn't end up needing the space for medical reasons, but the burnt building was declared uninhabitable, and when Gisele, Jonathan, and I left late that night, the SLG staff was preparing for the likelihood that the space would need to be used as shelter and housing for the residents who had been left homeless.

----

2009-07-06T00:39:00.000-07:00

p.s. Hey. Since the blog was already in a self-reflective mood this weekend, I thought I'd go ahead and blow the mood out with one more here-centric post before the whole world seeps back into the front page again. My sincere thanks to Math t for capturing Kier's NYC days with her classic panache. Me, I'm back in Paris where it's refreshingly cool and rainy after the medium swamp that was London weather. D.L. and artist sublime Kiddiepunk moved into the Recollets yesterday for a living stint of indeterminate length. I'm just easing back into the local routine of writing and the rest of whatever it is that I tend to do. Since I have a fair amount of comments to catch up with this morning, I'll head that way now, beginning with the accumulated comments from last week that I didn't catch in Saturday's post. ** Pre-Saturday: Jesse Hudson, I'm no fan of Boyd Rice either. I think his music is rinky dink and so-so at best, and I think his ideas are pretty half-assed, and I think his provocations are just slight variations on overly trod 'offensive' themes. I don't hate what he does particularly, I'm just not interested. ** Thomas, Hey, man! A real pleasure to finally get to meet you and talk to you at least a little. Thanks for the good words on 'Jerk', and of course for the stuff you gave me. I haven't had the chance to enjoy it yet, but it's angled in for later today. Hope I get to see you more lengthily before long. Take good care, my friend. ** Stan_cz, Hey. My back is edging ever closer to hardly feeling like it's there at all, which, of course, is the goal. London was a good thing. Oh, I'm really glad you liked the Celine so much. I forget: was that your first first hand experience with Celine? ** Rigby, Greetings, thank you, hug, cheek kisses, and more. ** Pascal, Ah, hey, man. Very, very good to meet you at last, and I'm glad 'Jerk' sat well with you. Thanks a lot. Oh, sure, of course it's more than cool to have the blog folk vote on your poem question. Stuff like that is what the blog is here to do. What's best? I could post it in the p.s. and make your word choice question the question of the day, or you can post it in the comments yourself. Whatever suits you best. Sounds like fun to me. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey, Ha ha, wow, gay photographer. That's a first. They probably said 'pornographer' in some accent that the journalist couldn't quite interpret clearly? ** Oliver, Hey. I wish I'd had a chance to meet up. I didn't realize you were there until I saw you in that photo up there. Yeah, the meet and greet plans were made very imperfect in many cases by the limited set up at the SLG. Drat. But thanks a lot for coming, and of course I'm really happy that you found the piece interesting. I'm totally with you on Rice. ** Bill, I hope Ohio is treating you well and not scorching you. Yeah, seeing Bausch's early works had a huge impact on me too. 'Cafe Mueller', among them, and her production of 'Rites of Spring' was mindbogglingly good. Take care while you're there. ** SYpHA_69, Yeah, on Rice. I'm there. Thanks so much for the kind words on 'UM'. That means a lot to me. Yeah, thank you. ** Bernard Welt, I found you clear as a bell. ** Steevee, That Shaviro MJ piece was quite interesting, yeah. Thanks, man. ** Flit, Hey, pal. ** David Ehrenstein, The Palin resignation feels very ominous to me, but who the fuck knows, I guess. Weird, weird, weird. ** Derek McCormack, My extreme honor, Mr. McCormack. ** Colin, Hey. Man, so nice to get to meet you. A real and total pleasure. Well, like I said above, we didn't know how bad the fire was at that point either. It had seemed to have been under control that afternoon from our vantage point, and the post-show news was a real shock. Anyway, thank you a lot, and I hope we'll get to meet up and spend a lot more time visiting in the future like ... in Paris? Know you've got a tour guide if need be at the drop of a hat. ** Chris, Hey, man. Yeah, I'll get caught up on Facebook today, and I'll check for your message and write to you pronto. Hope your weekend was swimming. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Glad your nose started treating you more politely. Still, the ongoing sickness isn't good. You've consulted a decent doctor and everything? I've never really gotten into McInerney's work. I read a couple, and I tried a couple more, but there's just nothing much there for me. I've never been a huge Fitzgerald fan, and that seems to be the model for him, so maybe that's it. Well, I hope your crappy sounding weekend ended with a bang in a good way. I liked London. Sometimes I go to London, and I don't like the place much at all, but this time I got the goodness and charms of the place. I think it was all the cool people, and maybe the fact that we were lodged in South Kensington, which is a pretty sweet, very high English looking/seeming area. ** You-x, London was quite nice, like I said. The heat and humidity sucked, but otherwise, yeah, all good. Shows went great. I possess your albums finally, having downloaded them last night, and today they'll make their grand entrance into my permanent experience. Can't wait. And thank you again so much for the awesome and humbling and charismatic weekend post, man. I like Death in June okay. ** Panda?, Hey, pal. Oh, you know, ha ha, I don't remember where the interview was for, which sounds weird, but I've been doing a bunch so I'm kind of confused. I'll find out. Did you get my email about needing that one missing image from the post? I hope the headache fled hours and hours ago. Oh, and thanks a lot for your major part in yesterday's post. So incredibly nice of you. ** Uli, Hey. Oh, Allroh, interesting. Yeah, I'll bet that was really good. My limited understanding of the Black Metal relationship to White Supremacy leads me to think that, well, it's hard to tell. Obviously, some of those bands are really into it, but the image of that music is so thick and so rendered into so much showmanship and confined mostly to graphics and lyrics and iconography that I do wonder whether it's not, in many cases, just used as scary ballast to help make the music and its vibe feel grounded. I don't know. Others might know more, and I thought Oliver's comment just below yours made a lot of sense in terms of how that offense is best processed if nothing else. Very interesting question. ** Saturday: David Ehrenstein, 'The Split', wow, there's a film I haven't thought about in a long time. Yeah, I didn't know Wenders was making that 3D Bausch film. Shit. I wonder how far along it was? My guess is he'll do a Terry Gilliam in some way or another, but ... ** Bernard Welt, Two days after the Palin announcement, and I'm already nostalgic for the MJ news overkill. ** Tomkendall, Super great to see you, and awesome that you're excited about writing right now. Yes! The Kathy Acker doc was shown on the French/ German TV channel Arte about two weeks ago, although it was past my bedtime, and I don't have Tivo unfortunately. But I'm guessing people recorded it, so maybe it'll end up as a torrent if it isn't already. I still haven't seen it, and I'm supposedly interviewed in some cut of it. ** Winter Rates, 95 degrees in Portland? I didn't think that was possible. I missed Wimbledon, but I could hear the collective UK's groans about Murray losing all the way across the channel. ** Marcus Whale, Hey! Yeah, I wandered downstairs yesterday morning to hand AMT/ Kiddiepunk his key and help him into his new home, and he was raving about the recording you guys did, and I saw the cover on his computer. I think he's going to sneak me a listen in the next day or so. Oh, that Cole Mohr thing ... did you alert me to that on Facebook? I think I saw an alert. If so, I'll go read it. Thanks, man. ** Mark, Yeah, I think you're just too classy for Model Mayhem. Not that I've ever looked at that site, but the name says it all. Actually, the name isn't so bad, I guess, in and of itself, but it just seems kind of obvious that their definition of mayhem isn't ours. Oh, let me try again on the pass-along front. Everyone, the superb and multi-talented artist and DL Mark is looking for models for a photographic project. Here are his words: 'Do any of you DC’ers in the SF Bay Area have the nude modeling bug? I prefer young women, but I am willing to work with men, TS, anything. We can shoot wherever you feel most comfortable, indoors, outdoors, at home, -- you name it.' Give it a thought and chance, you people in SF, and I guess let Mark know either here or via some more private means. ** Oscar B, Hey! Oh, yeah, our little first meeting was just the tip of the .... iceberg would be a weird term to use although it might feel just right considering your current weather conditions du jour, so ... iceberg on the hanging out front. A complete pleasure. Thank you a lot about 'Jerk'. Oh, I think you absolutely must post pix or video from your Michael Jackson performance. I think it's kind of imperative, no? ** Pisycaca, Hey, hey. Yeah, I should be pretty around and doing not too much (apart from, you know, the blog and my novel and the usual) while you're here. I'm greatly looking forward to your trip too, naturally. If you're not in the mood or right state of mind for 'Infinite Jest', then wait. It's a seriously great novel, and best to tackle it when it makes you hungry. ** Empty Frame, Hey. Good, I'm glad you decided to dive in. It was great meeting you, and you completely blew my mind reminding me about those films I sent you. I had spaced on doing that. And just knowing Mark E. Smith laid eyes positively on something I something to do with is a victory I'll treasure forever. Yeah, do try to come to Paris, if you can. That'd be great. And, like I said, I'd love to come to ultra-mysterious and forever tempting Berlin, so if you can think of any good reasons, that'd be awesome. And I hope you'll stick around here when you can. That would be a real pleasure. Take care. ** Dan, Hey, Dan. Oh, okay, I'll have a think about LA people and tell them to get in on the screening asap. That's exciting, and I'll go look at the new press on the site. Great, great! Thanks a million as ever, Dan. ** SYpHA_69, Yeah, this place has occasioned some pretty amazing friendships, right? I'll be forever hugely grateful to the blog's existence for that alone. Exactly, plug away on 'Grimoire' but keep working and moving forward. That's the ticket, and that's my modus operandi too. Mm, on the Burroughs obit ... I kind of decided crossed with agreed not to talk about that issue anymore because it just got me and others in a bunch of hot water, and this is way too public a place to go into it, but I stand by what I wrote, and if you can't get a copy of 'All Ears', I'm pretty sure that piece will be in the non-fiction collection I'm putting together. ** Misanthrope, I have seen one decent pic of MJ's oldest son, and I did think he was an adorable looking kid, yeah. I suppose we'll be seeing a ton of him for the rest of our miserable lives. ** JW Veldhoen, Mm, I think I like exactly the thing you don't like about T. Rex, but I guess I don't really think of him as overly associated with Bowie. It's just two different animals with the same timing like, uh, The Ramones and Television or something. Anyway, all that said, going in the further direction of Bowie would be my pick too. When do you guys start making music and jamming and all that? Elton John rocks?! Surely, you jest. If I were God, I'd probably wipe the slate clean of every song he's ever recorded. The black of that Ryan White joke was too black for me. That's the softy side of me showing, I guess. ** Flit, I know, Elton John, yikes. ** JoeM, My three worst rock deaths, off the top of my head: Nick Drake, Gram Parsons, Brian Jones. ** No more teenagekicks, Hey. It's so true about youtube comments. They're otherworldly, and so is their strange glue. ** David, Howdy. ** Math t, An in-person, as it were, thanks again for documenting the Kier takes Manhattan experience for all of us. Yeah, granted that LSD hasn't been what I remember LSD being for a long, long time, but that doesn't sound like LSD to me, or else it was heavily cut with something somehow. Strange. But you were pleasured ultimately, yes? Oh, I think I caught the edit. I hope so. If not, alert me in the comments, and I'll make the change as soon as I see it. Have you read or do you know what the deal/story is with Tao's 'Shoplifting ... American Apparel' novella? ** Kiddiepunk, How trippy to be talking to you here when you're all but walking on my ceiling as I type. ** Jesse Hudson, Good celeb deaths. Can't argue with a one, as imaginary deaths go. Although maybe the Jonas Brothers should die from massive heart attacks caused by the overwhelmingly great sex they'd just had with Misanthrope? ** Bacteriaburger, Hey, man. How's it, the writing, you, etc.? ** Alan, Hey. Yeah, I liked the last line of that Times review too. Otherwise, you know, it could have been a lot worse, but I've gotten that same review a hundred times, so there was no interest there for me. I'll let you know if I find any 'UM' reviews that excite me, yeah. Thanks a lot for asking. ** Erik, Oh, yeah, that's a strange thing, right? I mean sharing a space that was originally the other person's. In my relationships, it's almost always been boyfriends moving into my apartments rather than the other way around. I think the only time I moved into a boyfriend's place was with my ex Richard in Amsterdam actually. And that worked out very poorly. I go to the beach mostly if not always after the sun goes down. That's my kind of beach. When I visit my dad in Hawaii, he lives on the beach, so I have no choice in that case, and getting brown/tan is kind of interesting. You like the beach, don't you? I feel you're the blog's official beach going guy. ** Squeaky, Did you get the big cool off today like we did? Wow, what a relief. It's only like 20 outside today. I might even wear my coat when I go out. You'll like Derek's book, I'm pretty damned sure. When do you go to SF again. This fall? ** Uli, Michael Jackson buried without his brain? Oh, wait, he was probably a cryogenics -- or whatever you call it -- loving guy like Walt Disney, I bet. So his brain will be in one of those frozen cans. Maybe. Hm. ** Wolf, Dude, thank you, such a pleasure to be your presence. I think I'm not going to Avignon next week. Not for sure on that, but that's a guess. If southern France bores or cooks you excessively, you know where Paris is, right? ** Tender Prey, Hey, Marc. Yeah, sorry again for that fuck up. My phone was indeed at the SLG, but it was weird because, like I said above, when we arrived, that building right behind the SLG was on fire, so we all just stood in the SLG's back yard watching that in horror until show time. Anyway, it was really great to see you even a little, and, you know, thank you a lot about 'Jerk'. Interesting and beautiful thought re: the body idea and my work. I've forgotten what the other name was in that equation Gisele constructed with Riefenstahl. Sade? I'll have to ask her. Yeah, Riefenstahl is a big reference point for G. in the new piece we're working on. Anyway, yeah, take care, man, and, as I always say, come to Paris! ** Jesse Hudson, Ah, thanks, Jesse. Yep. ** Rigby, Thanks, mate, cheers. (Wow, I'm so not English). Oh, I'm like that excited pop corn eating MJ? But my excitement is more internalized, isn't it? Maybe not. I try to avoid mirrors and photos of myself like the plague. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Stephen and Sunn0))) are on their mid-west tour, but I think he gets back here in a couple of weeks, which might be too late for you, but, if it isn't, I'll definitely ask him, no problem. Oh, I have to get that 'Treasures ... ' DVD then. Thanks! I'm back working on the novel again. I was completely stuck in terms of going forward, and so I'm reworking and refining and polishing, etc. what I've written, and that's helping a lot and going well so far. Anyway, I need to finish the non-fiction book mss. in the next two weeks, so the novel will have to wait a bit yet again. I don't think I'll be traveling much until early August when Yury has his vacation, at which point I assume we'll go somewhere for a week or something. ** Steevee, Really hope you score the Toronto Fest gig. Yeah, how was 'Bruno'? I want to see it, but my expectations are pretty middling. ** October, Hey. Yeah, toughing it through is probably the only way to go, but of course talk about it as much as you need to because, yeah, that always helps, and I'm always interested in how you are. I hope one of these days I'll get to a do Slideshow post with you in it. Maybe when 'Jerk' plays Fresno, ha ha, or else you'll just have to get yourself to LA when I'm there sometime, okay? ** Postitbreakup, Hey, Josh. It's really nice to see you. I wish you'd come around here more. You're always missed. And even though I'm the slowest correspondent in history, I will read your piece you sent and write to you as soon as I can. ** Pascal, Hey, hey, my friend. ** Okay, that's that. We're caught up, and now it'll be smooth sailing around here for a while. Enjoy the local photo show. I'm off to buy cigarettes and then have lunch with the Jonathans (Capdevielle and Schatz) and subsequently powwow with them and Gisele about theater stuff. Have good Mondays. See you tomorrow.

You-X Presents: A Conversation Full of Citations for a Little DC's Lexicography

2009-07-04T03:36:00.000-07:00

----

---“Have you seen DC's?”
---“No,” Matt replies, letting me know he hasn't seen Dennis Cooper's blog today. DC's is a place I've been frequenting pretty much daily since Dennis started it around five years ago. Matt, my younger brother, has been following it and a part of that world for at least two years.
---“It's this cool day on this theater guy Castelucci's works,” I float back.
---A day is whatever Dennis posts, it always has a subject or organizing theme, today being on Robert Castellucci. I go on, “The photos are sort of amazing.”
---I'm staring at the top one, it's a young blond woman who looks to be about to box, her poised to punch arms in front of her chest. Her fists are covered in what looks like shiny metal. All the images from his theater works look like paintings. Every day except Sunday Dennis posts, that is, publishes, what we call a day. I type 'panda?' into the Find box and hit enter to search.
---“Hey,” I start. “You haven't posted on here recently.” I can tell because I don't get any returns for 'panda?', which is Matt's name on DC's. Posting is publishing a comment in the comment section, when not refering to Dennis (at which event it means publishing a day). I start reading the p.s., lots of interesting things happening there.
---“Yeah,” Matt replies.

---“Me neither. I need to,” I add. “I just was reading the p.s., Dennis is looking for someone, lots of someones, to do a day. You should do one on your EP when it's done.” To do a day is to suggest an idea to Dennis and if he approves, which he always will, then it entails putting together whatever you want to for your day. In the past tense it refers to having had a piece posted on DC's. In this case it is sometimes referred to as something you curated. But you wouldn't use that to describe the event yourself.
---The p.s. is a place at the end of the day where Dennis replies to everyone who has posted comments the day before. Dennis also uses this space to alert us to anything he deems important or chat worthy. Right now he's looking for someone to do a day, that is put together a blog post around something or someone, and send it to him. At the end of the day's p.s. is a comment link, this is where the new comments for the day are posted. People have all sorts of conversations there. Also, above the p.s. is the little comments, a place under the last segment of the day preceding the p.s. - people post secret comments here, sort of. This comment section is often neglected by all readers, and posters, except Dennis and those that choose to quietly say something there.
---“Yeah. Whatever happened to doing one on your poetry book 'Secret Single',” he asks.
---“I know, I know. I want to. I still never did the music blog one. The last one I did was on Trevor Brown, and then before that was my giant Japanese Pornography Exploratory thing. Actually yesterday was a back from the dead, it was Jose's Kobo Abe day. The guy who wrote 'Woman in the Dunes'.”

---A back from the dead is a day featuring something from one of DC's earlier blogs that were sadly lost by Blogger. Blogger is the blogging service Dennis uses, it's now owned by Google. The phrase back from the dead was chosen by Dennis.
---“You're hoping he'll do one of yours, huh?”
---“Every single day!” I say and laugh. It's true, I do hope he'll do one of mine.
---“Alan's been doing a lot recently, and Dennis is hoping he'll do more. Maybe it will be guest post central for a while, that could be cool.” A guest post is one done by anyone but Dennis.
---“What are you going to post about?” Matt asks me, wondering what my comment on DC's today will be. A comment on DC's isn't necessarily a commentary on the day itself. It can be but just as often it can be a poem, or dialoge with other posters, or correspondence with Dennis or anyone who frequents there, or basically anything else. And often a comment takes the form of all these things.

---“I don't know. I want to go back and read that SPD, and read the comments. But it was like a three parter, right? I don't even think I'd be able to get through it. I don't want to skim though, maybe I'll just search for 'you-x',” which is my name there though like most people here I'm also known by my real name. “I don't really remember who liked my poems and drawings, well No More Teenage Kicks, and Alan. I remember that. I liked Alan's too,” I pause. “Oh, and I still wanted to tell Dennis how much I enjoyed his last varioso.”
---An SPD is a self-portrait day. These have been going on for years now, they are usually suggested by someone who posts to DC's, that is someone who posts in the comments section, and then if the idea is liked Dennis puts out a call for entries. The entries are open to all, regular commenters, lurkers, and anyone who feels like sending something in. Each SPD has specific criteria, the last one was a response to images from the Thematic Apperception Test. There was a page set up with a number of images from the TAT and then if you wanted to be a part of the day you just had to respond to them, either in a piece of writing, visual art, song, video, anything. A varioso is a type of day Dennis does, titled varioso with a number indicating its sequence in the series, with an assortment of things without any specific theme. These can be items picked by Dennis as well as things submitted by anyone.
---“That was a long time ago,” Matt says.

---“I know, like a week or two,” I say, but it's probably longer. “Also, I wanted to get in on all the recent Cycle talk.” The Cycle is a series of five novels Dennis Cooper wrote, known in full as the George Miles Cycle. It was through these books that many, but not all, of us on his blog came to know Dennis and his work.
---“I think it was longer,” Matt says and I laugh. “So which DL did today?” A DL is a distinguised local, I'm not sure who started using the term, but Dennis uses it whenever refering to work by somebody who is known on the blog.
---“Oh, I think it was Dennis',” I say.
---“The orignal DL,” Matt cracks.
---“Ha,” I laugh. “Yeah, Distinguised Local number one. I think because of his work with Giselle or something,” my words seem to have no direction as I read the p.s., which is usually a few pages long and always delightful. “Did you see someone wants to make 'Jerk' into a movie? She's going to the performance tonight. I can't believe I missed it when it was in Seattle.” Giselle, or Giselle Vienne, is a French theather director Dennis has been collaborating with for the past four years. 'Jerk' is the name of their currently most well known playing piece.
---“I wonder what separates something from being part of Galerie Dennis Cooper, and just being a day like today's,” Matt poses.
---Dennis often does these Galerie Dennis Cooper days, featuring the work of an artist he is interested in. Dennis has been a contributing editor to Artforum for twenty some years and also is incredibly active in the art world.
---“I think maybe the Galerie posts are like curated by Dennis, as an exhibit, whereas the others are more like explorations, like a catalogue essay at an exhibit rather than the exhibit itself.”
---“When was the last slave day?”
---“I don't know. It seems like those escort posts come all the time and then never, but really I think DC does them on a schedule, but I'm so bad at paying attention to those things.” The escort, or slave days, are monthly posts of texts and images curated by Dennis of male escorts which are found on assorted open escort sites.
---“Me too. Did you ever hear back about your book from DC?”

---“No, I should do a phoner. I also want to talk to him about the Other.” I'm talking about a phone call, or a phoner as it's referred to on DC's. The Other refers to love, and the experience of that in relation to someone outside you, but not actually someone. I believe the term orignally comes from Lacanian psychoanalysis, but it's used in a much freer sense here.
---I fade into today's comments. JW Veldhoen writes about his pending divorce, being in debt and possibly taking to the streets, his wordver is 'rents'. That guy always destroys with poignancy. I can't remember my last wordver, except that it was strangely fitting, of course, and sort of funny. A wordver is the captcha generated by Blogger, which sometimes turns up as a really interesting word or phrase fitting to the situation. The word comes from “word” and “verification”.
---“Rents. That was Veldhoen's wordver. And he's losing his place and broke or something.”
---“One time I got closer,” Matt says. It's significant because that's also the title of the first book in the Cycle. “What was on htmlgiant?” Htmlgiant is an online literary magazine, that is basically a blog run by a lot of MFA students.
---“I haven't checked, did you see Alan's 'Haut or not' on there?”
---“No, what was it?”
---“Oh I'll show you after I post,” I say.
---“Okay,” Matt says as I begin to finish up notes for a linguistics paper.

---Looking over the jargon used on DC's I'm fascinated by how much it has entered into my daily conversations outside the blog, not just with Matt but with other people I know who frequent the blog or at least have at one point. There are a number of word-formation processes at work, though for the most part they seem to be informal and practical. The name of the space came simply from it being Dennis Cooper's blog, so it became known as DC's, an acronym. I think this also qualifies it as something of an eponym. This acronym is used to refer to not only the blog as a space as well as what's in that space but also to signify if something is from Dennis. Another acronym is “p.s.” which was borrowed from the world of letter writing. This, like all the other acronyms used on DC's, is spoken with each letter pronounced (see also: SPD, DL). There are examples of blending, wordver, derivation, phoner, borrowing, varioso, conversion, post, and surely mutliple processes which are evading me at the moment. The jargon is a mix of things specific to originator of the space (who was the reason we all started congregating there), such as Cycle, as well as words that have formed for functional purposes of this active and unique space of writers, artists, intellectuals, and genuinely friendly individuals of all ages. A lot of the words have a literary connection and seem to at least carry some tropes of the literary and art worlds. But others, such as phoner, seem straight out of lost American slang from the 60s – which they well may be though I've never encountered or used that word outside of DC's. Each word is useful and functional and makes up part of the fabric of one of my favorite places, a place both old and new, avant-garde and somewhat popular, formal and informal.

----

p.s. Hey. So it's the unimpeachable writer, recording artist, and distinguished local You-x who welcomes the blog back to full duty with this intricate and wistful exploration of what this place is all about. I'm, of course, feeling honored as hell, and I hope you out there find a place in your heads and hearts for it as well. Thank you kindly, You-x, and thanks to all of you in advance for the amount of your weekend time you'll be spending with it. So, just quickly, everything has gone very well over here in London, I think. It could have a lot less hot and humid, and I could have used much more sleep than I've gotten, but the very good definitely outweighs that bad. I'll tell and show you more about it when I'm 'home' again and have more time on my hands. So, while I was here, I managed to very, very occasionally score a little internet action, and the following p.s. proper constitutes the amount that I was able to read of the comments left while I was gone. The last time I'm able to check -- which is Friday morning as I type -- is as far as I got, and when I finish the interactions, I'll program this post to launch tomorrow (today, Saturday) at the normal time because I won't get any more internet between now and when I'm back in my Paris pad. Thus, addressing you from the near-future of launch time, I'll add that any comments left here within the last 24 hours will be responded to on Monday, okay? Also, I'm kind of quite sleep deprived and dripping sweat at the same time, so please excuse my lack of sharpness and just general zonked out energy here. ** Tomkendall, Pure treat to have been able to see you even that little amount the other night. Thanks a lot, man. ** NB, Well, you're down south or rather southwest now, I guess, and if you check in here, then here's a twangy howdy to you, and if you're sticking to Facebook while you're kicking up Texan dust, I'll try to follow your antics in that realm. Have all the fun you need. ** SYpHA_69, Hey. Well, I don't know those publishing houses except for Soft Skull, of course. I mean, there are a growing gazillion of new indie literary presses of high note too, although maybe you're angling for a particular kind of context? I just mean ideally you could keep sending it out for quite a while if necessary, and make that kind of your hobby or something while you move on to what you want to write next. I wouldn't give up after a handful or rejections. There are just so many possibilities out there, and why not keep fishing with your left hand while your right hand inscribes the new work? ** Jesse Hudson, Hey, pal. ** Colin, Yeah, Pina Bausch is a very big and sad loss. Her work is very important to Gisele, and she's pretty gutted, and the work of Bausch's I saw back in the 80s was definitely among the most startling and powerful theater I've ever seen. Ugh. Well, as I think you came to see 'Jerk' on Wednesday, which technically is tonight as I type this, I will have met you by the time I read this, and since it's given how great that experience is going to be, I'll just say for now how great it was, with details to emerge once I'm post- the momentous occasion. ** JW Veldhoen, Hey. Yeah, I can't go objective on the Phelps gang, like I said. Their shit is too unforgivable to me. If you become their new fearless leader, I'll try to find out if there's any part of my heart that hasn't been scoured yet. Who's DM? I'm spacing out. Oh, Derek, duh. That took me far too many seconds to parse out. So how do you see the distinctions between Bowie and Bolan as your own musical ideas construct themselves? ** David Ehrenstein, Hey, David. Ah, it's good you alerted me to that vegetarian = weak bones thing because I just read the other day how being a vegetarian can help significantly lower your chances of getting quite a number of kinds of cancer, and I was a little in danger of getting too cocky, ha ha. ** David Saa V. Estornell, I've been thinking about you these last days, and hoping you were doing okay. I'm very, very sorry for your loss. Be strong, my friend. ** JoeM, Yeah, Rigby got it backwards. My will leaves everything hereabouts to you. But I seem to still be alive, as far as I can tell. Need I say, if sides needed to be taken, I'm on yours re: the pro-Daily Show vs. meta-anti-FOX. I do have to say FOX's news is about as balanced as a Charles Manson monologue. I'm missing Wimbledon, so I'll take everyone else's word for all of that. ** David, Hey. Richard Stark ... of course I haven't read him. I should really try to go to a bookstore while I'm here. Where I'm staying, at the Institut Francais, which seems to be in a French neighborhood of London, all the bookstores (and restaurants and even souvenier shops) are French! It's like I'm not even here. ** Misanthrope, The heat here is more than a bit much, and the lodgings they've put us in are kind of monastery level lodgings, and the combo is not sleep friendly, but ... I always seem to save my whining for you. Why is that, I wonder? I think it's a good sign, but I apologize anyway. Uh, I think it's too hot here in London to go all JoeM Jr. on you about FOX News and the notion of their straight reporting, but I think you know my schpiel. Yeah, like I said, Wimbledon is escaping me this year. I don't mind Federer so much. I used to not be able to stand him. The French love Federer. When he plays in the French Open, people over there lose sleep worrying he won't win. It's kind of weird. He might as well be French to them. I guess because he speaks fluent French. Soccer the most boring sport?! Dude, I dare you to watch a single cricket match and then come to that same conclusion. ** Flit, Hey, Flister. ** Mark, Ha ha, hey! Oh, the proof sheet looks very interesting. The multiplicity of the opaque/transparent sheet as you used it is most impressive, the range of layered imagery from the Psycho offshoot to the block of ice and everything in between ... kudos, man. Do you have more lined up? ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Lovely thoughts, my friend. I went to Nudie's shop once on Sunset Blvd. when I was younger than that now. Never bought a thing, though. Stupid kid. ** Kiddiepunk, Sunday! ** Bernard Welt, Buddy, pal of mine, hello. Where's my key to that blousey dream guy's visage? I assume you checked Ubuweb already re: the Akerman doc? I can check to see if it's on DVD in France, if you like? I can only imagine the freshness of the difference when hanging with the Obama appointees. But I'll keep my thoughts backpedaled to that loosey goose sentence because Obama is just a topic I think I'm going to avoid opinionating about around here for fear of triggering land mines for the time being. ** Pisycaca, Hey, you guys. Oh, I think the radio play recording is going to be delayed, so I'll be even freer. ** Clovenskull, I'll see your thanks and quadruple them. ** Rigby, Leave my jism on your coat, if you haven't washed it out yet. Assuming it's not too late, three days from now, something miraculous will happen to your coat, and if you've been a good boy, it might just do something miraculous for you. If not, it'll do something miraculous for ... oh, let's say Oscar B. ** October, Hey, man. Oh, that doesn't sound so good, obviously. A real convergence of difficult stuff. With the girl, yeah, I hear you. Your feelings about her will settle into something that's more coherent, which doesn't help now, and I feel like I'm always telling you to hang in there, but there is this whole thing about time and patience that's a drag when you're on this side of the eventual resolution, and life is too often much more slowly paced than emotion can tolerate, but it's a fucked up no immediate win situation always. Man, I'm just sorry you're having to go through all of that. Steeping in sadness is part of the deal, and I guess that's sometimes the only way to renounce it honestly. Oh, thanks about 'God Jr.' That's really nice of you. I appreciate it a lot. My back is getting back to nearly normal, I think. I won't be picking up any anvils for a while, but it's all right. Lots of respect and support and affection to you, man. ** Erik, Hey, Erik! It's so nice to see you. Is your new doubled up life going well? I have this feeling it is? But tell me. ** Oscar B, So great to meet you. Way, way too brief, but what's started can't be stopped. It was just nothing but a joy. **Alan, Hey, man. I haven't been following the reviews on 'Ugly Man' all that closely, but I think HP is gathering them up for me. The handful I've seen have been pretty good, a couple that seemed to get the work fairly well. A couple of snarky ones, but nothing too vicious. Blake Butler's thing about it via writing re: one of the stories therein on HTMLGIANT has been my favorite. The NYT just gave it what I suppose is a little thumbs up given how 'not their thing' my work is. I guess it's going okay on that front, but I haven't scoured to see what's out there, although I'm sure curiosity will best me soon, and I'll embark on an actual hunt. Hope you had a good week. ** Saint-Amant, Hey! It's very nice to see you, of course. I'm always wondering how you are and what you're doing, working on, etc., etc. Obviously, I think it would be great if you launch that new blog you're talking about. I'd be all over it. Between a severe case of spaciness due to the above mentioned few days of very poor sleep, and the crushing wet, thick heat I'm staggering around in mentally and physically, and the severely limited time I have online right now, I've only been able to read the writing you've posted once and very quickly so far, but I liked it quite immensely. Very rich, very beautiful, and, for whatever it's worth, the style has a curious kind of distant resemblance to the style I'm working with in my cannibal novel, so that was quite interesting for me, and it gives my admiration a kind of close relative knowingness maybe. I don't know. My brain is not shooting out sufficient sparks right now. I like it very much, and I will spend the quality time with it that it deserves when I get back to Paris whereupon my attentions will regain sufficient respectfulness. For now, I'm hugely pleasured and honored to have it. Thank you, Eric. We'll talk more soon, I hope. ** Okay, that's as far as I got before the internet and my schedule and all that stuff took me elsewhere. The rest will be addressed after the weekend, as previously stated. Please do enjoy the local loveliness perpetrated by You-x and reward him with triggered thoughts of some kind. It being Friday where I type, I'm off to investigate certain holographic possibilities offered by a London based special effects company, and then the show happens tonight, and then I'm back to Paris on the morning that this post will appear, and then ... well, weirdly, I might actually go witness the Paris concert of the Britney Spears 'Circus' European tour if a possible, possibly promised free ticket is offered to me. I mean, why not? The yearly Parisian edition of Japan Expo ends on Sunday, and since the JE makes an appearance in my novel-in-progress, I should really take the opportunity to go have another look at the thing, which I'll do if I can manage to drag Yury or someone else along with me. Anyway, that's my weekend ahead roughed out if not foretold. Dig yours. See you Monday.

Derek McCormack's 'The Show That Smells' Day

2009-06-30T00:41:00.000-07:00

Note from DC: This blog is currently on a three day vacation. It will cease standing still and return to life this Saturday, July 4th. Sorry for the brief interruption, and now ...

----

Dzing! It’s a French perfume. I wet my wrist.
---Dzing! by L’Artisan Parfumeur. It smells like shit. It’s an animalic, a type of perfume with a fecal fragrance. When I sniff myself, I get a whiff of wet fur and asshole.
---Dzing! smells like a circus animals – lions, elephants, bears – and the shit they shit. I smell other smells in it, too. Sawdust. Leather saddles. Something sweet – cotton candy, caramel apples, or nuts.
---The scents of a circus in a bottle. But can they be captured in a book?

“The Show That Smells” – this is what carnies and circus folk call an animal show. It’s also what I named my new novel.
---The Show That Smells is set at a circus.
---There’s a midway: the story’s set entirely in a mirror maze.
---There’s fashion: Elsa Schiaparelli, the fabled fashion designer, is a vampire; Coco Chanel, the fabled fashion designer, is a vampire hunter.
---There’s perfume: Schiaparelli is selling Shocking!, a perfume whose base note is blood. When humans wear it, vampires can home in on them. Chanel is selling Chanel Nº 5, a perfume impregnated with holy water. When humans wear it, they’re impervious to vampire assaults.
---I’m in it. I play a writer for Vampire Vogue magazine.

Charlie Chaplin, Mirror Maze from "The Circus"

Vampires, carnivals, couture – The Show That Smells is full of these things, as was my previous novel, The Haunted Hillbilly.
---In The Haunted Hillbilly, a vampire named Nudie made Hank Williams a star. He did so by making Hank Williams's suits: garish gabardines gussied up with sequins. The suits proved irresistible to the public: they glittered like the chalkware dolls that carnies used to give away at carnival games. Nudie made the sequins by boiling human bones.
---In The Show That Smells, Elsa Schiaparelli sells Shocking! It’s made with with blood from babies. Her haunt is a mirror maze, the perfect place for a vampire to prey on people. Like a scent, she has no reflection – no one can see her coming! I like to think that the maze’s mirrors are akin to facets in a crystal flaçon. Is being in a mirror maze something like being in a perfume bottle?
---The Haunted Hillbilly starred Hank Williams, country music’s most famous singer. The Show That Smells stars Jimmie Rodgers.

Jimmie Rodgers, "T For Texas"

In 1927, a nobody named Jimmie Rodgers walked in a hat warehouse in Bristol, Tennessee. He had on a business suit and a boater.
---He’d come to sing, not to shop. The Victor Recording Co. had set up a recording studio in the warehouse, hoping to find local hillbillies to make hillbilly records. Jimmie wasn’t local. He hailed from Meridian, Mississippi. He was, however, a hillbilly.
He sang some sentimental songs that sounded folksy. Victor released them. They sold strongly. At a Victor studio in New Jersey, he sang several more. “T for Texas” – also known as “Blue Yodel” – was one of them. It became a monster, a million seller. Jimmie Rodgers became a star. He toured with Will Rogers. He recorded with Louis Armstrong. He shot a short movie in Hollywood: he strummed and sang before a backdrop of a railroad shack. Before being a singer, he’d been a railroad man, a brakeman on the Mobile & Ohio. “The Singing Brakeman,” Americans came to call him. Also: “The Mississippi Blue Yodeler” and “America’s Blue Yodeler.” He yodeled the same yodel in almost every record he cut.
---He wasn’t the only act discovered in Bristol. Days after he recorded his first records, a singing family showed up at the studio: the Carter Family.

The Carter Family, "Sea of Galilee"

“He loved the hillbillies, the same as he loved the common people everywhere,” said Carrie Rodgers in her memoir, My Husband, Jimmie Rodgers, “and loved to be among them and with them.”
---More than that, Jimmie loved circuses and carnivals.
---As a kid, he ran off with a circus. The big top: bedsheets he borrowed from his brother’s wife. The big act: him, singing. He sang in Meridian, then tramped to another town. By the time his brother caught him, he’d made enough to buy new bedsheets. He ran away again. Local children were the circus acts. His tent was store-bought, charged to his father’s account without his father’s knowing it.
---As an adult, Jimmie owned a carnival. In 1925, he was a struggling singer, driving around Dixie with a street show. Having bought an interest in the operation, he brought a carnival on board. It included a Hawaiian show: girls in grass skirts dancing daringly. Did it include games or rides? Did it include a freak show? An animal show? Books about Jimmie don’t say. What they do say: the carnival was destroyed in a blowdown, which is carny slang for a big windstorm.
---“Big Circus Tent” – this was the name of a show he headlined in 1930. He toured it through the south. He shared the bill with “Miss Helene, Mentalist.” The big top was red and contained a calliope, a “colored orchestra,” and, of course, hundreds of seats. Beyond the bigtop was a complete carnival, including rides, a midway, barking barkers and minstrel shows. Jimmie’s dressing room was a tent with screens and roll-up walls. And a bed. After a show, he had to rest. It took him an hour to remove his make-up. He was dying of tuberculosis. He had a pricey collection of perfumes from France. He would sniff them – it killed the stink of sick rising from his lungs.

Narcisse Noir by Caron.
---It was Jimmie Rodgers’s favourite perfume. In the United States, it was sold as Black Narcissus. The top note was orange blossom; the bottom, black narcissus.
---Jimmie’s nose was full of the fragrance of his liquefying lungs. I’m sure he would have loved a perfume that smelled like something sweet from his life. Like Carrie, or Carrie’s vagina. Or a carnival.

Shocking! by Schiaparelli. It wasn’t her first perfume, but it was her most famous. Introduced in 1937, it included notes of narcissus. Its animalic scents came courtesy of ambergris and civet. Ambergris is a waxy substance found in the stomachs of sperm whales. Civet is oil from the anus of a civet cat.
---Schiaparelli intended it to shock. Shocking! was supposed to smell like panties, like post-coital pussy. She titled her memoir, Shocking Life. She named her favourite shade of pink, “shocking pink.” Shocking is also a sideshow word – “Shocking and Amazing! See the Living Vampire! See the Human Worm! See a Beautiful Girl Become a Gorilla!”

In 1938, Schiaparelli staged a circus in the street in front of her shop in Paris. Tightrope walkers trod high above the Place Vendôme. Fire breathers breathed fire. Acrobats acrobatted.
---In the shop, Schiaparelli showed her Circus Collection. It included a coat stitched with dancing horses, and closed with acrobat-shaped buttons. Buttons on other ensembles were clowns. Handbags were shaped like balloons.
---Sideshow freaks were Schiaparelli’s main muses. She put monkey fur on boots and bracelets, an homage to the Girl-to-Gorilla sideshow act. The act is accomplished with mirrors. She printed crepe dresses with lobsters, which I interpret as a paean to Lobster Boys, men born with claws for fingers. She showed a Tear Dress, a dress with a trompe l’oeil pattern of tears and rips, as though it had been torn by a tiger in an animal show. The Skeleton Dress was a black dress that seemed to have bones – a spine and ribs stuck out from the fabric, making the wearer seem like a skeleton wrapped in a shroud. It was an homage to the Human Skeleton act. At a carnival or circus, the Human Skeleton was a man who was wasting away with tuberculosis.

What kind of couturière turns her clients into freaks?
---Schiaparelli had a sinister sense of humour, for sure. In my novel, I make her a vampire. Is it so far-fetched?
---Schiaparelli hated Chanel; Chanel hated Schiaparelli. Bad blood doesn’t begin to describe it. Chanel refused to say Schiaparelli’s name, let alone speak to her or of her. Which is why it shocked tout Paris when Chanel approached Schiaparelli at a costume ball in the 1930s. Chanel asked Schiap to dance. She waltzed Schiap across the floor. She dipped Schiap so that Schiap’s hat came into contact with a candle. Schiap was on fire.
---Burning a foe to death is barbaric. Unless your foe is undead.

In The Show That Smells, Schiaparelli is a vampiress who dresses the world’s wealthiest women.
---For her Carnival Collection, she shows apparel inspired by Human Skeletons and Lobster Boys. When the world’s wealthiest women are dressed as sideshow acts, she will put them in a sideshow at a vampire carnival.
---Her carnival will feature rides that vampires can revel in – haunted houses full of priests and nuns. It will feature games with prizes that vampires can prize – dolls made from dead babies stuffed with sawdust. Jimmie Rodgers will sing beneath the bigtop. She makes him a Faustian offer: he will be able to sing forever, so long as he becomes a vampire. What choice does he have? He is dying of TB. What makes his life bearable: the smell of Chanel Nº 5, and Carrie.
---Carrie Rodgers attempts to protect her husband from the vampires. It’s a futile task, until the cavalry comes: Coco Chanel and the Carter Family. The Carters are formidable foes. Their signature song is Keep on the Sunny Side. Chanel is the designer who made beachwear and suntanning fashionable. She made cross-shaped brooches and bangles fashionable. Coco was her nickname; her given name was Gabrielle, as in the archangel. Only Christian Dior had a holier name. Then came Christian Lacroix.

In The Show That Smells, I describe Shocking! as smelling the same as Dzing! – sawdust, sugar, animal spoors. And blood. When women wear it, they smell like a vampire’s supper. Vampires wear it, too.
---Vampires love perfume, as they have no scents of their own. They don’t have bad breath; they don’t respire. They don’t have body odour; they don’t perspire. They’re dead, so they carry a trace of cadaverine. Dogs detect it. Vampires prefer perfumes that camouflage them: scents that smell like living rooms, or libraries, or late nights.
---Vampires are perfectly suited for perfume. Perfumes flower on people – they’re transformed by the heat of bodies. Perfumes stay the same on vampires. Vampires have no blood, no body heat. They’re white. They’re absorbent. They’re smelling strips. Do this: Smell The Show That Smells. It doesn’t smell like paper. It smells like vampires perfumed as paper.

Notes on Images

#1 -- Pin by Jean Schlumberger for Schiaparelli
#2 -- Cover designed by Joel Westendorf, art by David Altmejd
#3 -- Narcisse Noir, Jimmie Rodgers's favourite perfume
#4 -- Ad for Schiaparelli's Shocking! by Marcel Vertès
#5 -- Portrait of Schiaparelli by Horst
#6, #7 -- Skeleton Dress by Schiaparelli
#8 -- Schiaparelli button

The Show That Smells reading tour: http://www.akashicbooks.com/showthatsmellsevents.htm
----

2009-06-30T00:33:00.000-07:00

p.s. Hey. So I'm off to London later this afternoon, and, as explained the other day and consolidated into the reminder up above, the blog's front page will be immobile until the next post appears on Saturday. I leave you with an introduction to and exploration of Derek McCormack's stunning new novel, which I'm extremely proud to be able to house within my Little House on the Bowery series. Of course, I hope you will consider adding it to your collection. I promise you would not regret that decision. Now, re: London, since there seemed to be a few bites on my proposal to meet up with 'Jerk'-goers before the shows, what I'll do is venture into the SLG's foyer around 6:30 - 6:45 pm each evening, and if any distinguished locals are thereabouts, we can hang out and chat and stuff for a while either somewhere comfy within the SLG or nearby. If no one is about, I'll just square myself away in whatever part of the building that the performances are taking place in and see people at or after the show. Okay? Otherwise, the Recollets cleaning crew are rattling their vacuum cleaners threateningly out in the hall as they do every Tuesday, so I'd better leap into the depths of the p.s. ** Andrew, You think? Well, no doubt there were some fakes in there, but since I gathered those ads/pix from a variety of slave/master social networking sites, I seriously doubt one guy is behind them all. And while I agree there's a heavy dosage of fantasy play going on in them, young and attractive guys are just as capable of having extreme fantasies as older guys with glasses. Does that idea actually surprise you? ** Clovenskull, Hey, Alex! LA! Fantastic, and even more potentially fantastic for me since I do everything I can every year to spend the time around Halloween there, so I might well get to see this in the flesh. So, yeah, you bet I want the details. That's just great, great news all around, man! ** Blake, Hey. Got your info. Do you have my contact stuff? I'll send it to you in case. I'm hoping we can swing that lunch, and I look forward to seeing you in any case. ** Stan_cz, The back's much better although still imperfect, but the pain is down enough for me to negotiate, I think. Mm, I don't recall having life saving instruction as part of the learning to drive experience, but I learned back in the dark ages relatively speaking, so I don't know what the current requirements are. No, I haven't had time to experiment with the Duotrope site yet, but I'll give it a fiddle when I get back. I hope your next few days are splendid ones. ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, yeah, I actually was quite friendly with Jimmy Duvall for a while, although I haven't seen him in a few years. Lovely, lovely guy. Oh, thanks on the Lucian guy's bio fill in. Wow, okay, very interesting. I must have read his pieces in the Voice, and I know 'Dress Gray' of course. You fully enjoy the time between now and Saturday, okay? Take care, D. ** Put The Lotion In The Basket, You're no doubt on your way by now. That is one twisted, long trip you have ahead of you. Lots of scenery, at least some of it eye-catching, I'm sure. Anyway, if you see this, enjoy every second to the maximum, and I'll miss you and look forward fervently to your return to the airwaves. ** Paul Curran, Hey. Yeah, I wrote you yesterday with info, and let's just hopefully count on smooth communications via phone and then seeing each other on Thursday. Really looking forward to it. ** You-x, Hey, man. So I downloaded your albums, but my scrambling to get ready to leave hasn't given me time to listen to them yet. I'll either slide them onto my iPod before I leave or jump on them as soon as I get back here, worst case scenario. I'm excited, needless to say. Oh, you know those guys yesterday aren't escorts, right? The slave posts aren't about money exchanging and that kind of seduction, although I imagine some of them would like it if their masters paid their bills. The slaves are looking for relationships and/or particular kinds of fuck buddies, not clients. I don't think having the wealth to spend on client work would make any difference for me. As I think I've said, there were quite a number of years when I was younger and developing the Cycle where I hired escorts with some frequency, so, in my case at least, I think I understand that experience as much as I need to. Whatever the 'What the heck' festival is, I hope it occasions a blow out of your dreams. ** Oscar B, Yeah, I've been looking at the weather forecast for the next five days in London with complete horror, hating hot weather with all my might as I do. Oh, well. Cool, like I said, I'll look for you early before the show in the foyer or whatever of the SLG. How awesome that we'll finally get to meet and so soon. Avoid dehydration until then, as will I. I'd love to get in on the auction thing. My money situation is precarious at the moment, though. Hm, shit ... I'll talk to you about it when I see you. Let me pass your query along here, though, in case people out there are interested. Everyone, Oscar B has something intriguing and important to pass along:'Me and my fellow MA students at Chelsea College of Art are having an auction of postcards and postcard-sized artworks created by international artists and designers. This event will be called ‘Going Postal’ and any monies raised by this auction will go towards funding our final MA show in September 2009. People like John Baldassari, Lawrence Wiener, Jay Ryan and Quentin Blake and have already agreed in helping us. The auction will be held in Central London and looks set to be an interesting night with a range of international artists, collectors and gallerists in attendance. If any of you would like to help, please email me at shadowdealessi@yahoo.it and I'll give you all the details you need'. ** Kyle Brod, Hey. Excellent catch. I guess whoever did that was counting on potential masters not being into contemporary art. A safe bet, I'd imagine, although whoever did that didn't count on winding up here where the true sleuths hang out. That Bollingmo's work looks pretty interesting, so the gotcha had some extra added benefit. Thanks, man. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yeah, too bad you can't be there for the shows. Maybe we'll somehow get 'Jerk' a gig where you are. That new k-punk MJ piece is even better than the first one. Terrific site, that site. Another big thanks. ** Davidc, Hey. Greatly looking forward to seeing you too. There has to be some sort of spot within the SLG suitable for hanging out. I would imagine the priority will be for a cool (temperature-wise) locale rather than a well stocked one, at least for anti-heat me. See you soon. ** T H O M, Aw, that's too bad. Oh, well, if there's a lot going on for you music-wise, that more than makes up for it. The weather is supposed to be hellish anyway. But you do need to get yourself over here at some point, okay? Take care, T. ** SYpHA_69, Where are you sending your mss.? Maybe the targets you're choosing just aren't the right targets? I mean getting many initial rejections is the standard affair when you're relatively unknown and first trying to get a publisher. Don't take it too much to heart. Yeah, tell me where you're sending it. Maybe I'll have some other ideas. ** Math t, Ha ha ha, about that Stonewall float. Why am I not surprised? That must say something unpleasant about me. Paris has a really good, absolutely massive gp parade. I missed it this year, but last year it was cool. Here it's not about g/l/t people parading before the populace, it's more of an inclusive thing where everyone who wants to marches, whatever their thing may be, in the parade to show support and unity. So you'll get, like, the national French soccer team marching along and then the float of some gay venue and then, like, the metro drivers' union or some famous French hip hop star or whatever. It's a different way of celebrating the occasion, but I dig it. Cool, I'll look for the sent stuff. Thanks, Math. I hope by the time I see you next you'll be rested and fried (not too fried, mind you) and raring to go. ** Colin, Yeah, I thought that one slave was top notch on the interesting front too. I guess Bernard explained the breeding thing. Cool re: the 3rd. Like I said, I'll look around early to see if you're there, and hopefully we can hang/chat. Safe trip. ** Tomas, Well, hey there, Tomas. 'User' is terrific, yes? I agree. Too bad about your exam, but very nice about Alex reading your novel. I want to learn what he thinks. Well, I'll be in London from today until Saturday, but after that I'll probably be here for the rest of July, so I'll love to see you guys soon after I get back if that's good for you. ** Joe M, The big MJ thing for me at least right now is the huge discrepancy about his condition at death. You've got this leaked supposed autopsy report that says he was a scarred up skeleton and then you've this supposed forthcoming DVD of his triumphant last rehearsal. Warring supposed official documents. Curious. ** Alan, I wish I could revise and edit and polish from the very beginning. If someone could invent a way for writers to write without the first draft part, I'd be bliss incarnate. Oh, the 'Ugly Man' title choice isn't a very interesting story. I just couldn't think of an autonomous overriding title that worked, so I looked at the stories, and 'Ugly Man' was the best one due to particular level of comedy in it and the self-reflexive aspect, so that was it. That was basically how I picked the title of my early short fiction book 'Wrong' too. Pretty simple and workmanlike, ultimately. Have a fine next few days, man. ** Bernard Welt, Thank you for sharing your expertise, sir. ** Wolf, Oh, man, I'm scared about the heat over there. I'm such a heat wuss. Deep breath. It'll be fine. And then there's my weird public bus phobia too. Deep breath. I'll either get fine with the bus or, more likely, take taxis and worry about the money eating later. Yeah, ring me in the morning and we'll suss a plan. Gisele called me this morning, and it might well be that doing the gallery visits on Wednesday is going to prove impossible, as it looks like I'm expected to spend most of that day at the SLG rehearsing Jonathan and getting everything set up. If that's the case, and it seems pretty likely, then let's do it on Friday, if that works for you guys too, because all will be in place re: 'Jerk' by then, and I'll be as free as I'm going to get. I'll send you or Marc the number at the Institut in case my phone has a signal problem. ** Antonio, Antonio! You rare and precious bird, you. I did get your message, and I even sent one back to you, but you were gone by then and never even knew how I'd broken my no-IMing rule on your behalf. But now you know. Why aren't you in London this week? What the fuck?! ** Pascal, Hey. Oh, I don't think I've ever said no to a guest-post in the history of the blog. I guess I count on people to make blog days about artists I'm not all that into, and I'd have to really hate some proposed artist or topic to say no. But, literally, it would probably take something like 'Racism is cool Day' to get a no from me. I don't think I've read any of those writers you mentioned except for Ishiguro, who I do think can be very good at least sometimes. I'll try that 'When we were orphans' if I see it somewhere. Thanks, man. Hey, see you very soon! ** Ken Baumann, 3 to 7 days sounds just about right for me too. 4 or 5 is about average, I think. So weird. Exactly on the collecting. You should see my billions of mostly 70s era 45s., like every possible version including radio-only editions and foreign releases with different pictures sleeves of every single released by all kinds of bands I could hardly care less about now. But I don't regret a moment of the scouring garage sales and paying through the nose and all that. So much fun. ** Thomas, Assuming we just end up hanging out somewhere at the SLG, which seems likelier than not, if you get there around 7 pm, just follow the sound of chattering to wherever we are. Great! Oh, thanks for the reminder about the Museum of Childhood. I would have completely spaced on that. Yeah, if I can manage it, I'll definitely and very happily check that out. See you pronto. ** Michael_Karo, Okay, 'Hejira' it is. Oh, I forgot to mention this yesterday, but if you were at all serious about doing a JM Day of some kind for here, I'd love that a lot and be most grateful. ** Steevee, Oh, like I said to You-x, those slave guys aren't escorts. They're just looking for their own private equivalents of love and boyfriends. The new Woody Allen isn't so good? I've been kind of excited to see it. It opens here this week. Well, always best to enter hoping for less. ** Amccartney, Hey, Alistair. Yeah, thanks. I thought it was definitely one of the best ever batches of slaves too. Good month. Oh, I didn't realize you'll be so swamped with teaching. Still, you sound like you're fully prepared to work in the margins for a while. That can have its own interesting effect on one's attention span and concentration, best case scenario. Rereading 'Lolita' is a great idea. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts. All right, enjoy your week, man. ** Armando, Oh, yeah, that sequence with Joe and the baby is sublime, right? Wow, how nice to remember it. There might well be a reference or continued referencing of the Solanis thing in 'WiR'. That makes total sense even if it's been long enough since I've watched the film that I don't remember. Seeing Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Holly Woodlawn all together in one place is an amazing thing. ** Flit, Oh, I think you get to be President. I'll happily be Vice President in all the senses of that term. Cool about the battery, natch. Be good or 'good' until I get back, pal. ** Uli, Well, I was hoping you'd say getting back in your music was the new priority. Excellent. If you think the stuff you do is worthy of the public, consider my ears to be eternally perked and ready to listen. Opening a gallery is an interesting idea too. There are just all kinds of reasons why your return to Berlin is the best move possible. I'm hoping the Berlin 'Jerk' gig will finally be the occasion that allows me to visit that city. We'll see, but I'm hoping. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Oh, yeah, the referencing on the Sunn0))) is no accident, I don't think, at least based on conversations I've had with Stephen about the album. I'll ask Stephen about writing or saying something about Julian Priester. I know he's due to start a big Sunn0))) tour of the mid-west very soon, but I don't know if he's still pre-trip. I know he's not in Paris at the moment for some reason. I'll ask Gisele about his state when I see her tomorrow. I'm sure he'd be happy to if he can. Mm, I'm not sure if I've seen Owen Land's stuff or not. Maybe not. I'll investigate and find out. Sounds very interesting. If I hear anything concrete about the Stephen thing, and if I manage to get some WiFi time in London, I'll email you. Take good care. ** Oliver, Hey. I think there'll be some early arrivers. In any case, I'll be there to meet and greet you. See you soon. ** Tender Prey, Yeah, it was an especially good slave batch. I definitely thought so. Thanks, man. Like I said to Wolf, I seem to have underestimated my 'Jerk'-related duties on Wednesday, and, at the moment, I don't think I'm going to be free that day after all, but I'm hoping we can transfer the plans to Friday? You guys can call me tomorrow morning, or, worst comes to worst, we can make a firm plan when I see you that evening. From this distance, all that 'where to meet' stuff bewilders me since I don't know London well at all, but I figure once I get there and plant my feet and look at a map, the meeting at Bethnal Green, etc., should be no problem. Like you said, on the early meeting stuff, let's just meet in the foyer and figure it out. If there's a suitable place in SLG, that would be ideal, obviously, but we'll nail something down quickly in any case. ** Mark, Ha ha, hey. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hm, it's interesting that people think those slaves are escorts. I think I haven't been clear enough or something. Yeah, like I said above, they're not escorts selling time with themselves. They're just looking for love in all the ... right (?) places. No, 'Doom Generation' is probably my least favorite Araki film. Well, no, I think 'Splendor' is. Ah, it's all taste stuff, right? What can one do? Sick, nosebleeds ... dude, that's not good. What's going in that body of yours? You're okay by now, I hope? Yeah, I've seen 'Revolution' and 'Hustler White'. Mm, you know, I'm kind of waffly on a lot of la Bruce's films too. I guess I'm weird. I thought 'Hustler White' was okay. I think 'Otto' is his best by far. My day yesterday was preparatory, as will be most of today, followed by a train trip and checking into my London lodgings followed by a 'Jerk' rehearsal, food, and sleep. It's hot here. It's too hot for me. I'm not crabby due to the heat yet but I will be soon. Summer sucks. Well, my friend, I hope when I see you again on Saturday, you are right as rain. ** JW Veldhoen, I have no distance on the Phelps people and their shit, but you could be right on the aesthetic aspect. I bet that Ensor show is great. You should go. I'll try to have a good vacation, and you try to have a good vacation within your non-vacation somehow, yes? ** Heliotrope, Back improves steadily while remaining a bit of a nag. Ugh, it's hot here. Not lovely LA hot, moist hot, ugh. Did I say ugh yet? Ugh. Mark, don't do anything unhappy making if you can between now and Saturday, and I'll miss your words until then. ** Jheorgge, My friend, hello! Great, great that you're coming. Twice even? Whoa! So, wow, I'll see you tomorrow. That's so trippy. I hope both of our train rides, if you're taking the train, are silk smooth. ** Misanthrope, Rey Mysterio Action Figure ... mhlmsg;nfmkla0bg ... (that's the sound of envy). Love me some Rey Mysterio. Glad you dig the Derek. Funnily, enough, whoosh, there that very book is right up above us. Comment as blurb. Uh, since I started this p.s., the temperature has slowly risen to a degree that is rather unbearable, so excuse my thoughts' drifting into lethargy. Love you, big guy. I'll take as many pix as I can over in that London place, and you'll see them, assuming you want to see them, as I assume you do, strangely. Excuse my presumption. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, I couldn't have left this blog to sit absolutely still on the surface for three days without seeing you first, so thank God or whatever he calls himself these days. I think your weekend was a hit, man. Seriously. Did you feel it? I think when I was cruising my car along trying to catch James Duvall-the-hustler's eye, the radio was playing me reading my fucking poem with some kind of jazz thing in the background. Might have been a deal breaker. Thanks for the safe journey wishes. Yeah, I'm always ready for my opinion to be rendered extinct, and this trip might provide the occasion, although based on the weather forecast, I very seriously doubt it, but I'm not a London fan either. There, I said it. ** Tomkendall, 6:30 it is. Awesome! ** Okay, I guess I have to say three days' worth of goodbyes now, and I guess I just did. Please do give some of your next three days over to the genius of Derek McCormack, and pile up some comments for me to come home to while you're at it, and I'll return on Saturday, and whatever transpires in London, you will see a selected slideshow on, oh, probably Monday, I'd guess. Take care until further notice.

DC's noteworthy, least or most imaginative, most or least clueless, plaintive, hot, sad-eyed bachelor slaves for the month of June 2009

2009-06-29T00:50:00.000-07:00

____________

slaverdy4anything, 20
looking for straight a's. i'm just a kid off the streets of San Francisco going to school and figuring i came to the wrong campus to learn what i need to know. Anyone able to give me some suggestions?

____________

fratmeat2, 18
thanks to everyone who help make fratmeat1 a prime piece of usefull meat. We will miss it but know it's being well used in its new home.

second frat meat now in training for use of brothers and select others.

university frat pledge undergoing total hazing by brothers as fuck and suck hole. meat kept naked in frat house and brother's dorm rooms for easy access and use and constant hazing.

UPDATE: fratmeat2 is spending this summer off campus with a select and very generous Master who has promised to give it very valuable and needed training while the rest of the frat enjoys their vacation.

_____________

ASBOladBRAPBRAP, 19
The one and only Little Shaw, ite u get me. First Off, bowt ma fotos. dont want any little prik seeing dat am bi so gotta protect ma self innit. Am normal yung teenager, decent lad, good to know! always partying n avin fun. like mi booze and weed. . tis all guuuurrd! anyways looking for one off or regula meetz 4 whorin slave fun. dats it for me. Into all the kinky shit and gerrin tied up n all da rest ov it.

_____________

FutureMentalPatient, 18
I cant find how to delete my account ! SO, ill just day that the leater life style belongs to those who disregard themselves as garbage and you all can keep it. . . . especially Benjamin Zeichick in Big Spring, Texas!!!

____________

19yohole4cock, 19
Needs to be owned for life, absoulty no release, no limits, loves to be whored, fucked, spanked, raped, whipped, caged, cut, branded, stomped, tortured. Knows what no limits mean. Name's Cody Landon.

____________

hugmepls, 18
its not easy to find love, but never give up to search in love, if u can not love me tender and hug me pls just be my master that be great for me so let to know each other and being close with me bttm guy :)

____________

nelay4078, 25
Poz boy in need of dad. Passive with a twinge of an unpolished appreciation and respect for his prospectives, but eager to learn the protocol of being a loyal object of masculine affections.

_____________

ownandbreedme, 20
I wanna bum around europe for a while experimenting with drugs, and after I'l just have a flat in paris and be a famous artist. And people will know, that I owe it all to U.
verry bears/chems friendly
ws, bondage, ff, cbt, tt, dog, cum, slave, toy, group, spanking, whipping, torture, sounds, flogging, whored, raped, deprivation, pain, public, humiliation, bb, whatever
Your Socks. My Mouth.
Doot-dee-doot-dee-doo, just trying to hit fifty characters.
no whales please.

____________

EmoHeartGash, 19
As we grow up, i have learnt that the one person that wasnt supposed to ever let you down, probably will do or has done. That you will have your heart broken, probably more than once, and it gets harder everytime. Youll break hearts too, youll fight with your friends and your best friends. Youll blame a new love for things an old one did. You'll say ou hate your parents and pray to god they would one day die. You'll cry because the time you thought you had lots of is passing too fast, and you'll eventually lose someone you love and care about. So take too many pictures, and laugh too much, and love like you've never hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness youll never get back. So Find a person who calls you beautiful instead of just hot, who will call you back when you hang up on them. who will stay awake just so you could fall asleep. wait for them to kiss you on the forehead who wants to show you off to his friends. Consider the one who is constantly reminding you how much they care for you and how lucky they are to have you. Watch For the one who will turn to there friends and say "thats not the one, thats not him." i'm not looking for him anymore. i'm looking for assisted suicide in return for anything you want.

____________

Apiani, 21
More than a feeling when you decide not to kill me

im a slave that got no rights no SOUL
i want sign me life over to a master:
never want be set free never wanna have no rights:
i want sign a no realsie contract

WHOO WANTSS ME
WANT BE NO ONE SOON AS

____________

Wikkid69Fairy, 19
Hi guys my name is Chase. My friends call me Fairy. Unfortunatly I'm not a pain-doll but dont let that discurage you from getting rough. I even prefer group dating such as a polly family. Do you deserve me? Prove it.

What do you think about my pics?:). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

_______________

DirtyScumLad, 24
drag me to ya party
get fukked on booze n drugs wiv all ya m8s
gang up on me n abuse me full on

- - - - - -

KICK DROP MUMMIFY GAG
PILE-ON TRAMPLE STAMP JUMP
FOOTYBOOTS ROCKIES TIMBS NIKE REEBS
BRUISE GRAZE CUT
GOB PUKE PISS SHIT
CHOKE GANGRAPE SKULLFUCK BOOTFUCK
REPEAT!

- - - - - -

- - - - - - - -

i no my place. . . mashed under urs and ur m8s boots!!!
GET IN TOUCH

____________

minds, 19
I'm looking for a twisted, perverted, creative master. Only looking for owners with the desire & means to disappear a slave permanently. He should train me to become his ultimate raunch slave. He will train me so well that by the time i need to sign my contract, i will have no hesitation. He should be obsessed with raunch and especially scat. I need to be fed everything from his body in any way possible. Once broken in, progressive modification -- branding, amputating, castration, surgery (from cosmetic to brain), .. . )

____________

str8mansbitch, 23
I am a whore--guess I picked that up from jail. MEN that slap you upside the head, put you on ur knees and dick down your throat--gettin my boi-hole pissed up--no luv makin, slam it in and fuck me like a bitch in jail ! I want it to be so total that my cellmate saying to do something makes me do and want to do it desperatley! I want this again badly.

____________

chrisyeah4u, 18
I'm new in this world . . . do not you get mad, all we ever started something . . . Not afraid

I want any one what fuck my and suffcoate fist me up the ass smother with gloves my and kidnap games and bondage and dress up as rubber or latex or as girl and i like festh.

____________

Raph77777, 18
Are you tough enough to dom this wrestler haha. If i get mummified ill be just as happy ahha. I have also grown to like fist mitts, so u dont have to worry about me trying to escape. I used to to wrestle with my str8 best friend but he got wierded out when he started getting boners play wrestling with me and things got outta hand one time after we got drunk and did the nasty. This is who I am. This is inside me. Please dont be a creeper.

______________

Seanyboix, 19
Lookin' for a master whose stare will turn me to stone. Here's just some random balls. .

The Basics
Hair Color: Cosmic Blue. . . . . . . Profession: Gentleman of Leisure.
Eye Color: Green. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relationship Status: Single.
Height: Hmm. . Religious Views:God is Evil.

My Favorites
Favorite Color: Pink/Black/Blue.
Favorite Car: Mini Cooper S (Convertable).
Favorite Movie: MAMA MIA!. . . . . . . . . Favorite Hobby: Shopping!
Favorite Song/Singer: The Veronicas/Pigstar.
Favorite Food: Pizza. . . . . . . . . Favorite Restaurant: PIZZA HUT!
Favorite Animal: Siberian Husky. . . . . Favorite Store: HotTopic!.
Favorite Baby Name: Lissa, Demi, Tyler, Leon.
Favorite Person In Your Life: Place To Be Taken.

______________

slaverdogboy, 18
lovbears

_______________

slaveben19, 19
im a no good slave wats use is to surve masters. my position on the floor with a collor around me neck. im worthless all im good for is house sexual use. this is things i did:

CBT
BONDAGE
TT
SCAT
LOANED OUT
CP

I WOULD LOVE SIGN A CONTRACT AS SOON AS POSIBLE.

_____________

bondageguychi, 18
Used to be a Red Sox fan...

____________

Hurtmygut, 19
Hi everyone. I love to be punched and looking for rough guys beat up my stomach. Punch, kick, stomp, torture my gut.

_____________

cheeselover, 25
I am a slut who likes sucking dirty cocks with long foreskin. I like dirty cocks with smegma and cockcheese. Like to sniff dirty, used underwear, socks and sneakers. Like sniff dirty cock, smelly armpit and feet. like to lick all dirty smegma under your forskin and eat them. I am looking for guys with dirty smelly long forskin. If you don't clean your cock for one day, and you can produce lots of cockcheese and smegman, then i'd love to serve you and worship your smelly cock. cuz i like to eat that everyday. feed me with your cockcheese pls.

____________

johnny1989, 19
I start to admit my desire for men when I touch and feel their texture, when they rub on my skin, everywhere. . . come from the movement of strong fucker and start a deepest one. . . ram on me, once again and agagin!

These macho images hover and hover. . . . .

New experience, new tactile sense, don't hurt, but enjoyable.

____________

youngperverted, 25
I'm a very perverted soul living in Toronto. Likes being incapacitated by pharmaceuticals. Extremely perverted here. Obviously I seem like a fool for wanting this. . . . . not being able to react to what's going on. . . chinese water torture, mind altering drugs. . . . control my pee. . . . . .

_____________

boyinropes, 18
I am very new and innocent but I want to be a mans boy. I think it will be so hot to be tied and bound and to have a man do what he wants to me. I will do what ever I have to do to please my man. I have never been with a man but I know that is what I want and what I need. I also really only think it would work for me if they are 100% active and want to use tape on me and tie me up or force me to sniff ther trainers and end up fucking me.

______________

PortionsForFoxes, 24
I am property of tirantoro, he controls this page.
I just want to serve tirantoro.

_____________

tinkerblizz, 23
fuck my ass ur ass holes
ask me and i will tell or u talk to my brother

----

2009-06-29T00:48:00.000-07:00

p.s. Hey. What's up? I had an okay if relatively uneventful weekend of writing and gradual back-related improvement and a pleasantly sunny Paris. Now I'm mostly just getting ready to Eurostar over to London tomorrow evening. Oh, I had a thought re: that. Do the people from around here who are going to see 'Jerk' want to meet up for a quick coffee or beer or something before the show? Ostensibly, we could meet up at the SLG at maybe 6:30 or something? Does anyone know if they have a cafe on the premises or anything like that? Or maybe there's somewhere very nearby? Anyway, if that idea is of interest to those concerned, maybe you can let me know via the comments today, and, if so, we can plan on it. If not, that's cool too. Since I'll be either completely without internet access or will have extremely limited access while I'm in London, I thought I'd throw that idea out now because once I'm there, organizing things might be rather difficult. Anyway, let me know if you're coming to the show and if you find that meeting idea doable and desirable. Okay, I think that's my whole story today. ** David Ehrenstein, I think all Nyro needs is one or two vociferous acolyte new stars, and she'll be back in fashion. That seems inevitable. I would have thought Antony would be really into her, for instance, but I guess not. Who is this Lucian K. Truscott IV? I only had a quick peek, but I didn't really understand. ** OscarB, Since you have some time before the final show, it seems totally natural and even really good that you're letting its point evolve. Better than having decided on an idea and then spending the time left hammering it into place, although I suppose that would have been less stressful. I have no doubt that you're going to find something more amazing than what you were planning before. ** Statictick, That sounds like some kind of reading, man. Naturally, I hope the video document aligns with your perfectionism. So you're good at improvving. Being good at that is a real gift. When poets start improvving, 90% of the time I gulp down the last of my espresso and zoom the hell out of there. That you'd keep me planted is a no brainer. Here's heavily hoping re: the sports doc. Canes are cool, but only when they're not necessities. ** Put The Lotion In The Basket, Do you get to Spain by train via the Eurostar? What's the other option ... train, ferry, train? I'll scour the blurry English countryside for any sight of your train window and wave like a school kid. If I don't talk to you before, have an amazing trip, okay? Oh, I wrote to you this morning, if you're still online. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey. Thanks for those links, especially for the k-punk one. That might be my very favorite MJ think piece so far. Take care, man. ** J. Campbell, I would have inserted Peter O'Toole's bloodcurdling, psycho scream in 'The Ruling Class', which is worth a little youtube hunt if you haven't seen/heard it. Very nice to see you, btw. How is everything? ** Flit, Have I told you already how fucking splendid your Re-Blog is. Goodness gracious. (Everyone, hit that link several words ago if you know what's good for you.) And not just because it's made me want to start an Andy Beyah Fan Club. If I haven't knelt before you re: the particular matter of your blog yet, there you go. ** Winter Rates, Hey, buddy. Yeah, the new piece will travel. It's already booked in a few distant places -- a four city Japan tour, Norway, Brest, ... I forget where else. Like I might have said, the 'forest' is mostly going to be constructed from trees near the area of each performance, and, other than that rather massive headache of an on-site task, the tech and screens and stuff won't make it much more difficult to send around than 'Kindertotenlieder', I don't think. Yeah, it was all downhill after 'Off the Wall' for me too. ** Bernard Welt, Weird. I watched that Gokey scream clip. I mean, maybe I'm crazy, but isn't there pretty much that same identical scream at the end of the actual song? People who watch 'American Idol' are easily scared. I did appreciate your gift, and it does seem to be a gift that keeps on giving. I still say how about you eat it and then I smell your breath afterwards? On this other fellow, this Ukrainian dream guy, yeah, get him all friended up and then link me. I'm intrigued. ** Bill, Yeah, do. Anything I can do to help either with Recollets or other Paris related stuff re: the possible residency, I'm at your disposal. ** Ken Baumann, Oh, you feel that too? Strange, no? I think it must be chemical rather than situational or something. That mood never seems to last too long for me though, what about you? Yeah, foster kid stories are cool, maybe even cooler than when bunched in a collection. I love hunting for strays by writers I like. It's cool when you're so into a writer that it turns you into a collector. ** Pascal, Yeah, it's the grating thing, I guess, although I really should put some time into the later-middle period work like 'HoSL' and 'Hejira' and so on. I don't know that phase of her stuff very well at all. The JM joke in 'Jerk' is a little more pronounced in the theater version, but it's just a little tension releasing quip of a thing. It would be great to play in Dublin. I don't know why we haven't. Maybe it's a tough place to try to import European work when it isn't by some hugely famous director. That happens with certain cities a lot. I can't wait to meet you and your pal Andra too. ** Michael Karo, The total opposite of Beggar's Banquet ... ha ha ha, good one. Back in the day, Nyro and Mitchell were like ... uh, the singer-songwriter version of the same period's Grace Slick vs. Janis Joplin thing, at least in my hood of friends. It was one or the other. I was in the cerebral-preferring Nyro/Slick camp and all that Mitchell/Joplin emoting stuff made me feel really creepy crawly. Ah, youth. An interesting, perhaps, thing is that Mitchell's work grew increasingly cerebral while Nyro turned into a hippie earth mother type after a certain point. Odd. Nyro's rapping son is news to me, curious. I'll investigate. Speaking of 1969, another aesthetic battle springs to mind: Iggy vs. Bryan Adams. I think we can all agree that one's winner. ** No more teenagekicks, Ha ha, who'd have thunk? I'm talking about my newfound biggest fan Megan Fox, of course. Where are my fucking royalties? ** SYpHA_69, Gosh, I'm sure really liking the sound of this novel idea of yours. It's pretty tasty. Yeah, I'm into the Southern Lord bands as a rule. Stephen O'Malley's other band Khanate is well worth your time. I love Om, especially the 'Conference of Birds' album. Xasthur and Leviathan are terrific. And, I mean there's lot of great Scandinavian stuff if you want to go whole hog. ** Armando, Oh, 'Hate' is a great song, yeah. I know that one, and of course I know the earlier stuff. I'll download those songs you mentioned if not the whole album. 'Flesh for Frankenstein' is wonderful. Is it possible to see it nowadays in the original 3D version. I don't know if that version is on DVD or not. It's extra big fun in 3D. So, what's your favorite Morrissey film then? I'm not sure what mine is ... maybe 'Women in Revolt', although 'Flesh' and 'Trash' are great. ** JoeM, Well, the holograms have to not immediately look like they're video is the thing, even though everyone will know they're something like holograms. The piece is really emotional and really, really bleak, so we have to be careful not to screw that up by introducing something that would feel like a novelty. It's tricky. With the MJ death, the craziness that happened in the real world around Lennon and Elvis seems almost entirely to be happening online, and, based on what I've seen, and mostly in the comments areas of different sites, there's craziness galore. It was more fun when it happened in fresh air, though, I agree, but I'm kind of getting quite obsessed with the meta-narrative all these clashing anonymous 'insiders' are spinning. ** Killer Luka, Cool, thanks, pal. We actually entertained the idea of a campfire for about three seconds, but those trees are very dry, and apparently even the set without an onstage fire is so potentially combustible due to the lights and stuff that it's going to require all kinds of paperwork to get theaters to agree to house it. ** Blake, Hey, man. Yeah, cool, I hope so. Maybe on Friday sometime? That might work. It's all a bit confusing as to what and when my duties there will be right now 'cos I guess we have to do some stuff re: holograms and meetings and things for the new theater piece during the three days too. Friday seems mostly likely at the moment. I'll try to get things are figured out as best I can by tomorrow. ** JW Veldhoen, Yeah, that Hell (and now Kier) book is awesome. Lucky you (and them) to be and talk in proximity to that power duo (and power solo). Wow, that made no sense. Try too hard and you get your hands cut off. ** Uli, I think it's great you're moving back to Berlin. I remember when you moved to where you currently are. Time flies and is weird. What are your plans post-job? Are you going to have more time to do your own work? That would be ace, obviously. Yeah, welcome back, man. ** Misanthrope, That Katt Williams clip made me guffaw. Hilarious, I say. ** Marcus Whale, Assuming the Australian today is the same as French today, which I don't think it is, break every leg in sight, as I know you guys will. Sucks that you and AMT hooked up just before he split for here. But there's one more reason for you to come visit. ** Thomas Moronic, Man, your rich relationship with the scream makes me feel like such a novice. Maybe even a virgin. I can't remember ever screaming once. Surely I must have screamed as a newborn blob, but ... maybe I'm being too purist about what constitutes a scream. Does yelping count, I wonder? ** Tender Prey, Yeah, I've had snooping around in galleries with you on my agenda of hope ever since you proposed that. As for when ... maybe Wednesday late morning or very early afternoon? If not, I guess we can try to sort out a plan Wednesday night. You have my cell number, right? If I can get a signal -- and the last time I was in London I had a devil of a time getting and keeping one -- we can do a phoner. No, I wish we were being put up near the SLG. Apparently we're being put up somewhere that's 25 minutes away from the SLG, ugh, at someplace called Institut Francais Hebergement. I don't know London well enough to know where it is. The tube stop is South Kensington. It's near the Natural History Museum. Is that a convenient location at all? Great about the really positive Vienna experience and resulting possibilities, man. Can't wait to see you. ** Alan, Yeah, me too, exactly, re: Burroughs. Your novel plans are really exciting. I got kind of jittery reading and thinking about them. 4000 words is a solid start, I think. Not bad. Organic rather than linear of course sounds very good to me. I'm mostly just going back through my novel right now combing and sprucing and trying different formatting ideas and hoping to catch the kinds of repetitions you're talking about. I think you're like me in finding that part of the process kind of the most exhilarating, no? ** Steevee, Excellent suggestions to SYpHA, obviously. ** Heliotrope, It's sneaking towards hot weather here too. We're still in the grace period, but the forecast has Paris beginning to resemble hell starting as early as tomorrow. I'm lost without that nasty coat I always like wear. I've heard just a little of the Ya Ho Wah stuff. Back in the punk days, I'd wander into the old Rhino Records shop on Westwood Blvd. and frequently see Mr. Saxon there in his full-on hippie cult garb checking to see if anyone had bought those curious 45s with handmade, hand painted sleeves he was putting out a lot at the time. I was too punk at the time to find them cool, but, damn, I wish I'd known enough to spring for them. I went over to him one of those times and told him how much I loved The Seeds, and he asked me what my favorite Seeds song was, and I had this sense that he would be happier if I picked a song off of 'Future' than off the earlier albums, so I picked 'The Flower Lady and Her Assistant', and he just stood there and sang the whole song to me accapela, which was embarrassing at the time because the whole store full of people came to stand still and watched us this with very arched eyebrows, but it was pretty fucking cool, duh. Sure, I used to go eat at The Source fairly frequently. Good stuff. Not as good foodwise as H.E.L.P., as immortalized in that Beach Boys song. ** Chris, Hey, man! Oh, with NYU/Fales, you basically just need to know if Marvin will be around when you visit, or, if not, that whoever's there will know the deal, and a phone call to Fales would do that. I don't know. If you need to me to do anything at all, just tell me. I'll be mostly if not entirely offline from Tuesday evening until Saturday afternoon, but otherwise, I'm around. ** Creative Massacre, Birthdays usually end up sucking, don't they? Mine almost always do. It's weird. Unnatural expectations or something. I still haven't watched 'Dexter'. There's so much TV I'm behind on, it's getting scary. But, oh, that cake, that glorious sounding fucking birthday cake. Hear my stomach growl. ** Christopher/ Mark, I'm mostly just interested in how MJ's death has temporarily reorganized the world. Or has seemed to. And that the reorganization is so unresolved yet bent on resolution or something. But I'm such a structure fetishist. Thanks about London. It should be okay. I wish you could be there. If you talk to your friends again, tell them to say hey if they feel like it. ** NB, Hey, man. Those pix are manna. You and Christopher look great together, even with Paris Hilton standing in between you, and the whole float dancing and public display of face munching, as Atheist might phrase it ... well, jeez, how much better and more transcendent and all of that could it have gotten. Dude, so nice, so, yikes, prideful in the good way. I bet you kind of wish you weren't going on your trip now. But then again it might be just the right time for the old 'heart grows fonder' stuff to work its magic. Like you, I'm gonna be out of town and out of blog after tomorrow, but I get back before you do. Any anecdotal phrases you think up and convenient internet cafes you find while you're away would be most welcome. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, I can't think of a movie wherein I don't find James Duvall attractive, even 'Donnie Darko'. If you ever get a chance to watch this TV series from the 90s called 'The United States of Poetry', there's a segment about/with me in it where a poem of mine is turned into a little movie, and in the segment, I play a john cruising in a car looking to pick up a street hustler who's played by Mr. James Duvall. He's the sweetest, nicest guy you'll ever meet. Mm, I like the early Araki, everything up through 'Totally Fucked Up', and then I'm kind of waffly about his films after that for the most part until 'Mysterious Skin', which I liked, of course. I go to that bookstore all the time. It's a dream within a dream. As is you having all those movies at your fingertips. My hard drive is stuffed to bursting at the moment, so, until I get an external hard drive or something, I'm screwed. My weekend was okay, nice, not worth either enthusing or complaining about basically. ** Pisycaca, Hey. My weekend was okay. It can't compete with yours. An excursion to a mountain sounds like just the perfect thing. That U2 thing is hilarious. Of course, I secretly wish you'd do it so I could see you in it, although, wait, masked, forget it. Anyway, U2, no payment, bleah. ** Math t, Ha ha, the gay burn out thing, ha ha. It usually takes about twenty minutes for me to overdose and go find the nearest biker bar. Email? Cool. I'll go hunt it. Lots of love, Math. ** Rigby, Yeah, the Nuremberg rally being the exception, ha ha. Oh, like I said up above, I'm proposing an early meet up if people can and want to do that. After the show and interview thing on the 1st, etc., I'll probably be my usual pooped out self, but you never know. You just never do. ** You-x, Hey, man. I wandered, I wrote, I smiled upon myself. Wait, you have albums available on this magical Alice label too? Okay, I'll get those for myself and shove them into my iTunes library today. Ultra-cool. You Marcure brothers are getting to be our own personal Jonas Brothers without the, you know, chastity and third member and no notable talent parts. ** Panda?, Hey. Man, that album is so my best friend right now. I mentioned it in an interview I did yesterday. I guess about the live thing, it's, like, do you do it with prerecorded accompaniment or get a band together and take the songs into a new kind of presentation? I could see either way working very well. Hm. I have no doubt that if you decide to do the live playing thing, you'll ace the right way to do it. Yeah, thanks a lot again, P! ** That's the entirety for now. It's slavery day yet again on DC's. Need I say more? Surely not. I'll see you one more time before the blog's tiny vacation begins, i.o.w. see you tomorrow. Bye.

The Dreadful Flying Glove presents ... The International Language Of Screaming

2009-06-27T00:53:00.000-07:00

----
Song is not theatre is not cinema is not poetry is not lyrics is not speech is not doggerel is not words is not writing is not cleverness is not blind intuition. But all of these things have their limits. To soft-shoe along those limits is to feel something of the vertigo of the dreams we climb, the ache of the loss and the depth of the joy. As richly-sewn with marvels as the reams of Stuff & Nonsense that dwell within those limits can be, when speech and words fail and there's nothing left for either of 'em, what then?

Screaming is an expression in defiance of language, an expression of something that demands to exist. Dedicated to you, but you weren't listening.

Die Männer nicht wissen, aber die kleinen Mädchen verstehen.

The neuropsychiatrist Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of the bestseller The Female Brain, says the release of dopamine in a screaming teenage girl's brain upon seeing her pop idols is like "injecting heroin." Being with other screaming girls, she says, only makes the effect wilder.

"There's a thing in biology we call synchrony," Brizendine says. "Basically, one girl affects another affects another, and it becomes a domino effect building up to that level of hysteria. They are getting all these brain hits of dopamine, and also oxytocin, which is a love-and-bonding hormone. Teenage girls have so much estrogen, which just catapults the level of dopamine and oxytocin in the brain, creating this sort of ecstatic rush in themselves and others. It truly is a state of ecstatic love." (link)

CaptainGringopants on how to scream (2009)

Blixa Bargeld, screaming, (2007)

Isabelle Adjani in Andrej Zulawski's "Possession" (1981)

Kingsize Taylor & The Dominos, "Stupidity" (1964)

Diamanda Galàs sings "The Thrill Is Gone" (1999)

Patty Waters, "Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair" (1965)

Mars, "Helen Forsdale" (1978)

Tim Rose, "Morning Dew" (1967)

Alan Bates & John Hurt in Jerry Skolimowski's "The Shout" (1978)

Little Richard, "Rip It Up" (1956)

Pink Floyd's "Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up", as featured in Michelangelo Antonioni's "Zabriskie Point" (1970)

Cradle of Filth, "Cruelty Brought Thee Orchids", live (1998)

Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "Frenzy" (1957)

The 13th Floor Elevators, "You're Gonna Miss Me" (1966)

Diamanda Galàs with John Paul Jones, "Do You Take This Man" (1994)

The Plastic Ono Band, "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For A Hand In The Snow)" (1969)

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Didn't It Rain" (1964)

Suicide, "Harlem", live (c. 1980)

Robert Ashley, "The Wolfman" (1964)
"'The Wolfman' was composed in early 1964 and first performed on Charlotte Moorman's festival of the avant-garde in New York in the fall of the same year, gaining considerable reputation as a threat to the listener's health."

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, "Nightmare" (1968)

Janis Joplin with the Kozmic Blues Band, "Ball & Chain" (1969)

Super Furry Animals, "The International Language Of Screaming" (1997)

Can't, "We Are The World", live (2004?)

Further information:
CaptainGringopants' YouTube channel
Blixa Bargeld at Wikipedia
Zulawski's "Possession" reviewed by Victor Galstyan at Senses Of Cinema
Kingsize Taylor & The Dominos appreciated by Spencer Leigh
Diamanda Galas' website
Patty Waters at ESP-Disk
Mars at Wikipedia
Tim Rose, RIP
"The Shout" reviewed at Electric Sheep Magazine
Little Richard at Wikipedia
Pink Floyd's "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" at Wikipedia
Cradle of Filth at Wikipedia
Screamin' Jay Hawkins at Wikipedia
The 13th Floor Elevators at Wikipedia

The Plastic Ono Band at Wikipedia
Sister Rosetta Tharpe at last.fm
Suicide at Wikipedia
Robert Ashley at UbuWeb
The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown at Wikipedia
Janis Joplin at Wikipedia

The Super Furry Animals website
Jessica Rylan & Can't at irfp.net
----

2009-06-27T00:43:00.000-07:00

p.s. Hey. Thanks to the multi-talented artist and distinguished local The Dreadful Flying Glove, your thoughtfully raucous weekend is now in place, and all that's required to complete the happy coupling of here and you is an aplomb of which you have long since proved yourselves highly capable. My gratitude extends both to our guest host and to all of you out there who will take full advantage of his wonderfully tall offering and then leave your comments accordingly. Otherwise, here's one more reminder about tonight's and tomorrow's blog-tangential events starring d.l.s Kier and Stephen Boyer in NYC and SF respectively. More info at the top of yesterday's p.s. What else ... oh, there'll be one more blog disruption coming up, this time having nothing to do with my aching back but rather with the apparently vast lack of internet access I'll have while I'm in London for the 'Jerk' shows. Consequently, the blog will be taking a three day vacation next week. After the post on Tuesday the 30th, this place will stand still on July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd before returning to full operations again on Saturday, July 4th. I tried my best to get around this problem, but, given the old fashioned lodging set up provided by my London hosts, I'm probably not going to be able to even check my email for those three days much less hit the blog's Publish button. But, after that short break, the blog should be back to running smoothly and continually again. So there's an advance notice. This weekend I'm mostly going to try to continue my physical recovery and write some novel pages if I can and wander about Paris as thoroughly as possible. And you? ** Heliotrope, Aw, thanks, Mark. Gosh, I hope today's TDFG Special doesn't torture your computer. I know you'll love it if it'll have you. ** Kiddiepunk, Yeah, we don't mess around, boy. Of course the piece isn't nearly as polished up as the photos probably suggest, but, yeah, we managed to do a pretty solid 45 minute public performance of what we did make after only four days of working in that space, so no complaints. So very, very cool that you did that show with Marcus, and I so hope you guys get to make that record before you split. Yeah, we'll both be making international arrivals in Paris on the same day. Early afternoon for me. When will you hit the big iron gates of the Recollets? ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, I have no doubt the MJ story is going to be unraveling and raveling in a decent portion of our eyes and ears whether we welcome it or not for as long as we both shall live. It should be something of a laborious page turner at least. ** Tonyoneill, Hey, pal. I have that Jordy Chandler book albeit very lost somewhere in the jumble that passes for furnishings in my LA pad. Yeah, the late and great Amok store on Vermont sold it for a while, and that's where I scored it too. It sure would be a great time to unload that thing on eBay, damn. ** Tomkendall, Good to see you, man, but condolences about the rent and money crap. Even in theory, and even when the money problems aren't even mine, the mere idea gives me a nervous breakdown. (That sound you hear would be me cracking my knuckles if I cracked my knuckles.) Yeah, that's the new performer, the one I lobbied for relentlessly, and he's as fantastic in the piece as I had hoped, and a lovely, fascinating guy as well. Hm, that weird comment you got on your story was weirdly complex and, although full of shit, no doubt, kind of a nice little read. ** Bernard Welt, One of my Facebook friends' status updates yesterday, which were renewed every ten or so seconds for most of the day, were a high speed string of RIPs for celebrities both living and long dead. It was a lustrous use of the form, I thought. ** Statictick, Part of it was because Gisele and I are workaholic types, and part of it was because we had a deadline and needed to be out of there in four days. Fire lit under ass stuff. Dude, I hope the docs got things sorted out. That foot thing has been lingering way too long. And I hope your screams woke the dead if they were dead. ** Stan_cz, Oh sure, as Bernard more colorfully put it, students in the US change schools all the time. No big deal. I'm not sure if it's harder to do that when you're in the US on a student visa. You should check with the visa experts about that. ** Pisycaca, Mm, I guess if my back doesn't heal right on its own, I'll see another osteopath, but I'm hoping it'll slowly fix itself now with my -- and certain medications' -- help. I think if I were younger, the MJ thing would hit me more emotionally. But I was in my 20s when his big records came out, and I was into a very different kind of music, so my reaction to all those hits at the time was more on the order of thinking how well crafted and smartly produced they were, and the whole MJ/King of Pop stuff was more a ubiquitous and interesting pop culture phenomenon to me than something that went to my heart. But people's caring is totally understandable. When John Lennon was killed, the fallout was pretty similar to what's going on now, and I really felt that death in the way people are feeling this one. ** Daniel Portland, Hi, Daniel! It was really getting to meet you too, and it's nice to 'see' you here. Oh, Renoir is really in top form these days, so kudos. Let me pass along your query. Everyone, in the words of Daniel: ' ... also wanted to publicly mention here that the l magazine is seeking submissions for a new new york-based poets section and submissions can be sent to poetry@thelmagazine.com'. What's the zine festival? Any info that I could pass along to the folks here? Thanks a lot, Daniel, and take care. ** JoeM, I wish the holograms looked as convincing in real life as they did in the photos. But we're getting it figured out, I think. Elie's performing at the Avignon Festival next month if you need a fix, but I don't know if he'll be naked. He usually is. Very true about the richness of MJ's weirdness compared to the usual drug problem beset celebs. Still, we can be assured a huge volume of previously unrevealed MJ weirdness will be unfolding for years, with or without him. ** Bill, Ha ha, yeah, I managed to hold my camera strangely still considering I was quite the hobbling, groaning cameraman. Yikes but cool too about the scrutiny of your gig. Does stress not take your game up a notch? On the Recollets, it's fairly simple. You just need to describe a project you're working on or intend to begin that would require you to be in Paris for some reason. It's just that and the usual CV, links, materials or whatever that proves you're an artist. And if you did apply, I think I could help a lot on my end with a recommendation. It's not that competitive here, and they love having interesting artists come -- they've started a new program of trying to seek artists out because the place tends to be full of scholars, and they'd prefer more artists. It's mostly a matter of you being able to pay the rent or have an organization that will pay it. It's not cheap, but for Paris and for its location in Paris, comparatively, the rent is a very good deal. ** Alan, Yeah, Burroughs' understanding of my work really surprised me too and of course pleased me no end. It took years for critics and so on to stop calling me 'the new Burroughs', a comparison I always thought was super lazy since, admiring Burroughs' early-mid work as I certainly do, I don't feel there's much of a real connection between his work and mine, and I never really thought of Burroughs as someone who paid much attention to the work of writers who weren't in his immediate circle of either peers or blatant devotees. So, yeah. Hey, how's the novel going? Has that breakthrough you mentioned been panning out? ** Math t, Very awesome about the time off and festivities and, slurp, LSD, and give Kier and even Richard a hug for me tonight. I'll try to be there via pretend telekinesis. ** Wolf, Oh, your drooling is most welcome, trust me. The forest's location vibe will probably change from show to show because, apart from a few main trees that we'll be transporting around, the forest will be made from the stuff of the indigenous trees of whatever place the piece is being performed. That sketch set wasn't so indicative since we just threw what we could together, including a couple of stupid looking Xmas trees, basically because we had few options. 99 paintings/drawings, wow! If you weren't dried out after that, I'd almost start worrying about you, ha ha. The back is better enough that I should be mostly normal by the time of the 'Jerk' shows apart from maybe being a little stiff and achey. ** Flit, Such a poignant tale of you and your luggage cart and the balloon animal-responsive wide, moist eyes. I'm a little misty just reading that. ** Pascal, Family stuff, the dysfunctional, dealing and healing ... I hear you with a knowing, sympathetic nod in tow. So are you to be in Dublin for a while? I've never been there. I wish. I've only been to Cork once briefly as far as Ireland goes. One of these days I'm sure I'll figure out a way to like Joni Mitchell. The way, or rather the style in which, she emotes is hard for me. There's something very oppositional about her thing for me. A matter of two temperaments clashing, I guess. There's a joke about her in 'Jerk', but it's kind of neutral rather than critical. Anyway, blah blah, have fun. I'll get to meet you next week, won't I? ** Nick Hudson, The fake trees on that sketch set were default props. The plan is for the finished forest stage to be entirely made of the real, except for maybe a fake log that may be used to brutally bash in one of the performer's heads at one point. Yeah, that's the Avignon piece. Excellent about the stopping of the drinking. I mean, I'm speaking as someone whose drinking habits involve half a beer or half a glass of wine every six months or so. Clear-headedness is the trippiest, coolest thing going. That's my current life policy. So that's great news. Plus, the lack hasn't seemed to have harmed your dreams. ** Mark, Hey. Most of the trees on the sketch set were real. All of the trees in the real set will be real. I love your idea for that gallery installation. You should do it somehow. It sounds very complexly pretty and more. Now you've made me need to go back and look at that penis flag. You're evil, ha ha. ** Michael_Karo, Yeah, I saw the pix and stuff of your poor cat. I can't believe he and his portraits haven't lured Atheist back in here yet. Very nice toilet photo (scroll down). The photo definitely transcends the source while maintaining its edge. I did have an initial if not thorough enough look at your very beautiful book, but not the long look that remains in its cards. Hm, now I have another something to do this weekend, cool. Thank you, sir. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, First, thank you for taking over. I'm so very obliged. What a fantastic shambles that Liberation Music Orchestra sounds to have been. Pocket trumpet, wow. That alone. I have been lucky enough to see Charlie Haden play a few times back in LA. Wonderful, the playing and the him-ing too. I miss my futon. ** Uli, Hey, Uli! Wow, it's so very good to see you! I mean, how have you been, what have you been doing, etc., etc.? That Gelbart video on your blog is insane. Yeah, if you have a little time on your hands, do tell me how and what you're doing please? Take care. ** Blendin, Oh, New American Paintings ... you know, I think I've only ever leafed through an issue or two of that magazine, so I don't know what to think of it. I liked what I saw of it, I think. I hope you get in. I guess just keep in mind the bureaucratical in-group crap involved in every art magazine decision in the world just in case. You have a great weekend too. ** Ken Baumann, Thanks a lot about the photos. Yeah, I think we have the makings of something strong, and luckily we have a year ahead to get it right. From my experience, I'm thoroughly blown away by the community of really, really talented writers that you've got going on there. I can't tell you how exciting it is to be discovering all of your work, which so far has just been non-stop so impressive and inspiring, and, with the online component of your writer gang, it's just fantastic to be able to experience both the work and the community itself happening and growing. I really haven't felt this jazzed about new American fiction in a very, very long time. It feels like a total renaissance to me, and I feel really grateful to be in range of the wave and be receiving all the gifts. I'm just a happy audience member feeling a real comradeship, but it even makes me feel kind of sentimental too. Fucking amazing! Mm, on the mood swing thing, I get these bouts of melancholy mostly that I don't really understand and whose source I can't really pinpoint. One came on in Belfort suddenly, and I'm in it now. I guess it's like a feeling of being really alone and outside even in relationship to my close friends. I don't know if that's like what you're talking about. It's a strange thing, and then it just passes, poof, again for no reason. Great to know you're on the cusp of getting into the work on 'Unguentine'. That's exciting, and I hope the conversation with the producer is mostly or ultimately positive and propulsive. And congrats on writing a new story you like. Is a collection of stories by you a future possibility, you think? ** Winter Rates, Thanks, man. Well, the process on the theater piece has gone something like this: Maybe eight months ago, Gisele started telling me her ideas, which were pretty basic at that point. She wanted the piece to be about a failed or rather failing gymnast, and she wanted Margret to play that role, and she wanted there to be hologram characters whose texts or songs would be very poetic and even kind of archaic, and other stuff. We kept meeting and exchanging ideas and developing the idea of the piece from then on, and it went through a big evolution -- for instance, the auditions for the replacement performer for 'Kindertotenlieder' introduced us to Jonathan Schatz, and from the first minute I saw his work, I wanted him to be in our new piece very badly, and so we created a whole new character and narrative for him, and that changed our original plans radically -- until we finally kind of agreed on a rough structure and narrative about two months ago. Then I sat down and wrote a number of possible texts for the piece, and Gisele liked them, which got us to the point where I could write out the script and structure of the piece, which I did a few weeks ago. We took that to Belfort and used it as a starting point, and, so far, we've stuck to the script I wrote, although with the holography stuff proving to be much more tricky than we'd thought, the whole center of the piece will need to be revised. I had five monologues written for that part, and we're down to three at the moment, and we might cut back further. And, like, we decided we needed a stronger ending while we were in Belfort, so I wrote a new part on the spot which has created three new characters, although they might end up just being the voices of invisible characters. Stuff like that. I would imagine that the piece will be evolving a lot and continually over the year ahead, at least in small ways, and Stephen O'Malley has only just started writing the score, and his score could cause us to change the piece to suit his work. It's pretty organic. But that's a long answer to your question. Anyway, that's the idea. The Sir Richard Bishop show should be pretty great. Pass along a report when the time comes. ** Trinie, Speaking of screaming, ha ha. The sharp pain thing really sucked. A few times I fell over and collapsed on the ground in extreme agony. Whoa. You were just in Joshua Tree w/Stanya. Joel was just in Joshua Tree too. I guess you guys didn't cross paths? So you might end up living in Taos for a while? That's an interesting development. Definitely would be good for the work dedication as long as you guys were happy otherwise. I'll go check your road trip photos. Man, I could so use a nice road trip right about now. In the US, I mean. In the West/Southwest in particular. Sigh. You're the best, T. Love you, and lots of love to Matt. ** JW Veldhoen, If Saxon was in a cult, it was a pretty soft-edged hippie love-love-love cult, and he wasn't when he was making his great Seeds stuff. Kip Winger is still alive as of this second in time if you want to call that living. ** Amccartney, Hey, Alistair. No, no acupuncture, yet anyway. Just the somewhat miraculous seeming osteopath stuff so far. We'll see, though. It ain't over yet. My pleasure and honor on the POL thing. Just hope it helps somehow. So now you get some writing time of your own for a while, I hope? ** Creative Massacre, Happy birthday! Awesome. How are you spending or did you spend it if you're reading late in the day? Did you have a birthday cake? What kind, if so? (I love birthday cakes almost as much as I love wedding cakes). Yeah, I really hope you have a great, great day, my friend. Lots of love to you. ** Steevee, That's interesting about Twitter. Very curious. The behavior seems so sheep-like. ** Misanthrope, I got sidetracked yesterday for too many hours reading the message boards attached to the MJ death news stories. It interested me at the time that there was no middle ground. There were the people declaring him a pure saint and genius, and there were the people popping cyber champagne bottles because the children of the world are now safe from his perverted longings. Nothing in between. It isn't that interesting, but looking in vain for people whose opinions fell into a gray area kept me busy for some reason. 'Off the Wall' is a really good album. ** Rigby, Needles, yeah, maybe, I hope not, but, yeah, it might be the right time to get into that. The Parisian MJ bereaved people who numbered in the high four figures gathered in front of Notre Dame yesterday in MJ costumes doing the moonwalk and singing the hits and stuff. That was kind of honestly touching, I have to admit. I like how sadness regarding a single thing unifies people for a little while. That's the part that gets to me. That's what makes me mist up. I don't know why. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, I like trains. Traveling by train is really nice, at least in Europe and as long as the train stops once in a while so I can leap outside and smoke a cigarette. Okay, I'll go look for 'The Graveyard Book' today maybe even. I need to walk, the doc says, and the store where it's sold is a good forty minute walk from my place as well as being quite likely the greatest bookstore in the entire world: Un regard moderne . Yeah, I know those loneliness feelings. That's what I was kind of talking about to Ken up above. My day so far has consisted of doing this p.s., drinking coffee, a few cigarettes, about fifteen minutes of work on my novel, six emails, checking Facebook, eating a piece of cheese wrapped in a tortilla ... that's it. Yeah, I get mentioned in Araki's 'Totally Fucked up.' That was nice of Gregg. Actually, every once in a while someone tells me they found my work only because of that bit of dialogue in 'TFU'. I almost did a cameo as a psychiatrist in 'The Living End', but I forget why I didn't. ** SYpHA_69, Gosh, why not write a romance novel? I think that would be really interesting. I guess the key will be whether it holds your interest long enough to write a whole novel. I say go for it. Fuck literary concerns. The literature will be there because it's yours. ** NB, Oh, that's so nice, N. Wonderful. Sounds very promising what with the existing mutual interest and shyness about the interest and all that stuff. I like the sound of this. This sounds really good, man. Digging the goofy smile. Take a picture. I mean at least of your goofy smile if not of him. I think someone around here is going to have a good weekend. ** Panda?, Hey. Dude, the album is so fucking good. I mean, the earlier work you've done was terrific, but this album is really a significant advance, I think. In the songs, the constructions, the textures, the lyrics ... Really, really good. I had the album looping yesterday, and my favorites so far are 'Maples' -- the first single, right? You should do a video for that one. If I were your exec, that'd be the single -- 'Light Diving', which is just gorgeous, and I love the ending with the repeated lyric, really strong -- 'Can't Write', very sad and smart and the sonics are beautiful -- 'Dream Collective', love the use of electronics, really interesting, drifty and deep and complicated -- and 'Fields of Alice', which is such a good closing track 'cos it's kind of small but very epic, catchy and strange, again with really good words, and such an interesting development. Yeah, I really love the album a whole lot. Really amazing, man. I'm dazzled and really proud of you as a friend too. Even though it would be hard, I guess, what do you think about playing live? Is that something you'd want to do? I kept wondering if that wouldn't be really interesting and work really well if you could suss out how to perform that material on a stage. Great, just great. Oh, and I glanced at the post you sent, and it's just terrific, don't worry. I'm pleased as punch. Yeah, the album ... you're doing such strong work, Matt. It's just a thrill be a witness to it. ** Put The Lotion In The Basket, Hey, Nick. Yeah, the feet thing has helped, thanks a lot. I continue to be on the upswing without stopping so far. So you'll be heading off to Spain just as I head into London. Drat. But there'll be other mutually agreeable places and times. I'm really glad you're going to get a break, and I'll be so incredibly looking forward to seeing how the time away effects your work. Have a blast of a weekend, okay? ** Armando, Seeing films is a good way to spend a summer. I should do that. I don't have 'The Greatest'. I've only heard random tracks and none of them stick in my memory as being better than the others. I should just go ahead and download it, and I will. What are your favorites? It would be interesting to know now before I dive in. ** David, Thanks about the forest. I'll happily take the 'Throne of Blood' resemblance, of course. I have a deep fondness and respect for Laura Nyro, especially the 'New York Tendaberry' album. I saw her play a number of times back in the early 70s, and it makes me sad that she's so overlooked and mostly forgotten at the moment. I always had trouble with Joni Mitchell's emotional makeup and delivery, but never with Laura Nyro, who still makes me feel shaky and kind of awestruck. ** Right, once again, have very fine weekends, give it all up for the screaming festivities of The Dreadful Flying Glove, and I'll see you guys on Monday.

Slideshow: Untitled 2009 Theater Production, Creation Session #1: Belfort, France (June 20 - 25, 2009)

2009-06-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

----
Belfort, our lodgings, the CCN

Constructing the sketch set *

* for the real set, the 'forest' will be fleshed out such that the entire stage will hold a dense realistic thicket of trees, earth, rocks, fallen branches, leaves, etc., intersected by a small manmade trail, and the front of the stage will be covered with a transparent screen to give the feeling that one is watching a theater piece occurring inside a large diorama.

The supervisors: Gisele Vienne (director), Stephen O'Malley (score), Shiro Takatani (holograms & special effects), and, not pictured, DC (texts and dramaturgy)

The performers: Margret Sara Gudjonsdottir, Jonathan Capdevielle, Jonathan Schatz
Margret plays an aspiring Olympics gymnast who realizes over the course of the piece that she's not talented enough and has wasted her life. Jonathan Capdevielle plays Margret's trainer. He's obsessed with her and has just raped her in the forest before the piece begins. Jonathan Schatz plays the member of a famous rock band who just murdered his girlfriend and has ventured into the forest hoping to disappear.

Warm ups, conference, make up test

Early, primitive holography tests

Creation & rehearsals

Farewell dinner

----

2009-06-26T00:49:00.000-07:00

p.s. Hey. Wow, Michael Jackson, that's big. I was asleep when all that happened and woke up into a world swallowed by the news. I'm know I'm weird, but my reservoir of sadness goes to Sky Saxon , whose death earlier yesterday is now buried in the giant shadow. On a hugely more trivial note, my back is still fucked up, but I have a tentative plan to cease mentioning that fact as of this minute. Above are pix from the Belfort experience. I'm not sure how interesting they'll prove or how legible the work we did will be in the images, as we're at an early stage of the piece's development, but I share them simply in order to share them. Any questions or anything, just ask. Alerts: (1) For those of you who are in NYC and its environs, know that tomorrow the 27th from 5 to 7 pm at Printed Matter , 195 Tenth Avenue (btwn 21st St. and 22nd St.), there'll be a party to celebrate the publication of 'The Voidoid', Richard Hell's great, long o.o.p. 1973 book which is being reissued with illustrations by the amazing artist and distinguished local Kier. Hell will read from the book, and both he and Kier will sign copies, and it's all completely free. It's kind of a serious must of an event, if you ask me. (2) Equally of high note, if you are in San Francisco or its environs, know that on Sunday the 28th from 4 to 6 pm at 2nd Floor Projects , 3740 25th Street, no. 205, the amazing writer and d.l. Stephen Boyer will be reading a new piece called 'andmoreagain' that was created for the very art show wherein he will be standing and reciting. Your attendance is very recommended by yours truly. Now I'll head onwards and try to cover the comments from Wednesday and yesterday. ** Steven Trull, Steven! Where've you been, man. I've missed you. Fill me in if you have a minute or two, okay? ** Put The Lotion In The Basket, Hey, Nick. I caught your comment just before my internet blackout the day before yesterday, and I tried that crossing the feet trick, and it did help, and it's still helping me. I even did it on the rocking train yesterday, which required a bit of stealth. So thank you, man. You're now officially my favorite pain killer. Ha ha, but it's true. When do you take off for Spain? Early next week? ** Pascal, Hey. Thanks, man. Yeah, into every life a little .... something occasionally falls. What are you up to that brings you into an internet cafe in Dublin? ** David c., Hey. To materialize my inner geek for a moment, any seeable pix of your balloon animal making session? I'm actually trying to work a bit of balloon animal into my novel, which I suppose explains something or other. ** Roger Clarke, Oh, yes, I think I recall you telling me about your own back related hell. The doctor says I need to walk a lot and not sit in a chair for long stretches. The former advice is easy to take and fulfill, but the latter is the wrench in the works considering my, err, lifestyle. Hope the Isle is lovely, and I'll try to hook up with you by email this weekend in hopes we can start cementing a real meet up. ** Chris, Hey. Yeah, the traveling yesterday wasn't a big help, and I suppose the fact that I was traveling with Stephen and helping him get his battalion of guitars and amps and stuff on and off the train wasn't the smartest ever move, but that's what friends are for. You're the one who sent the Iggy 'Sixteen' clip, right? Nice. I like that particular Iggy album/period. Do you know that song ... is it called 'I'm Only 5'1"'? I love that. Great about the NYU visit. I heard back from Marvin last week, and he said he'd do all he could to help you/us. Wow, I only vaguely recall that text Ishmael is talking about. I sure hope it's somewhere in the 'Them' files. I imagine it must be. I'm totally blanking on that text. Weird. ** David, Oh, I like the idea of my skeleton being an ally who must be monitored. That was beautiful. If I steal that for my novel, you'll get a footnote. ** Stan_cz, Ugh, on the seriousness of this new mom fallout. Well, hopefully you'll be away from her soon one way or another. My apartment in LA isn't too far from LACC, just up the Avenue, almost walking distance. Interesting. Yeah, I'm not an expert on that school, but I've known people who've attended, and, basically, from what I understand, going there would be a way to get you to LA but not necessarily a way for you to learn anything particularly special. But I don't know how the school is faring in terms of its quality at the very moment. I've never heard of Duotrope's Digest before. Hm. I'll go fool around with it and see what use it might be from my perspective. Maybe others here have used it. ** Bernard Welt, I guess I'll have an audio peek at the new Tortoise. They've always just seemed to me like they were a few IQ and hipster points north of the easy listening genre. Not my thing. But I've certainly thrown away the wrong band before. 'Year One', huh? Really? Hm, okay, probably when it's rentable then. ** Alan, I don't know a lot about the origin of the Burroughs 'essay' on my work. As it was told to me, Burroughs wrote it himself. It was just a think out loud reaction to his having read 'Closer' and 'Frisk', I think. As far as what I think of it, it's hard for me to get beyond how incredibly honored I feel that he was inspired to write something about my work. I thought it was quite beautiful and curiously thought out. I haven't looked at it since the Leora Lev book first came out, but I should. The early Keanu Reeves circa the 'River's Edge', 'Permanent Record', 'Bill and Ted', 'Prince of Pennsylvania' era was someone I was thinking about and using a character model when writing 'Frisk', I think most particularly re: the character 'Henry'. Reeves might actually be referenced in 'Frisk' too, I can't remember. That's the connection. No, I don't have a problem with you photocopying the correspondence. If you were going to print or quote from it, it might be good to run that by me first, but, no, it's totally fine for you to do that as far as I'm concerned. Thanks, Alan. ** SYpHA_69, Well, you got the psychiatrist's number, so that's a good step, right? You think you're going to call him and set up an appointment? If your doctor's right about the source of your symptoms, that kind of 'treatment' could be the best medicine for what's ailing you, you know? Good news about you beginning to get back into your writing, obviously. The muse dictates when that should begin, and making art can be something of a curative thing as well, of course. ** Marcus Whale, Hey. Oh, that writing by you is beautiful. Everyone, you might think about heading over here and reading a lovely short piece of writing by the artist, writer, musician, and d.l. Marcus Whale if you have a minute. Wait, you did a collab thing with Kiddiepunk? Whoa, I want to hear more about that. That's as fascinating a meeting of two talents as I can think of. Oscar's a music artist? ** Kier, So you're in NYC now, obviously. What do you think? Is everything okay? Etc.? Man, I so, so wish I could pop into Printed Matter tomorrow, and I hope someone who does attend takes pix and posts them somewhere or passes them on to me so all your buddies and admirers around here can have the virtual experience. ** Ken Baumann, Thanks a lot, Ken. Hey, I came across Michael Kimball's 'life story on a postcard' post about you yesterday. That was quite interesting. And the one about Shane Jones too. Very nice blog he has going on over there. I just ordered MK's novel after having intended to for months. Are you and the writing and everything else good? ** JW Veldhoen, Man, weird how deathy your birthday accidentally ended up being. Including Sky Saxon, who, if I'm recalling correctly, you were also a big fan of like me. ** Trinie, Hey! Thanks, pal. Now that I'm 'home' and have internet everywhere I look and can walk without screaming and sit while only screaming very softly once again, I'll be all over your email pronto. Are you still pre-rugged nature trip? ** NB, Betterness seems to be in the works for me, yes. So I have you and your bizarre home rituals to thank. Well, thank you! And, well, other than my back, hm, well, the theater thing was great, and now I'm getting shit done and trying to work on my novel a bit before I head off to London for the 'Jerk' shows. That's kind of my whole story, I guess. Nothing quite as dramatic and impendingly (not a word, I know) life changing as your current situation. Fingers crossed about the tattoo guy stuff. I mean, heck, why not? I'd like to have some writing news from you by Monday, it's true. That would be most welcome. ** Mark, Oh, Mark, that is so incredibly sweet of you. Plus, it's pretty and it touched every part of my soul that isn't being squirmed into a balloon animal by my aching back. I have to ... Everyone, the wonderful and multi-faceted artist and d.l. Mark composed a 'get well' song for me, and I swear to Whoever that if you share in my listening experience, you will get well too, whatever your malady of the day might be. It's right here. Give that dog a Tastee Treat, and give yourself a big hug and pretend those warm arms are mine. Thank you, thank you! ** Bs, Hey, welcome. Wow, your blog is terrific. Those Diana Davies photos are really something, just to mention what's sitting at the blog's top. A pleasure. And I just had a quick initial look at the work on your site, and a major ditto re: that intro too. Glad you liked the Eddo Stern stuff. Yeah, I think he's pretty fantastic. I was lucky enough to be able to include an earlyish piece of his in the most recent gallery show I curated called 'The Funeral Home' at Marc Foxx in LA. Anyway, nice to have you here. I hope you'll delurk more often. ** Roger P, For better or worse, I was both my own page boy and Stephen O'Malley's page boy yesterday, which wasn't the wisest move, but I seem to have survived even if perhaps I've now taken a baby step backwards in my recovery. Oh, well. Yury swims in Paris, and I should join him, and I think I probably will. Swimming would be a good thing, yeah, maybe not right at the moment, ouch, but as future preventative. How are you today? ** Math t, Wheeee, indeed. I'm right there. If you can take any Kier pix, please do, yeah? If not, no big. ** Creative Massacre, Most of the photographers I know and most respect are all about 35 mm film, so, yeah, I understand. What do you like to photograph? What interests you as a photographer, or is there any common theme or subject or whatever to your photographing? ** Misanthrope, Balloon animal making in person is kind of sexy, although balloon animal makers themselves don't tend to be so sexy, even when they're doing such a sexy thing. Weirdly or not weirdly, I have no emotional reaction to the MJ death at all. It just seems very, very bizarre and strangely not a vast surprise or something. His music never meant much of anything to me. He was mostly just the weirdest celebrity out there to my way of thinking. Strange thing to say, I guess. ** Panda?, Hey, man. Yeah, I just saw your email in my box this morning. So very cool of you, thank you. I'll open it and build the day and write to you soon. Really, thanks a lot. I really, really can't wait to see it and then see it here. Oh, and now I've seen your comment yesterday. The album is out! I'll go download it as soon as I type the final period here today. This deserves some kind of huge party or something. Damn the limitations of the p.s. Okay ... Everyone, I think a number of you have previously had the mindblowing experience of listening to the music of one of our resident local geniuses, namely the mighty Panda? Well, under the new moniker Pacific Blush, Panda? has just released his first album 'Skeletal Garden' on the virtual Japanese Alice label, and I personally can hardly stand to wait the few minutes it's going to take me to finish this p.s. before I can download it. You, however, needn't wait another moment. You need only click this humble blue phrase . So you guys do that, and then I'll go do that in a bit, and then I'll meet you all back here, okay? Man, that's so exciting! I'll get it pronto like I just said and start living anew in its wake. ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks again for the great yesterday, David, and pass some of that thanks onto Mr. Reed. I was late getting that Governor/affair news. It's starting to feel a lot like Xmas. All those big deaths all at once yesterday, so strange. If I were a superstitious type, I'd be waxing apocalyptic. ** Oscar B., Hey. Yeah, the holograms are still in, but we're having to do a big rethink about them. So far, the original idea of figurative holograms isn't working well, although we're going to try some more options. But we're thinking of going more abstract and trippy and apocalyptic with the holographic stuff as well. Gisele and Stephen are going to Japan in September to work with Shiro in his lab to experiment. We have until October or November to decide what to do because we'll need to shoot the holograms during a window of time around then. Oh, so the Recollets has a big say? Hm, that's very good. Keep me up on the timing because I'll talk to the powers that be more specifically about our collaboration, which could tip the balance in your favor ostensibly. Interesting, cool. ** Bill, Oh, do let me/us know about the microsound email list 'Naked Lunch' thing, yes. I want to try to do something 'NL' related on the blog, and I guess I'd better get on that pretty soon. A Paris residency? Well, that's potentially excellent news as far as I'm concerned. What are the details, if you can say? Is it via Centquatre or somewhere else? I mean, obviously, it would really great to have you here. ** Killer Luka, Yeah, you've had bad back shit, right? Ugh. But I'm limbering up a bit. The new drawing is stunning. Everyone, the startlingly great artist and d.l. Killer Luka has a new drawing eventually intended for a Felicien Rops-themed gallery show in NYC that she has kindly shared with the commenting area's populace and that deserves to have some lurker exposure as well. Hence, I hereby lead you to it. Just awesome, KL. ** Colin, Glad you both dug it and survived the chair fall. That last part could have been a little disaster, speaking as a temporary injury expert. ** Armando, Hey, Armando! It's very, very good to see you, man. I've been over here wondering how and where you were all this time. You sound pretty good, am I right? How are you going to spend your summer, man? Yeah, welcome back! ** Steevee, I know, three in a single day. That's an unusually death weighted set of hours, for sure. ** JoeM, Hey, Joe. Very weird MJ news. Kind of boggling. ** Heliotrope, Yeah, Sky Saxon. Made me sad. What a great, strange voice he had on top of the band's curious stylings. The last thirty seconds of 'I Can't Seem to Make You Mine' are up there with the great treats of rock. Wish I'd seen one of the recent, revived Seeds gigs. The youtube clips make them seem pretty on a par with how good the late era Love gigs usually were. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, I kind of figured that guy would reappear, actually. Gut instinct or whatever. That Gaiman book sounds pretty tasty. Hm. I know exactly where in Paris that I can pick up and flip through a copy at the very least. Glad your skin is settling back into whiteness and politeness. Yeah, things went very well with the theater piece construction. We made a lot of progress for only having four full days to work. Plus, it was a lot of fun, and it was even fun with my back-related misery. The graphics part didn't advance that far, but we figured out some things that we thought would work but that don't in fact work, and that's good. No, it was a train ride. Three and a half hours from Paris with a stop over/train change in a pretty town called Besancon. Belfort is near Dijon, where the mustard comes from. ** Blendin, Pal, sir, my friend, howdy. The back in question betters itself too gradually for my taste, but I'll take the ease where I can get it. Cool: your reaction to 'The Ash Gray Proclamation'. I'm actually pretty proud of that one. Best piece in the book by far for my money. Thanks. Your rambling was music. I liked it. It was good music ... you know, like Oxbow, not like, uh, The Decemberists, to give what I guess is a controversial opinion. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Whoa, that's one hell of a concert line up you just saw. Whoa. Tell me that thing was recorded. Christ, it must have been. People aren't that stupid. Oh, yeah, you can send me revisions. You should do it today, obviously, 'cos otherwise ... well, you know. I'll peel my eyes for them. ** Okay, we're caught up, and things are relatively back to normal around here now. I intro'ed the post up above. It's what it is. Feel no need to do anything out of the ordinary re: it. I'll go download Panda?'s album then walk off my stiff back, and I'll see you tomorrow.

George Box presents ... Honen Matsuri: the Japanese Penis Festival *

2009-06-25T02:41:00.000-07:00

* Courtesy of David Ehrenstein & Bill Reed
----

George Box * Self-Portrait

How could we have missed it? March 15 was Penis Day in Japan . Here are the photos. The actual festival is called Honen Matsuri. Celebrated every March 15 in Komaki, a town about 45 minutes north of Nagoya , Japan , this is the time of year where folks haul out a large wooden penis to give three cheers to fertility and renewal. The custom is an old one that is connected to bringing about a good harvest and having babies.

Yamasa Institute Tagata Jinja
Hounen Matsuri @ Fastrider.net
Hounen Matsuri @ Wikipedia

'The ceremony begins at Tagata Jinja with some preparations and drinking of sake. Based on the discovery of an ancient sword and other artifacts, Tagata Shrine is thought to be over 1,500 years old. There are a number of interesting items around the shrine, stone and woodcarvings, manmade or naturally occuring that, of course, are all of the phallus-shape. The main attraction of Tagata Shrine is "the big one". Every year a new phallus is carved from a single cedar tree trunk. In the middle of winter, a tree is cut down and brought to the shrine for purification. Then a master craftsman using traditional tools and wearing ritually-purified clothing slowly carves the tree trunk to be a giant phallus that will be featured in the parade that year. After that year's Hounen Matsuri is finished, the giant phallus is stored here.

'Before the procession can begin, special rites must be performed, prayers must be said, and the participants have to get good and drunk. All the men who carry the large wooden penis are 42 years old. An age which is thought to be unlucky and, like the women aged 36, requires spiritual labors such as carrying a gigantic phallus through the streets of one's town. It takes 60 men working in alternating shifts to deliver this offering to Tagata Shrine. The 8-foot long phallus by itself weighs in at 280 kg (620 pounds), but inside it's wooden palanquin.. together they weigh an astounding 400 kg (885 pounds). The appearance of the phallus changes a bit from year to year. Sometimes it is very smooth and some years it is carved with many veins. It has also grown larger over the years.' -- Fastrider.net

Ceremony & Parade

Souvenirs & Snacks

Media

(2:06)

(0:45)

(6:15)

(0:29)

(1:45)

About George Box

George Box is a visual artist and performer. He appeared in Andy Milligan's infamous cult horror film 'Torture Garden ', and, under the name Rocky Box, he was a frequent performer in the early theater works of Charles Ludlum, including 'Turds in Hell', Ludlum's legendary adaptation of 'Satyricon'.

http://www.gallerynow.com/box/

from Bill Reed's Early Plastic (Cellar Door Books, 2000):

Early one evening, shortly after moving to New York City in 1962 and finally gathering the courage to walk to and from the subway, at 12th Street and Avenue B I espied a tavern that looked like something straight out of San Francisco's 19th century Barbary Coast. I pressed my nose up against its frosted and etched glass windows to discover the interior fittings were also the genuine article. But the rest of what I saw wasn't.

Instead of a few stragglers from the neighborhood stopped off for a beer on the way home from work, Stanley's Bar was packed with an ethnically heterogeneous, mixed race, overwhelmingly male clientele, almost none of whom looked like they'd just returned from a hard day at the office. Investigating further, I had barely finished downing my first martini---the only mixed drink I knew how to ask for up till then---when the person seated beside me at the bar struck up a conversation. She turned out to be a folk singer, Sue Hoover, with some eye-opening, dog-eat-dog tales about the folk music racket---especially about Joan Baez. More small talk ensued before I was invited by Sue to join some just-arrived friends seated at a nearby table. One of them was a fairly well-known Australian journalist/rock critic, Lillian Roxon. I was impressed. I said I was a writer, too. Inasmuch as I'd published regularly in my hometown paper, the Charleston [West Virginia] Gazette, that was the truth. Up until that moment, however, I had never much thought of myself in those terms.

Later that night I departed with George Box, an amiable, good-looking fellow about my age. Going back to his house, we smoked a joint (my first ever) and partook of some hot male-to-male action. Afterward he told me how Lillian had acted as trystmaker: "Oh, you could get him in five seconds. Go introduce yourself."

Thirty-five years later [now forty-five] George and I remain friends. Even if you don't happen to make sexual contact like George & I did that night, cruising, as utopianist/educator Paul Goodman once observed, gives you something to do during those long layovers at airports.

The socio-decadological period known as The Sixties didn't really begin until the drugs kicked in big time during the middle of the decacde and continued well into the Seventies. The received wisdom is that if you can substantially recollect the who, why, where, what, and when of those volatile times, you really weren't a part of it. But I remember a lot (it helps that I kept diaries). There are lapses, however: after Janis Joplin died in 1970, George was surprised I couldn't recall having known her. Recently he e-mailed me more details: "Janis arrived in New York with her girl friend Linda en group with Ken Hill [a mutual friend of George's and mine] on his return from San Francisco. She was painfully shy, had acne and sat in front of the juke box at Charlie's Bar on Avenue A just listening to every song and singing along for hours, never saying boo to anybody." This was before she'd turned pro. While I recall Charlie's, a kind of gay(er) Stanley's, Janis still eludes me---even with the assist of George's memory prompt. Eventually she went on to develop a public persona that no one---no matter how ripped on drugs---could forget.
----

p.s. Hey. My major thanks to distinguished local David Ehrenstein and honorary d.l. Bill Reed for ferrying me today's post of posts. Give it your all today, if you will. As I explained yesterday, I'm sans the ability to interact with you today seeing as how I am at this very minute riding a train from Belfort to Paris whereupon I will meet and greet you in my fairly usual style tomorrow. I'm writing this in the middle of yesterday's afternoon during a short break from testing various holographic possibilities, and so I don't have a lot to tell you that would inch the narrative of my situation any further into the future. Presumably I will have news or something by the time I see you next. Take care, and thanks for your kind attention and for any comments you decide to leave in the meantime. Later.

How to Make Balloon Animals Day

2009-06-24T00:50:00.000-07:00

----

Oscar Statuette (10:39)

Dog (2:46)

Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee's Penis, and more (3:09)

Parrot on a Swing (5:13)

Xmas Tree (8:36)

Inflatable Bag Monsters (2:25)

Rainbow (4:16)

Pikachu (9:05)

Wolverine Claws (10:01)

Baseball Cap (2:55)

Killer Whale (3:01)

Bling (1:51)

Starship Enterprise (3:20)

Grandfather Clock (3:41)

Basketball with Hoop (4:16)

Fire Hydrant (7:32)

Atrocities (1:43)

3 (3:52)
----

2009-06-24T00:37:00.000-07:00

p.s. Hey. Gradual improvement on my end. I'm significantly more mobile and less constantly in pain, and I think I should be reasonably okay by the weekend if all the train traveling and lugging my bags around tomorrow doesn't do a tailspin number on me. Speaking of tomorrow, the p.s. will have one more bad day before everything returns to normal again on Friday. Specifically, I have a morning train back to Paris, and I won't be anywhere near an internet access point before I leave, so tomorrow's post will be pre-set today to launch at the appointed time tomorrow, meaning there'll yet another p.s. that consists of nothing but an intro to the post and a general hello, but I'll plan to catch up with both the comments from today and from tomorrow on Friday. The theater piece constructing continues to go really well, although there's still a ton of work to do, but we do have almost a year ahead of us to finesse the thing. We've now roughed out the structure of the entire piece, and the main problem is a technically very challenging long central section where we want there to be this ferocious storm -- the piece is set deep in a forest, and the finished set will resemble a very large diorama, a la the Natural History Museum model, depicting a very realistic dense forest -- where wind and other elements will shake the trees, blow things around, maybe knock down a tree or two, and occasion the arrival of ghosts (the holograms) who'll deliver these strange messages from the beyond and/or from the characters' subconscious or from ...( ? )... to the characters. (It's hard to explain in a sentence or two.) Getting that part right, if we can, is going to take quite a while. But the rest of the piece, although very much a moveable sketch and minus the score, is initially in place. Tomorrow I'll post some photos so you'll have a better picture of what I'm talking about. We might finally have a title, although I'm going to hold off passing it along until we sleep on it for a while. So all of that is good. Today we have a long rehearsal and final work session to get a fragment of the piece ready for the required public work-in-progress viewing tonight. So those are the basics, and I'll get to the comments now because the longer I sit and type, the more the pain takes me over. ** Ken Baumann, Always very happy to add inches to your already considerable stock of books, man. Thanks. ** Roger p, Hey. Yeah, I'm on an upward swing, too gradually for my taste, but I cant, you know, complain. Oh sure, Malick's 'The New World': no surprise I love it passionately as I do all of Malick's work. Did you like it? ** Misanthrope, Hey. I don't like taking breaks. Weird, huh? But I might be forced to for the four days we're in London doing 'Jerk' due to WiFi impairment, I'm not sure yet. Oh, the stuff or whatever comment yesterday wasn't about what you sent me. The painkillers and pain were swarming me when I wrote that, and I don't even remember what I meant. I think it was about the comment itself, and I think it was supposed to be a joke or something, fuck knows. ** Katsim, Oh, so you might be on fabled Fraser Island at this very moment. I want to hear and see pix if you take any. Have a serene blast. ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. Thanks for the good wishes. My back seems to be easing back into its more natural subservient relationship to my brain and nerve centers. Yeah, Butor doesn't seem to be much read these days, and he's also known as the kind of lost or black sheep member of the Nouveau Roman who didn't ride the wave of interest back in the 60s into coolness the way a lot of his comrades did. But he's very good, as you already know. ** AK, Hey, AK. Very nice to have you here. Neil Codling ... I know I know who that is, but I think my pain killers are blocking the trail between what I know and what I know I know. I'll refresh myself via google and then slap my forehead with an accompanying duh. I'll go check your blog straight away. Thanks for the pass along. I'm actually writing this while forcibly offline or else I'd look at it right now. Thanks, and, yeah, do feel free to hang out here any old time. ** Put The Lotion In The Basket, Yeah, I'm trying my best to avoid low chairs and sofas because I've been finding out first hand what they do to a poor innocent lower back. Of course it's all very low seating and couches around this theater space. I've actually just started experimenting with typing this standing up with my laptop on a ... what do they call them ... shit, pain killer-related brain attack ... those stands that hold speakers' papers when they do lectures or whatever. It helps my back, but it's a weird position to type from, and it makes my arms tired and crampy, so I think I'll have to go type sitting down again in a second. Man, I'm a mess. Anyway, blah blah. I don't know what M.A.D. is up to these days. We lost track of each other, but, yeah, isn't his 'Userlands' piece fantastic? Maybe he's still reading the blog out there somewhere and will see the mention and show up and clear the fog away from himself. All the best to you today, Nick. ** Magick Mike, Yeah, Verow is a serious dick, if you ask me. I like Parker Posey and Craig Chester in the movie, and that's pretty much it for me. Well, and the score that poor, very generous Lee Ranaldo and Peter Christopherson created for the film. ** Marcus Whale, Hey, pal. Like I said, I'm forced to do the p.s. offline today, but when I get online to post this, I'll go see what Cougar Flashy is all about, thank you. Nice name obviously. ** Math t, Same problem here. I can't look at your Kier drawings until I can get online to post this later, but I can't wait for my sneak peek, trust me. It's so fucking nice that you're back to working on your art with passion. That really, really is a lovely thing. A very nice real life top ten list tpp. ** Jose, Hey, dude. Yeah, I sort of got this vague idea that maybe Semiotext(e) might end up reprinting 'Strange Landscape', but I'm not sure if that's a phantom bit of news or not. Grove Press should just reprint the fucking thing, but they won't 'cos there's no dough in doing so. Maybe I should start scanning and posting it here as serial or something. Great about you being in the end phase of your novel, and, yeah, I love that tinker tinker phase. I can't wait to get there. ** SYpHA_69, So, today you see your doctor? Don't let him get away before you ask every question you can think of, okay? Give him the third degree while you've got his attention, and, of course, let me/us know what happens. ** Scunnard, Yeah, if we can get the hologram thing working right, it's going to be very cool. It's very complicated, as you can imagine. There's the getting the 'gram itself looking cool and weird enough because it isn't easy to get holograms to not look like video or like the ones in 'Star Wars' or whatever, and then there's getting them to move around in the space, 'cos you have to have all these screens placed at different points on the stage and also have the screens invisible, which is hard in our case because our piece needs an elaborate lighting set up and so on. I think we're going to suss it, and we need to because the other options aren't nearly as interesting. ** Bacteriaburger, Hey. Oh yeah, of course I remember your porn version of Winesburg, Ohio. That's not exactly a prospect one could easily forget. I'm really glad to hear you're back working on it, and I love the idea of it being illustrated. I don't think that would necessarily make it harder to publish. It might even be more of a lure for publishers. Obviously, you should do exactly the book you want to do and not worry about that right now. Wow, a day on Nifty Archive from you! That's awesome, thank you so much! That's super kind, and I'll await it with much excitement. ** Shane Jones, Thanks a lot, Shane. I really look forward to cracking it as soon as it gets here. Very kind of you. ** Heliotrope, Right, I read that about Kodachrome yesterday via a typically ultra-lame Aol-style headline: 'Sorry Paul Simon, They Took Your Kodachrome Away'. Hardy-har-har. You good, M.? ** Flit, Thanks, Flit. Like I said, I think I'll get a vacation (from the blog anyway) while I'm in London although, typically, I'm looking for ways to cancel the vacation part. ** Jesse Hudson, Me too, Jesse. Me too. ** October, Hey, pal. Oh, uh, things suck on the body/health front at the moment, but artistically, things are pretty interesting. What about you? Tell me what's up with you on all your fronts please? ** Steevee, Making moves like that on someone who works at a place where you shop or whatever are always so tricky. It has a weirdly preventative organization or hierarchy or something, like the space where you meet and your positions are so pre-set or something. You just have to be inventive, but I can't think of a good proposal. Hm. ** NB, Where'd you run? Anyway, hey, thanks for being you, etc. I'm getting better. I had to cancel my usual Wednesday Watusi lesson, but otherwise ... ** Stan_cz, Thanks, man, and really sorry to heat the mom-son stuff has flared up again. If history has a lesson, these bad spat phases have always passed rather quickly if memory serves, and you usually end up celebrating her good side to some degree. So here's hoping the pattern holds. ** Dan, Wonderful news about 'Weak Species' obviously. Great, great! I'm writing this offline as I said, but when I get online I'll go read the reviews. Fantastic, Dan. You and it so deserve that, and I feel pleased and proud over here too. ** Mark, The problem with knowing whether there are young French writers on a par with the masters we already know is that new French fiction rarely, rarely gets translated into English nowadays. There are writers whom I'm told are incredible and who, yeah, are apparently not of sufficient interest to American or British publishers. Which sucks very badly. 'Musion holograph'. Interesting. Yeah, I definitely will search that out, and I'll ask our holograph expert and collaborator Shiro if he knows about it when he walks in the door. Thanks very much, Mark. ** Alan, Yeah, Mathews' 'The Journalist' is really terrific. I forgot all about that. Excellent piece by a guy who sort of can't not make excellence at every turn. You can go ahead and ask me questions if you want. I'm getting better fairly quickly, and by the next time I do a proper p.s. on Friday, I should hopefully be as raring to go as I ever am. ** Creative Massacre, Hey! An early very happy birthday, pal. Awesome you're doing tons better now. I definitely feel more of a hop, skip, and jump in your comment's steps, if that makes any sense. If not, painkillers are to blame. Yeah, tell me more when you get a chance, about the photography and everything else. ** JW Veldhoen, Oh, whatever I said yesterday was writ in worse than sand or water and probably meant zip. You like Tortoise? I can't stand them. Why do you like them? I'm eternally looking for a reason to come around on them. (As luck would have it, my pain is reaching mindfuck level, so you simply must not hold me to anything I've said today either.) Twenty pages, good. I know that for sure. ** Christopher/Mark, Thank you, man. Backs are significant, and mine has been a monkey on my back, as it were, since I was a kid, but I'm still the 'top' in that relationship thus far. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Having twice in my life been hospitalized due to extreme sunburn that caused my body to swell up to the point where the doctors joked that I looked like a red snowman, I feel for you on that front, and on the grr front too. A late, heartfelt happy birthday and love to you on top of all that, my friend. ** Panda?, Hey, man. I can't wait to hear your album. That's so exciting! Oh, my back ... it was like it happened for no reason at all. I bent over to tie my shoe and, wham, I was suddenly lying on the floor yelling in agony. Strange, but that tends to happen to me once or twice a year. I would absolutely love a Day on pacific tree octopuses. I really, really would. I'm asking you please, and I'm telling you thanks. Awesome. Yeah, You-x mentioned your new band name. I love the new name actually. It's super warm and poetic. Great to see you, pal. ** Colin, Hey. Very glad you liked the Butor post, of course. Yeah, 'Inventory' is a great book. I need to find my copy of that. I'm glad you're writing. If there's any opportunity to see any of the new work, let me know, okay? Maybe there's some on your blog, and, if so, I'll check when I get online. ** Oscar B, The back is still pretty fragile, stiff, and a real ouch machine, so I'm not counting my lucky stars yet. I think the holograms will stay in the piece. It would be hard to realize the piece as we intend it without them. It's just a matter of how to do it, how 'human' they can be without looking cheesy, stuff like that. If you find out more about how that residency thing works, let me know, like if you find out how much 'say' the Recollets has in the choice, for instance, so I know how to play whatever pull I have with them. Yeah, I'll be meeting you at long last so soon. Crazy great. Good luck with the acing of the final show. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Really, you're serious about that Latin thing? (I'm a bit too zonked and simultaneously blinded by cringes to suss out tones.) If so, wow, irrationally cool, oh yeah. ** Nick Hudson, Hey, Nick. Back sucks. In fact, I've pretty much reached my limit of p.s.ing for the day as the pain of sitting and typing has reached torture status. But cool about the cello. On Stein, gosh, I guess I'd go for a good compilation unless someone else here as a better idea. Take care, man. ** Right. I made it through just in time, and now I'll go walk off the lower back-centric agony. The post: I don't know. I got all fascinated by animal balloon making one afternoon last week, and the post is what resulted. Have fun with it or something. Remember that tomorrow's p.s. will be a non-interactive quickie, and that I'll be your host of hosts or whatever again on Friday. See ya.

Spotlight on ... Michael Butor's 'Degrees' (1960)

2009-06-23T00:22:00.000-07:00

----

'All the maps you have are of no use, all this work of discovery and surveying; you have to start off at random, like the first men on earth; you risk dying of hunger a few miles from the richest stores.' -- Michel Butor, Degrees

____________

'Michel Butor (1926 - ) came to prominence in the 1950s with his novels Passage de Milan (1954) and La Modification (1957). Like Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, Simon and other writers of the new novelists, he refused to follow traditional concepts of plot and characterization. Instead of describing reality these writers have questioned our usual way of seeing reality. In L'Emploi du temps (1959, Passing Time) the protagonist, Jacques Revel, tries to find sense of the streets and buildings of a strange city, but feels that he is imprisoned within a loom. He has come to work in an English town called Bleston. He wanders disorientated along rows of houses or passes on a bus the building he left just half an hour ago. "...little by little I came to feel that my bad luck was due to some malevolent will and that all these offers were so many lies, and I had to struggle increasingly against the impression that all my efforts were foredoomed to failure, that I was going round and round a blank wall, that the doors were sham doors and the people dummies, the whole thing a hoax."

'Butor's best-known novel, La Modification, is a story inside story, told throughout in the second person plural. The narrator talks to himself during a train journey from Paris to Rome, before eventually deciding that he will not leave his wife for his mistress. Instead, he elects to write a book that will become La Modification. Again in the following books, Le génie du lieu (1958), Degrés (1960), and Répertoire I (1960) the author attempts to exercise readers' perception of the world.' -- kirjasto.sci.fi

____________

Michel Butor/Auteurs TV (19:49)

A portrait of Michel Butor (2:35)

Prieuré de St Côme : Les livres pauvres de Michel Butor (1:49)

_____________

Michel Butor @ Britannica Online
Michel Butor's books @ Powells.com
Michel Butor interviewed by Anna Otten
About Pierre Coulibeuf's film 'Michel Butor, mobile' (2000)
Barbara Mason's 'Michel Butor: A Checklist
Re: Michel Butor @ Vertigo: Collecting & Reading W.G. Sebald
About Elinor S. Miller's 'Prisms and Rainbows: Michel Butor's Collaborations'
Richard Kostelanetz on Michel Butor's 'Mobile in America'

____________

'On Tuesday, October 12, 1954, Pierre Vernier, a teacher in a Paris lycée, begins setting down an account that is to be a complete record of the life lived by himself, his students, and his fellow teachers. He begins by meticulously recording what he already knows of his students, their relationships to one another, and the books they're studying. Then he's forced to enlist his nephew—who's in his class—to report on the private lives of the other boys. To record all reality, he must know all that has passed, is passing, and will pass through his pupils' minds.

'Degrees is an extraordinary novel exposing one man's obsessive project, the impossibility of its completion, and the damaging effect this obsession has on both Vernier and those who surround him.' -- Dalkey Archive

Excerpt:

I walk into the classroom, and I step up onto the platform.

When the bell stops ringing, I take out a briefcase I have just laid on the desk the alphabetical list of students and the other sheet of white paper, on which they themselves have indicated their seats in this classroom.

Then I sit down, and when all the talking has stopped, I begin to call the roll:

“Abel, Aremelli, Baron . . .”,

trying to fix their faces in my memory, for I don’t know how to recognize them yet, except the ones who were with me last year, you in particular, Pierre,

who raise your brown eyes when I come up to your name,

after “. . . Daval, de Joigny, de Loups”,

before going on to “Estier, Fage Jean-Claude, Fage Henri . . .”,

giving me a smile I don’t want to answer, because it’s obviously better if as many of your classmates as possible were unaware for as long as possible that we’re related, so that in their eyes you’re the same to me as many of them.

Your uncle Henri Jouret, on the other side of the wall behind me, is coping with his senior French students, calling the role, trying to get their seats and faces straight before going to the questions and the analysis of a page of Saint-Simon.

I have already been in this classroom with you. It was our second geography lesson.

“Zola, what can you tell me about the atmosphere?”

“Wolf, what do you know about the internal structure of this planet?”

“And now, Voss, go to the blackboard and tell me about the history of the earth and its principal geological ages.”

While he was standing there thinking up his answers, his hands behind his back, I was watching you out of one eye. The sun fell on your black hair, and on your hands with their bitten nails; your shadow spread over the book you were looking at, you spent a long time over a rather blurred photograph of the Grand Canyon that had a black spot in the middle, so heavy and irregular it looked as if you had made it yourself;

and your Uncle Henri was already on the other side of the wall behind me, with his senior French students, asking one of pupils to begin with the death of Monseigneur, Dauphin of France:

“I found all Versailles gathered there . . .”

frowning when he corrected mistakes, tapping his pencil point on the yellow wood of the desk that like my own was already pitted with little dents, the same way he corrected your mistakes last hour, after collecting your first French compositions on this ultraclassical subject:

“Describe the one day of your vacation that has left the strongest impression in your memory; try to explain why it was this day that seems most memorable.”

He questioned some of you about Rabelais’ life and works, asked for a volunteer to explain Gargantua’s letter to Pantagruel, and selected you from among those who raised their hands, saying in a tone of voice he wanted to sound particularly severe, without looking at you:

“All right, Eller, show us what you know.”

You wondered if you were supposed to read the paragraph in small type, where the editor provided some information about the nature and content of the selection:

asterisk, “having become a student, Pantagruel attends the various French universities . . .”,

or else:

triangle, “Most of the chapters devoted to Pantagruel’s studies. . .”,

or else:

circle, “A more elaborate program will be found in Gargantua; here is the wit itself. . .”,

but suddenly, just as you were going to ask your question, you found yourself facing this uncle, and you stopped, disturbed, no longer sure how to address him, realizing you would have to say “Monsieur” and not be able to, blushing, looking down, rushing through your reading most wildly, pronouncing the words indistinctly, disregarding the punctuation:

“Now it is the minds of men are qualified with all manner of discipline, and the old sciences revised, which for many ages were extinct: now it is that the learned languages are to their Sistine purity restored . . .”

“Eller, please pay attention to the text; start that sentence over again.”

“Now it is that the minds of men . . .”

“That’s better.”

“Are qualified with all manner of discipline, and the old sciences revived, which for many ages were extinct: now it is that the learned languages are to their pristine purity restored . . .”

“Go on.”

“Viz., Greek, without which a man may be ashamed to fall . . .”

“To what?”

“To call himself a scholar, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean and Latin. Printing likewise is now abused . . .”

“Careful!”

“Is now in use, so elegant, and so correct . . .”

In the classroom directly underneath, I was explaining to your seventh-grade schoolmates, in front of the map of ancient Egypt that one of them had brought in from the superintendent’s office,

that we knew the ancient civilization of this country from the monuments it had left, pyramids, hypogea, mastabas, obelisks like the one in the Place de la Concorde,

how Champollion had managed to decipher the hieroglyphics thanks to the Rosetta Stone (Rosetta was a city), now in the British Museum in London, immediately extending our history several thousand years back into time,

how the pharaoh of the first dynasty, Menes, had combined the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, of the valley and the delta, the red and the white, the vulture and the kite,

how this long series of kings and conversions was divided into three chief periods, the Old, the Middle and the New Kingdom,

before coming upstairs to meet your class here,

where I continue calling the roll:

“Jourdan? Absent too? Oh, no, there you are. Speak up! What were you dreaming about? Knorr?”

(he was absent yesterday too),

“He hasn’t come back? All right. Limours?”

“Here.”

“Mouron?”

Sitting in front of you in the first row, Limours casually arranges on his desk his spiral-bound notebook and his second hand history book, on the first page of which he carefully crosses out the former owner’s name with his ballpoint pen, in order to write his own,

he too a pupil, this year, of one of his uncles, Monsieur Bailly, who at this moment is making his seniors on the floor above read Keats’s sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”

(Chapman: 1559-1634):

“ . . . Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like a stout Cortez”

(Cortez, or Cortes: 1485-1547),

“when with eagle eyes

he star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”

(Darien: southernmost part of the isthmus of Panama),

a first cousin of both Monsieur Mouron, father of Alain Mouron who is in this class, and of Madame Daval siting to your right, who is leaning over to ask you for a blotter, because his ink bottle, badly corked, has begun to leak all over his hands.
----

2009-06-23T00:20:00.000-07:00

Hey. I'm a little improved. Actually, I can stand fairly upright and walk a reasonable distance without grabbing onto a wall and screaming, which is huge, but everything is still pretty difficult to do, and I'm woozy-ish from painkillers. All that said, I'd never been to an osteopath before, and now I'm definitely onboard with how magic that practice is. So I guess the improvement over the last 24 hours is significant enough. The hardest, most painful thing at the moment is sitting, but I'm going to try to get back on track today and catch up, albeit quickly and rather feebly, I'm positive, with the comments from the weekend and yesterday. As for the reason I'm here in Belfort, I'll just say that, my impairment notwithstanding, the rehearsals for the new theater piece are going very well so far. We've roughed out two of the piece's main and most important sections, and today we're going to try out a third one. Stephen was up all last night working on parts of the score, and we'll start working with them today. The main problem so far has been the holograms, which aren't working well yet and still have the problematic look and quality of video projections, so we're experimenting with different techniques, kinds of screens, etc., and we might have to rethink that aspect of the piece altogether. We're committed to doing a public presentation of the work in progress on Wednesday night, so we're trying to finesse what that will be. Anyway, I'm documenting the rehearsals with my camera as best I can, and I'll post the results on Friday so those who are interested can see what I'm talking about more clearly. All right, I'm going to speed through the comments now because the pain of sitting is already starting to distract and bother me. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey. Oh, yeah, the reissue of that Serge Gainsbourg album really should have been in my list too. Thanks a lot for the list. ** Bacteriaburger, Wow, long time indeed. You good? What are you working on? Anything new we can see? ** Put The Lotion In The Basket, Hey, Nick. Listen, discovering your work has definitely been a huge highlight of the year, a 'counting one's lucky stars' kind of thing. That stupid comment you got is pretty funny. My stuff used to get the exact same reaction, except with William Burroughs' name instead. Someday your name will be in that sentence too when it's applied to some future young 'edgy' writer. People can be so dumb when they're intimidated. ** Magick Mike, Hey, man. What a pleasure. Great list. I noted the stuff I don't know. On the 'Frisk' film, yeah, that's me making a cameo walking down the hall. The letter to Marcus Hu was a statement I asked him to read at the film's premiere, at which point that ending you mentioned wasn't included yet. My issues with that film are vast and go far beyond the real or not thing. That was just a compromise: if Marcus had read my statement re: the ending, I would have kept my problems with the film to myself, but he didn't read it as he had promised to do, and then Todd Verow gave an interview where he talked about how hard it had been to make a film based on a novel that was such a pretentious, badly written piece of shit, and that was that, which even isn't what you asked me. Blame pain and its killers. ** I have to speed up now and stop interacting so much or I'll never get through this, sorry. ** Pisycaca, Hey, great, I can't wait to see you guys! ** Stephen Elliott, Hey, Stephen! Its an honor to have you here. I need to check out that Eggers. Sorry for the brevity, but thanks a lot for commenting. Respect. ** SYpHA_69, Hope you're feeling a lot better by now. I was slipped an mp3 of the Consumer Electronics album, and I understand it's out there somewhere to be found and grabbed. ** Bill, I don't know most of the things on your list. I will. Thanks. ** Mark Gluth, Hey, M. Thanks a lot. ** Heliotrope, Oh, fuck, RIP indeed. I hadn't heard that. Sad, very sad. ** Darby, Hey, welcome. I like both. BSC should have been in my list too, actually. ** Steevee, Thanks for the list, and, yeah, sounds like a clean break is the way to go on that critic jerk. Fingers crossed and very nice initial news re: the Polish guy. ** Alexander, Hey. Welcome to here. I don't know 'Waste'. I'll check it out. Thank you. ** Reynard, Hey. Wow, an awesome amount of new people today. Thanks. Yeah, I try to keep my oldness purely technical. It's pretty easy to do, so I don't know what all the boring older guys' excuses are. Oh, I liked that Chelsea Martin book too. I forgot about it when doing the list. Yeah, that was really good. Thanks for coming by. ** Colin, Hey, Colin. How are you? What's been happening? How's the writing on all fronts going? Really nice to see you. ** Jesse Hudson, Hey, buddy. Everything's either fuzzy or jolting today. Strange sensation. Talk to you later. ** David Ehrenstein, I have to read that 'Anal Retentive whatever' story, it sounds good, ha ha. Thank you, sir. ** Ken Baumann, Hey, Ken. Yeah, I think Shane Jones is sending me his novel. I can't wait. And you mentioned 'Waste' too. Okay, I'm going to get that as soon as I'm enclosed in Paris again. I'll hope to give a more lucid update on the theater stuff tomorrow. I'm still vagued out by painkillers and interrupted by stabs of heavy discomfort this morning. Take care, K. ** JW Veldhoen, I'll hold you to that, naturally. ** Adam, Hey, Adam, welcome. I wish I were able to be a better host today, but that 'hey' was a linguistic glass of champagne, if you didn't notice. I want to see Ponytail live. And Religious Girls too. Thanks. ** Rigby, Those were, like, the perfect comments for my exactly inexact state at the moment. Top Ten, easily. ** Kiddiepunk, Cool, man. ** Joshua Caleb Weibley, Hey. Very cool of you grace my place. Yeah, I'm all torn in half about the Blur reunion. If Coxon hadn't been in such good shape music-wise of late, I think I'd roll my eyes. Agree on the MSP and on Wavves too, come to think of it. Nice. Yeah, thanks a lot. ** Tfcinnyc, Wow, all you new guys ... this is cool. I'm not normally such a mealy mouthed space case. Such bad timing. Blah blah blah ... oh, I haven't read the Lisa Jarnot book entirely, but I have read either a piece of it or something else by her, and, yeah, it was really terrific! Good call. I'm gonna get that. Thanks a lot. ** Oscar B, Hey. Thanks, pal. Any year is good for Rites of Spring. Cool, cool. ** Wolf, Howdy, Wolf. I'm fucked in the head and lower back today and getting more fucked by the minute. Still, you ever get osteopathy done on you? Man, it's pretty special. ** Alan, Ha ha ha, what? That was complicated when you're on painkillers. In a confusingly good way. ** I'm starting to feel too much pain. I have to move even faster. I'm sorry. ** David, Gracias. ** Bernard Welt, ... saves the day. ** Mark, Wow, nice. ** Alexandre, Dude, hey, what's the haps? I'm in Belfort. You ever been here? I'm in pain. You ever been in pain? It sucks in a very uninteresting way. When am I going to see you? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hey, man. I'm going to have to go back and read your list later on or tomorrow or something because I'm losing my grace period. ** Tonio k, Hey, pal. I owe you an email, which I'l write to you soon, but thank you so much for what you sent, and I'm going to use it proudly and very gratefully. ** Thomas Moronic, My extreme pleasure, man. ** NB, Excellent add on the FB add by that tattoo guy. Are your fellow NYT employees giving a going away cupcake? ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Like with Chilly Jay Chill, I've lost the ability to process a comment as rich with suggestions as yours for the moment, so a raincheck. Thank you. ** Distimium, Hey, my friend. Do I understand you correctly that you're doing a Buenos Aires Day for my blog? If so, wow, thank you, and if I misunderstood, I apologize. Pain's effect on thinking is really weird. ** Fanny burney, Oh, thank you so much about the Chris Lemmerhirt post and the posts like that. That means a lot. Oh, on your poems, well, I'm too fucked up by pain and its killers to give you any good suggestions this morning, which sucks. You could show me your poems first, and I could read them and ... what's it called ... vet (vett?) them? Anything I can do to help, I will. ** Steven Vineis, Hey, man. I'll try to check out 'Black Sabbatical'. Thanks. Sorry to be quick ... I'm seriously getting eaten by pain now. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hi, man. I'm out of it. I'm crawling to the finish line now. That said, I don't like you not having someone to talk to. Is that Valentine guy worth this? I don't know. Best, best, best to you, and I'll hope to be lucid tomorrow. ** Blake Butler, Hey! I'm totally like you on the Gaspar Noe. I'm losing my shit waiting to see it. Last I heard, I think it'll open in France in ... early August? ** Misanthrope, Too much pain now. Can't get the stuff in your stuff. Sorry, sorry. Must finish this. Love you, dude. ** Winter Rates, Thanks, hey, sorry. ** Nick Hudson, Don't know about the phone thing. If I get a signal, I guess so. We'll figure it out. I'm all about Messian's (sp?) organ music at the moment. ** David, Hey. ** Okay, I had planned to respond to the comments from yesterday too, but I just can't. When I looked at them yesterday in the early evening, which was the last time I looked, they were full of good wishes and kindness, and so I'll thank you all collectively, okay? If someone said or asked me something in particular, can you post it again today so I'll see it and respond tomorrow? Thank you. Very sorry for this crappy p.s., but I wanted to get things restarted here, and I'll surely be more with it and a more attentive friend tomorrow. What's the post today ... oh, yeah, Michel Butor. Very interesting writer. Hope the Day interests some of you. Thanks for your patience, everyone. Things will be more normalized by tomorrow, I'm pretty certain. Mark my words. Bye.

'The World Is Down': Eddo Stern's Visual Art Consoles

2009-06-22T00:07:00.000-07:00

----

'Born in Tel Aviv and San Francisco based, Eddo Stern's work ranges from video game modifications, to machinima (cinema made through video games sequences) and installations. His work explores new modes of narrative and documentary, fantasies of technology and history, and cross-cultural representation in film, computer games, and the Internet. He works in various media including computer software, hardware and game design, kinetic sculpture, performance, and film and video production. His short machinima films include "Sheik Attack", "Vietnam Romance", ”Landlord Vigilante” and "Deathstar". He is the founder of the now retired cooperative C-level where he co-produced the physical computer gaming projects "Waco Resurrection", "Tekken Torture Tournament", "Cockfight Arena”, and the internet meme conference "C-level Memefest" He is currently developing the sensory deprivation game “Darkgame" recently featured at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.' -- The Influencers

* The Influencers: Eddo Stern
* Eddo Stern Official Website
*Eddo Stern @ Postmasters Gallery
* An interview with Eddo Stern
* Eddo Stern's 'A Touch of Medieval: Narrative, Magic and Computer Technology in Massively Multiplayer Computer Role-Playing Games'

______________
8 works by Eddo Stern

'These days I spend about 20-30 hours a week playing computer games. At an early point when I just started making things I decided that the way for me to be happy was to keep the art-making rush at full speed and make work around all the other things I was doing -- a sort of grand unification life theory. Doing this seems obvious to me now but it felt like a revelation at the time -- it's basically about working with your life experience, very non Platonic. With games it's particularly great, a way to justify and process the thousands of hours of playing and reading game magazines. I find game culture fascinating beyond the experiential acts of gaming. It's so rich with questions about identity, power, and politics -- there's a lot of work to do.' -- E.S.

1. WACO RESURRECTION (2004)
Computer Game/Installation/hardware/mixed media
(Eddo Stern, Peter Brinson, Brody Condon, Michael Wilson, Mark Allen, Jessica Hutchins)

Watch Waco Resurrection game footage
Waco Resurrection: Game Design Doc

Revisiting the 1993 Waco, Texas episode, gamers enter the mind and form of a “resurrected” David Koresh through a specially designed voice activated, surround sound enabled, hard plastic 3D skin. In an attempt to defend the Branch Davidian compound against internal intrigue, skeptical civilians, rival theologians and the inexorable advance of government agents, each player on the network plays as a ”Koresh”. Ensnared in the custom "Koresh skin", players are bombarded with sounds of government psy-ops, internal voices and the clamor of battle, and empowered to voice messianic texts from Koresh's exegesis of the book of revelation, wield a variety of weapons from the Mount Carmel cache and influence the behavior of both followers and opponents by “radiating” charisma. Waco Resurrection draws on the rhetoric of conspiracy theory, cult activity and apocalypticism to investigate the Waco siege as a cultural milestone. It addresses the multi-layered dynamics of a 51-day media-event that served to mobilize the militia movement, radicalize Timothy McVeigh and cause a re-evaluation of the role of religion in society.

____________

2. DARKGAME
computer game / hardware /software
1 ft x 2ft x 1ft

Darkgame is a sensory deprivation computer game.
The project is in progress.

Eddo Stern interviewed about Darkgame and independent gaming

EXHIBITION/ DEMO HISTORY:
IndieCade at E for All Expo, Los Angeles, CA
2008 Sundance Film Festival, , Park City, UTAH
IndieCade at E3, Los Angeles, CA
Edith Russ House for New Media, Oldenberg, GERMANY
Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, KOREA
Gameworld Exhibition, LABoral, Gijon, SPAIN
Cinematexas 11, Austin, TEXAS

____________
3. Portal, Wormhole, Flythrough... (2008)
18' x 17' x 6'
Steel, Aluminium, Fiberglass

'Eddo Stern’s monumental installation Portal, Wormhole, Flythrough consists of a 17-foot-tall octagonal gate with a circular screen in its center, upon which is projected a looping montage of found video images of motion-tunnel sequences, swirling vortexes, and other abstracted passageways through virtual space. The massive steel-and-aluminum construction suggests the low-polygon 3D graphics of a contemporary computer game; its chunky proportions seem slightly off, as if it were a very small object suddenly made unusually large. More precisely, the structure resembles interdimensional portals found at various spots in the universe depicted in the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. A comparable but square entranceway, seething with a membrane of swirling, luminescent color, appears as the login screen every time one of the game’s more than 8 million subscribers worldwide decides to enter the game world once again.' -- Ed Halter, Moving Image Source

_____________

4. USS DRAGOON (2003)
"One God to Rule Them All...And in the Darkness Bind Them"
wood, plastic, electronics, software
10' x 5' x 4'

USS Dragoon: One God to Rule Them All...And in the Darkness Bind Them - An Elvin class computer aircraft carrier prepared for battle with an on-deck army of knights and dragons.

____________

5. Fort Paladin: America's Army (2003)
6' x 6' x 5'

Keywords: Tolkien, Christ, Your Empire and Your Desktop

Fort Paladin is a medieval computer castle automaton trained to kill and master the American army 's recruitment training game "America's Army" using elecro-mechanics and a custom written expert system.

____________

6. COCKFIGHT ARENA (2001)
game performance/software/hardware/costumes etc...
(Eddo Stern, Mark Allen, Jessica Hutchins, Karen Lofgren)

Watch three videos of Cockfight Arena in action

A one night parade of sweat and adrenaline hopes to reclaim performance art in the age of video games, pitting viewer against viewer in brutal virtual cockfighting theater. Audience volunteers suited up in custom-made wireless game controllers with full sized wings and feathered helmets. Combatants stepped into an arena to control their life size game avatars through vigorous flapping and pecking, competing for blood and birdfeed while rapaciously inflicting onscreen bodily harm in a custom made "joustlike" fighting game.

____________

7.HATE WAVE (2004)
kinetic sculpture
8 ft x 6 ft x 5 ft
244 cm x 183 cm x 152 cm

A clan of templar, farmers and champions gather to greet the future
A mechanical crowd does the wave
Their giant prays

____________
8. Narnia, Again (2007)
Lotusman (2007)
Man, Woman, Dragon (After World of Warcraft) (2007)
Tsunami (2007)
Kinetic Shadow Puppets (after Narnia,Segeal, World of Warcraft and Iraq)
Plastic, Paper, Electronics

'Eddo Stern's new works - kinetic shadow sculptures and 3D computer animation videos - use a mash-up of documentary material from online forums, clip art, youtube videos, midi music, electronics and hand made puppets. They mine the online gaming world at its paradoxical extremes: on one hand, an untenable perversion of everyday life spent slaying an endless stream of virtual monsters, on the other, an ultimate mirroring of the most familiar social dynamics. The struggles with masculinity, honor, aggression, faith, love and self worth are embroiled with the game world’s vernacular aesthetics.' -- Postmasters Gallery
----

p.s. Hey. As you'll be able to tell by the length of this p.s., the blog is hampered at the moment. Very long story very short, I injured my back yesterday morning, and, it being Sunday, and Belfort being a tiny town, no doctors were available, so I spent yesterday lying on a cot devouring ibuprofen and trying to work on the rehearsals when I wasn't moaning in pain. I managed to see an osteopath this morning, and he worked on me, and I supposedly will be feeling at least a little better tomorrow, but for now I'm simultaneously kind of agonized and zonked on pain killers at the same time, and sitting in a chair is very difficult for me, and I haven't even looked at the comments from over the weekend yet because I just don't have the focus to absorb them at this point, so I'm going to have to launch yet another post sans my usual p.s., but it would seem that I should be able to interact with you tomorrow if the prognosis was correct. I sincerely apologize for all of this, and I promise I'll read the comments and do my best to catch up as soon as possible, likely tomorrow, as I said. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the post today about the artist Eddo Stern, and I hope everyone both local and distinguished and afar and unknown are doing really well. One last apology, a few ouches, and I'll go hobble back into the rehearsal space now at my current one inch per hour traveling speed then lie down in my chosen spot until further notice with the hope that things will be back to normal on my end of the blog by tomorrow. Take care.

Mine for yours: A mid-year round up of loose candidates for my year-end Best of 2009 Top Ten Lists

2009-06-20T03:28:00.000-07:00

----
Books
in no order

1. Blake Butler Ever (Calamari Press)

2. Abdellah Taia Salvation Army (Semiotext(e))

3. Vanessa Place & Robert Fitterman Notes on Conceptualisms (Ugly Duckling)

4. Patrick deWitt Ablutions (Norton)

5. Dodie Bellamy Barf Manifesto (Ugly Duckling)

6. Peter Sotos Public: The Collected Peter Sotos, Volume 2 (Creation Books)

7. Mary Gaitskill Don't Cry (Pantheon)

8. Brian Evenson Fugue State (Coffee House)

9. Brian Pera, editor Life as We Show It: Writing on Film (City Lights)

10. Jacques Roubaud The Loop (Dalkey Archive)

11. Louis-Ferdinand Celine Normance (Dalkey Archive)

12. Gary Indiana The Shanghai Gesture (Two Dollar Radio)

13. D.A. Powell & David Trinidad By Myself: An Autobiography (Turtle Point)

14. Ellen Kennedy Sometimes My Heart Pushes Through My Ribs (Muumuu House)

15. Thomas Moore Hospital (lulu)

Music
in no order

1. Sunn0))) Monoliths & Dimensions (Southern Lord)

2. Hecker Acid in the Style of David Tudor (Editions Mego)

3. Robert Pollard The Crawling Distance (Guided by Voices)

4. Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)

5. Grizzly Bear Veckatimest (Warp)

6. Natural Numbers Ocean Ghosts (last.fm)

7. Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca (Domino)

8. Deerhunter Rainwater Cassette Exchange (Kranky)

9. Wavves Wavves (Fat Possum)

10. Wolves in the Throne Room Black Cascade (Southern Lord)

11. Boston Spaceships Planets Are Blasted (Guided by Voices)

12. Consumer Electronics Crowd Pleaser (Hand to Mouth)

13. Sonic Youth The Eternal (Matador)

Movies
in no order

1. Henry Jelick Coraline

2. Steve McQueen Hunger

3. Stephen Kijak Scott Walker: 30th Century Man

4. Peter Docter & Bob Peterson Up

5. Christophe Honore La Belle Personne

6. Scott Treleaven Last 7 Words

Live
in no order

1. Yves-Noel Genod Theatre Chaillot, Paris

2. John Williams Sister Gallery, Los Angeles

3. Jarvis Cocker Galerie Chappe, Paris

4. Une image petit cache une autre Grand Palais, Paris

5. Presences Electronique Centquatre, Paris

6. Sylvain Decloitre le Conservatoire, Paris

7. Jacques Tati: Deux Temps, Trois Mouvements La Cinematheque Francais

Internet
in no order

1. HTMLGIANT
2. UbuWeb
3. Put The Lotion In The Basket
4. The Rumpus
5. Silliman's Blog
6. Diane, A Shaded View on Fashion
7. Male Movies
8. Joe Brainard's Pajamas
9. Isola di Rifiuti
10. Milkboys
11. AmericanSuburbX
12. The Free Music Archive
----

p.s. Hey. I'm hoping the post today will inspire you to share some of the things stamped 2009 that you've been liking the most. I'm certainly very interested to know, and I'm pretty sure most everyone else around here would be too. Thanks in advance for the input. So, I'm on route to the town of Belfort today where I'll be hold up working on the new theater piece through Thursday. I won't have internet access where I'm staying, but my plan is to get to the WiFi-enhanced rehearsal space -- otherwise known as the Centre Choreographique National de Franche-Comte a Belfort -- early every day whereupon I'll write the p.s. and launch the day's post before the heavy work gets going. The timing on when the posts will pop up is hard to predict at the moment, but they should appear fairly close to the time that they normally do when I'm in Paris. There's always the chance there'll be some kind of snag in my plan, but I'll try to alert you preemptively to any interference if I can do that. As usual when I'm in the midst of theater rehearsals, it's pretty likely that I'll be less talkative and in more of a rush than I normally am when typing the p.s., but I'll do my best. If the theater work is particularly interesting, I'll probably pass along anecdotes from the experience, and I'll almost certainly do a slideshow presentation of the week's activities at the end of the residency. I think that's the whole story for now. Have fine weekends both around here and elsewhere, and I'll see you on Monday.

Steven Vineis presents ... Go Fuck Yourself

2009-06-19T00:48:00.000-07:00

----

Honeydew

Wednesday. Sixteen, dropped out. Lives at home.

Honeydews make him think of blondes with skin so smooth.
He puts a melon in his mother's cart as she compares carb counts on plastic sleeves of white bread.
"Those are probably out of season, honey."
"What, I can't have a fucking melon now?"
"Shhhh with the cursing. Go get a dinner from the freezer."

Hungry Man for the boy.
The checkout bagger is a black retard.
He licks his thumb every time before he packs something.
Lick, then he eyes the melon.
"Beautiful," he says with a lisp.
"Yeah," the kid says.

She lets him drive home.
She doesn't get out of the car, she's on the clock in twenty.
She kisses her hand and touches his face as he gets out.
His cheek is greasy and she wipes her finger tips on her uniform as she shifts.

He's hard by the time he hits the door.
He leaves the melon in the kitchen still in the plastic bag, like he's captured her.
Gets the black wig out from under the bed. He's going to steal another twenty and go back to the Halloween supply store for an exotic one soon.
His mother's lipstick is on the sink. Her worst color - peach. Makes her lips look like a wiped, lubed asshole. He finds red. He likes red.

Marker for the eyes.
Paints them closed.

Nose so small and without a bump or blemish.
Tape the wig down so he can pull it hard like he prefers.
The marker slips and a stray mark resembling a tear marks the cheek.

Cuts the skin with a knife and hollows the hole with his finger.
Sticks the melon in the microwave for :36.
He watches the head spin as he unbuttons.
The lamplight in the microwave and her head around and around, eyes closed...she's crying.

When the light cuts out and the timer rings he pulls open the door.

So pathetic and small.

When he's done he'll cut her throat and throw her away before eating his dinner.

==

Sock

The dentist blushes when he brushes her breast with his hand.
She doesn't notice, never has.

He tells her to open wide and lean her head back farther over the chair's head rest.
Farther. FARTHER.
She strains and the veins rise up to the surface of the skin from the stress and he bends to look down into her throat.

He uses his gloved hand to press her tongue down and she instinctually retracts.
He tells her "farther" again and for a moment her blue eyes open and she catches him heaving, his bald head sweaty under the pale fluorescent light.
His belly hangs and sags over his belt and the white coat drapes his sides, the buttons gone.

She tries to raise her head but he holds her chin and sticks his finger into her mouth until she gags and spits.
Her blue eyes fearful, gone red at the sides.
He pulls back and wipes his head.
She lurches upward, and brings her elbows to her side.
He pulls over his gloves off finger-by-finger before placing them on the tray with the retractable arm, lined with sanitized steel tools.

"All done," he says.

She hasn't turned to look at him again.
She stands and gets her coat off the rack and leaves.
She almost trips over her heels in the gravel of the parking lot.

The dentist lumbers as he bends and groans and kicks off his cheap loafers and removes his sock.
He lets it lay across his knee and looks at the glove.
He feels it still wet with her saliva and the clean smell of fluoride.
He puts the glove in the sock and rolls halfway down.

He thinks of her mouth and the sound of her wretching throat as he spits in it-- their biologies briefly joined.

==

Black Widow's Bedtime

"Where's Poppa?"
"He's cleaning up downstairs. Did you have a nice birthday, Soph?"
"Yes. I liked my presents."
"Good. Now go to sleep."
"Leave the light on until Poppa comes up."
"Okay."

She left a sliver of light on the carpet by keeping the door cracked and she went downstairs. He was in a chair, sleeping on the table; a cup full of bourbon just out of his fingertips. He had laid his head atop his folded arms and he looked like the bully who slept in the back of study hall. She looked at his muscles and the cut-off sleeve t-shirt and the sunburn from grilling all afternoon outside. She boxed the food and put it in the fridge.

She looked at the rainbow of empty bottles on top of the counter. He was so insistent that they needed to be well-stocked for Sophie's tenth birthday bash. The other men stuck to a beer or two before switching for the rest of the evening to Cokes or Sprites, but he kept on refilling his cup with ice and liquor. She finished cleaning up and stashed the bottles. She touched him but was careful. He didn't stir. She turned off the kitchen light and went back upstairs.

She slid an arm into Sophie's room and killed the light and closed her door. When she got to their bedroom she stripped and walked around in just the one-piece bathing suit she'd been wearing all day in and out of the above-ground pool.

She touched the picture frame above the bureau that held her high school diploma and saw the graduation Polaroid in the corner. She looked huge under the gown. Next to it was their wedding photograph, the couple slicing the wedding cake and holding it out to Sophie who was smiling. She'd worn a lot of make up to cover up her black eye and kept her head tilted just so that the camera didn't catch her puffed cheek.

She slipped out of the bathing suit and looked at herself in the mirror. She stuck her bolted tongue out and pulled at loose flesh. She ran her fingers over the black widow tattoo on her belly she'd gotten when he'd had a scorpion done on his shoulder.

She slid into bed, alone again. Still young despite aging through their best years together; they would only ever regret one another. All the things they could've done and all that could never be.

She pulled the revolver out from the bedside drawer and laid it between her legs. She planted he feet against the mattress with her knees raised and pulled the sheet until she felt it taut against her crease. She knotted the sheet around one hand and held the gun in her other hand, pressing it against her throat. She bit one end of the pillow and rocked her hips up and down, hard against the fabric. She slid the barrel down and burrowed it into herself deep.

She climaxed when she heard the hollow sound of the hammer clicking against an empty chamber in the silent, voided night.
----

2009-06-19T00:46:00.000-07:00

p.s. Hey. Writer, d.l., Extreme Possum Fighter, and guest host Steven Vineis has the floor, and I dare not overly bracket this fine, havoc-y post with too much intro, so I'll just say your powers of perception are refreshingly on their own today. Please enjoy Steve's gift, and respond accordingly in the appropriate places. And thank you kindly, Steven. Otherwise, I'll remind you that I won't be able to do my interactions in the p.s. tomorrow due to a morning train to the little French town of Belfort. I'll just be saying hi, introducing the post, and explaining how and when I suspect the blog will be working/appearing during the four blogging days that I'll be in that town creating theater. Tonight, right here in Paris, I'm doing this , if anyone's around and not doing something else. That and a lot of pre-trip and theater making preparations are all I'm doing and all I have to report at the moment. ** Davidc, Lovely to see you, David. I hope your currently more mysterious to me life has a decent dollop of happiness in it, and I definitely look forward greatly to seeing you ere long. ** Stan_cz, At least the way it used to be when I was young and learning, you could learn on automatic or stick, and your consequent driver's license did allow you to drive with either format. I can't even remember the last time I rode in a car in the US that had stick shift. On my money loss/card thing, if you get robbed via card in Russia, all bets are off, at least with my bank (Bank of America). When I explained the situation to them -- fyi, someone working at the hotel, and it was a major hotel right on Red Square, used the ATM card imprint I'd left at the front desk (to cover any phone usage expenses) to empty my bank account -- they said there was nothing anyone could do because there's no cooperation between the US and Russia on card fraud. Or that's how it was a few years ago. It extremely sucked. ** David, Pleased you enjoyed it, thanks! ** Roger Clarke, Great. We can make a plan via phone or email soon. I'll be back in Paris and back online regularly on Thursday, so let's sort it out after that. Can't wait. ** David Ehrenstein, Ah, a man after my own heart and fascinations. Of course I remember those 'Hello Dolly' at Fox. You could see them very clearly in all their glory when you drove by the gates of the studio on ... Olympic, Pico, I forget? My absolute favorite was the MGM backlot, which wasn't very far from 40 Acres. I took that tour a bunch of times, and when I first moved to Palms, which is cradled in a nook of Culver City, in the late 70s, they were still there, albeit rotting away, and a couple of friends and I snuck in one Sunday and managed to roam around for a good hour before a guard caught us. Yes, I hope I'll get to meet Christophe Honore asap. He (or I think it was him) actually wrote to me via Facebook a few months ago asking if I was the real Dennis Cooper. I said yes, and I asked if he was the real CH, and then I never heard back. But, yes, getting to know him while I'm in Paris is a goal of mine. ** Paul Curran, Hey. Oh, thanks for mentioning that great piece on 'UM' by Blake Butler. I have to say I was really honored and happy about it, as I think he's really terrific -- his novel 'Ever' is easily one of the best novels I've read this year -- not to mention that just being featured on HTMLGIANT, my favorite place on the internet, was a big thrill. ** Shane Jones, Hey, welcome. Wow, you appearing here just after I mentioned you is like magic. I would love to read your work, definitely, and if you really don't mind sending me some, I'd be very grateful. My email is: dcooperweb@gmail.com. My postal address is: c/o Centre International des Recollets, 15 rue du Faubourg St. Martin, 75010 Paris France. Your blog is a dreamy thing, so it's great to discover that as well. Thanks a lot for commenting. It's a real pleasure. ** Put The Lotion In The Basket, Hey, Nick. Yeah, I want to get to Spain and spend time there. I'm dying to, but I keep being thwarted by having too little money and not getting invited to come gratis for the theater performances there. One of these days. Will you be blogging from there, or will you be taking a blog vacation? I always feel like I should keep doing the blog wherever I go for some reason, but if Yury and I vacation somewhere as planned in August, I'll probably tear myself away from here. Anyway, take care, man. ** Tosh, Yeah, I'm pretty sure the 'Combat' set was at the old MGM backlot 'cos I think I remember it being pointed out. It kills me that those kinds of places aren't designated historically important and saved/preserved. Where the MGM backlot once stood, there are just the ugliest condos you've ever seen, and where 40 Acres was, there are just two big ugly concrete and steel warehouses that have had 'for lease' signs on them for about twenty years. Grr. ** Maximum Etc., Thanks. Fascinating thoughts/insight about the political situation over there. Obviously, it's so incredibly difficult to figure out where all of that is coming from precisely or how popular the government's policies are. I really look forward to the lengthy piece on your trip. I read the Jeremy Schmall piece last night. It's terrific. Excellent choice and pass along by you. And, yeah, like I said to Paul, I saw and was humbled/ blown away by Blake Butler's piece. And, you're right, I loved that the post accrued a big Ryan Manning presence. I told you I think he's kind of brilliant and a brilliant 'thing'. ** Nick Hudson, Hey, man. The album and theater piece sound fascinating, and I think I get the basics of your term, but you can flesh it out in person. I don't mind extracting pieces from 'Period' if they work as solitary things. Or I could read a poem. I'm game. Yeah, we can surely hold up somewhere quiet one morning or something while we're both in London. I can't see that being difficult, so cool. ** Katsim, Hey, pal. Oh, ugh, about your iPod. I hope you found the missing materials somehow. That kind of tech stuff bewilders me. I turn to Yury begging 'help' whenever such things occur. Where are you going for the weekend, if you're not already gone? If you are, where were you? Thanks a lot about 'UM'. And, yeah, try to come to Avignon next year. It's really a fun, great festival, and the town is gorgeous, and when it's completely packed with theater makers and lovers, it's dreamy. ** Alan, Oh, the revisions I lost were re: a earlier novel, I can't remember which one. I've blocked out the painful memory. That's a great idea about sending drafts to myself. I've been doing that but only every few weeks, which is dangerous since, when I'm writing, I tend to make lots and lots of changes every day. Yeah, I'll get in the habit of sending the latest draft to myself every evening. I have gmail too, so there's no excuse. Thanks a lot, Alan. That's a really helpful suggestion. I didn't know about 'Infinite Summer', but, now that I do, I'll try to keep my eyes on it, especially if you're chiming in. ** Bernard Welt, It's true I'm nearly shocked that your areas of expertise include the auto. I don't why that surprises me exactly. I guess I have this wrongheaded kneejerk idea that people on the East Coast don't know anything about cars. Weird. ** David Saa V. Estornell, Hey, David. When I saw Gisele for the hologram investigation, she said she hasn't had any time to watch your DVD yet -- she's just about the busiest person in France if not in the world -- but she said she would try to watch it on the train to Belfort so we could talk about it while we're there next week. So that seems to be the plan. Sorry for the delays. It's a crazy busy time right now what with the upcoming rehearsals and creating of the new theater piece. Thank you again, D. Your pictures in my email? I'm so behind on email, and there are so many emails I haven't even opened yet. I'll go find yours, sorry. ** Wolf, Ha ha, yeah, I would have pegged you as a manual transmission person in a second if I'd ever wondered. Me, I want my car to just do its job and leave me alone so I can think and daydream and look out the window, 'cos those are the reasons I love to drive, which I suspect is a very LA kind of attitude. The screens and stuff are tantalizing, yum, yes. The piece is written. My script has been printed out and distributed to all and sundry. It just needs to be fleshed out, colored in, fucked with, finessed, etc., etc. I'm really excited to start building it, I must say. I've been chomping at the bit for months and months. ** Math t, Nice birthday, all of it, especially the drawing part. Well, and the sex. And, well, the falafels too. Do you have Moaz Falafel in NYC? I forget. Vegan falafel, fucking killer. There are two of them in Paris. Sad looking skinny boys, ha ha, shouldn't be a problem for me. I'll go through my bookmarks and compile a pile for you. I haven't seen too many in bondage pix though, except on the sites where I get the stuff for my slave posts. You might search back through the blog's past for the 'slave' posts. There might be some useful bondage and boy stuff for you there. Paris in a year, yeah. Well, visiting people can stay at the bookstore Shakespeare & Co. for free, but you'd have to tell them you're a writer, and act like you were writing something while you stayed there, and I could vouch for you, I think. ** Killer Luka, Oh, no rush on the CV. Whenever you have the time. There's no imminent deadline or anything. I talked to G., and she's into the idea, and we're just beginning the working process now, and it'll be slowing building up for a while until we really dig in early next year, so there's time for you to take yours. (See: below) ** Pisycaca, Hey. That trip sounds amazing, especially the West Coast parts, but then I'm from and love the West Coast, north and south. Yeah, I should be in Paris around July 24 - 26. There's no reason why I wouldn't be, and I think we're recording the new radio play around then, so I'll have to be here. So if you can come, please do, and let me know your plans, of course. Congrats on the A! (Champagne cork popping and firework sounds) ** Blendin, Neighbors ... hm, interesting. I think I maybe can guess what you mean, and, well, that would be a horse of a different color in the good sense. Interesting. De-fog that news when the time is right. Excellent about the new show and new gallery. Nice locale, obviously. I'll go find that gallery's website. ** Steevee, Do you know what this nutsy film critic's issues with you are? Do you hate his beloved films and vice versa? Strange, but, you know, good riddance all in all, right? ** NB, It feels weird for you to even consider calling me Uncle Dennis, so please don't, and I'll retroactively withdraw that word from my weird sentence yesterday. You're gonna love the tofu dogs here. The French ones have this ... this ... something that the American ones don't have. Hopefully that something is not increased insect parts. Yeah, in other words, make that big money and come on over here to see all of what makes Paris the kingdom of sightliness. A holographic come shot would look like ... you know when smokers let their inhaled smoke escape and drift out of one of their nostrils? It'd be kind of like that. Or maybe more like if a cigarette smoking ghost did that. At this stage of planning, all of the holograms except one are going to be young, skinny, ethereal rocker boys. One of them might remotely, vaguely look a little like Diego Luna. None of them will look remotely like David Duchovney, you can bet the farm on that. And no mustaches. ** SYpHA_69, Dude, yikes, ugh, shit. I hope you're feeling a million times better by now. What happened? Where did all that come from, man? Love to you. ** JW Veldhoen, Interns are almost always so great. Why is that? The lack of capital? ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Mm, not sure if I saw that particular Hammer film. A Hammer Day is an obviously great idea, of course. Oh, I miss the old scrabbled, messy way TV used to be too. TV is so organized now. Radio got all crapped out too, barring some college radio stations, until internet radio reintroduced the good old free form style that made being on drugs so much more involving and unpredictable when I was newish. I hope Heliotrope saw your advice. If not, Heliotrope, if you're out there, check out TDFG's blog/computer saving advice in his comment yesterday. Oh, shit, I just watched the trailer for 'Braid'. I simply must have it. It's extremely me. The graphics are wonderful. I'm getting it unless I need to clear some memory space or get an external hard drive, in which case I'll get it next week. Oh, that looks so good, yes. Thank you, Glove. Oh, William, yes, of course. A fine chap indeed. He seems to have retired. I look for new things on him all the time with no luck. You probably know he was on Doggyboys.com when he started out. Some nice stuff there. When last seen, I think he did a video or three for one of the Popupboys sequel sites, if you know them, before vanishing. If you hunt around the free gay porn promo pages, there are lots of clips of him. If you want some directives, let me know, and I'll give you some links. ** Amccartney, Between yesterday and today, I got an updated script for the event tonight, and now I'm no longer playing T.S. Eliot. Now they have me playing me. Eliot's texts got replaced with bits of my writing chosen by the director. I guess that's for the best. I couldn't figure out how to read 'The Wasteland' well, so I was just fucking around and being theatrical and irritating, and, even though it was crap, they loved it, and now I worry they think I'm going to act ridiculous when I read my own stuff, but I won't. I'll just go laconic like I always do when I read my stuff. This could be a disaster in the making. I wrote Paul at POL yesterday, so fingers crossed, and I'll keep the recommendation going as the need arises. I absolutely love 'Inland Empire', but I only watched it once so it still lacks good and bad parts and is just a totally beautiful mindfuck in my memory. ** Mark, Yeah, I've been to Bodie. Incredible place. I think I even did some kind of post about it years ago on the dead blog. Thanks to the California financial disaster, poor Bodie like most of California's best state parks and historical treasures, will be closed until further notice. Anyway, I like your opposite post idea. You probably know where I live in LA is walking distance from several contenders for such a post. I live a block from 'Melrose Place' which was also Giles' apartment in 'Buffy'. And I live not so many blocks from Cordelia's apartment in 'Angel'. And also not so many blocks from the storybook-looking court apartments in 'Mulholland Drive'. And then up on the hill right behind my pad is the great Ennis Brown House, one of Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest buildings, where a million movie and TV shows have been filmed: Harrison Ford's apartment in 'Blade Runner', Angel's lair in 'Buffy', and on and on and on. The proof sheet is very alluring. Everyone, do you remember that our pal Mark wants to make portraits of SF located folks from around this blog? It's a more interesting and complicated project than I'm making it sound, but I don't want to paraphrase him and get it wrong. You guys in the appropriate area should pose for him, right? I would. Anyway, here's a proof sheet to give you a sense of what he's thinking. Raise your hands. ** Steven Vineis, Ah, it's the man of the hour or of the next twenty-four hours. Thank you again, kind sir. Good news about the split shift development. As someone who also gets unpleasant when I can't write, I wouldn't want to have that mood wished on you by some weird if weirdly inspiring job. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Well, I don't have to be T.S. Eliot after all. He was all nerdy looking. More nerdy looking than me. Much more. It wasn't typecasting, let's just say. Anyway, now I play me. Yesterday was okay, just catching up, getting ready for the trip. I was photographed for an interview in a magazine. I did an email interview. I read the new issue of Wire Magazine. Ate, walked. Nothing too spectacular. The 'UM' cover is all textured. It's cool. I never thought I'd ever get a textured cover. It's a little dream come true. Anyway, today isn't going to be too exciting either except for the event tonight, which might be fun. I'm counting on you to have the day I can only wish I'd had. ** You-x, Avital Ronell is incredible. Honoring her is such an honor for me. She wrote this essay on my work that's been one of the highlights of my life. Oh, you can even read it if you want. It's here . Yeah, I love the Hecker album. It's super rich. I haven't heard the Aphex Twin/Hecker boot, but I've watched the clips on Youtube and even embedded them here a couple of weeks ago. Oh, those withdrawals sound intense, yeah. Take care of yourself and do it the right way, for sure. You almost have an album finished? Whoa. I want to hear that sucker, needless to say. You Marcure brothers are such fireball geniuses. You'll give us the directive to the virtual label, right? Obviously, I'm dying to hear the new album by Panda? too 'cos I adore his music. Yeah, other than the withdrawals, which are no small thing, you sound like you're doing really great, which is awesome news. ** Misanthrope, I'll bet the 'Lost in Space' set is long, long gone, tragically. Wasn't that shot inside in a studio? It sure looked like it. I'm sure I'll love this post of yours. I mean, I make my hobbies and idle pastime stuff into posts all the time. I mean, movie studio backlots, for goodness sake. I just made a post about balloon animals that I'm going to foist on you guys soon, for goodness sake. Oh, and hey, stop that dry heaving stuff, whatever it takes. Not good, man. ** Oscar B, You seem to feel what I feel about the movie sets, and the post-Atomic Disneyland idea made me goose-bumpy. Oh, I talked to the head of the Recollets yesterday about something else, and I mentioned that I'd heard about an Italian residency thing, and she knew all about it, and I said I know one of the artists who's applying and that the artist and I are collaborating, and she said, That sounds great. We should talk about this soon. So, so far so good. ** Killer Luka, Dude, harsh. Or jokey harsh, which is good harsh. I think I saw that Amsterdam shop you mentioned. Actually, I think there are a bunch of those or there were at least. Oh, wait, I spoke to you up above. Damn, but I'm too spacey to cut and paste this up there because it's actually a more labor intensive thing to do than you would think. So you get two entries from me, lucky you. Love, love, love. ** Okay, that's it. Enjoy your trip into the darkness that occupies at least part of Steven Vineis' mind and art. Remember that I won't be doing the interactions tomorrow. Monday, however, if the fates agree, I will. Have good ones until tomorrow's ones come.

Ghost 'Town': A Brief History of 40 Acres (1926-1976)

2009-06-18T00:58:00.000-07:00

----

__________

Linkage

The Story of '40 Acres' at Retroweb

'40 Acres' Image Gallery & Virtual Tour

Bonanza: Scenery of The Ponderosa

Batman Tribute Site: 40 Acres Backlot

40 Acres @ Wikipedia

40 Acres Site Today at Wikimapia

The History of Culver City

Star Trek Filming Locations

__________

Background:

'40 Acres is the misnomer that was given to what was actually about 29 acres of land in Culver City, California, first used as a movie studio backlot in 1926 by Cecil DeMille, after he leased the property from Italian immigrate Achille Casserini (on March 22, 1926). DeMille's production company utilized the backlot for numerous silent films, including The King of Kings (1927), for which a large Jerusalem temple and town were constructed, The Fighting Eagle (1927), The Forbidden Woman (1927) and The Godless Girl (1929), DeMille's last silent, and for which a large reform school set was built on the lot.

'In 1928, DeMille's Culver City studio and backlot were acquired by RKO Pictures, whose films which employed the backlot included Bird of Paradise (1932) and the 1933 classic, King Kong. In 1937, David Selznick acquired the property in a long-term lease, and used the backlot to re-create a Civil War-era Atlanta for his 1939 epic Gone With The Wind (after filming the burning of numerous leftover sets on the lot, including the "King Kong" gate, to depict the burning of Atlanta in the film).

'Under a variety of owners over the next two decades, the backlot appeared in dozens of films, and by the early 1950's, the lot began to appear in television productions, including The Adventures of Superman. Pictured above in an aerial view from 1963, the backlot had recently changed ownership to Desilu Studios. For the next ten years, the backlot would provide outdoor locales for Desilu's own television productions, as well as for series produced by others.

'Some of the notable series filmed on 40 Acres included Hogan's Heroes, Batman, Mission: Impossible, The Untouchables, Star Trek, Gomer Pyle, and The Andy Griffith Show for which the streets of Atlanta constructed for Gone With The Wind served as the town of "Mayberry." Paramount Pictures eventually bought out Desilu, and in 1968, sold off the Culver City studio facilities. As the studio continued to change hands, the "40 Acres" backlot fell out of use and into disrepair in the early 1970's, and in 1976 it was bulldozed and the land was sold to industry.' -- Retroweb.com

1972

__________

The movies, shows, sets:

Bonanza

Land of the Giants

Gone With the Wind

Forbidden Woman

Miracle of the Bells

Attack!

Fighting Eagle

The Godless Girl

Gomer Pyle

King Kong

The King of Kings

My Three Sons

The Set Up

The Real McCoys

Tarzan

Mayberry RFD

The Untouchables

The Story of GI Joe

Mission: Impossible

Andy Griffith Show

Vigilante Force

Hogan's Heroes

The Adventures of Superman

StarTrek

Batman

----