Dennis Cooper's

The blog continues ...

2006-11-22T22:20:00.000-08:00

To make a complicated story very simple, this blog was suddenly hijacked and knocked out of service on November 17, 2006 for the period of a week. For that reason and others -- upon returning, this blog has a number of strange bugs and problems -- my blog is being continued at a new location. Use the link to find it, or go to:

http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/

David Ehrenstein presents Lorenz Hart Day

2006-11-17T01:35:00.000-08:00

“Behold the way our fine-feathered friend
His virtue doth parade
Thou knowest not, my dim-witted friend,
The picture thou hast made.
Thy vacant brow and thy tousled hair
Conceal thy good intent.
Thou noble, upright, truthful, sincere
And slightly dopey gent”

That’s the verse to the greatest song ever written. Among the greatest renditions; Lee Wiley, Frank Sinatra, Chet Baker, Matt Damon, and Nico.

Written in 1937 for Babes in Arms (the all time “Hey gang, let’s put on a show!” show) and introduced by Mitzi Green, “My Funny Valentine” was an “up” tune. But not as sung by itself outside of the context of that show, and not by everyone else who has sung it since then. It reflects the sweet melancholy of its author.

According to his Wikipedia entry Lorenz Hart (1895-- 1943) “struggled with his own homosexuality in an era when such a lifestyle was socially unacceptable and with alcoholism, which eventually contributed to his death.” Nonsense of course. There were no “lifestyle’s” in Larry Hart’s era, and being in show business he was surrounded by fellow gays and fellow drinkers. But at five foot nothing, balding and with the face of a Frank Loesser bookie, Larry Hart’s “presentation of self in everyday life” didn’t evoke romance. As the song goes that he wrote in 1942 for By Jupiter --

“Nobody's heart belongs to me,
heigh-ho, who cares?

Nobody writes his songs to me,
no one belongs to me.
That's the least of my cares.

I may sad at times,
and disinclined to play,
but it's not bad at times,
to go your own sweet way.

Nobody's arms belongs to me,
no arms feel strong to me.
I admire the moonas a moon
just a moon

Nobody's heart belongs to me today.”
----

2006-11-17T01:33:00.000-08:00

I say he wrote it, rather than composer Richard Rogers because Hart’s words were the key to their collaboration. And a curious collaboration it was -- Rogers having the soul (and keeping the hours) of a Connecticut banker, and Hart never being around him much -- given as he was to drinking, gambler, fucking and rushing in at the last minute with a completed verse.

They met in the early twenties, gaining success with tunes for The Garrick Gaieties. The first and most striking of these --

“Summer journeys to Niag’ra
And other places aggravate all our cares
We’ll save our fares!
I’ve a cozy litte flat in
What is known as old Manhattan
We’ll settle down
Right here in town.

We’ll have Manhattan
The Bronx and Staten Island too
It’s lovely going through
The zoo
It’s very fancy
On old Delancy street you know
The subway charms us so
When balmy breezes blow
To and fro
And tell me what street
Compares with Mott street in July?
Sweet pushcarts gently gliding by
The great big city’s a wondrous toy
Just made for a gril and boy
We’ll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy

We’ll go to Greenwich
Where modern men itch to be free,
And bowling green you’ll see with me
We’ll bather at Brighton
The fish you’ll frighten when you’re in
Your bathing suit so thin
Will make a shellfish grin
Fin to fin

I’d like to take a
Sail on Jamaica bay with you
And fair Caanarsie’s lakes we’ll view
The city’s bustle cannot destroy
The drams of a girl and boy
We’ll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy

We’ll go to Yonkers
Where true love conquers
In the wilds

And starve together, dear
In “Child’s”
We’ll go to Coney
And eat balony on a roll
In Central Park we’ll stroll
Where our first kiss we stole
Soul to soul
And “”
Is a terrific show they say
We both may see it close someday
The city’s clamor can never spoil
The dreams of a boy and goil
We’ll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy

We’ll have Manhattan
The Bronx and Staten Island too
We’ll try to cross fifth avenue
As black as onyx
We’ll find the Bronnix Park express
Our Flatbush flat, I guess
Will be a great success.
More or less
A short vacation
On inspiration point we’ll spend
And in the station house we’ll en
But Civic virtue cannot destroy

The dreams of a girl and boy
We’ll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy”

Sounds charming, doesn’t it? But charm wasn’t what Larry Hart was about, as is clear with this number from Peggy-Ann (1926)

“Troubles really are bubbles they say
And I'm bubbling over today
Spring brings roses to people you see
But it brings hay fever to me
My luck will vary surely
That's purely a curse
My luck has changed,
Yes, it's gotten from rotten to worse
Where's that rainbow they hear about?
Where's that lining they cheer about?
Where's that love nest,
Where love is king ever after?
Where's that blue room they sing about?
Where's that sunshine they fling about?
I know morning will come,
But pardon my laugher!
In each scenario
You can depend on the end
Where the lovers agree.
Where's that Lothario?
Where does he roam, with his dome
Vaselined as can be?
Oh, it is easy to see all right
Ev'rything's gonna be all right
Be just dandy for ev'rybody but me.
In each scenario
You can depend on the end
Where the lovers agree.
Where's that Lothario?
Where does he roam, with his dome
Vaselined as can be?
Oh, it is easy to see all right
Ev'rything's gonna be all right
Be just dandy for ev'rybody but me.
Oh, yeah, I see that rainbow
For everybody but me.”

And in Curtis Hanson's film Wonder Boys, lecherously intrepid agent Robert Downey Jr. tracks down the object of his affection, Toby Maguire, through the Rogers and Hart song 'Glad to Be Unhappy,' as sung by the great Lee Wiley.

In short Lorenz Hart sang about climbing out of the pit of hell and peering anxiously up into the light.

Stephen Sondheim, who certainly should know better, once said Hart “wrote an ironic love song. And then he’d write an ironic love song. And then he’d write an ironic love song.” Zip it, Miss Thing! It took you half a century to write a love song that meant anything -- “Where Have You Been All My Life?” for Bounce -- a show you’re currently re-writing. Let’s hope it stays in. What you’ll never be able to write is something like the following from Present Arms (1928)

“I'm a sentimental sap, that's all
What's the use of trying not to fall?
I have no will, you've made your kill
'Cause you took advantage of me!

I'm just like an apple on a bough
And you're gonna shake me down somehow
So, what's the use,
you've cooked my goose
'Cause you took advantage of me!

I'm so hot and bothered that I don't
know my elbow from my ear
I suffer something awful each time you go
And much worse when you're near

Here I am with all my bridges burned
Just a babe in arms where
you're concerned
So lock the doors and call me yours
'Cause you took advantage of me.”

And that’s not to mention this one from Simple Simon (1930):

“He was too good to me how can I get along now
So close he stood to me
Everything is all messed up and wrong now
My baby would have brought me the sun
Cos making me smile that was his fun

When I was mean to him he didn't say go away now
You see I was his queen to him
Who's gonna make me gay now
It's only natural that I'm blue
He was too good to be true

I said he was too good to me how am I ever get along now
So close he stood to me
Everything's all messed up and wrong now
He would have brought me the sun and the moon
Cos anytime I left him it was too soon

When I was mean to him he didn't say go away now
I was his queen to him who's gonna make me gay now
It's only natural said it's only natural that I'm so blue
He was too good to be true”
----

2006-11-17T00:56:00.000-08:00

Besides the stage Rogers and Hart wrote for the movies -- most spectacularly in Love Me Tonight, which you can sample here, and which produced this gem

“I've never met you, yet never doubt, dear;
I can't forget you, I've thought you out, dear
I know your profile and I know the way you kiss,
just the things I miss on a night like this
If dreams are made of imagination
I'm not afraid of my own creation
With all my heart, my heart is here for you to take
Why should I quake? I'm not awake
Isn't it romantic?
Music in the night, a dream that can be heard
Isn't it romantic?
Moving shadows write the oldest magic word
I hear the breezes playing in the trees above
while all the world is saying you were meant for love
Isn't it romantic?
merely to be young on such a night as this?
Isn't it romantic?
Every note that's sung is like a lover's kiss
Sweet symbols in the moonlight,
do you mean that I will fall in love per chance?
Isn't it romance?

My face is glowing, I'm energetic
The art of sewing I found poetic
My needle punctuates the rhythm of romance
I don't give a stitch if I don't get rich
A custom tailor who has no custom
is like a sailor, no one will trust 'em
But there is magic in the music of my shears
I shed no tears, lend me your ears
Isn't it romantic?
Soon I will have found some girl that I adore
Isn't it romantic?
While I sit around my love can scrub the floor
She'll kiss me every hour or she'll get the sack
and when I take a shower she can scrub my back
Isn't it romantic?
On a moonlight night she'll cook me onion soup
Kiddies are romantic
and if we don't fight we soon will have a troupe
We'll help the population,
it's a duty that we owe to La Belle France
Isn't it romance?”

And then there was Hallelujah I’m a Bum in which the great Al Jolson relaxed on screen for the first time to intone the lovely --

You are too beautiful
my dear, to be true
and I am a fool for beauty
fooled by a feeling
that because I had found you
I could have bound you to me.
You are too beautiful
for one man alone
one lucky fool to be with
when there are other men
with eyes of their own
to see with.
Love does not stand sharing
not if one cares
have you been comparing
my every kiss with theirs?
If on the other hand
I'm faithful to you
it's not from a sense of duty
you are too beautiful
and I am a fool
for beauty.”

Similar incisive simplicity can be found in this number from Jumbo (1935)

“My romance
doesn't have to have a moon in the sky
My romance
doesn't need a blue lagoon standing by
No month of May
No twinkling stars
No hideaway
No soft guitar

My romance
doesn't need a castle rising in Spain
Nor a dance
to a constantly surprising refrain
Wide awake
I can make my most fantastic dreams come true
My romance
doesn't need a thing but you.”
----

2006-11-17T00:04:00.000-08:00

Hart found even jauntier notes in this number from The Boys From Syracuse (1940) , a vaudeville-inspired rendition of A Comedy of Errors that in turn inspired A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, by a jealous queen whose name escapes me at the moment.

“This can't be love, because I feel so well,
No sobs, no sorrows, no sighs.
This can't be love; I get no dizzy spells,
My head is not in the skies.

My heart does not stand still, just hear it beat.
This is too sweet to be love.

This can't be love, because I feel so well,
But still I love to look in your eyes.

My heart does not stand still, just hear it beat.
This is too sweet to be love.

This can't be love, because I feel so well,
But still I love to look in your eyes.
Still I love to look in your eyes”

But he returned to bittersweet form in 1940 with this number from Higher and Higher :

“Once I laughed when I heard you saying
That I'd be playing solitaire
Uneasy in my easy chair
It never entered my mind
And once you told me I was mistaken
That I'd awaken with the sun
And ordered orange juice for one
It never entered my mind
You had what I lack, myself
Now I even have to scratch my back myself
Once you warned me that if you scorned me
I'd say a lonely prayer again
And wish that you were there again
To get into my hair again
It never entered my mind
Once you warned me that if you scorned me
I'd say a lonely prayer again
And wish that you were there again
To get into my hair again
It never entered my mind

And that same year produced Pal Joey, the first (and possibly last) truly adult musical and arguably Hart’s masterpiece. It was about a gigolo. Among its great songs, this one recently done to great effect in The History Boys.

“After one whole quart of brandy
Like a daisy, I'm awake
With no Bromo-Seltzer handy
I don't even shake
Men are not a new sensation
I've done pretty well I think
But this half-pint imitation
Put me on the blink
I'm wild again, beguiled again
A simpering, whimpering child again
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I
Couldn't sleep and wouldn't sleep
When love came and told me, I shouldn't sleep
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I
Lost my heart, but what of it
He is cold I agree
He can laugh, but I love it
Although the laugh's on me
I'll sing to him, each spring to him
And long, for the day when I'll cling to him
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I
He's a fool and don't I know it
But a fool can have his charms
I'm in love and don't I show it
Like a babe in arms
Love's the same old sad sensation
Lately I've not slept a wink
Since this half-pint imitation
Put me on the blink
I've sinned a lot, I'm mean a lot
But I'm like sweet seventeen a lot
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I
I'll sing to him, each spring to him
And worship the trousers that cling to him
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I
When he talks, he is seeking
Words to get off his chest
Horizontally speaking, he's at his very best
Vexed again, perplexed again
Thank God, I can be oversexed again
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - am I
Wise at last, my eyes at last,
Are cutting you down to your size at last
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - no more
Burned a lot, but learned a lot
And now you are broke, so you earned a lot
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - no more
Couldn't eat, was dispeptic
Life was so hard to bear
Now my heart's antiseptic
Since you moved out of there
Romance, finis.
Your chance, finis.
Those ants that invaded my pants, finis.
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered - no more.”

(Harold Lang, star of the 1952 revival of "Pal Joey" with boyfriend du jour Gore Vidal.)

It was no more Larry for Richard Rogers by the mid-forties when he broke with his unreliable and increasingly dead-drunk lyricist and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein to write a series of hit shows that while far from negligible are the polar opposite of the ones he wrote with Hart. Yet after Hammerstein’s death Rogers on his own wrote the music AND lyrics to No Strings -- a brilliant show about a white American novelist’s affair with a black American fashion model in a racially liberated Europe. In every way it was a séance in which Rogers was evoking (with striking success) the spirit of Larry Hart.

But that spirit hasn't died. Robert Altman, for one, built a major dance sequence around Hart's arguably most famous song in his 2003 film The Company. And that spirit will never die as long as we all can sing --

“My Funny Valentine
Sweet comic Valentine
You make me smile with my heart.
Your looks are laughable,
Unphotographable
Yet you’re my fav’rite work of art.
Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak,
Are you smart?
But don’t change a hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little Valentine, stay
Each day is Valentine’s Day.”

I’d like to end the proceedings on an up note with a number from The Boys From Syracuse -- that I find myself singing every time I think of the state of American politics.

“There was an old zany who lived in a tub;
He had so many fleabites
He didn't know where to rub.
He kept looking for an honest man
Said "I'm gonna find him if I can"
If i could meet Diogenes today,
This is what I'd say:
Rub-a-dub-dub

Oh, Diogenes!
Find a man who's honest!
Oh, Diogenes!
Wrap him up for me
Oh, Diogenes!
Find a man who's stolid-solid
Hook that fish if he's in the sea
Hunt him! Trail him!
Catch him! Nail him!
If he is free
Have you got your stick?
Have you got your lantern?
Can you do the trick
And produce him, please!
Catch that fellow!
Ring that bell,
Oh,
Oh!
Oh, Diogenes!
----

2006-11-17T00:02:00.000-08:00

p.s. The mighty david ehrenstein has pulled through big time today, as I'm sure you'll agree. Do give him your response. I sure learned some stuff from this. At the risk of possible own horn horn tooting, I'd like anyone to name another blog that pays tribute to Slayer and Lorenz Hart in the same week. Bizarre. I don't really have anything of note to report on my end, so I'll just move to your, end, so to speak. ** Jw veldhoen, Interesting. Well, hm, I read what you wrote a few times, and looked at your blog, and my potentially faulty conclusion is that your post is dense with irony. If I'm wrong, and you're being serious, you seem fully intelligent enough to imagine the unsatisfying response I'd give you. So I guess I'll leave it at that. I will say you have an interesting blog, though that might not be much of a compliment coming the likes of me. ** Joe mills, If you do, tell Suspect Thoughts I sent you. Hm, I guess I should quit smoking, huh? I won't cut down, though. Nobody I know who's ever tried that has been successful. It's all or nothing for me. On Alyson, well, at least two people who post here have published books with Alyson, but I don't know if they'll feel comfortable in-putting on that subject. I only know Alyson as a reader. They've done some excellent stuff as well as a lot of what I consider junk. David Gest has to be about as low as it gets on the celebrity scale, and of course he's on a reality show. Good God. ** Bacteriaburger, I read two of your porn stories -- the Burger King one and the 69/rimming one -- and liked them a lot. It's not very often at all that I'm reading porn and getting happily distracted by how good the sentences are and how economical the prose is. I also read 'The Bee Is Me,' which I like a whole lot. Beautiful. Consider me a fan, and I look forward to reading more. Oh, if you don't mind me asking, when you write for places like Handjobs, what kind of edit do you get? If you are edited, is it at all a literary kind of edit? How free do they let you be? I mean, is there a formula they expect porn stories to follow -- A+B=C -- or is it looser than that? A lot of questions, sorry. I'm just curious. ** Photi, Hey. Yours a great list too. I didn't know Night Boat or Factory School, so big thanks for those turn ons. I love all those presses you mention too. Have you published with any of them? How's your Paris trip planning going? Etc. ** Perspects, Oh gosh, I can see how my sentence/tone read as teenage-level bait. If so, it was unconscious. I was just spinning off tosh's post without calculation. If I did bait, I'm sorry because, really, no one is going to hear that tape. I don't even know where it is. In some box. On your novel/blog question ... I don't think the blog has affected the novel problem. If anything, I think math is probably right that it'll only help when or if I find another novel to write. Like I've said, I'm seeing this blog as my big project. It's my new novel in the sense that I'm trying to make it my own, something original and valuable, and think of it as an artistic form that I'm working in, and so far it's still a really interesting process to me. And of course this unexpected community has formed here, and that's really something because a novel doesn't do that. Yeah, sure, sometimes it's a chore, but so's writing a novel. An obligation? Once in a while when I'm feeling really burnt out on ideas, it sort of feels that way, but not entirely, and it's more that when I'm not in the mood I think of it as a form of discipline. A vacation: it's inevitable. I won't always have the time or handy internet, but I think the vacation time will find me not the other way. I think it's okay. I might go down to only posting five days a week at some point. We'll see. Thanks, I. ** David ehrenstein, Thank you thank you for today. And, on Shadow Morton, did he do other really top work aside from The Shangri-Las? The only other work by him that I can think of is his production on the second New York Dolls album, but I'm assuming he must have done a lot of work in the 60s, no? ** Tosh, Oh, thank you for the support, sir. ** 5stringaphasia, Yury speaks Russian, English, and French. ** Mark, Interesting question about Redonnet. People here often ask me what contemporary French fiction writers I like, and I always have to say that not many get translated, but among the ones I like a lot are Marie Redonnet. And the response has been a kind of thoughtful pause and then an, 'Oh, yes, she's very good,' which I have interpreted as indicating that she's not a big deal here, not a writer on the tips of literary people's tongues, but that she is respected. The only other thing people have said is that they think her earlier work is better, but then I tend to interpret that kind of response as meaning, 'I haven't read her recent work, but I'd rather not say that I haven't.' So that's all I know so far. But I like her work a lot, like you. ** Tony o'neill, I'll be very interested to hear your take on Amsterdam, my former home, yet a place I haven't been in a decade. Have an amazing time. ** Misanthrope, That's very nice of you to say, my friend. Funny, on your latest job guess. Yury really laughed when I told him what you'd guessed, and he's not a big laughter person, but rather a bit of a hardnosed young Russian cynic. I fear you'll be sorely disappointed by the blandness and obviousness of the answer. I love your guesses, though. ** Matthew, Thank you. That's incredibly nice. I read that piece of yours, 'Flashbacks,' on your webpage and liked it a lot. Very sharp. So thanks for it too. ** T.pkendall, Hey, there. Thanks for the project report. Very curious sounding. I'll try to get over to your blog and read the new writing asap. ** Katsim, Hey! I was wondering where you were. Nashville, huh. I've never been there, but I always imagine a super country music influenced place, meaning .... I don't know, cowboy hats galore and lots of steel guitar sounds floating on the wind? Thanks for the project. I'll put it on the permanent page. You sound good. ** Sypha_69, Sounds like we're in pretty much the same writer stage allright. I like your HP Lovecraft book idea. If you're not in a fiction state, why not? It definitely sounds very worth doing. ** Eddie b, You still at the writer's residency? Comedy's good. I thought there were things in your novels that were really funny, showed your touch for it. ** Brooklynserpico, Pollard's injury surely just means he's gonna go back to Dayton and record five new albums while he's limping around. Not a bad thing. ** Antonio, Am I surprised your course load is heavy on the female? No, I expect no less of you. What interested me in your list of classes, not surprisingly, is a little old class called 'Composition II Eng.' Please tell me this is a fancy name for a writing workshop, and that you've bitten the bullet and decided to flex your mindbogglingly great literary talent. Or don't tell me that if you don't want to. Anyway, you say all your classes suck, which would include that one, which is not a good sign, I guess. Tons of fake jewelry for you, dude. ** Math t, as I said to perspects above, yeah, I think the blog will only help lead me to whatever novel I write next, if I write another novel. I.e., i think you're right. ** Lost child, Thank you, pal. You don't have to be articulate about your projects, and your inarticulation is beauty. ** Blake, That's crazy you saw the films of those pieces. I'd love to watch those again. It's been forever. You know, since you offered, you could actually really help me out if you took any camera phone shots of 'Them' because I'm putting together a blog entry on that piece, and I don't have any pix from the piece itself. If you have any and could send them to me, that would be really great. If it's a hassle, don't worry about it. Thanks, man, and for the good words about the text. Speaking of Kevin Cridon -- it's actually spelled Creedon: I wish you could have seen him or I had a picture. Wow, pretty. ** Maria mcgregor, Thanks! ** Matt, Okay, I'll think up some questions and email them to you soon. I'm pretty easy to talk to, you wouldn't really have to sweat it. But, cool, Matt Day is now officially in the works. Projects can be anything, so your band is definitely a project, yeah. Good, more Matt-related stuff for your Day. Take care. ** Winter rates, Yeah, I know some of the work of Sun City Girls and definitely like it. Your curated Day would be most, most welcome. Anytime, whatever you want to do. Great. ** Nicehex, Excellent news about the meeting. Sure, send a still or two. You know, if you're game, I'd be totally into devoting a blog day/post to your film: stills, script piece, notes, whatever you wanted to share. Anyway, I just throw that out there, if the idea appeals. My address: contact@denniscooper.net ** Jheorgge, So now you've got me and probably others wondering what happened today post-big meeting. Can the opinions of the bright and few have had a real impact? Fingers crossed. ** David c, 'Frisk' might sorely test your love. We'll see. Gulp. Yury would love to model for D&G, but no. Apparently there's an unofficial but generally agreed upon height requirement for male models and Yury's height doesn't make the cut. That's what Yury says. ** Hedi, I would so welcome and value anything you have to say about Guyotat's 'Coma,' which isn't available in English, I don't think, and/or Lynch's 'Inland Empire.' ** Atheist, Please nick away at my blog. Pretty please. Trust me, it's a big compliment and honor from one so ultra-talented and wonderful as you. Anyway, anything you nick becomes yours. Your voice is only yours, a transformative force. ** Jax, Fuck, I really apologize for the boyfriend name mix-up. And please tell Tom I'm sorry as well that I hope he feels better. The name Circlet Press sounds very familiar. I'll have a hunt. You're so generous and helpful to the blog people with your suggestions and tips. It's really good of you. Best of luck on the weekend of treatment writing. I'll burn a imaginary candle -- that sounds really lame, wow -- and avoid walking on cracks and so on for you. ** Simon, Okay, will do. I was really sorry to read about Grizzly Bear's robbery and the other troubles. I hope you and they are okay. ** Dandysweets, Russia used to be included in the green card lottery, but no more, grr. But you should try it. Hopefully, if you win one, by the time you get over there, its evil empire phase will be on the way out. Have a good one. ** Geez, I'm posting this so late. It's been one of those days of endless phone calls and other interruptions. Late or not, I hope you enjoy david e's glorious fruit. See you.

My top ten American independent presses of 2007 (in no order) *

2006-11-16T07:14:00.000-08:00

* I'm excluding Akashic Press and Void Books because I have working relationships with them, but they deserve to be here.

1. Dalkey Archive (Normal, Ill.)
website

Their thing: Modern and post-modern literature

----------
In the spotlight: Louis-Ferdinand Céline Conversations with Professor Y

"Here’s the truth, simply stated . . . bookstores are suffering from a serious crisis of falling sales.” So begins the imaginary interview that comprises this novel. Professor Y, the interviewing academic, asks questions that allow Céline, a character in his own book, the chance to rail against convention and defend his idiosyncratic methods. In the course of their outrageous interplay, Céline comes closer to defining and justifying his poetics than in any of his other novels. But this is more than just an interview. As the book moves forward, Professor Y reveals his real identity and the characters travel through the streets of Paris toward a bizarre climax that parodies the author, the critic, and, most of all, the establishment.
----------

A few greatest hits: Countless important books, but, to pick three, Ishmael Reed The Freelance Pallbearers, Robert Pinget The Inquisatory, Djuna Barnes Nightwood, ... ----

2006-11-16T05:12:00.000-08:00

2. Suspect Thoughts (San Francisco)
website

Their thing: Queer fiction, non-fiction, poetry, anthologies

----------
In the spotlight: Matty Lee 35 Cents

35 Cents is the story of a straight, young, white boy growing up and coming of age as he hustles his way both through the gay community and the juvenile-detention system of South Florida in the late 1980s. It's also the amount he made when he turned his first trick at 13. Will he find home? Will he find love? All it costs is 35 cents.

"This memoir cuts through the crap with all the wild, touching, erotic insanity of the truth." —Todd Haynes
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A few greatest hits: The Wild Creatures: Collected Stories of Sam D'Allesandro, D. Travers Scott One of These Things is Not Like the Other, Dodie Bellamy Pink Steam, ...
----

2006-11-16T04:53:00.000-08:00

3. Fence Books (NYC)
website

Their thing: Experimental poetry and prose

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In the spotlight: Ariana Reines The Cow

To call Ariana Reines' poetry scatological doesn't even scratch the surface. "I COULD BE A DIAPER FOR THE DAY'S RESIDUALS," she writes, and, "She clasped the event to her and proceeded. Fucked her steaming/ eyehole and ended it." The Cow is a body in the way that texts are bodied—"Are you so intelligent your body doesn't have you in it."—but not in the way that allows the text to become desensitized, depersonalized, sterilized. Instead this text is filthy and fertilized, filling and emptying, filling and emptying, atrocious and politic with meaning. The Cow is a mother, a lover, and a murdered lump of meat, rendered in the strongest of languages. "I cannot count the altering that happens in the very large rooms that are the guts of her."
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A few greatest hits: Fence Magazine, David Brenner The Stupefying Flashbulbs, Michael Earl Craig Yes Master.
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2006-11-16T04:50:00.000-08:00

4. Semiotexte (NYC)
website

Their thing: Fiction, theory, philosophy, poetry, visual art

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In the spotlight: David Wojnarowicz A Definitive History of Five or Six Years on the Lower East Side

In the wake of David Wojnarowicz’s death, critic and cultural theorist Sylvère Lotringer undertook to track down all of Wojnarowicz's friends and former collaborators, such as Bill Rice, and Kiki Smith and Marguerite Van Cook, amongst others. Lotringer wanted to talk not just about David, but about the East Village cultural scene they'd created. Through their detailed and candid, sometimes lurid, often hilarious and profoundly moving accounts, the protagonists of the East Village art scene reclaim their history, on their own terms. Profusely illustrated with photographs and artworks by Gary Azon, Nan Goldin, James Romberger, Peter Hujar, Richard Kern, Marion Scemama, Andreas Sterzing, Tommy Turner and David Wojanrowicz, Five or Six Years tears open art history’s myth of the single Great Artist to reveal Wojnarowicz’s real life, and the real lives surrounding him.
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A few greatest hits: Tony Duvert Good Sex Illustrated, Julia Kristeva Revolt She Said, Cookie Mueller Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, ...
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2006-11-16T04:48:00.000-08:00

5. Turtle Point (NYC)
website

Their thing: Fiction and poetry

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In the spotlight: Wayne Koestenbaum Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films: New Poems

“With a nod to Woody Allen's story "The Whore of Mensa,' Koestenbaum proffers that largest of sex organs—the mind—and entices with erudite and smuttily trenchant wit. Charming, teasing, brainy, and slightly Seder-Masochistic, this collection asks that age-old question, "Is Crisco Kosher?"” —D.A. Powell
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A few greatest hits: Henri Barbusse Hell, Michael Friedman Martian Dawn, David Trinidad Plasticville, ...
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2006-11-16T04:15:00.000-08:00

6. Soft Skull (Brooklyn)
website

Their thing: Edgy fiction, poetry, nonfiction, graphic novels.

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In the Spotlight: Alain Mabanckou African Psycho

African Psycho concerns a would-be serial killer, Gregoire Nakobomayo, and the spiritual relationship he has developed with his phantom mentor, a far more accomplished serial killer, Angoualima. The title recalls Bret Easton Ellis' infamous book but while Ellis' narrator was blank, and the book eschewed any kind of psychological exposition, accepting pure psychosis as the bottomline, Mabanckou's protagonist is all psychology and relentless internal chatter and prevarication. Although the gruesome descriptions that characterize crime fiction are many, it is Mabanckou's inventive use of language that surprises and relieves the reader by injecting humor into this disturbing subject.
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A few greatest hits: Lynne Tillman American Genius: A Comedy, David Ohle Cursed from Birth: The Short, Unhappy Life of William S. Burroughs Jr., Derek McCormack The Haunted Hillbilly, ...
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2006-11-16T04:09:00.000-08:00

7. Clear Cut Press (Portland)
website

Their thing: Fiction, poetry, nonfiction, art

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In the spotlight: Robert Gluck Denny Smith

The stories in Denny Smith use events in the life of Robert Glück as a ground for the expansion of empathy and intellect. These events include burglary, sex, conversation, reading, humiliation, child raising, and porn. A teenage girl runs away from home and takes up with a pair of Bible-reading boys named after the Beatles; the theft of a shovel from a postal truck brings our narrator to an epiphany about his relationship with his father; the pleasures and sorrows of intimacy and betrayal are analyzed, obscured, abstracted, and reveled in. Self-absorbed, the stories are nevertheless profoundly communal. As William Burroughs said of Glück's earlier novel, Jack the Modernist, "in this book self-exploration is so precise it becomes impersonal."
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A few greatest hits: Stacey Levine Frances Johnson, Matt Briggs Shoot the Buffalo, The Clear Cut Future, ...
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2006-11-16T04:04:00.000-08:00

8. Coffee House Press (Minneapolis)
website

Their thing: Fiction, poetry

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In the spotlight: Paul Metcalf The Collected Works of Paul Metcalf

"Metcalf is an American original whose books are certainly not of the mainstream nor can they properly be called avant-garde. He has not written novels nor has he obeyed the distinction between fiction and non-fiction. His work might be termed poetry, but that, too, is inadequate. What we have here is a writer beyone category, and thanks to Coffee House we have him in abundance." --William Corbett, artsMEDIA

"Whatever history 'was' is made available through a tapestry of narratives collected from multiple sources and arranged in such a way that they cohere in the present day. The publication of Metcalf's Collected Works...is nothing less than an event one hopes library selectors will not be the only ones to notice." --Library Journal
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A few greatest hits: Elaine Equi Decoy, Alice Notley Margaret & Dusty, Cris Mazza Dog People, ...
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2006-11-16T03:43:00.000-08:00

9. Roof Books (NYC)
website

Their thing: poetry, criticism, fiction

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In the spotlight: Hannah Weiner Page

Hannah Weiner’s Page is the final, major, unpublished work of the notorious, clairvoyant poet who died in New York 1997. Completed in 1990, Page uses Weiner’s combination of family, TV cartoon, and high-art diction to weave a unique view of the individual interacting with society. The reader gets the sense that the poet is just barely hanging on, tenaciously, tenuously, and touchingly. Hannah has the ability to make you sympathetic and needy, exposing your humanity to you in every phrase. Hannah Weiner was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1928 and died in Manhattan in 1997. Page, completed in 1990, is the first posthumous publication of her work. Weiner's books include The Clairvoyant Journal, Little Books/Indians, Spoke, Silent Teachers/ Remembered Sequel,>/i> and We Speak Silent Her papers are housed at the Archive for New Poetry, Mandeville Special Collections Library, at the University of California, San Diego. Weiner's home page is located at the Electronic Poetry Center.
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A few greatest hits: Arakawa & Madeline Gins Making Dying Illegal, Ron Silliman The New Sentence, Kim Rosenfield Good Morning-Midnight-, ...
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2006-11-16T03:41:00.000-08:00

10. Seven Stories (NYC)
website

Their thing: Popular Culture, Human Rights and Politics, Media Studies, American History, etc.

----------------
In the spotlight: Dennis D. Loo & Peter Phillips Impeach the President

"An eye-opening, multi-layered indictment of the lawless rule of the Bush White House reactionaries. A well-edited, well-substantiated, an dwell-argued offering of hard-hitting truths that can serve as a manual for political action." -Michael Parenti, author of The Culture Struggle and Superpatriotism

“A looming, new totalitarianism--that is the warning here. Citizens who feel uneasy owe it to themselves to read this important book and think about how to exercise their responsibilities. Citizenship, truth be told, isn't easy, nor free.” -George Kenney, former State Department Official

"This important volume, contributing powerfully to the campaign for impeachment, must be welcomed by anyone concerned for peace, justice, and a truly democratic nation." -Howard Zinn, from the introduction
---------------

A few greatest hits: Ewen & Ewen Typecasting: On the Arts & Sciences of Human Inequality, Kurt Vonnegut Man Without a Country, Noam Chomsky 911, ...
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2006-11-16T02:15:00.000-08:00

p.s. I don't know if you guys think in terms of the publishing houses you like or are interested in, but I'd love hear your tips and faves inside or outside the United States. I think the rise of indie publishers is going to save a lot of great artists. Well, it already has. Maybe this post is a good one to follow up the projects report day since a number of you are working rather extraordinary sounding writing projects, and a safety net is always nice. Now, need I even say the projects that people are working on are so fantastic and impressive across the board? Back me up here: there wasn't one project that wasn't exciting and in serious need of existing in the world. You people never cease to astonish and inspire me. Those of you I know, and those of you who keep arriving. Incredible. There's no way I can give each project or progress report any kind of worthy response in the situation that this p.s. format and my life's time frame can allow, so just know I'm blown away. What I will do is set up a new link/page where the the progress reports and new projects will be permanently on display in the next couple of days. Thank you, guys. If you posted something that asked for a response from me, I'll do my best, but I'll have to be brief all the way around because I need to scurry through the Monday comments and answer any direct queries there as well. I'll do another progress report and call for new projects by the new people in a few months. Yeah, I just don't what to say. The hugest respect and supportiveness from me that you can imagine. ** (Monday) Atheist, There is suddenly some hope that my brother might have come to a few of his senses and will sign the agreement on my mom's will. But I'll believe it when I see it. He's talking the talk of someone who's realized he's acting irrational at least. My mom is not doing well at all. Pancreatic cancer doesn't give its victims a pleasant ending in any way. So she's still mostly lucid but is in ever-increasing pain and on ever stronger pain killers, and, well, I'm sorry to pass on such a downer, but it's just not an easy thing for her and consequently for us. It's all about just trying to make her as comfortable as possible and not knowing how long things will continue. Sorry, but since you asked, that's the story. I appreciate your asking. ** Tony o'neill, Just let me know, re. the publishers. The very, very best of luck at your event in Holland, not that you need it, duh. ** Misanthrope, You're getting warmer on the Yury job guess, though not yet hot. Which is not to say you're not hot personally. I bet you are. ** Tosh, 'My Mind's Eye,' fuck yeah. The band I had in high school did a cover of that song in our live shows, sung by yours truly. There's a tape somewhere, but nobody is going to hear it. Nope. ** Jheorgge, I must say your studies are hugely disaapointing based on your report. 'The Full Monty?!" And if I'd been there to see the derision of 'L'Argent,' there would have been a school shooting for sure. Well, just be a great enemy, I guess. Oh, the Dave Lombardo non-appearance was a complete mind slip and fatal error. I don't know what I was thinking. He's likely the greatest rock drummer alive, for anti-Christ's sake. Forgive me, jhoerggey, for I knew not what I did. ** Nick, Well, howdy. Excellent to see you. ** 5stringaphasia, Yury said to tell you he thinks the Mother Russia monument is 'impressive,' and to add that he was raised in the newly post-Soviet Russia where everyone was pressured/taught to hate everything to do with Communism, so it's hard for him to have a clear opinion. ** Richard eichmann, You need to listen to 'Reign in Blood' asap. Oh, there's an email from you, yes, but I haven't opened it yet. Soon. ** Jose, Actually, 'Lain' is one of Yury's all time favorite animes, so nice call. ** Alice in chains, Even though most of my friends hate Atari Teenage Riot, I think because what's-his-name is supposedly is such an arrogant prick, I like 'em. Well, the older stuff. They're not still around, are they? ** Blake, Hey. The end of the month is looking like maybe I'll be here, maybe I'll have flown back to LA at a day's notice. I can't tell. Things are rough with my mom, and I can't make concrete plans. So I don't know. I'm really sorry. We'll figure something out because I really want to meet up and talk about your project. The timing just couldn't be worse. ** David ehrenstein, I've made a note to ask Catherine R-G your question the next time I see her. ** Alistairmc, Hey, man. It's so nice to see you. Great that your book's turned in. Norman Frisch sent me some strange link to some news story that a performance of yours got banned or ... ? I couldn't figure it out. Anyway, I hope it's all either notoreity under the bridge or fun for you if it isn't. Cool. I hope I'll get to see you and Tim soon. ** Vomitingghosts, Your piece was beautiful, yeah, kind of like 'The Beloveds' (a compliment to me not you), and thanks a lot. ** Winter rates, I have emails out to two eczema-haunted friend, and I'll let you know if they have any advice. ** Garrison, Oh, on 'The Queen,' I thought it was real good, don't get me wrong. But I guess I didn't fall in love with it, no. Not that I really think it had problems or anything. But I felt more than like for it. I think I was just so into her performance that I was mostly watching her work and not the film itself so much. ** (Tuesday-Wednesday) Brooklyn serpico, Dude, I'm so envious of you that I could get drunk, I mean about Pollard, duh, and about the wrecked stage diving boy too. Cool you dove. Cool you didn't die. I guess you probably heard that Pollard tore his calf muscle right after the NYC show and had to cancel the rest of his tour, so you got especially lucky. Anyway, feel my drool. ** Nicehex, Hey, I really appreciate you sharing your project. Christ, that's great. The film sounds amazing. If I'm in LA, and you ever have screenings, I'd love to see it, naturally. Anyway, just big congrats and a lot of anticipation from me. ** Antonio, Based on your project, I see a MacArthur Grant in your future. ** Tony o'neill, Congrats on selling the footballer book. What a curious project. And of course your fiction project sounds excellent. ** Math t, Complacency is definitely worse than anything. I can't think of a more horrible state. The new drawings rock. You're great with sex. ** Maria mcgregor, I'd love copies of your zines when they're finished, if you could spare them. I'll reimburse the postage if it helps. ** James, Hey, you're back, at least fort a second. As you can imagine, I love the name of your club, being that it is presumably named after one of my all-time favorite songs. Cool. ** Link raygun, It's not going to be anything like 'Lolita,' don't worry. It's like me having worried that I'd just replicate Sade. It doesn't happen. Your film sounds quite amazing. The story, whoa, gets a deep bow from me. Let us/me know how it goes, okay? ** Doug wasted, Excellent to see you. Your novel sounds incredibly promising. I'd forgotten you write as well as make films. Thanks, man. ** Matt, I'd love to do a signing in Houston. I've never done a reading or anything in the Southor Southwest. My publishers always assume no one down there reads me or something. On Matt Day, great. Let's see ... well, pix, obviously. Things you really like: life stuff, music, books, people, whatever. I could do a short interview with you to include in your Day. That might be interesting. By phone or email, I guess. What do you think? That might be just the thing, if you agree. ** Bacteriaburger, Welcome. Thanks for passing on your project. I really like your ideas, and you know I'm into porn, so I'm definitely intrigued. Where could I read some? Is any of your work online? Thanks again. ** Jack, Oh, my God. ** Misanthrope, You really need to finish that novel, right? You know that, right? Don't worry about whether it's great or shit. That's for the world to know and for you to find out, as they say. ** D., No new novel in sight for me. I'm in a two year fiction bad patch. Ever since I finished the cycle, every time I write a novel, I lose my voice afterwards. It's just gone. Then I have to find it again. And sometimes it's hard. It's never been harder than recently. I could be done with novels, or one could start tomorrow. I'd like to write two more and stop. That's my ideal. But right now two more seems impossible. Otherwise, my projects are the theater piece 'Kindertotenlieder' and the radio play 'Jerk,' both in progress. New book of poems, but that's done. Little House on the Bowery. Maybe a book of short fiction. I think that's all. Thanks, man. ** Dickson edwards, You know I'm really getting to like Fosca a lot. I always did, but it keeps growing in my head and revealing new imprsssive aspects. Chuck Pallahniuk: Yeah, I like his work. I haven't read the last two. His prose is often really good, chewy, aware of what sentences can do. I like the first few the best for some reason. I'd like to see him really throw himself a loop in the next one. That would be good, I think. But yeah, I do, and I think his big success, in the States at least, is a real positive thing. The Shangri-Las are absolutely sublime. Shadow Morton was kind of a weird, unsung genius. I named one of my books -- 'He Cried' -- after their song. Big fan. ** Mark, You know I'm really into Marie Redonnet too. I wonder what her recent work is like. They haven't been translating her newer books into English, have they? ** Dandysweets, Very cool about your film projects. Weird, I just saw a preview for 'C.R.A.Z.Y' in a movie theater here a few days ago, and I thought, What's that? It looks way up my alley and sexy. ** Laney, Hey. I hear you about the problem of finding porn where young cute slender guys get fisted. It's not easy to find at all, though there are scenes here and there of varying quality and power. But anyway, you and ignacio have together inspired me to do either a fistfucking day or an assplay day here, so I'll try to hunt some stuff/info down that could be helpful. ** Young and stupid, School sucks that much? Because the schooling itself sucks or because you hate the time it's taking or ...? I hope you can find a way to make it work for you. ** Postitbreakup, Sure, you can send me those questions. And I'll even try incredibly hard to answer the questions/email right away. I'm trying out a new system to get myself to answer emails like I used to. We'll see. ** Christopher michael stamm, Singing in a band? I'll check it out. You got my email about writing the letters for the schools? ** Lux, Hey. Mm, about Slayer members' possible homophobia? I guess I'd expect that. They hate all kinds of shit, being nihilists and anti-sensual and so on. I guess I don't think about it when I listen to them. I listen to them for a hit of their particular genius, and to feel their particular hatred of the world, and if I'm part of what they hate, no surprise. It just doesn't bother me, but I haven't read these comments you're talking about. And about the humor at gays' expense in teen movies ... if I let that bother me, I'd be angry all the time, and that's no fun. It depends on the joke and context to me. If it's ugly, it's ugly. If it seems more about the characters' fear of unconventional sex, then I just see it as character flaw, and I don't care. Obviously, I wish everybody thought gays were just cool, no big deal, but teens are always going to go through huge anxiety and fear about sex at some stage, and gays of course will get some of that, being easy to joke about, and movies are going to reflect that. It depends on the context and the joke for me. I don't know that I can explain the impact of 'Thin Red Line.' I completely love Malick's work. In that case, I couldn't figure out how to write 'My Loose Thread,' and I was going crazy trying to figure out a way, and I saw 'TRL' and I knew, That's it. That film just told me how to write it. Not that 'MLT' copied 'TRL' at all. It just taught me. Not a great answer, sorry. On ATP, as I said above, my life is on hold right now with my mom's dying. It would be great to see you and it, though. We'll see. Thanks a lot, lux. ** Antler, Hey. Thanks for joining in. You sent me a version of your novel? Wow, I'm a blank, but then I get a ton of stuff. Anyway, whatever, it's great your novel's being published. I'd love to know more about how I could pick up a copy. It's funny you chose the screenmame antler. At first I thought you might be that poet Antler that Allen Ginsberg was so crazy about. So hey, and come back, and, again, congrats on your book being published. Don't be so down on it, though. If a couple of your heroes have given you blurbs, how bad can it be, right? ** Jax, First I'm so sorry about what happened with nick, and I'm so glad he's okay. Pass along my very best wishes to him please. My trip was nice. I went to a 2000 year old French city named Besancon. Very beautiful. I did a talk at the art school and a reading at the local university. Everybody was really friendly and great. Mm, you're pretty damned close on Yury's job. I'll be able to talk about it more after the weekend. Like I said, it's not some big mysterious whoop. He just doesn't want me to talk about it much until he's sure it's a secure situation. ** Okay, great. I'll be putting up the permanent new projects page over the weekend, so anyone hasn't piped in yet and wants to, please do. Thanks again, everybody. I should be back in my regular, more responsive state tomorrow. See you then.

'Current projects of some distinguished locals:' a late-year progress report

2006-11-14T07:17:00.000-08:00

Back in June, I asked the people who were reading and posting on this blog to describe their current project(s). There was a great response, and the answers were posted on this blog at the end of a link that's over to your right: 'Current projects of some distinguished locals.' Well, I've been wanting to do an update and see where people are in relation to the projects they described back then. Are the projects finished, ongoing, dead, replaced with (an)other project(s), or what? If you don't remember what your project was, you can use the aforementioned link to see how you characterized it at that time. So, I'd like a progress report, please? For those of you weren't around back then, I'd like to ask you the same questions I asked those readers and commenters in June. The original post is below. It's talking to you. Read it and respond here, if you don't mind. Understand? Thanks a lot.

The original post: 'Mid-year progress report: 5 questions'

We discuss all sorts of crazy and serious matter on this blog, but there hasn't been a deliberate focus on what you people are thinking about and working on individually for a while. Some of you are artists, some of you aren't. It doesn't matter. I want to know what you're into and up to creatively right now. So here are some prying questions for you, meaning you who've posted here and you who've only read so far but might be tempted to join in under the right circumstances. 1. What is your main project at the current time? When I say project, I mean anything in-progress that's important to you. It can be an artistic endeavour -- writing, visual art, music, film, theater, journalistic, a thesis, etc. It can be something you're investigating -- an idea, philosophy, TV series, scientific info, a book or writer, a band, an esoteric practice, something practical, etc. It can be a love affair or a sexual obsession. It can be redecorating your bedroom. It can be anything preoccupying you and activating your imagination that you see as central and (potentially) productive in some key way. It could be something as seemingly prosaic as a diet or going to the gym or whatever just so long as it's a creative endeavour to which you're giving a significant degree of thought. If you're into more than one thing right now, name more than one. 2. Where do you think you are in this project -- at the beginning, the middle, or the end? What makes you believe you're at that point? 3. At this moment, do you consider the project a success, a failure, or something inbetween? Why? 4. Do you think this project is fairly characteristic of your established interests, behavior, and patterns in the past? Or does the project surprise you and seem to be something new or more new than not? 5. What would be the ideal result or conclusion of this project to your mind? What would be the most disastrous? Realistically, what do you think will come of and from this project in the long run?

*

p.s. I spaced until last night on the fact that I have to catch an early train to a small French town today where I'm doing a reading and book signing and some other stuff. That's why this post is appearing so bizarrely early by my standards, and why I can't interract with you today. I'll be away sans internet until tomorrow afternoon, so there won't be a new post on Wednesday, for which I apologize. But I'll be back again full time the day after. Coincidentally, this is probably a good post to leave up for a couple days as, hopefully, it'll give you guys plenty of time to report on your projects and/or progress. Do share. Okay, I'm going to miss my train if I don't zoom, so take care, and I'll see you on Thursday.

A pause to feel the massive impact of Slayer

2006-11-13T03:02:00.000-08:00

Official Slayer Website
The Official Slayer myspace Page

The Abyss - the complete unofficial Slayer fansite
Slayerized - the ultimate Slayer fansite
Slayer Saves - the definitive Slayer fansite

Slayer's Wikipedia entry
An analysis & history of Slayer at anus.com

2006-11-13T02:25:00.000-08:00

'Angel of Death' live at Ozzfest '96 (5:49)
'War Ensemble' live at Wembley Stadium 1990 (5:03)
'Disciple' live, undated (3:31)
'Raining Blood' live somewhere in the 90s (6:58)
'At Dawn They Sleep' from the 'Live Intrusion' DVD 1994 (6:05)
'The Anti-Christ' live 1985 (3:00)
'Bloodline' promo video 2003 (3:42)
'Serenity in Murder' promo video (2:43)
'Dittohead' promo video (2:32)

2006-11-13T02:12:00.000-08:00

Tom Araya

Full name: Thomas Araya
Instrument: Bass, Vocals
Birthday: 6th June 1962.
Birthplace: Santiago, Chile

Kerry King

Full name: Kerry King
Instrument: Guitar
Birthday: 3rd June 1964.
Birthplace: Los Angeles

Jeff Hanneman

Full name: Jeff Hanneman
Instrument: Guitar
Birthday: 19th August 1964.
Birthplace: Oakland

Paul Bostaph

Full name: Paul Bostaph
Instrument: Drums
Birthday: 26th March 1964.
Birthplace: San Francisco

2006-11-13T01:51:00.000-08:00

National Day of Slayer Task Force
The complete Slayer lyrics
Slayer bootlegs trade and buy site
Dead Skin Mask, Slayer tribute band
MTV's Slayer archive
Slayer tour dates and news updates
News Story: Slayer's 'Christ Illusion" album banned in India

2006-11-13T01:40:00.000-08:00

p.s. Hey. I hope your weekends were up to par. Mine mostly consisted of collateral damage from (and ill-received attempts at peacemaking re.) my family's ever-escalating war of words and deeds, so I'm kind of a mental and nervous wreck today. I think I'll just leave it at that and take a deep breath. Oh, I saw 'The Queen.' I thought it was good not great, but I thought Helen Mirren was great not good. ** Link raygrun, I did indeed check out your suggested link and it was mesmerizing. That kid's song has got to be played over the opening or closing credits of the 'Try' movie if one ever gets made. Wow, thanks for the tip. ** Swann811, Leora! What an amazing and wonderful surprise. Well, now that you've cracked the cyber-door, don't be shy. I think I've owed you an email for months, haven't I? I'm so discombobulated these days. But it's cool to see you and to hear your tale of Bowie. Thank you thank you and much love. ** Math t, Yeah, there is something appealing about that ... boy in the post Saturday. If nothing else, he's got the market cornered on strange glam/alien-looking gay porn models. I've never seen anyone quite like him before. I think he could use a different hairstyle though. My family's mostly Scottish with some Czech way back. I'm not sure what generation American I am. My family's been here a long time, fought in the Civil War and the whole shebang. ** Joe mills, Hm, maybe the stud is paralyzed. In all the shots I found from that session, he doesn't budge an inch. But maybe he's just in shock. I don't like Hilary Clinton because she's a two-faced, mega-careerist who kissed Bush's ass tenderly and publically over and over as recently as earlier this year, and that is completely inexcusable. But she won't be the Democratic Presidential candidate. No way. She's dreaming. ** Thomas, Hey. Thanks for the linx. I've actually got 'The Nomi Song' DVD sitting on my 'desk' right now, but it belongs to my friend and occasional blog community member chris, so I almost own it. Almost. ** Dandysweets, Yeah, Matt kind of is this blog's Bunnyboy, isn't he? Definitely a good thing. Get this: I saw Eno live when he was in Roxy Music on their American first tour playing at the Whisky A-Go-Go, a club that holds about 500 people. You talk about feeling lucky? Whoa, I do. ** Antonio, Bowie's cock, gross, I agree. Iggy's cock, now gross, but in the early 70s, way not gross. The Knife album was good. I ain't no ghey icon, motherfucka. Well, it's not for me say, I suppose. Thanks for including me in your pantheon, in any case. Just to be in the same breath (or ten) with Varg Vikernes is a dream come true. I don't know your serial killer relative, but I'll have a look, and it's cool in any case. Or weird me thinks so. ** Tosh, That is an excellent book of R-G interviews, and it is super super rare, so you're a lucky dog. I like the psychedelic Small Faces but not the r&b/soul Small Faces. They were a weirdly schizophrenic band, style-wise. But Steve Marriott's voice ... wow. When he sings it always sort of sounds like he's vomitting, in a good way, I mean. Plus he was teeniest weeniest little guy, which is cool too. I never saw the Small Faces, but I saw him live when he was in Humble Pie, who weren't so great. He had, like, two foot high platform shoes on, and he still looked like a biological anomaly. Great singer. ** Andrew Gallix, I wrote Vim. We're figuring out how to work it. Thanks. ** Misanthrope, (sound of buzzer) Nope, Yury's not a dish washer in a French bath house, but good guess. I don't know about back in the States, but over here at least, I feel like if I hear the name Borat one time I'm going to go deaf or something. It's like the birds are chirping 'Borat, Borat ...' That movie better be damned funny. Was it? ** Statictick, You're welcome. Deep bow. ** Vomitingghosts, Hm, 'Red Sails,' 'Ashes to Ashes,' 'Always Crashing in the Same Car' (or whatever it's called), 'Rebel Rebel,' 'John I'm Only Dancing,' 'TVC15,' 'Panic in Detroit,' 'Hang On to Yourself,' 'The Width of a Circle,' 'Changes.' I think that's ten. 'Harold and Maude' is my mom's favorite movie. ** Garrison, Separating the twins, yeah. I've done that too. That can really do the trick, though one might not survive or turn into a poem. Not so bad. Excellent news. ** Michael karo, 'New gentleman friend:' That sounds really hopeful and upbeat. Good for you. Hooray. ** Dickon edwards, Well, hey there. It's really good to see you in these woods again. I guess I'll have to read that anthology -- congrats, by way -- to learn the poop, but a trip with Shane MacGowan! That's both incredibly impressive and impossible to imagine and kind of scary sounding. I would be very happy to do something with Cam Archer, naturally. He's got my email address, so ... you never know. I dig the Scarlett/Lukas comparison except she's so ... voluptuous, big bodied and his body's a rail. A very, very nice rail, no doubt. Anyway, good to see you. Don't be a stranger. ** Atheist, Welcome back to full time. Cool. Yeah, if you have a serious problem with poo representation, you're going to have skip around in '120 Days of Sodom,' and you shouldn't even think about reading Samuel Delaney's 'Hogg,' which is full of it. ** 5stringaphasia, Dude, you impress me mightily everyday. That's no hill to climb. You're already up there looking down. ** David ehrenstein, I never dance, with the boys or otherwise -- unless bouncing up and down on one's heels when I watch bands play counts -- but if I did dance with the boys, hm, I might even pick the stars of today, Slayer. See, that's why I'm not a dancer. Oh, New Pornographers actually. Whenever I listen to them I dance all over our little apartment here, scaring Yury in the process. ** Mike, Hey, man. Yeah, awesome news about the Robbe-Grllet films. I don't know about English subtitles or not. Fingers crossed. I'll need to talk to Catherine Robbe-Grillet to get all the release info, but I will, and I'll pass along what I learn. But I think end of the year is pretty firm on the release date. Take care. ** Rigby101, I'll do that index finger flick as soon as Yury gets home from school. He doesn't drink alchohol and I drink so rarely that I practically don't. Yury's originally from a city in the south-ish part of Russia called Voronezh. ** Maria McGregor, Hello, welcome to here. A Charles Ray show in Oslo? Cool. He's a god in my book. Was it a survey show or something new or ... ? Thanks for joining in. I'll hope to see you here more. ** D., It is sadly true that short fiction collections are hard to get published. Even when you're semi-established, publishers usually seem to publish them as a favor to the writer to keep him or her happy. But there are always glaring exceptions, so don't feel doomy about it. It can happen. It should happen for you. Proceed apace, and who knows? I've got your back, for what that's worth. ** Robert-nyc, Hm, I know Christian too well to see his resemblance to the stud, but I think I get it. ** Sypha_69, I like the cover. It looks very pro, like you said, and catchy, yeah. Good one. Don't forget that when your novel's coming out I want to do a Day here to celebrate, hype, and preview it. So when the time's right, let's confer and figure out the best way to do that, okay? ** Okay, until tomorrow then. Heil Slayer, and have a good day.

Scrapbook Three, p. 2: 'Old Fashioned,' part two

2006-11-11T08:19:00.000-08:00

Stud: Thanks again, buddy. I know doing this job for me wasn't quite your thing. But to watch myself suck David Bowie's cock in 1972 ... shit, that's been my life's dream.
Photographer: True, I'd rather have spent the last few months whittling thirty-plus years of sag, droop, and wrinkles off the Thin White Duke himself, but he declined my request to pose with you, as you might remember. Still, restoring boys of the 70s is my specialty, and I think you'll agree that ... oh, I've forgotten the name of that young model who stood in for Bowie. What was your nickname for him again?
Stud: Don of the Dead.
Photographer: Don, that's right. Well, I think you'll agree that while Don wasn't the hottest street prostitute you've ever sucked off, he made for a very fine canvas.
Stud: I do look excited in this shot, don't I? Well, I think I'm ready. Show me my dream come true.
Photographer: Okay, but understand, what you'll see is not a perfect Bowie replicant. Technology has yet to catch up with my genius, I'm afraid. But I think you'll be more than satisfied.

2006-11-11T07:07:00.000-08:00

Photographer: Ta da.
Stud: Hunh. Well, he's not what I ... I mean the work you've done, wow. That nasty little Don slag is, poof, completely out of the picture, but ... Give me a second. Okay, you sort of got the Bowie bone structure right, I guess. Sort of.
Photographer: Mind you, it's David Bowie out of costume. I thought about putting in all the crazy make up and wacky haircuts he was famous for, but I thought the candid David Bowie would be more ... erotic.
Stud: So you really think that looks like David Bowie.
Photographer: Well, yes. It's rather uncanny, if I don't say so myself. Quite illusory.

2006-11-11T06:55:00.000-08:00

Stud: I have this feeling you're not that huge a Bowie fan.
Photographer: Frankly, no. Honestly, I only know his song ... what's it called ... 'Major Tom.' But of course I'm fully cognizant of the great man's artistic legacy and how he looked back in his heyday. What fool isn't?
Stud: Because to me ... and I could be way off here, but this quote-unquote Bowie looks more like some Glam rock 70s fem dude mixed with, like, an alien from the original Star Trek TV series mixed with ... I don't know, Liberace?
Photographer: Shit, did I let some Liberace slip into my work yet again? See, the first job I ever had was airbrushing Liberace's publicity photos, and old habits do die hard.

2006-11-11T06:47:00.000-08:00

Photographer: Now, look at this shot. You've got to admit that's the young David Bowie. No question about it. Capital D, capital B. I mean ... mindfuck, anyone? I don't want to boast, but it's almost like he could burst into one of his platinum hit songs at any moment.
Stud: So what photographs of Bowie did you use to create ... uh, Bowie?
Photographer: I only used one image. I've found that using more than one source image causes me more problems than anything else. But I found a very fine photograph of the great man. The best shot of him that I personally have ever seen. I'm talking David Bowie at his most Bowie-ish. Here, I've got it with me. Let me show you. See?

2006-11-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

Stud: Uh ....

2006-11-11T06:45:00.000-08:00

Stud: Uh, that wasn't David Bowie.
Photographer: It certainly was. Let me put on my glasses. No, that's quite an excellent picture of David Bowie. Really, who else on earth could it be?
Stud: Klaus Nomi. German opera singing Glam cult figure guy. He sang back up one time with Bowie on Saturday Night Live during the 'Diamond Dogs' tour.
Photographer: Well, then my mistake is understandable. And there you are sucking his famous cock in 1970-something.
Stud: Okay, forgetting that this is the biggest disappointment of my entire life, and forgetting that if I have to look at this picture for one more second I'm going to throw up, yeah. I guess I am.
Photographer: So, this slight detour notwithstanding, you are going to pay me the little fee we agreed on, I'm imagining?
Stud: No, buddy.

(to be continued)
----

2006-11-11T06:31:00.000-08:00

p.s. Here I am, late again. I'll try to get back on earlier posting track next week. No news from me, so I'll get right to the interractions. ** Joe mills, Thanks a ton again for yesterday. I apologize for the fucked up links. I thought I had them sorted, but I guess not. Yeah, there's no big organized, cohesive youth culture movement going on right now, and it would be a great time for one, but there is as good a batch of new bands and musicians as there's been in a long time, in my opinion, and maybe the fact that the current energies are so splintered constitutes a kind of anti-movement movement of some sort or something. It's curious. On the discarded 'Sluts' chapters, I think at least one of them will show up somewhere at some point, maybe in book of short fiction or maybe here. The thing is that in addition to how extreme and bleak one chapter is, people have found it dfficult to read. It's a series of emails between the Brian character and a guy in Russian who makes snuff videos. So the Russian's voice is in really fucked up, distorted, bad English, which is kind of the point -- the difficulty of what he's saying being made more difficult by the prose itself. But in the context of the relatively easyreading 'Sluts,' people had a hard time with it. So I have to figure out how it works on its own, and I still haven't decided on that. But I will, and you'll probably seen some version it somewhere before too, too long, for better or worse. ** Porcelain skull, Hey. I'm one of the seemingly few who doesn't hate 'AI.' So I understand. How's Ireland? ** Angela, Thanks a lot, pal. ** David c., I'll be in France in February, though I'll probably be in Brest much of the month getting ready for the 'Kindertotenlieder' premiere. Still, we might get lucky, and I'll certainly give you my Paris tips. Paris is sublimine, even in February. ** Richard eichmann, I'm almost well, thanks. I'm sorry to hear about the anxiety, something I know quite a bit about, but I'm glad the meds are nice. Why the anxiety? Is it locateable? ** Paul curran, What a great description of guro. That's so true, such an interesting way to think about it. Cool that you think about space too in your thinking/work. It's key for me, really solidified by discussions with my friend the artist Charles Ray who uses a lot of principles from particle physics in his sculptures, particularly the idea of negative space. I suppose that's why a lot of sculpture has been so influentiial on my writing, having learned to think about sculpture as space complexly and subversively utilized and adorned. ** Misanthrope, I'm all for Matt Day, and he seems up for it, so I'll nudge him into helping me make it happen. I've thought of pretty much every possible angle of getting Yury into the US, believe me, but being there illegally, however he might be able to sneak in, isn't really an option since it would make his life there a very limitations-filled thing and make mine a paranoia-filled hell. So, unfairly, we have to sort out a way to get the US to realize the obvious -- that he's just a nice law-abiding guy. You wouldn't think proving an obvious, bad-faced truth would be so hard, would you? I appreciate your being bugged on our behalf. It's gonna take some time, some changes here and changes over there. ** Laurabethnobel, You're going to write a book! That's great news. Hey, if your teacher has figured out what we here figured out a long time ago -- that you're gifted, to say the least -- then believe her, okay? Yury's job? I'll explain soon. It's not that mysterious. it's just a little tricky at the moment. But soon. Thanks for everything. Oh, I'll try to get off my ass and write you a real letter too. ** Lost child, I hardly ever remember my dreams, so dreams are mystery to me. But if you remember yours, and they feel true, then I can't see why they couldn't be. So I say, yes, feel and believe the love. And, yeah, where the heck is c.? C, where are you? Come back. ** David ehrenstein, I too am interested to see you're not impressed with Obama. Knowing very little about him, and only having read and seen a few interviews with him, I've been impressed, but I feel like I'm so hungry for a admirable Democrat and a possible decent future President that I can't trust my judgements. But I'll view him more skeptically now because you are one wise cat on such things. ** 5stringaphasia, Oh, Eddie Vedder's mumble, yeah. I can see wanting to pry open that mumble a little more and see what comes out. Oops, that sounded suggestive, but I don't mean it like that. He's not my thing, but I mean I get your interest more now. As always, you're just too incredibly kind about my work, and I am happy. ** Gregoryedwin, Seems that not paladin is remaining tight lipped on the education front for now, but I'd love to be a lurker on you guys' conversation about the place, as it's a bit mythical and surely overly flowery in my imagination. ** Tony o'neill, Excellent that you're a year from your green card. A lot of my friends have gotten green cards in the last year or two. Of course they're young heterosexual Europeans newly married to American guys or women, so that does make it a lot easier. Well, when and if you submit your mss. to my French publishers, give me a heads up so I can tell them it's excellent, on its way or newly there, and urge them to give it close attention. Nice of you about the Care Package idea. Luckily, getting back home every couple of months, I don't feel too deprived. But it's funny what you miss. One time a NYC friend was coming to visit me and asked if I wanted him to bring anything, and the first thing that sprang to mind was Grape Nuts. Who'd have thought? ** Tosh, I'm not sure Gore has the fire in his belly now either, but, based on the person he seems to have become in the past few years, I'd sure like to see him try for the Presidency again, maybe with a Vice President who does have the required belly fire. In fact, until david e. made me think again, I've been fantasizing about a Gore-Obama (or vice versa) Democratic candidate team. Not that I've thought that pairing out very far. ** Vomitingghosts, I'm kind of glad I haven't seen 'Shortbus' so I don't have two-cents to throw into the debate. It just opened in France and is doing quite well, so I guess I'll have my chance. Yeah, a lot of movies to see right now. Where to start? ** Math t, Go Germany! Definitely give Bejar a little hear, 'Destroyer's Rubies, 'Yr Blues,' and of course the sublime (in my opinion) New Pornographers albums, if for no other reason than your being able to hear Bejar's 'Jackie's Dressed in Cobras' on 'Twin Cinema.' ** Adjoun, We should all be so lucky as to be as dizzy as you. ** Jeff, I totally welcome your Chris Morris #2 Day if you want. The door's open and flying off its hinges. And thanks for the additional CM links. Awesome stuff. ** Land of the bat, That is fantastic news about Carroll & Graf doing your novel. I'm just thrilled for you, and thrilled for me because we'll be C&G neighbors. I'm guessing the great Don Weise is responsible? Anyway, you made my day with that news report. I'd say congrats to you, but it's really congrats to C&G. ** Chilly jay chill, Like I said to joe mills above, yeah, publishing the 'Sluts' outtakes on the blog is a real possibility. I'm still sitting with them to make sure they're good enough on their own or to see if they need more work, which they probably do. Thanks for asking, cjc. ** Matt, Oh, I definitely want to do a Matt Day. If you want to wait until your birthday, we'll do that, though I can also do it anytime sooner. I'll just need to get some Matt related stuff from you of any kind you want to give me to fill it up. But awesome. ** Michael karo, Lucky, lucky you to see the reformed Slits. That's a reunion gig I wouldn't hesitate to watch. Pix would be great. What magazines did you load up on, if you don't my asking? Me being a magazine junkie. ** Winter rates, You know, for what it's worth, I've had friends with eczema who've changed their diet and had huge improvement in their condition, so it might be worth a shot. I just don't like the idea of suffering out there, friend. And new 'Battlestar Galactica' episode, sigh. France hasn't hipped to that show's genius and viability yet, the fuckers. ** Sypha_69, Enjoy your vacation, and I hope we here get a little of your vacation time. But if not, bask. ** Have a great weekend, all. See you on Monday.

joe mills presents Chris Morris Day

2006-11-10T01:24:00.000-08:00

The true Greats in comedy are those who come up with something totally unexpected. Something that seems to have no obvious influence. Chris Morris first came to our attention with The Day Today. It was an exaggeration of the TV news programs of the day. Monty Python (there I’ve said it) did mini take-offs of TV game shows/continuity indents/presenters but The Day Today was not one of a million Python echoes. What made Python different was that the creators were in the right place at the right time – the end of the anarchic surrealist 60s (and were all immensly talented) . What made Chris Morris different was the same - his luck was to be there when a load of cheap new visual techniques became available. What made D2D different from anything that came before was, among other things, the visual pyrotechnics – allowing completely over the top versions of the form over content style of modern News programs.

---There were also some great charicatures. All the different types of newscaster are there – Ted Maul, the ‘this really is the end of the world as we know it’ drama king, Morris as the Hard Man Interviewer (who once started shooting up over the credits), the sexy female presenter, flirting with Morris, the clichéd clod on the sports desk – ‘And that was Liquid Football ‘– ‘Alan Partridge’ - who went on to his own mainstream infinity and beyond – as did many of those from Morris shows – always a good sign.

---Brass Eye followed. This got loads of pompous ‘celebrities’ to pontificate on drugs/sex with hilarious results. How they let themselves be duped like that just goes to show how desperate ‘celebs’ are for publicity.

---Then there was Jam. Nowdays - at least in the UK – there are few pure comedy series being made, it’s all ‘comedy/drama’.Everybody thinks it began with The Office. In fact it began with Jam. Which is more comic,dramatic – and disturbing - than anything since. Since Jam, Morris has done a 6 part sitcom satire on young media hipsters –Nathan Barley - which was good and at times brilliant – especially on the meaningless jargon and styles which that tiny self-important gang came up with to set themselves apart from everyone else. But it wasn’t in the same class as what went before.

---Chris Morris has influenced just about every comedian that came after him. Our current greatest comedian - Russell Brand - would not have existed in his present form if CM hadn’t existed.

(The background links are for diehards. If browsing - best clips are Cake, Paedogeddon, Chopped up Man, First Intro)

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Bio:

Chris Morris (born June 15, 1962, Bristol, England) is an English comedy writer, satirist and radio DJ.
---Morris grew up in Cambridgeshire; both his parents were doctors. He was educated at Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit boys' boarding school in Lancashire, and studied zoology at Bristol University

CM Wikipedia
CM Archive
(Thanks rigby for this)
CM Top 10 Rebels

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The Day Today is a surreal British parody of television current affairs programmes. It is an adaptation of the radio programme On The Hour.

Wikipedia Day Today

Day Today Rok TV
Day Today Manimatronics
Day Today Gay Desk

Brass Eye is a series of satirical spoof documentaries which aired on Channel 4 in 1997 and was re-run in 2001.The series was created by Chris Morris as a sequel to Morris's earlier spoof news programmes On The Hour and The Day Today.

Wikipedia Brass Eye

Brass Eye Cake – Made Up Drug
Brass Eye Crime

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Brass Eye 2001 paedophilia special Paedogedoon

---In 2001, the series was repeated, along with a new and entirely original extra show, which tackled the tricky subject of paedophilia and the associated moral panic prevalent in parts of the British media at the time following the death of Sarah Payne focused on the controversial 'name and shame' campaign of the News of the World. This included an incident in 2000, in which a paediatrician in Newport had the word 'PAEDO' daubed in yellow paint on her home.

---Celebrities including Gary Lineker and Phil Collins appeared in videotaped interviews, in which they endorsed a spoof charity "Nonce Sense" ("nonce" is a common British slang term for paedophile). Tomorrow's World presenter Philippa Forrester and ITN reporter Nicholas Owen amongst others were tricked into explaining the details of "HOECS" (pronounced "hoax") computer games, which online paedophiles were supposed to be using to abuse children via the Internet. These fairly simple plays on words were opaque enough that none of the guest celebrities understood that they were being lampooned until the show was aired, in spite of what often seems to the viewer like plainly absurd subject matter. The Capital Radio DJ "Doctor" Neil Fox, for example, informed viewers that "paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you and me", before qualifying his remarks with "Now that is scientific fact - there's no real evidence for it - but it is scientific fact". Viewers were also told by MP Syd Rapson that paedophiles were using "an area of Internet the size of Ireland", and by Richard Blackwood that internet paedophiles can make computer keyboards emit noxious fumes in order to subdue children (Blackwood even sniffed a keyboard and claimed to be able to smell the fumes, which he said made him feel "suggestible").

---Around 2000 complaints (and approximately 3000 calls of support) were received.There was also a vociferous tabloid campaign against Morris, who refused to discuss the issue. The episode went on to win a Broadcast magazine award .
The show caused a furor among sections of the British tabloid press. The Daily Star printed an article decrying Morris and the show next to a piece about the then 15-year-old singer Charlotte Church's breasts under the headline "She's a big girl now". The Daily Mail featured pictures of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who were 13 and 11 at the time respectively, in their bikinis next to a headline describing Brass Eye as "Unspeakably Sick". Defenders of the show argued that the media reaction to the show reinforced its satire of the media's articifial hysteria and hypocrisy on the subject of paedophilia.

Paedogedoon 1
Paedogedoon 2
Paedogedoon 3

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Blue Jam was an ambient radio comedy programme produced by Chris Morris. It aired on BBC Radio 1 in the early hours of the morning from 1997 to 1999. The programme gained cult status due to its unique mix of surreal monologue, music, synthesised voices, heavily edited broadcasts and recurring sketches.

Archive Blue Jam
Wikieda Blue Jam

---Jam was based on the earlier BBC Radio 1 show, Blue Jam, and consisted of a series of unsettling sketches unfolding over an ambient soundtrack.

---Many of the sketches re-used the original radio soundtracks with the actors lip-synching their lines, an unusual technique which added to the programme's unsettling atmosphere.

---Jam is a sketch show like no other and the satirist's darkest hour. Combining video, full wide screen film, distorted digital video images and even security camera footage Morris creates a twisted reality in which to tackle thought provoking issues, courting controversy and flying in the face of formulaic bland television output as he does so. Not as immediate as The Day Today or Brass Eye but ultimately more entrancing, in Morris's own words, “It's loneliness in the modern world, dreams of the ill in a vacuum: welcome in Jam”.

Wikipedia Jam

Jam Intro
Jam Chopped Up Man (Press ‘Confirm’)
Jam Suicide with an escape Clause
Jam Birthday Party

Jam Intro
Jam Phone Sex Doctor

Jam Intro
Jam Pub Kiss

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2006-11-10T01:04:00.000-08:00

p.s. Big, big thanks to joe mills for curating this Day. I didn't know Chris Morris before, and he's a real find. No doubt you'll enjoy the post, and make sure to let joe know, okay? Me, I'm feeling a little better, thanks very much. Yury started his new job here in Paris today. I can't say much about it at the moment, for reasons I'll explain soon, but it's a very good thing. Because he's on a student visa and can't really work here officially, he'll start on what they call a working practice situation, two days a week with no pay. Assuming it goes well, his duties and time will increase in a month, and then in time he'll be offered a full time position and his employers will support a work visa for him. So this is great for Yury's state of mind, and in terms of extending his time here, and it will help set up a situation where we can actually apply for another US visa for him with a bit more ammunition. So it's all a good step. As for me, status quo: family squabbling continues, and my mom isn't doing great, although she's been stable for the last week or so, which is the best that can be expected. So there are basics on my front at the moment. ** Not paladin, Hey, thanks a lot for commenting. What you wrote on your blog is really sharp. So you're studying in Normal. I have this fantasy that the program there is an usually good one, what with the seemingly high grade faculty and the school's track record. So how close is my fantasy to being true? You mean your dissertation is being published tomorrow? Congrats, if so. ** The_disease_with_the_notions, Well, thanks for that. Interesting handle. Any story behind it? Anyway, welcome. ** Chilly jay chill, Awesome you're into McCourt. Yeah, all his books are great. 'Time Remaining' is my personal favorite of his books, if I had to choose. Well, you could try 'Queer Street' if you want to see what his writing does when it tackles non-fiction as well as learn more than a bit about the history of New York queer culture. Novel-wise, hm, maybe 'Kay Wayfaring in "Avenged"' would be best as the #3. ** Joe mills, Personal huge thanks from me for today. Really a blast, and it's super good of you. The day any Republican opens his or her mouth and speaks and does not cause nausea will be a brand new day. I suppose there are a few okay Republicans, by the law of averages. I don't know them. Listen, winding up being good friends with John Waters has been one of the real joys and honors of my life. Not only is he an incredible filmmaker and artist, but he is the nicest, most thoughtful guy you can imagine. One of the true, true great people in the world. ** Matt, Hey, my pleasure, re. the photo. Send more anytime. We can have a Matt Day. Take care. ** Thomas, Long time no see. Cool. It'll do something to your head, for sure. The 'what' is something you'll have to tell us. ** Lost child, Good, the recording was fine? I hope we get to hear it somehow and some point. And your film ideas sound delicious to me. Welcome home! ** Tosh, I couldn't agree with what you said about Bush more. Lovely to see you so impassioned. Like a lot of people, I have my little hopes about Bush being investigated and fried alive so to speak. Still, and I know it's just politics and the way things work and probably means nothing, but watching Pelosi and Bush make nice and smile at each other yesterday made me feel really ill. I just hope she was imagining spitting in his face. ** Misanthrope, Thanks, man. Do I get sick a lot? Hm. I don't think I do really. Maybe it's because you guys keep having to go through my jet lag with me all the time, 'cos I'm definitely a victim of that. In any case, my vegetarianism has generally been a big boost. For most of my life, I've hardly ever gotten sick, and I think the diet has helped a lot on that front. But what do I know? Thanks for caring. I think I'll be relatively spunky by tomorrow. ** David ehrenstein, I figured you were a fellow McCourt worshipper. You know him a little, right? What a sweetheart. On the gay marriage thing, the Massacusetts development is small but good news, as it seems the threat to gay marriage there is now all but dead, from what I've read. No? ** Tony o'neill, Hey. Well, my two French publishers are both fantastic and I would recommend them and would put in a word for you. They're POL and Editions Desordres. In other countries ... there's a bunch and I'll have to sort through my memory banks. Fazi Editore in Italy is great. Hm. But you should be published over here. They're smart and they get things here. Not to say America is totally full of dummies or anything. I don't mean that. They're just less prejudiced here against the daring and literary is what I guess I'm saying. But I'm sure you know that. ** David c., The cigarettes aren't helping, no doubt about that. I gotta quit, yep, soon, yep. ** 5stringaphasia, I need to power swallow more vitamin C, I think. Eddie Vedder's in your dream interview list. Curious. Why him? ** Atheist, Thanks for taking a break from your vacation to get a little tan on our beach here. Come back soon. ** Jose, You sound psyched. I guess that's what I was feeling. When do you start? I love 'Resident Evil 4,' the best of the series for me and one of my favorite games. Yeah, 'The Thin Red Line' might be more get-able for the not so very young. The Malick movie for the young is 'Badlands.' But then 'Badlands' is killer whatever you age. ** Laurabethnoble, I'm feeling better, thank you. Lots of tea has been coarsing through my system, and I think you're right, it really helped. What's new with you? ** Rigby101, I don't think I can switch from Lights to non-Lights. I'm sure you're right, though. I just need to quit. Oh, I found a link for you in your guro hunt if you like. The majority of guro on this site/board is about girls, but it's a place dedicated to the more extreme guro, and you'll find boys as subjects if look around enough. The site's called gurochan, and this is the link. ** Math t., I don't feel obligated, don't worry. Pure unabashed enthusiasm. Well, high school for me was the late 60s/early 70s, so I did a lot of psychedelic drawings, painting, murals, etc. In fact, as I might have mentioned before, I painted a huge psychedelic mural on the wall in the Senior's Lounge at Flintridge Prep, and it was there until they tore down the building years later. I mean I did portraits and stuff too. It wasn't serious art in any way. On your 'Sluts' questions, the novel went through many, many permutations, and there were multiple explicit Brad dopplegangers at one stage, but it didn't work, so I went with the more vague Brad-like peripheral characters and fantasy figures instead, which worked better. 'The Sluts' had two additional chapters that were there until just before I published it and decided to yank them. They elaborated on Brian's part of the story and more clearly explained what was happening with him while all that was going on. One of those chapters was so extreme and bleak that people I trust told me to cut it because it was too shocking and difficult. I'm glad I did. But, anyway, the novel changed a lot over the years. About the webmaster character, the first and last chapter and the message board to some degree were based very on a website called male4malescorts.com. The site has now mutated into something similar but less interesting because the site's webmaster, Hooboy, died a couple of years ago. Anyway, I was following the model of that site, and the Webmaster's comments were always very non-techy. That's basically why. I did try a more techy voice, but it kind of interfered with the novel's energies. It's sweet of you to ask. And sweet for you about your dealer, although I had some NYC dealers who were just so incredibly nice for a while until the other shoe fell. So congrats and ... good luck? ** Paradigm, Hey. You think I've been sick a lot too? Hm. Maybe I have, but it doesn't seem like it. Anyway, the stress of my life is definitely not helping me in any way, but it's my lot in life for a while. Excellent that you're still on the Indigenous Day. I'm still excitedly awaiting it. Thanks, man. ** Perspects, Definitely good luck on the move. Where are you going and why? ** Garrison, More crazy bad luck for you? And Aaron too? What's with the magnet for the strange and negative thing you've got going on? I hope there's some awesomeness that's balancing it out. Elections, yeah, real nice. Hey, have you been writing at all? Is your job leaving you enough energy to space to do that? ** Saa viccenzo, Hey. I saw 'An Inconvenient Truth' a couple of weeks ago. And of course I liked it a lot. It actually made me cry thinking how different the world might be today if Gore hadn't had the Presidency stolen from him. It's pretty depressing to think about the consequences of that one act of thievery and unfairness. And the film was powerful in its intended ways too. I actually think it's had a real impact here in France. Since it came out, it seems global warming has become a more much prominent concern here. ** D., Yury always make take zinc and bunch of other stuff. He's very up on the ways of keeping healthy. I will definitely spend more time at Tonya's site. It's bookmarked and everything. Thanks, man. How's your writing going? ** Winter rates, Thanks, I'm trying, re. being a good, practical anarchist. Eczema? I'm sorry. I have a number of friends who suffer from that. They don't know why it occurs, right? Isn't it a virus? Does it have anything to do with possible allergies, or is that a whole other thing? Anyway, I guess the cure for you is to write all the time, not just in November. ** Vomitingghosts, Very nice Bejars. What a good writer that fucker is. I'm in agreement with you about Herzog's genius. If you haven't seen 'Stroszek,' you've got to see that. I think that's my fave of his fiction films, although he has so many great fiction films. I love all of his documentaries, and you can get collections of the shorter ones on DVD, but I imagine you've seen those. ** Lux, ATP, gosh, I'd love to, but when is it? Xmas is probably going to be an LA time for me. What are the dates. Thanks for the alert. You doing allright, I hope? ** David c., (again) I was going to say good morning to you too, but I see it's afternoon now. I'm so late today. Keep plugging on that November novel thing. Or I hope you will. See you tomorrow ** That goes for the rest of you too.

The Seven Godlike Books of James McCourt

2006-11-09T11:27:00.000-08:00

Readers of this blog know I don't tend to love American fiction the way I do the French variety. There have been and will continue to be exceptions to my literary Francophilia, but, generally speaking, I guess my preferences are on the table. The American writer James McCourt is one of the biggest of the aforementioned exceptions. His writing and mine don't have that much in common, on the surface at least, and yet there's no other living American novelist from the generations earlier than mine with whom I feel more kinship and whose work inspires in me a deeper affection. When he wrote a very positive review of 'God Jr.' in the Los Angeles Times Book Review last year, it was one of the greatest honors I've ever received. McCourt is that rarest of contemporary American authors -- a true iconoclast, a devoted high stylist, and a holder of the unfashionable opinion that prose is a natural extrovert and beauty that deserves the brightest polish, the best accessories, the most extravagant costumes. McCourt's work has been described as a marriage of Ronald Firbank's meticulous, delirious camp and Don DeLillo's maximalist historiography, which wouldn't be too wildly inaccurate if McCourt weren't a whole lot more mischevious and uninhibited than DeLillo. If McCourt's voice happens to strike one's fancy, there are few more potent language based drugs. Still, his reverential but modestly sized following shows that his books are not everyone's idea of an island in the sun. Far too many of his books are out of print. The internet is not exactly chock full of McCourt related goodies. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry, bewilderingly enough. Building a Day in tribute to his work was no picnic, and you won't find any youtube or McCourt fan site links below. For a writer as inebriating, fanciful, and entertaining as James McCourt, mine is an awfully straightforward tribute. But don't let that stop you from investigating his work if you haven't already.

2006-11-09T11:26:00.000-08:00

Mawrdew Czgowchwz (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1975; New York Review of Books Classics, 2002)

Official description: Diva Mawrdew Czgowchwz (pronounced "Mardu Gorgeous") bursts like the most brilliant of comets onto the international opera scene, only to confront the deadly malice and black magic of her rivals. Outrageous and uproarious, flamboyant and serious as only the most perfect frivolity can be, James McCourt's entrancing send-up of the world of opera has been a cult classic for more than a quarter-century. This comic tribute to the love of art is a triumph of art and love by a contemporary American master.

Blurbs:
'Bravo, James McCourt, a literary countertenor in the exacting tradition of Firbank and Nabokov, who makes his daringly self-assured debut with this intelligent and very funny book.' — Susan Sontag

'Mawrdew Czgowchwz is a Zuleika Dobson of the opera world. James McCourt is an ecstatic fabulist, robustly funny and inventive, and touchingly in love with his subject. His novel is both special and precious, in the most honorable senses of those words.' — Walter Clemons, Newsweek

'The reader must be prepared to follow the silver-tongued writer through an outlandish landscape, unquestioning. Reason would be out of place here. She would upset the ecological balance of a rich and delicate world.' — John Yohalem, The New York Times Books Review

from the Introduction by Wayne Koestenbaum:

To call Mawrdew Czgowchwz the great novel of the opera queen is less accurate than to call it the great novel of the gay virtuoso gabber—that creature of lists, parentheses, digressions, apostrophes, opinions, and contradictions. Oscar Wilde belongs to this tribe of loudmouths. So do Dorothy Dean, costar of Warhol’s Afternoon, and Charles Nelson Reilly, game-show stalwart. Although McCourt does not hesitate to connect connoisseurship to what a sociologist might call a “gay fan-base,” his novel skimps eroticism, despite its romantic ending, and despite the prose’s nonstop orgasm. Rapture is reserved for the voice of its heroine and its plural narrators (Rodney, Jameson O’Maurigan, Mother Maire Dymphna, and others contribute to the polyphony). Energy’s displacement from eroticism to music has nothing to do with the “closet” or with prudishness, for music is not a code for sexuality: rather, music is a sexuality. .... McCourt’s genius lies in his ability to weave the highest styles of twentieth-century literature and music with the gutsy vernacular of men/women (like Candy Darling and Myra Breckinridge) who modeled themselves after Jean Harlow and died in the process.

McCourt’s subsequent works go even farther into the lunatic fringe, the only place where I feel at home. To the reader who enjoys Mawrdew, I highly recommend McCourt’s other novels, Time Remaining and Delancey’s Way, and also his short-story collection, Kaye Wayfaring in “Avenged.” It is not pejorative to call a work of art “minor.” Deleuze and Guattari, in Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, claimed that Kafka himself was a minor writer, and more important for being minor. Robert Walser, too, is subaltern: a writer’s writer, with the melancholy of music’s minor keys. Like other noble practitioners of that strain of modern literature (an elect galaxy including Firbank, Schuyler, Butts, Cavafy, Pessoa, and Rhys), James McCourt has the gift of not assuming that writing is a way of being polite, accommodating, or sociable. Although his novels give comic delight, they also are willing to perplex their readers, and to suggest, in their language’s bejeweled barbed wire, that pleasure is beyond our capacity to understand, and that we turn to literature not to see our desires made lucid, but to see a reflection of our transports at their most difficult.
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2006-11-09T11:25:00.000-08:00

Kaye Wayfaring in Avenged (Viking, 1985)

Description: It is October, a peak fall day. Kaye Wayfaring sits on a rock high in the Ramble of Central Park, smoking raw Luckies, considering impetus.

Impetus is what she will need to plunge into Orphrey Whither's ''Avenged,'' ''based on a Diderot tale already once brought to the screen as 'Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne' (Robert Bresson, director, France, 1944),'' of which the harried unit press agent had written in the release for the first day's shooting, ''another dimension is revealed in the geometry of human lust,'' continuing, ''Never before has desire so bruised, so scalded so cruelly.''

Kaye Wayfaring, ''two-time Oscar nominee (for 'We Are Born, We Live, We Die' and for 'Way Station'),'' sits, broods, smokes, considers ''Avenged.'' H. Q. P., ''that seasoned, trusted metropolitan arbiter and public scold,'' had ventured to write of her: ''So on , so forth ; vivid and particular. No actress in these past two weary decades has displayed so deft a form. Wayfaring does deliver - in the Sullavan-Stanwyck-Lombard tradition, with offhand, odd resemblances to, among others, Irene Dunne, Frances Farmer and, eerily, Jeanne Eagels. Kaye Wayfaring is something of a navigator. Impetus is her concern.''
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2006-11-09T11:24:00.000-08:00

Time Remaining (Knopf, 1993)

Official description: From the author of Mawrdew Czgowchwz ... and Kaye Wayfaring in "Avenged" ... - two wildly brilliant, moving, electric stories of gay life in New York during the last twenty-five years. The first story introduces Delancey, performance artist and, in his words, "one of the sole survivors" of a band known as the Eleven against Heaven. Delancey's recollections of four decades in the flamboyant New York wilds - spirited, defiant, festive, bright as paint (or acid) - are filled with the force of longing and the melodrama of remembering.

Delancey's prologue sets the stage for the title story, "Time Remaining," in which the formidable Odette O'Doyle - semi-retired transvestite ballerina, veteran of foreign wars, and polymath recorder of the stories of valiant lives - assumes the spotlight. On a midnight train to Long Island's South Fork, Odette reports on his just-completed mission: he has deposited the ashes of eight of the former "Eleven" in various rivers, canals, fjords, and harbors of Europe. Through the ceremonies of time, travel, ritual re-enactment, and eternal return, this renegade celebrant officiates at something very like an Irish Catholic wake. He recalls a glittering chain of outrageous adventures and a terrible history of decimating disease and death while conducting a private service of reconciliation and renewal.

Time Remaining is a moving, defiantly hilarious solemnization of life and love in the age of AIDS.

Review: 'I Go Back to the Mais Oui," the first of two stories offered here, presents a summation of 40 years of gay life in New York by protagonist Danny Delancey, thereby providing a context for the much lengthier "Time Remaining," which follows. In that piece--a novel, really--Danny is joined by Odette O'Doyle, an ancient, wise, all-knowing drag queen who has lived through those 40 years. As they ride the midnight train across Long Island, Odette unbeads his pearls, dropping story after story from his personal epic. And what an epic! McCourt presents us with an encyclopedic view of gay New York, from high to low culture, from Frank O'Hara, Judy Garland, and the Everard Baths to ACT UP and the Clit Club, leaving no queer stone unturned. For some, Odette's discursive, anecdotal, manic soliloquy may be off-putting. But taken together, these brilliant stories add up to a life, one full of wit and anger, courage and love.' -- Library Journal

Etc:
* Podcast: James McCourt interviewed about 'Time Remaining' on NPR's Bookworm
* James McCourt reviews The Collected Stories of Noel Coward
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2006-11-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

Delancey's Way (Knopf, 2000)

Review: Few literary writers take on Washington, D.C., probably for fear of stumbling into tired satire or overblown intrigue. James McCourt is undeterred by these risks, however, and successfully avoids them. Delancey’s Way presents a whirl of D.C. players and hangers-on in an elaborate, at times paranoiac, portrayal of the city that smacks of Marcel Proust and Don DeLillo. Delancey’s Way derives its energy from its carnivalesque language. The scenes, whether set in a cab from Union Station or a masked ball at the Library of Congress, entail characters discoursing to one another in lively harangues. As the novel progresses, one character after another goes gonzo, spewing references both classical and kitsch, and sprinkling every fourth sentence with foreign phrases. The reader—or listener—becomes an awed witness to these wild and virtuoso verbal performances. In response to a comment from Ornette, the jazz-playing redactor of race, Delancey thinks, “Where that came from I couldn’t have told you”—and then realizes he’s not writing this story, it’s writing him, and that’s just how things happen in D.C. -- Review of Contemporary Fiction

Review: "Sometimes this book is funny, and sometimes it's very funny. What it is, is an acidic romp through the political high and low roads of Washington, where the President is known as POTUS and Hillary (sometimes) as FLOTUS, with a wacky cast. The book is dense with allusion--political, literary, filmic, operatic, mythological, and more--uncommon in today's watery literary scene. The writing can veer from plain to stream-of-consciousness to labyrinthine. Thus, the same page can yield "Clinton is a masochistic hick out of Dogpatch turned high toned sadist," and "Clinton as Clint Eastwood--the quintessential Quantrill's Raiders personality." -- Library Journal

Etc:
* James McCourt profiled and interviewed about Delancey's Way by Patsy Southgate

Excerpt:

I never went to bed early in my life.

Until a minute ago . . .

You might have known it would all start out that way.

The first sentence I heard in my own head on the Metroliner to Washington. I'd put down Democracy (you know, the novel of Washington by "Anonymous" turned out to be written — depending on your politics, or your psychic — by either Henry or Clover Adams), gone to the back of the club car and from the window watched the tracks seeming to issue in two steel ribbons from underneath the train, then returned to my seat, a permeable signifier full of metaphoric dread, and succumbed to a little nap, tired of others' voices and of my own plans.

No systematic chronicle, I told myself as I drifted off, but more a rambling disquisition, with copious historical discussion and many anecdotes.

I never went to bed early in my life. Until a minute ago. Two lies, a sentence and a phrase, in the forced conjunction (or dual emphasis) of which there arises a tensile ambiguity — between the stronger and the weaker force — that sparks narrative. Always a forced conjunction, a duality, since what is a true sequence (this/that) if not an uninterrupted flow of conscious-radical-unconscious ideation-pulsation, lasting from the moment of birth until the moment of insanity and/or death? Nothing.

(Cont.)

2006-11-09T11:22:00.000-08:00

Wayfaring at Waverly in Silverlake (Knopf, 2002)

Description: After skewering Clinton-era Washington in Delancey's Way (2000), McCourt, stylistically rambunctious and metaphysically inclined, descends on 1980s Hollywood and rejoins diva Mawrdew Czgowchwz (the subject of his first novel) and movie star Kaye Wayfaring, Mawrdew's daughter-in-law, mother of twins, and the focus of an earlier short story collection. In this set of interlocking tales, each a droll riff on one of the seven deadly sins, Kaye, who misses her dear, departed friend, Marilyn Monroe, has just flummoxed everyone by appearing in a wildly successful rock video and is now working on a movie about an Irish pirate queen. Such story elements are deeply embedded within a fizzing hubbub of witty conversations spiked with Hollywood trivia and mysticism that morphs into jousts, reminiscences, and philosophical disputations to form a scintillating montage not unlike those of novelist Paul West. As for McCourt, all his canniness and irony can't conceal his love for Hollywood and its obsessions.

Blurb: 'In Wayfaring at Waverly in Silver Lake, his hilarious deconstruction of the Hollywood signs, James McCourt is, as usual, erudite, recondite, and absolutely right.' -- Fran Lebowitz

Excerpt:

As out beyond long tinted windows Los Angeles lay gleaming in the bright air, while in the studio commissary the televised women’s Olympic marathon neared culmination on the multiscreen background wall, Leland de Longpré, Hyperion Pictures’ controversial new chief of concept evolution, was speaking words of caution and concern to the chief of publicity over lunch.

“Vanity of vanity, all—”

“But I didn’t say ‘vanity,’ ” the chief of publicity, purposedly attuned to words, objected. “I said ‘pride.’ And please don’t tell me they’re the same thing, because even if I don’t know exactly what vanity is, I do know what I think it isn’t.”

“True enough,” the strategist allowed (managing, his lunch partner thought, to sound both affirmative and not). “The Dodgers, it must be said, brought to Los Angeles a cohesive focus, enforcing a civic pride that had never been provided by the self-serving motion-picture industry. I’ve even heard it said the Dodgers in effect brought to bear on their adopted city the mysterious assimilative pride of Brooklyn—never to be confused with the exploitive vanity of Manhattan—thus creating, principally, but not entirely, through the Jewish factor, the atmosphere for the construction of a new civilization in what had been a desert.”

“As a matter of fact,” the publicist continued, boldly staking out his own territory, conceptually speaking, “whenever I’ve heard the word—‘vanity’—all I’ve thought of really is a piece of set decoration—one of those boudoir units with big round deco mirrors. Jean Harlow had one in Dinner at Eight.”

“It would seem clear,” Leland continued, relentlessly, “that vanity is not, all said and done, to be confused with devotional intensity. Devotional intensity is not vain; quite the opposite.”

(Cont.)

2006-11-09T11:21:00.000-08:00

Queer Street: Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985 (W.W. Norton, 2003)

Official description: Beginning with the influx of liberated veterans into downtown New York in the golden age before McCarthyism, Queer Street tells the explosive story of gay culture in the latter half of the twentieth century. Coming out himself in the "buttoned-up/button-down" 1950s, McCourt positions his own experience against the whirlwind history of the era, summoning a pageant of characters that includes Harry Hay, Judy Garland, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and Truman Capote. In a learned but lively voice, McCourt highlights the major events of the period: the landmark eruption at the Stonewall Inn, the AIDS crisis that brought an end to a century of bathhouse culture, the ascendancy of the Christian right, and finally the social acceptance of gays that paradoxically marked the demise of queer culture.

Review: 'The book is less a memoir or a social history of the neighborhoods and meeting places of old gay New York than a thick scrapbook of the distinctive gay cultural styles, sensibilities and forms of literacy that reached their apogee in postwar New York and Los Angeles, where the plays, songs, films and stars that constituted so much of the gay métier took shape. Drawing on his preternatural command of that postwar gay cultural universe, Mr. McCourt brings a learned queer eye to the oeuvre of gay icons ranging from Bette Davis, Judy Garland and Holly Woodlawn to Luchino Visconti, Douglas Sirk and Ronald Firbank (a fey novelist of the 1910's and 20's whose style Mr. McCourt's may most closely resemble), as well as Susan Sontag's famous 1964 essay on camp, the riches of opera and the cultural poverty of the standing-room line at the new Met compared with the old.' (Read more) -- The New York Times Book Review

Brief excerpt:   

"I hate to be a pill, to piss on smoldering embers, no matter how warming, but the facts are these: it was neither Larry Kramer's hysterics, the courageous reporting of the New York Native, Everett Koop's blinding-hot moral flash or anything else that turned the tide of AIDS recognition in America and of AIDS research funding by the American government. It was nothing less or other than Ronald Reagan's sentimental - goddamnit - feelings for a fellow guy he just happened to like a whole hell of a lot from their Hollywood days, a guy called Rock Hudson who came down with the goddamn thing. And if you don't think them's the facts, go look them up. As our story winds down to a close, darlings, in the year 1985, rather than cut AIDS funding by ten million, Ronald Reagan - or more probably Nancy, as Ronnie was already, courtesy of Alzheimer's, more and more lunching out, though not in public - was upped to one hundred million, and, get this right please, a 270 percent increase in AIDS funding. You see, darlings, all that heaven allows written on the wind by tarnished angels is an imitation of life."

Etc.:
* Podcast: James McCourt interviewed about Queer Street on NPR's 'Bookworm'
* A profile of James McCourt from Time Out New York
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2006-11-09T11:20:00.000-08:00

Now Voyagers (Turtle Point Press, forthcoming 2007)

Description: Now Voyagers is James McCourt’s long awaited sequel to Mawrdew Czgowchwz. Like his earlier novel, Now Voyagers delights in the whys and wherefors of celebrity and is a tribute to the triumph of art and music; love and humor. 'Tragic wisdom, we discover, can also be le gai savoir, and James McCourt has made a real specialty of transforming intricate wisdom into no more than discerning frivolity, no less than divine frenzy; as he puts it: a running-neon paradigm of the quintessence of diva-dienst! For the purposes (if that is not too grandiose a word) of such fiction, fun is fun, but folly a kind of fate. How I envy Mawrdew's new readers, though remaining helplessly content as a repeat defender.' — Richard Howard

Visit Turtle Point Press

Etc:
* Podcast: James McCourt, Edmund White, Camille Paglia, and Alan Hollinghurst discuss gay literature and queer theory on NPR's Bookworm
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2006-11-09T02:48:00.000-08:00

p.s. Forewarning again: I'm feeling worse today and am even less at my best, so bear with me. I think today's the illness peak. Famous last words, but that's what it feels like. Well, the election results are even better than the last time I talked to you. Pretty satisfying, I must say, if for no other reason than the rest of the world now has proof that Americans are against Bush and his policies. But hopefully this'll mean greater gains than just that. I don't know. It's some kind of dawn anyway. Uh, there are some kind of interesting things going on as well the taxing, awful things I've mentioned before that I could tell you about, but my energies are low enough that I'll save them for another day and spend the fumes that are keeping me upright on interracting with you, albeit more briefly and vaguely than I'd like. ** Photi, Hey. Well, I can't direct you to any specific apartments, but there are a lot of online sites where you can find short term apartment rentals in Paris and trades and so on. I did a google search using the words 'temporary apartment rental paris france' and found a ton. What I can do and would be happy to do is help you out on locations, tell you which areas are better or more fun and convenient for you to stay in if you can find some choices. That's easy for me to do. Or I can tell you straight off that some areas that would be really good for your first Paris visit are Le Marais, Beaubourg, Left banke/St, Michel or Saint Germain. But, seriously, I'll be happy to give you any tips I can. I hope I'll be here so we can meet. That would be awesome. Chances are I'll be in LA then, but I'm not sure yet. Anyway, Xmas in Paris is beautiful, but bring warm clothes, that's for sure. ** Math t., Yeah, your Matt really captured it. I really think your artworks are truly just getting more beautiful and clear and complicated and pleasureable by the minute. This 100 drawings in a month game plan is really paying off. It's really great to be in on the process and see them grow. Great stuff, math. I don't draw, no. I did in high school. In high school my identity was much more as a visual artist than a writer, but I just didn't have the talent to continue. So, no, I never draw. In a weird way 'The Sluts' was easier to write than my other books because I was going for computer chat speak, and once I'd done enough experiments to get the voice in place and find a bunch of variations I could use, the writing was lot quicker than when I usually write fiction and am going for something much more compressed and poetic and impacted with formal fireworks and stuff. In that way, yeah, it was easier, but getting the whole thing structured correctly and working properly was a chore. Thanks for that. Oh, okay, I'll do a Handwriting Day soon but not in a pressurized 'Self-Portrait' way. Just whoever wants to, etc. Cool. ** Teenage kicks, Interesting Bowles take. I understand what you mean. This is heresy and all that, but I feel that way about Raymond Carver a lot of the time. As good a writer as he is, and he can be stunning, there's a little too obvious trickiness to a bunch of his work for me that I wish I didn't feel happening when I read his stories. I'm so glad to hear the positive buzz about the new Pynchon. I keep hearing a lot of excitement from the lucky ones who've read it. And I agree with you that Joy Williams is at the very least in the shortlist of the greatest living American writers. ** Young and stupid, Howdy. Oh yeah, you're in Kiska's neck of the woods. Did you know of his work before? I'm really new to it, but quite impressed. Thanks much for the input. You doing okay? ** Kosa838, Totally, it is the opposite of The Bible. Nice. ** Jax, No surprise that the two pix you picked from the SM ones are the two that rattle my chains too. I forgot that you're a big fan of Warsaw. That sounds nice. You just going to tool around and be tourists? Thanks for answering my fiction/script question. Very interesting. Fuck knows if things will get better in/for Iraq. I think there'll at least be more of an attempt to find a realistic end point. Not that there is one. Bush fucked Iraq and us to the point that there is no good way out. It's going to be horrible whatever happens, it's just which horrible, and whether it'll end without becoming even more horrible. That's my guess. ** Lost child, What recording are you doing exactly? Don't let that guy dampen your sounds. Possible movie to do? Whoa. That's fantastic. Tell us more. ** Chilly jay chill, Not sure if there'll be English subtitles on the Robbe-Grillet box set. Christ, you'd think so, wouldn't you? I'll try to find out. Yeah, very nice election, phew. ** Perspects, I must be really naive because I'm shocked that the state that contains Detroit would ban affirmative action. I mean it's shocking enough when an obviously ractists-filled state does it, but ... Fuck, that's really sick. I don't get it at all. ** Tony o'neill, Things do feel better today, don't they? Wow. Aren't you heading over the Netherlands soon? Is your work published in Holland? ** David ehrenstein, Amazing: they did lose the senate. Wild. Rumsfeld's departure is nice, although the damage is done and Bush is scapegoating the motherfucker, or trying to. Arizona's voting down the gay marriage ban is interesting, isn't it? Any thoughts on that? In a way, that's a small nice thing next to the 7 states that voted against gay marriage, but I guess a twinkling little light is still a light. ** Misanthrope, I found some pix of Emile on line, and, sure enough, our mind meld remains in place. Very sigh worthy. ** Gregoryedwin, That binge would be nice, but I think I'll have to do with the orange juice and Dolipran route for now. Roddy Piper is one of my big all time faves too! I even like watching him in those sub-B action and horror movies he made. It was kind of sad when they tried to bring him back a couple of years ago as a character. Time had passed, and they had to yank him after about three hyped appearances. Not that he looked bad. Just not up to par with the giant muscle machines that are the stars today. And, yeah, I'm really excited to read your work. Soon. ** Simon, Damn it, every time you kindly offer me a ticket to Grizzly Bear I'm either sick or out of town. It's a fucking curse. I'd love to go, but I'm too under the weather. But thank you for trying again. It sucks. ** Eddie b, Really nice little thing you wrote about words. You don't seem uninspired, that's for sure. Too many words is an interesting way to think about it. I might try that, even if it's not helping you at the moment. I bet at any second those pages you're staring are gonna flood. ** Jose, You sound really inspired too. I can just feel it from your post. It feels good to see it. Tillman's wonderful. I wonder about your idea that men write less about the self than women. You might be right. Others here have an thoughts on that? If true, I wonder why, though maybe the answer is obvious. Hm. ** 5stringaphasia, Life is good? Cool. Vince McMahon is one of my dream interview subjects. I've got a bunch of them, some not obvious choices: Vin Scully, Randy Newman, Jackie Chan, ... ** Joe mills, The primrose path may indeed be before us, but boy it feels good to hear the starting gun going off. ** Sypha_69, Excellent news! I'm not surprised really, but it's a relief. Cool, so your book will be a Xmas book, a stocking stuffer, the literary equivalent of the new Zelda game, etc. Anyway, I'm real glad the crisis is over. ** Rigby101, Yeah, you have to be a bit obsessive and patient to get to the best guro, but it's there and you'll find it. If I find a treasure trove, I'll let you know how to get there. Well, if google bought blogger that long ago, and they haven't come down bloggers so far, I guess things are okay for now, I hope. ** D., Weirdly and tragically, I haven't seen 'The New World' yet. When it played in the US, I was here, and when it played here, I was in LA. So I lost out. And I haven't rented it because I'd prefer to see it in a theater, but I may have to break down soon. But all my fellow Malick loving fans have kept saying to me, 'You have to see it. You'll go bonkers with happiness,' etc. For now, it's still a pipe dream. That Tonya Harding site is wild. I'm too bleah to give it more than a glance right now, but wow. Thanks, man. ** Morgan, I was hoping you in particular would like the Joy Williams link. On the thing about telling the subject of your poems that they're the subject, I completely know what you mean. I understand the impetus to tell them, and I've had reactions like that girl's to your poems. If it's any consolation, people tend to come around in time and really appreciate the honor once they're not mistakenly seeing it as some kind of immediate form of pressure or something. I guess the main thing is protect the poems in that situation. But, yeah, I hear you. People are so strange sometimes, and poems have a strange power that's both beautiful and can be interpreted as invasive. Strange, huh? Don't take it too much to heart, if you can. A part of her might really like it, and another part of her might be scared by the attention, and that bad part might be the one in power at the moment. But that could so easily change. ** Winter rates, Shit, I wish my brain was better off today. Okay, well, for me anarchism is a philosophy. I suppose I think that we'd pretty much have to back to the beginning of the world and start over to have any realistic chance of a world run along anarchist principles. So I use the principles of anarchism -- which are complex, but which I'll reduce to 'power corrupts' due to my poor mental facilities -- as a way to think about the world, negotiate the world as it stands, make decisions in the real world. I think about those principles when I analyze people's actions and opinions, you know, thinking that they are in large part victims of the systems by our world is governed, and trying to sort the people out from their received notions. When I'm given power, I do my best to disperse it in the ways I can. Uh ... It's a long explanation that your question would require, but that's the cloudy basics. Feel free to ask me more if I'm not making great sense. And don't think anarchism is only what Jello Biafra thinks it is. If you want, find out for yourself. You can find a lot of information online, and you'll see there are many definitions. I came to anarchism through Emma Goldman's ideas about it, but, like anyone who wants to be a good anarchist, I've found my own rules for my own life that make the principles work for me. Anyway, I appreciate your asking. ** I'm going to go lie down now. Take care.

Cherry-picking my 'out' box

2006-11-08T08:18:00.000-08:00

1.

For those who skip my blog's comments section or those who read them but didn't happen to copy and paste a certain link into your browser, this is Matt, one of this blog's new superstars, in his Simba costume on Halloween night.

2006-11-08T08:02:00.000-08:00

2. Inspired by all the recent talk here of Paul Bowles, my blog's generous gift giver Disquiet sent me this short story by Bowles to share with you.

In The Red Room

by Paul Bowles

When I had a house in Sri Lanka, my parents came out one winter to see me. Originally I had felt some qualms about encouraging their visit. Any one of several things--the constant heat, the unaccustomed food and drinking water, even the presence of a leprosy clinic a quarter of a mile from the house might easily have an adverse effect on them in one way or another. But I had underestimated their resilience; they made a greater show of adaptability than I had thought possible, and seemed entirely content with everything. They claimed not to mind the lack of running water in the bathrooms, and regularly praised the curries prepared by Appuhamy, the resident cook. Both of them being in their seventies, they were not tempted by the more distant or inaccessible points of interest. It was enough for them to stay around the house reading, sleeping, taking twilight dips in the ocean, and going on short trips along the coast by hired car. If the driver stopped unexpectedly at a shrine to sacrifice a coconut, they were delighted, and if they came upon a group of elephants lumbering along the road, the car had to be parked some distance up ahead, so that they could watch them approach and file past. They had no interest in taking photographs, and this spared me what is perhaps the most taxing duty of cicerone: the repeated waits while the ritual between man and machine is observed. They were ideal guests.

Colombo, where all the people I knew lives, was less than a hundred miles away. Several times we went up for weekends, which I arranged with friends by telephone beforehand. There we had tea on the wide verandas of certain houses in Cinnamon Gardens, and sat at dinners with professors from the university, Protestant ministers, and assorted members of the government. (Many of the Sinhalese found it strange that I should call my parents by their first names, Dodd and Hannah; several of them inquired if I were actually their son or had been adopted.) These weekends in the city were hot and exhausting, and they were always happy to get back to the house, where they could change into comfortable clothing.

One Sunday not long before they were due to return to America, we decided to take in the horse races at Gintota, where there are also some botanical gardens that Hannah wanted to see. I engaged rooms at the New Oriental in Galle and we had lunch there before setting out.

As usual, the events were late in starting. It was the spectators, in any case, who were the focus of interest. The phalanx of women in their shot-silk saris moved Hannah to cries of delight. The races themselves were something of a disappointment. As we left the grounds, Dodd said with satisfaction: It'll be good to get back to the hotel and relax.

But we were going to the botanical gardens, Hannan reminded him. I'd like to have just a peek at them.

Dodd was not eager. Those places cover a lot of territory, you know, he said.

We'll look inside and come out again, she promised.

The hired car took us to the entrance. Dodd was tired, and as a result was having a certain amount of difficulty in walking. The last year or so I find my legs aren't' always doing exactly what I want 'em to do, he explained.

You two amble along, Hannah told us. I'll run up ahead and find out if there's anything to see.

We stopped to look up at a clove tree; its powerful odor filled the air like a gas. When we turned to continue our walk, Hannah was no longer in sight. We went on under the high vegetation, around a curve in the path, looked ahead, and still there was no sign of her.

What does your mother think she's doing? The first thing we know she'll be lost.

She's up ahead somewhere.

Soon, at the end of a short lane overhung by twisted lianas, we saw her, partially hidden by the gesticulating figure of a Sinhalese standing next to her.

What's going on? Dodd hastened his steps. Run over there, he told me, and I started ahead, walking fast. Then I saw Hannah's animated smile, and slowed my pace. She and the young man stood in front of a huge bank of brown spider orchids.

Ah! I thought we'd lost you, I said.

Look at these orchids. Aren't they incredible?

Dodd came up, nodded at the young man, and examined the display of flowers. They look to me like skunk cabbage, he declared.

The young man broke into wild laughter. Dodd stared at him.

This young man has been telling me the history of the garden, Hannah began hurriedly. About the opposition to it, and how it finally came to be planted. It's interesting.

The Sinhalese beamed triumphantly. He wore white flannels and a crimson blazer, and his sleek black hair gave off a metallic blue glint in the sunlight.

Ordinarily I steer a determined course away from the anonymous person who tries to engage me in conversation. This time it was too late; encouraged by Hannah, the stranger strolled beside her, back to the main path. Dodd and I exchanged a glance, shrugged, and began to follow along behind.

Somewhere up at the end of the gardens a pavilion had been built under the high rain trees. It had a veranda where a few sarong- draped men reclined in long chairs. The young man stopped walking. Now I invite you to a cold ginger beer.

Oh, Hannah said, at a loss. Well, yes. That would be nice. I'd welcome a chance to sit down.

Dodd peered at his wristwatch. I'll pass up the beer, but I'll sit and watch you.

We sat and looked out at the lush greenness. The young man's conversation leapt from one subject to another; he seemed unable to follow any train of thought further than its inception. I put this down as a bad sign, and tried to tell from the inflections of Hannah's voice whether she found him as disconcerting as I did.

Dodd was not listening. He found the heat of low-country Ceylon oppressive, and it was easy to see that he was tired. Thinking I might cover up the young man's chatter, I turned to Dodd and began to talk about whatever came into my head: the resurgence of mask-making in Ambalangoda, devil-dancing, the high incidence of crime among the fishermen converted to Catholicism. Dodd listened, but did no more than move his head now and then in response.

Suddenly I heard the young man saying to Hannah: I have just the house for you. A godsend to fill your requirements. Very quiet and protected.

She laughed. Mercy, no! We're not looking for a house. We're only going to be here a few weeks more.

I looked hard at her, hoping she would take my glance as a warning against going on and mentioning the place where she was staying. The young man was not paying attention, in any case. Quite all right. You are not buying houses. But you should see this house and tell your friends. A superior investment, no doubt about that. Shall I introduce myself, please? Justus Gonzag, called Sonny by friends.

His smile, which was not a smile at all, gave me an unpleasant physical sensation.

Come anyway. A five-minute walk, guaranteed. He looked searchingly at Hannah. I intend to give you a book of poems. My own. Autographed for you with your name. That will make me very happy.

Oh, Hannan said, a note of dismay in her voice. Then she braced herself and smiled. That would be lovely. But you understand, we can't stay more than a minute.

There was a silence. Dodd inquired plaintively: Can't we go in the car, at least?

Impossible, sir. We are having a very narrow road. Car can't get through. I am arranging in a jiffy. He called out. A waiter came up, and he addressed him in Sinhalese at some length. The man nodded and went inside. Your driver is now bringing your car to this gate. Very close by.

This was going a little too far. I asked him how he though anyone was going to know which car was ours.

No problem. I was present when you were leaving the Pontiac. Your driver is called Wickramasinghe. Up-country resident, most reliable. Down here people are hopeless.

I disliked him more each time he spoke. You're not from around here? I asked him.

No, no! I'm a Colombo chap. These people are impossible scoundrels. Every one of the blighters has a knife in his belt, guaranteed.

When the waiter brought the check, he signed it with a rapid flourish and stood up. Shall we be going on to the house, then?

No one answered, but all three of us rose and reluctantly moved off with him in the direction of the exit gate. The hired car was there; Mr. Wickramasinghe saluted us from behind the wheel.

The afternoon heat had gone, leaving only a pocket here and there beneath the trees where the air was still. Originally the lane where we were walking had been wide enough to admit a bullock- car, but the vegetation encroaching on each side had narrowed it to little more than a footpath.

At the end of the lane were two concrete gateposts with no gate between them. We passed through, and went into a large compound bordered on two sides by ruined stables. With the exception of one small ell, the house was entirely hidden by high bushes and flowering trees. As we came to a doorway the young man stopped and turned to us, holding up one finger. No noises here, isn't it? Only birds.

It was the hour when the birds begin to awaken from their daytime lethargy. An indeterminate twittering came from the trees. He lowered his finger and turned back to the door. Mornings they are singing. Now not.

Oh, it's lovely, Hannah told him.

He led us through a series of dark empty rooms. Here the _dhobi_ was washing the soiled clothing. This is the kitchen, you see? Ceylon style. Only the charcoal. My father was refusing paraffin and gas both. Even in Colombo.

We huddled in a short corridor while he opened a door, reached in, and flooded the space inside with blinding light. It was a small room, made to seem still smaller by having given glistening crimson walls and ceiling. Almost all the space was filled by a big bed with a satin coverlet of a slightly darker red. A row of straight-backed chairs stood along one wall. Sit down and be comfy, our host advised us.

We sat, staring at the bed and at the three framed pictures on the wall above its brass-spoked headboard: on the left a girl, in the middle our host, and on the right another young man. The portraits had the imprecision of passport photographs that have been enlarged to many times their original size.

Hannah coughed. She had nothing to say. The room gave off a cloying scent of ancient incense, as in a disused chapel. The feeling of absurdity I got from seeing us sitting there side by side, wedged in between the bed and the wall, was so powerful that it briefly paralyzed my mental processes. For once the young man was being silent; he sat stiffly, looking straight ahead, like someone at the theater.

Finally I had to say something. I turned to our host and asked him if he slept in this room. The question seemed to shock him. Here? he cried, as if the thing were inconceivable. No, no! This house is unoccupied. No one sleeping on the premises. Only a stout chap to watch out at night. Excuse me one moment.

He jumped up and hurried out of the room. We heard his footsteps echo in the corridor and then grow silent. From somewhere in the house there came the sonorous chiming of a grandfather's clock; its comfortable sound made the shiny blood-colored cubicle even more remote and unlikely.

Dodd stirred uncomfortably in his chair; the bed was too close for him to cross his legs. As soon as he comes back, we go, he muttered.

He's looking for the book, I imagine, said Hannah.

We waited a while. Then I said: Look. If he's not back in two minutes, I move we just get up and leave. We can find our way out all right.

Hannah objected, saying it would be unpardonable.

Again we sat in silence, Dodd now shielding his eyes from the glare. When Sonny Gonzag returned, he was carrying a glass of water which he drank standing in the doorway. His expression had altered: he now looked preoccupied, and he was breathing heavily.

We slowly got to our feet, Hannah still looking expectant.

We are going, then? Come. With the empty glass still in his hand he turned off the lights, shut the door behind us, opened another, and led us quickly through a sumptuous room furnished with large divans, coromandel screens, and bronze Buddhas. We had no time to do more than glance from side to side as we followed him. As we went out through the front door, he called one peremptory word back into the house, presumably to the caretaker.

There was a wide unkempt lawn on this side, where a few clumps of high areca palms were being slowly strangled by the sheaths of philodendron roots and leaves that encased their trunks. Creepers had spread themselves unpleasantly over the tops of shrubs like the meshes of gigantic cobwebs. I knew that Hannah was thinking of snakes. She kept her eyes on the ground, stepping carefully from flagstone to flagstone as we followed the exterior of the house around to the stables, and thence out into the lane.

The swift twilight had come down. No one seemed disposed to speak. When we reached the car Mr. Wickramasinghe stood beside it.

Cheery-bye, then, and tell your friends to look for Sonny Gonzag when they are coming to Gintota. He offered his hand to Dodd first, then me, finally to Hannah, and turned away.

They were both very quiet on the way back to Galle. The road was narrow and the blinding lights of oncoming cars made them nervous. During dinner we made no mention of the afternoon.

At breakfast, on the veranda swept by the morning breeze, we felt sufficiently removed from the experience to discuss it. Hannah said: I kept waking up in the night and seeing that awful bed.

Dodd groaned.

I said it was like watching television without the sound. You saw everything, but you didn't get what was going on.

The kid was completely non compos mentis. You could see that a mile away, Dodd declared.

Hannah was not listening. It must have been a maid's room. But why would he take us there? I don't know; there's something terribly depressing about the whole thing. It makes me feel a little sick just to think about it. And that bed!

Well, stop thinking about it, then! Dodd told her. I for one am going to put it right out of my mind. He waited. I feel better already. Isn't that the way the Buddhists do it?

The sunny holiday continued for a few weeks more, with longer trips now to the east, to Tissamaharama and the wild elephants in the Yala Preserve. We did not go to Colombo again until it was time for me to put them onto the plane.

The black weather of the monsoons was blowing in from the southwest as we drove up the coast. There was a violent downpour when we arrived in midafternoon at Mount Lavinia and checked into our rooms. The crashing of the waves outside my room was so loud that Dodd had to shut the windows in order to hear what we were saying.

I had taken advantage of the trip to Colombo to arrange a talk with my lawyer, a Telugu-speaking Indian. We were to meet in the bar at the Galle Face, some miles up the coast. I'll be back at six, I told Hannah. The rain had abated somewhat when I started out.

Damp winds moved through the lobby of the Galle Face, but the smoky air in the bar was stirred only by fans. As I entered, the first person I noticed was Weston of the Chartered Bank. The lawyer had not yet come in, so I stood at the bar with Weston and ordered a whiskey.

Didn't I see you in Gintota at the races last month? With an elderly couple?

I was there with my parents. I didn't notice you.

I couldn't tell. It was too far away. But I saw the same three people alter with a local character. What did you think of Sonny Gonzag?

I laughed. He dragged us off to his house.

You know the story, I take it.

I shook my head.

The story, which he recounted with relish, began on the day after Gonzag's wedding, when he stepped into a servant's room and found his bride in bed with the friend who had been best man. How he happened to have a pistol with him was not explained, but he shot them both in the face, and later chopped their bodies into pieces. As Weston remarked: That sort of thing isn't too uncommon, of course. But it was the trial that caused the scandal. Gonzag spent a few weeks in a mental hospital, and was discharged.

You can imagine, said Weston. Political excitement. The poor go to jail for a handful of rice, but the rich can kill with impunity, and that sort of thing. You still see references to the case in the press now and then.

I was thinking of the crimson blazer and the botanical gardens. No. I never heard about it, I said.

He's mad as a hatter, but there he is, free to do whatever he feels like. And all he wants now is to get people into that house and show them the room where the great event took place. The more the merrier as far as he's concerned.

I saw the Indian come into the bar. It's unbelievable, but I believe it, I told Weston.

Then I turned to greet the lawyer, who immediately complained of the stale air in the bar. We sat and talked in the lounge.

I managed to get back to Mount Lavinia in time to bathe before dinner. As I lay in the tepid water, I tried to imagine the reactions of Hannah and Dodd when I told them what I had heard. I myself felt a solid satisfaction at knowing the rest of the story. But being old, they might well brood over it, working it up into an episode so unpleasant in retrospect that it stained the memory of their holiday. I still had not decided whether to tell them or not when I went to their room to take them down to dinner.

We sat as far away from the music as we could get. Hannah had dressed a little more elaborately than usual, and they both were speaking with more than their accustomed animation. I realized that they were happy to be returning to New York. Halfway through the meal they began to review what they considered the highlights of their visit. They mentioned the Temple of the Tooth, the pair of Bengal tiger cubs in Dehiwala which they had petted but regretfully declined to purchase, the Indonesian dinner on Mr. Bultjens's lawn, where the myna bird had hopped over to Hannah and said: "Eat it up," the cobra under the couch at Mrs. de Sylva's tea party.

And that peculiar young man in the _strange_ house, Hannah added meditatively.

Which one was that? asked Dodd, frowning as he tried to remember. Then it came to him. Oh, God, he muttered. Your special friend. He turned to me. Your mother certainly can pick 'em.

Outside, the ocean roared. Hannah seemed lost in thought. _I_ know what it was like! she exclaimed suddenly. It was like being shown around one of the temples by a _bhikku_. Isn't that what they call them?

Dodd sniffed. Some temple! he chuckled.

No, I'm serious. That room had a particular meaning for him. It was like a sort of shrine.

I looked at her. She had got to the core without needing the details. I felt that, too, I said. Of course, there's no way of knowing.

She smiled. Well, what you don't know won't hurt you.

I had heard her use the expression a hundred times without ever being able to understand what she meant by it, because it seemed so patently untrue. But for once it was apt. I nodded my head and said: That's right.
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2006-11-08T08:01:00.000-08:00

3. Marc Kiska is a very interesting young Norwegian photographer whose work I was recently introduced to. These are a few of his photos, and you can see many others and learn more about him at his website.
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2006-11-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

4. Maybe you've always intended to read The Marquis de Sade's monumental masterwork of a novel The 120 Days of Sodom but you've been hesitant to fork out the cash required to buy such a big, fat book or you don't have space in your bookshelf for that big, fat book. If so, a blog reader named Vic from St. Petersberg, Russia wrote recently to clue me in on the fact that anyone can read the entire The 120 Days of Sodom online for free by clicking this link.

2006-11-08T07:56:00.000-08:00

5. I really like Cam Archer's films and music videos. I know a bunch of you do too. Maybe everybody likes them. Whether you do or don't or don't know yet, if you want to watch all of Archer's music videos to date, the man himself sent me (and by proxy you) this link where you can.

2006-11-08T07:54:00.000-08:00

6. Joy Williams is one of my favorite fiction writers. Some of you might remember the Joy Williams Day I hosted here on the blog a few months ago. A fellow Williams fan named Tao Lin who does the terrific blog Reader of Depressing Books sent word that she's posted a hard-to-find Williams essay about her writing and life as writer on that blog, and here's where you can read it. It's a beauty.

2006-11-08T07:50:00.000-08:00

7. Yesterday's art exhibition themed post originally consisted of two interrelated shows. One was the drawing show you saw, and the other would have been a show of photographic portraits on the same theme. My idea was to create a comparison between real a.k.a. photographed acts of sex/power/violence and those that were purely imaginary. The doers vs. the dreamers. But right after I posted the entry, I looked it over and thought it would be clearer without the photographs, so I deleted them. I was going to throw that part of the post away, but, on second thought, what the fuck, here's a blog outtake.

Selected Portraits from the Contemporary Photography Collection of Slave4master.com

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2006-11-08T01:30:00.000-08:00

p.s. My mild cold of yesterday has turned into something worse. I know a bunch of you have had your bouts with illness of late, and now I guess it's my turn. Oh well. Anyway, I mention that to you as a forewarning of possible lack of focus and energy on my part today. Otherwise, it is a slightly better world in the United States today, which is great. Now we'll see what the Democrats do with their new powers. They've got the votes and the mandate to start making big changes and investigating Bush's seemingly many illegal and/or unconstitutional actions to date and so on, but whether they have the courage and integrity to do all those things, who knows? But I think there's some hope starting today. That's something. Oh, before I forget, to chilly jay chill: The collected Robbe-Grillet films come out on DVD towards the end of this year. Gisele says that if you really want/need a copy of 'The Man Who Lies' before that, she or I could probably get a copy from Catherine Robbe-Grillet for you, but it would be a version without English subtitles, and, as you probably know, R-G's films are text heavy, so I'm not sure if you want to go that route or not. If so, let me know, and I'll do what I can. ** Stickitminister, Thanks for the props. I don't know the names of the artists who did the guro drawings in my post yesterday. I basically swipe those images here and there, and they're very rarely credited to a particular artist, and I haven't paid the kind of attention I should to what credits there have been. So I can't name names, sadly. I'm still collecting them, and I'll be more diligent, and if I post more of them, I'll try to credit the artists where I can. ** Kosa_838, Hey. Good to see you. Yeah, I was surprised and really pleased that Richey Manic liked 'Frisk' so much. Manic Street Preachers were a very good band back when he was around, especially 'The Holy Bible.' Anyway, thanks. ** Jax, Cool you liked the drawings. Their combo of cuteness and violence and so on is really fascinating to me. The eroticism is really particular and filtered in a itchy way. So, yeah. You're going to write the script as fiction first? That's really interesting. Why? Because fiction's a medium you feel more comfortable in? Or do you feel you can discover and create and lay out the story more richly or complexly if you start with a fiction? Or ... ? Paris doesn't have snow. Did I make it seem like it did? My wintery comment? No, no snow yet, just a cold that grows more biting day by day. ** David c., That dog thing was funny and so true except that with Bush as the head it's a pretty unfriendly, rabid dog, and the damage done by the tail is no accident. Yeah, I feel good about what's happened with the election. The whole political system in American is one big outmoded flaw, but you take what you can get. That's the young me on the cover of 'ToW' indeed, in my 1981 bedroom with pix of my gods of the time. ** Math t, That's not a boring answer whatsoever. I'm really interested in how speed or lack thereof effects art making and the art that results. I'm always slow, or I should say except in rare cases, but I don't think that novels that took longer to write are necessarily my favorites, per say. I do love 'Period,' and it did practically murder me. But 'The Sluts' took seven or eight years to write, and it's not one my favorites of mine. So I guess for me the time taken either depends or doesn't matter. Handwriting Day ... I like it. But wouldn't people need scanners or really high quality cameras to make contributions? Do enough people out there have scanners and/or excellent cameras? I'm definitely into the idea. ** Misanthrope. 'The Mudge Boy,' no, I haven't seen it. I think it's been mentioned here before. I'll look for this Emile Hirsch fellow, especially because your tastes and my tastes seem quite, quite chummy. Thanks. Doogie heavily cruised my friend Joel Westendorf a few years ago. That's my only Doogie ancedote. ** David ehrenstein, No, I don't know Jonathan Littell, and I don't think I've read him, but, yeah, that novel of his was one of the talks of Paris this year. From what I've heard about it, it doesn't seem like my cup of tea, but they've loved it over here. ** Adjoun, Oh, you're wild allright, whether you know it or not. Your words and images scream, 'Wild!' Wild doesn't just mean zonking yourself on drugs and booze and digging around in boys' bodies, etc., or not in my book. Wild is a quality, a way of thinking, a sensibility thing. And, sir, sire, you are wild. ** Perspects, Yikes on the hacking thing. Well, they didn't hack deep enough yesterday, I guess. Or maybe they did. ** 5stringaphasia, Yeah, there's a real dark side to yesterday's election. Seven states voted against gay marriage. Regardless of how one feels about gay marriage, those defeats copme from a deep ugliness. ** Christopher michael stamm, Of course I'l write the letters. Just let me know how to do it, etc. I guess you can write to me at the contact@denniscooper.net address with the info. You doing well? ** Jose, Ouch about not keeping those drawings. I know what you mean. That point where you're first becoming sexual is so intense and creative, or can be. I wrote a bunch of stuff back then that I burned for fear my parents would find it. Always regretted that. Anything you can about the novel you're writing? No pressure, just two (and surely many more) open ears here if the mood to talk about it ever strikes. ** Robert-nyc, The election, not too bad, right? It's a start, at least. ** Lost child, Okay, The Undertaker is a famous professional wrestler in the World Wresting Federation, and he's also the cooloest pro wrestler ever for my money. When he first appeared, he had this whole schtick where his assistant would bring a coffin into the ring and then do a hocus pocus ritual, and the coffin would open, and out would come The Undertaker amidst plumes of fog. Essentually, he was an evil zombie wrestler. In recent years, he's dropped the schtick and is just a spooky looking guy, but he's still the coolest. Vince McMahon is the founder, head, mastermind, creative force behind the WWF. I think he's a genius, but sometimes he gets into the wrestling itself and his onscreen character is a weasly, cheating slime bag. So in my proposed wrestling match, either you and The Undertaker would win fair and square, or Pedro and Vince McMahon would win by cheating. Worst case scenario, you'd lose the match technically but you'd win the hearts of all wrestling fans. ** Dynomoose, That's really promising and wonderful news about Joe and Dillard University. My fingers will be crossed, and you count on crossed fingers from everyone here, I'm sure. Well, since Adrienne Shelly didn't want to die, this is a much worse outcome for her. It was a horrible and sad story before, and it still is. ** Sypha_69, Well, shit, they have to get back to you, iUniverse I mean. Don't they? They have your money and your book. What do you think is going on? Could they have already gone to press on your book and are afraid to tell you that or ...? That really sucks, but I keep thinking they will contact you unless they're pure evil or something. Don't worry about talking too much about it here. I'm interested and concerned, as are many here on your behalf. ** Vomitingghosts, Excellent and chewy poems. You really have a feel for language as a source of pleasure and surprise. Really nice. ** Rigby101, Here's the link to 'The bruise turned yellow overnight.' It's essentially a guro blog, and if you go throw the posts you'll find lots of links to other sites that host guro. You can go on quite a journey into the guro world if you want. Being kind of obsessed with guro these days, I recommend it. Google owns blogger? Can that be true? Oh fuck, if so, my blog may be doomed considering their purging of copyrighted stuff from youtube. I hope it's not true. That's scary. ** Eddie b., So you're on the retreat? Yeah, people I know who've done them say there's a real hell aspect to them as well as a positive one. My advice: try to get the pressure brought on by being on the retreat off of your head. All you have to do is get some stuff going while you're there and it'll be worth it. Consider us here your cheerleading section. Long live you! ** Gregoryedwin, Colorado is just one of many states that should eat shit and die if that's any consolation. Boy, it sure is pretty, though. I'm absolutely positive you didn't fail your students. In fact, I wager the next William Gaddis was among those bright-eyed, upturned faces. ** Alice in chains, I already put a comment on your blog, but, again, I love those cut-poems. I love them a lot. ** Paradigm, 'Strange and confronting a lot of stuff' is good, right? If not, this blog is in trouble. How's your music project going? You okay? ** Jheorgge, Yeah, that Virginia thing is sick, and it's part and parcel of the Republicans' immorality, which is why the election results yesterday are a joy no matter what happens now. Just the fact that their power at all costs strategy has failed is such a relief in and of itself. And you? What's up? Is school still eating you alive? Any interesting related knowledge to share? Or whatever? ** I hope you guys find something to enjoy in today's potpourri of a post. I'll go glug down some orange juice, and you do something else, and I'll see you tomorrow.

Galerie Dennis Cooper presents ...

2006-11-07T07:28:00.000-08:00

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Selected Drawings from the Works on Paper Collection of 'The Bruise Turned Yellow Overnight'

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2006-11-07T02:15:00.000-08:00

p.s. Hey. So it's election day in the land where I wish I was, and I must admit I'm sweating bullets hoping the power shift that everybody seems to think could happen tonight will happen, even if, worst case scenario, it only results in a different status quo. Best case scenario? Well, the mind boggles at the myriad possibilities for change, or my mind does. Anway, that's where I am today, anxious and crossing my fingers. We'll see. No news on the family front. It's ever more wintery here in Paris. That's pretty much it on my end at the moment. Oh, I think I have a slight cold. No biggie. ** Jax, All those qualities are definitely what I'm trying to get in this new little photo novella, so, no, you're not reading too much into it, you're just making me smile and feel more confident. Aka thanks. What's the latest on your script? ** Lost child, Here's what I want to see: You and Pedro in a tag team wrestling match. WWF Monday Night Raw. Your tag team partner, The Undertaker. Pedro's tag team partner, Vince McMahon. I just realized you probably don't know what I'm talking about. Oh well. It's a compliment. ** David c., You having invoked the celebrity fuck rule -- and what better authority -- the next time I run into young Mr. Haas, well, I ... (to be continued) ** Antonio, I'm not nihilistic, am I? Wow, that would throw my self-understanding into chaos. Oh my God. Hilarious ...? Hm, if you say so. I still like 'Reveille' the best, I don't know why. The keyboards, maybe. But Deerhoof are a do-no-wrong kind of proposition in my book. 'Milk Man' is great. I love that weird last song. My Top Ten Violent Moments is a good idea maybe. No joke. If I can think of ten. If I can't, how about the top ten times I most sincerely flashed the peace sign. What about that? I didn't beat up that punk kid. Emphasis on the word that. Hitting kids in the head with their skateboards ... Dude, I can't even count how many times I've done that and loved every millisecond. Top Ten Times I've Hit Kids in the Head with their Skateboards. How about that? I want to see you top ten violent moments, or should I say your Top Hundred. Ace every test, antonio. You know you can. ** Michael karo, Nice that the great Lady Bunny namechecked you. And for good reason. And thanks much for the pic of dynomoose's baby Jesus. ** Adjoun, Thank you, you wild fella. ** David ehrenstein, You think I should unleash my mental capacities on the Fundies? Lots of tragi-comic figures there for sure. I feel a new photo novella sizzling on my back burner as I type. Thanks for the tip, david. Oh, and for that interview with Jones. Fascinating. ** Tosh, Actually, my mom recently gave my sister, her husband, and my nephew a trip to Paris as a gift. But I think it'll have to wait until Cody has a lengthy school vacation. Still, I look forward to it a lot. Cody wants him and me to go to the Alps while he's here so he can watch me do Extreme Snowboarding. He's not kidding. I love Nik Kent too, yeah. But I do like some of the 60s New Journalism, especially the early Tom Wolfe. Nowadays he's a hateful, tedious 'Great American Novel' writing hack, but the fizz in his 60s journalism really pleases me. ** Tony o'neill, Yeah, I saw the Brigid Polk documentary. Wonderful. I've always loved her. The way she shoves that hypodermic full of speed in her and the other woman's asses in 'Chelsea Girls' is sublime. Her little book 'Scars' is great, though I don't how you'll find a copy. It's super rare. Take care. ** Misanthrope, It's weird. Yeah, I seem to be able to write non-fiction on this blog like a demon, but when there's payment at stake, it's hard for me. It makes no sense at all. Maybe I should go back into therapy. Tasty little story about Doogie, not that I'm into him at all. I guess I mean your story's tasty, and he gives a good performance in it. Thanks. ** Chilly jay chill, Weird, I'd heard that all of Robbe-Grillet's films were now out in a box DVD set, including 'The Man Who Lies,' but I just did an elaborate online search for you here in France/French and couldn't find such a thing anywhere. I'm seeing Gisele today. I'll ask her. She should know. I've seen Chabrol's 'This Man Must Die' and thought it was terrific. I haven't seen the other film. ** Paul curran, You made me drool with your fun fair description. Fun fairs are another of my fetishes. Your further characterizations of your writing process again excited me. We're at least sort of birds of a feather on that front, I think. ** Ignacio, And those thoughts led to ....? ** Math t, More excellent drawings. How quickly do you draw them? Does it vary? When they take longer, do you like them better, or does it make no difference how long they take re. how good you think they are? ** Jose, Excellent news on your novel writing. That's great, man. Congrats to you, and, with any luck, to us when you finish it. That site with the ghost stories -- which I haven't read yet -- was funny: The words Obiwan and Red Sox in the same banner? ** Saa viccenzo, I haven't given Ted Haggard a huge amount of thought yet, so right now all I think is that he's a disgusting hypocritcal lying motherfucker, I guess. I'll try to give him a more sophisticated think. What do you think of him, oh wise and powerful saa? ** Postitbreakup, Thank you, sir. ** Perspects, Oh, that was weird, wasn't it? Well, antonio said something about musical collaborators for me. And naturally you sprang to mind since one of these days we'll hopefully collaborate as planned. And I was looking at his typically jazzy looking post, and I saw the words DEELISHHH or something like that, and at first I thought the word was DeeeeLite (or however they spelled that), and one thing lead to another. I'd rather -- if we're going to work with a has-been -- we do the Grace Slick comeback album. Give her a bunch of acid, I'll try to recreate those great high schoolish trippy lyrics he used to come up with, you lay down some dense psychedlic stuff, and there we go. Oh, I'll check my mailbox. I haven't yet. ** Tigersare, You didn't consider a wax job? Not even for Butt? I wouldn't either, actually. ** 5stringaphasia, I'm reasonably okay today. Can you tell? You okay? ** Sypha_69, I saw the first 'Saw' and thought it was shit. I never saw (ha ha) #2, though people say it was zillion times better. #3 hasn't come to Paris yet. But I'm game. Apropos of nothing, the guy who directed those movies is cute. Or I think so. Apropos of nothing. What is 'The Wizard?' ** D., I have a very small collection of the sort you describe. I have Leonardo Di Caprio's used lip balm circa 'Romeo and Juliet.' I have two Vincent Kartheiser itens: his used drinking straw and cigarette plucked from his lips. Hm, that might be my entire collection. I need to beef it up. I thanked Malick in 'My Loose Thread' because his work, especially 'Thin Red Line,' was a huge influence on the novel. He's one of my very, very, very favorite directors. Probably my favorite American film director. So that's why. ** Winter rates, I'm terribly happy that you liked 'The Devil, Probably.' Whenever anyone loves a Bresson film, it makes my day. I like 'Slacker.' I like Linklater's work, or much of it. And, in fact, Linklater has mentioned Bresson as an influence in a few interviews, so you are a very perceptive person. I need to watch 'Slacker' again and look for Bresson-isms. Thanks. What's going on with you and yours? ** The End. See you tomorrow in a slightly better world, I hope.

Scrapbook Three, p. 1: 'Old Fashioned'

2006-11-06T03:38:00.000-08:00

Photographer: Try giving me one of those lopsided 'I'm such a goofy kid' smiles.
Old man: Like this?
Teen model: (off camera) Wait, explain to me this one more time. You say I’ll only think I’m fucking that ugly old man you’re taking pictures of, but I’ll actually be fucking a cute boy my age? I don’t –
Photographer: By the time these photographs appear on their designated porn site, he'll look younger and cuter than you deserve, thanks to my artistic genius, three months of non-stop eighteen work days, and no small amount of help from Photoshop CS2.
Teen model: Okay, but you’re saying me, real person, right now in the real world … I’ll be fucking that old man.
Photographer: Just make the best of it.

2006-11-06T03:37:00.000-08:00

Old man: Hi there, cutie.
Teen model: Listen, I'm friends with a hot boy who’d take a taxi over here right now and let me fuck him for cab fare. And that way I would never have to see what's in this gross old guy's shorts.
Photographer: No offense, but boys like you are a dime a dozen. Whereas cute 18 year old boys in the 1970s might as well be mastodons. See, my … fetish, if you will, is rescuing the 18 year old babe inside that pile of fat and sag you see before you. Nothing gets me harder than chipping away at those depressing, sexless pixels. My friends always chide me. ‘Joe,’ they say, ‘you should be down in Egypt where cleaning dust specks off an old piece of trash with a child’s paint brush for three weeks is called rewriting history not obsessive compulsive behavior.’

2006-11-06T03:36:00.000-08:00

Old man: Not to take a leak in your imaginary champagne, but when I was 18, I was a fat pig with horrible acne. Believe it or not, this is the best I’ve ever looked in my life.
Photographer: Funny. Yeah, I’ve only heard that line a million times. No doubt it’s painful for you think back on the boy whom you and father time have so carelessly destroyed, and I promise to take your emotional pain under advisement, but personally, I only hear … what’s your name again?
Old Man: John.
Photographer: I only hear young John’s sad, desperate little voice crying out to me. ‘Sir,’ he says, ‘I used to make men’s jaws drop, and I could do it again if you’ll just free me from this troll who has stolen my identity.’

2006-11-06T03:34:00.000-08:00

Old Man: Look, no complaints from me. Assuming I ever get him hard, an 18 year old blond is going to pork me, and I didn't even have to find an ATM first. Imagine I’m a Rose Parade float for all I care.
Teen model: Yeah, but I have to fuck this nasty Jack Nicholson looking dude, which sucks.
Photographer: Try picturing this. We’re in The Twilight Zone, okay? You’re an astronaut who went into space, and your spaceship got lost for forty years, but it finally found Earth again. Thanks to the space time continuum or something, you’ve only aged one day, but your boyfriend here, the love of your life, was stuck on earth and aged forty years. So he’s still your gorgeous 18 year old boyfriend, he’s just –
Teen model: Nope, not hot.

2006-11-06T03:31:00.000-08:00

Photographer: Okay, try this. You’ve just met the hottest boy you’ve ever seen in your life at a masquerade ball, and he just happens to be wearing a naked fifty-six year old man costume.
Teen model: So how did I know he was hot?
Photographer: By osmosis. Anyway, you’ve snuck off with the world’s hottest boy for a quickie fuck, but you only have a minute, so there’s no time to take off your costumes, and –
Teen model: Nope. Still not hard.
Old man: Do you mind if we do this with me lying on my stomach? My back is killing me.
Photographer: Fine, I’ll put on a porn DVD.
Teen model: Thanks. Lesbian stuff if you’ve got it.

(to be continued)

2006-11-06T02:49:00.000-08:00

p.s. Hey. First of all, thank you so much for the good words on my family situation. It means a lot. I wish I could tell you things are better, but the situation's gotten uglier if anything. I guess it's going to have to get worse before it gets better, like they say. We'll see. It's a lot to deal with, for sure. But here I am, and let's catch up before the next outburst takes over my life. ** Link raygun, Hey there. Thanks for gathering all my stuff, obviously. I'm not even sure I have all my published books. On the blurbs, I don't have much to say about it. The publishers' publicity people pick and choose them, basically prioritizing ones that have either big names or places attached and/or constitute what they think are good soundbites. And on that blurb you mentioned, it has both Irvine Welsh as the writer and the Velvet Underground as ... whatever, name dropped. I tend to just look the other way and let the people who think they know what sells books do their job. But, yeah, sometimes the fit is a little loose. Thanks, man. ** Stickitminister, Thanks for the sympathies. You know what it's like. And thanks for that link to that prop on my blog. I hope chilly jay chill's seen it. If not, chilly jay chill, check out stickitminister's post in the top comments section of Saturday's blog day to see some nice support for what you're doing. And, yeah, Shelley Duvall, hot, no argument. ** Jeff, You have to check out 'Three Women,' for sure, and her Olive Oyl is intense, but she's always really good. ** Atheist, With my brother, that's been my tactic, to try to make him feel like he's being heard and his opinion valued, but he's making it pretty difficult because what he's saying and asking for is self-serving and unfair. So that tactic is crumbling, and who knows? ** Lost child, The passions of the lost child are pretty impressive. Lost child as volcano. I like it as long you don't erupt against Bresson or something. Then you'll have a cat fight on your hands. Anyway, you were on fire, and it was amazing. ** Michael karo, Just a big olde thank you, my friend. ** Adjoun, Another cool tryptich. It's getting to be your glorious metier. ** Tosh, I like that I'm always eye level. Good old reliable Cooper books. My brother is definitely transferring a lot of things onto this money issue. Some of them I understand from a life of being his sibling, some of them of course are hidden and bewildering. He's always been the competitive sibling given to paranoias and resentments about whatever gains the rest of us have had from life while technically being by far the most successful among us. It's pretty dense and complex, what he's going through. I'm not sure it's going to be settled. I think he's probably going to ostracize himself from the family the way things are going, and I think in some way that's what he wants. Why, I don't know. Anyway, thanks, Tosh. ** Joe mills, Dude, we're seriously missing you here. Get that keyboard or whatever fixed pronto. I can help you out on the Chris Morris Day easily, if that would ease things. I can put in the links and stuff. I do it all the time, no problem. Just say the word. And hang out more often asap. ** Killer luka, 'Pretty Boy,' huh? Okay, I'll cover my ears and give a hunt. ** Dynomoose, St. Josephs Day sound even better. New Orleans really has the superior holidays, doesn't it? On the TV actors coming out, I actually think it's quite possible they won't be stigmatized. Things have changed a lot since Tom Hulce, et. al., came out and went into career nose dives. Excluding the bizarro evangelical nuts, I think people in general are totally ready for openly gay actors playing non-gay characters. The ice just needed to be broken. And I think Neil Patrick Harris and that Grey's Anatomy guy are really smart to come out while they're on big hit TV shows. Those shows will run for at least another year, probably longer. Every week millions of people will watch them and, if need be, become accustomed to the divide between who the actors are and who they're playing. Really, if people can believe John Lithgow was an alien or what's-their-names were gay guys on Will & Grace and ... I don't know, Raymond Burr was a paralyzed detective on Ironside, it's not much of a leap. I actually think that, as small as these acts of coming out might seem, they, in combination with the borderline weirdness of the outing of Haggard and Foley, might be quite significant, either signaling or making a big change in the perameters of what prominent people who happen to be gay, at least in entertainment, can reveal about themselves. I don't know, but that's my gut feeling at the moment. ** Heliotrope05, It's always so nice to see you here, my bud. Thanks, man. I hope things in your life are going a lot better than the last time I saw you. You take care, and I'll be seeing you before too, too long. ** David ehrenstein, Yeah, I'm totally in agreement with you about the cumulative thing. Besides, the stars of very popular TV series are pretty big stars anyway. It's just that old prejudice against the television medium in the film world that makes them seen like second rate/hand stars. ** Antonio, Thanks for making it happen on the 80s Top Ten Songs request, though you could have sent that to me privately and I could have done my magic and made it a super-duper blog extravaganza day with a gallery of every international picture sleeve of the 'Like A Virgin' single and links to every remix mp3 and every TV show appearance where Madonna lipsynced the song, and the same with Poptones. So thanks, but next time thing big. You're big, man. Big brain, big ideas, a veritable lord of bigness. You gotta accept that. I definitely think the Marquis de Sade destroying Lukas Haas is the perfect idea for my next novel, which probably explains why I'm not writing a next novel. My inclinations are wacked out. I do need musical collaborators. Maybe perspects and I can write and produce an album for ... Lady Miss Kier. She's a comeback story waiting to happen. ** Tony o'neill, Thanks. I just got 'Digging the Vein' in my mailbox yesterday. I won't be able to start it for a while, but that poem you wrote at the beginning is beautiful. Much appreciated. ** Sypha_69, Have you heard from the publishers? I mean, it is your book, so they should do what you want. Let us know what happens. ** Matt, Yep, keep your eyes on the blog for the next couple of days and your already bated and deserved famouse-ness will take a little step forward. I hope death stays away from the people around you for a long, long time. It's no fun, my friend. ** Math t, I'll have to think on my favorite song of the 80s. Your choices are good ones, obviously. Hm ... ** Winter rates, I've never had a real day job. I've always worked freelance when I work. Which is why I'm always stressing out about money, and why I hardly own anything, but hey, you pay for your freedom. There are times I've lived off my writing, but only when I do a lot of journalism. Sometimes between writing articles and money coming in from my books, I'm allright. But I tend to get really lazy about writing articles and reviews and stuff, which is bad, and in that case I've had to borrow money from my parents, and because I do work my ass off at my chosen profession and have had good success in most ways except for financial ways, they've helped me out. I've never found that writing for magazines or art catalogs or whatevever had any bad effect on my fiction writing at all, though I understand your fear. If anything, I think I've learned stuff as a fiction writer by learning how to journalistic writing, so it's all been good. So I don't know if that's my advice to you. I know writers who feel the way you do, and it's all good. Congrats on meeting your word count, and thanks for the questions. It's good of you to ask. More anytime. 'Peeping Tom:' amazing, yes, definitely. ** Alice in chains, See, apples and oranges. I love Lukas Haas's ears. They drive me kind of mad. I think bubble gum should come in the shape of Lukas Haas's ears, etc. Courtney Love Day would be interesting, complex. I'll make a note and give it a go, although if anyone here wants to do it, that would be more awesome. ** Dandy sweets, Yeah, no love lost for Saddam Hussein, but what are the chances his trial was even minutely fair? Like zero chances maybe? This is a wild, pretty implausible dream, but if the Democrats do win enough elections on Tuesday to take over the Senate and House of Representatives on Tuesday, a certain amount of hell could possibly begin to come down on Bush's head, impeachment hearings included, but, like I said, it's a long shot dream. Nice Paul Auster thought piece. Much appreciated. ** Ribgy101, How was the holiday? Did V show up? Oh, I guess that would have been on the news, wouldn't it? Thanks for the kind thoughts. Oh, my dad and mom divorced in the 1960s and have only spoken twice since then, not being fans of one another. So it's up to my sister and me to urge my mom to sign her will. She's not going to do it, though. I'm afraid that becomes clearer every day. ** Postitbreakup, Your review of 'Hard Candy' is good enough for me. Thank you. Good God, based on a first tiny taste, that Wondershozen show is like brain damage, I mean in a good way. Yikes. ** Jax, Yeah, that's the deal with my sister too. It just naturally befell her to be my mom's caretaker, and she's been just incredible and devoted, and I can't tell you how grateful I am, which makes my brother's jealousy really ugly since he didn't volunteer, and he's been scooting all over the place doing his thing this whole year while she put everything on hold to be with my mom. It's crazy stuff, jax. People say this, and it's so true, that you just never know how something like this going to play out. I never would have imagined this war, and here it is. Fucked up. I really hope you and your siblings keep it together when you get to this point. ** Brian curtin, Thanks a lot, brian. I got your questions, and I'll send the answers to you as soon as I can. Take care. ** Gregoryedwin, I'm a little behind on my reading because of all this family stuff, but your work and Matt's friends' work are right there waiting for me at the first opportunity, a moment I'm really looking forward to. ** Nikolas, Very, very cool about the musicians. That is very exciting. I'll check my email. And, yeah, talking soon would be great. Right now I'm just too fucked by life to think about much else. ** Steve, Funny. ** Blake & saa Viccenzo, Thanks, men. ** D., Am I the only one who thinks Daniel Radcliffe is scary looking? At least without his glasses. His face is like Zardoz. ** Garrison, 'Little Children?' I didn't know about that. Its buzz hasn't made it across the Atlantic yet. Cool. I'm seeing 'The Queen' tonight. You said it was great, right? Let's both hang in there and wait for the glory. Deal? ** David c., Thanks a lot, david. Your analysis of brother is of course very right on. Since you're a fellow Lukas Haas liker, I'll pass along evidence to you of my simultaneous personal qualities of perversion and the ethical. When I interviewed Lukas Haas, it was in his hotel room, and I happened to notice on entering the room with glance to my left that a pair of Lukas Haas's obviously previously worn underwear was lying on the bathroom floor. Did I sit there while interviewing him thinking, it would so easy to say, 'Can I use your bathroom,' and, well, ahem, slipping that pair of underwear into my pocket? Yes indeed. But did I set one foot in his bathroom, with or without his permission? No. And do I now regret it and think I was being way, way too ethical on that occasion? Yes. ** Take care, you guys. See you tomorrow.

Double Feature: Shelley Duvall & Lukas Haas Short Clips Festival

2006-11-04T06:15:00.000-08:00

Why Shelley Duvall and Lukas Haas, I hear you asking? Well, they bear a curious physical resemblance to one another. They're actors capable of giving performances that are at once wildly idiocyncratic yet full of deep grace and startling emotional intensity. They're both very undervalued artists relative to their unique talents. Neither one has ever accepted a role in a project that could remotely subject them to accusations of selling out. Possibly as a result of that and of their habit of only working when they feel like it, they're strangely obscure, even among beloved cult actors. They both wildly deserve to have their own special Days on this blog but lack enough interesting online related material to make those Days special enough to do. Even searching for every possible vidclip I could find re. them for today's festival, there wasn't much to pass along. Also, I've met them both. I interviewed Haas on the set of the film 'Johns' for Spin Magazine, but the magazine never ran the interview. I met Duvall at an art opening and was so in awe and stricken that my boyfriend of the time had to drag her over to me, whereupon I stammered and gushed while she sweetly gave me an autograph. She's one of the artists I would most love to have a beer or meal with, and he's one of the artists I would most love to ... how to say it ... spend some serious quality time with, if you catch my drift. They're both gods among humans, and I worship them. Please enjoy these heartfelt if wholly inadequate shows.

2006-11-04T06:12:00.000-08:00

Shelley Duvall
The Unofficial Shelley Duvall Website
The complete filmography
Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre
Shelley Duval ... Sex Goddess?
45 quotes from Shelley Duvall
Shelley Duvall's oeuvre on DVD

2006-11-04T06:11:00.000-08:00

Olive Oyl (Shelley Duvall) sings 'He's Large' (Harry Nilsson) in a sequence from Robert Altman's 'Popeye' (2:32)

Olive Oyl (Shelley Duvall) sings 'He Needs Me' (Harry Nilsson) in a sequence from Robert Altman's 'Popeye' (3:16)

A sequence from Robert Altman's 'Three Women,' one of his greatest films and possibly Shelley Duvall's greatest perfomance (2:43)

A sequence from Shelley Duvall's first film, Robert Altman's 'Brewster McCloud,' featuring SD and Bud Cort (10:00)

Shelley Duvall learns how to do 'the pathetic look' in a sequence from 'Bernice Bobs Her Hair' (2:07)

The 'Gimme the bat, Wendy' sequence from Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' (0:13)

The 'Here's Johnny' sequence from Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' (4:08)

2006-11-04T06:08:00.000-08:00

Lukas Haas
The Lukas Haas Official Website
The Complete Filmography
Lukas Haas Myspace Page
Lukas Haas on Bunny, his band with Vincent Gallo
Lukas Haas to release debut solo album
Lukas Haas's oeuvre on DVD

2006-11-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

Joshua Leonard's 'The Youth in Us,' a short film starring Lukas Haas (11:58)

The trailer for Tim Burton's 'Mars Attacks,' the film that features Lukas Haas's famous, sublime speech to the new world.

A sequence from the film 'Who Loves the Sun' starring Lukas Haas (3:03)

Lukas Haas interviewed on the set of Gus Van Sant's 'Last Days' (0:49)

'Queefer Madness,' a short trailer-style film co-starring Lukas Haas, David Arquette, and Neil Patrick Harris (1:49)

The trailer for Rian Johnson's 'Brick,' co-starring Lukas Haas and Joseph Gordon-Levitt

2006-11-04T01:27:00.000-08:00

p.s. Hey. Yesterday was spectacular, the architecture, the comments. Just great stuff. Sometimes a day on this blog is like a entire website somewhere else, and that was one of them. You people are just so unbelievable. What can I say? Thank you from the bottom of my heart for gathering here and letting the blog be a part of this incredible creative journey. So tomorrow's my day off, obviously. I hope you have excellent weekends. Mine's going to be hell, I'm afraid. So as not to be mysterious, and in brief, my mom's health is worsening day by day now. No one knows for sure, of course, but the end is in sight, I think. Any of you who've had people you love die of a fatal progressive disease don't need me to tell you what that feels like, and those of you here who've been spared that experience have the imaginations to picture it. So there's that. Plus, the battle I've mentioned here between my sister and one of my brothers over my mom's estate has become a full scale war, and I'm being pulled into it by both sides. It's very complicated, as these things always are, but, in a nutshell, my sister has pretty much devoted her life for almost a year now to taking care of my mother. As result of that and other pre-existing factors, my mom wants to give my sister, her husband, and their son/my nephew her condominium in thanks, which basically means my sister will technically gain significantly more from my mom's estate than the rest of us. I have no problem with this at all. I think my sister deserves it for what she's done for my mom, and it just makes sense on a number of levels that are too complex to go into. But one of my brothers is extremely resentful of this and has decided that my sister has manipulated my mother into giving her the condominium, and that my sister's caretaking has just been a big manipulation to get the condo, and he's refusing to accept this, and has been trying to talk my mom into changing her mind. Nonetheless, my mother set up her estate that way in her will. But with my brother's battling, and my mother's increasing weakness and pain and confusion, she hasn't been able to read and sign her will, and now it looks like she won't be able to. The solution is to draw up an agreement that we will all abide by my mother's will as it stands if she doesn't get around to signing it, because, and again it's too complicated and boring to explain in full, if she doesn't sign the will, there will complete chaos for us, her children, to deal with. My brother is refusing to sign the agreement, even though my mother and all the rest of the family have asked him to please sign it for everyone's sake, because he can't stand that my sister would get more than him. Let me add here that he is by far, by far the most financially well off of us and already owns three houses and other property. So it's gotten ugly, and I'm trying to play peacemaker and make my brother understand why this so important and why he needs to stop being selfish so on, and, well, this stressful situation on top of trying to deal with my mom's dying is, well, hell, as I said. So, most of that is what I'm in for until I see you next. Dudes and dudettes, seriously, have a much, much better weekend than I will. Knowing you're out there having some kind of blast will only help me. But enough of my stuff. Let's do this. ** Dandy sweets, I remember that Tony Bennett/ RHCP moment, sure. Did you watch the American MTV Video Awards the year Chris Rock hosted the first time? That was a classic. Rock was really vicious and hilarious to the nominees in a way you just never see on those kinds of shows, especially to Ricky Martin and the Backstreet Boys, but to almost every 'artist.' So many evil zingers. I wish I could remember one to pass along. Worth a youtube look, if it's there and you didn't watch it. ** Misanthrope, Hey. Nice of you to say that about Yury, of course. Well, he's a fox, what can I say? But he's very self-critical like pretty people often are. I'm going to get a pic or two of him that he's okay with, one way or another. You're a fellow VK luster, huh? High five. Or maybe I should say, 'He's mine, bitch!' Nah, three-ways are cool, high five. Does the blog inhibit my fiction writing? It's kind of a chicken or egg situation. Thing is, I haven't found an idea that's exciting enough to me to warrant writing a novel. And believe me, I'm looking and thinking in that direction daily. That's the problem, if there is one. I am able to write fiction and do prose experiments even now, but nothing's really sticking. If I come up with what I think is a great idea, I'll write the novel, and this blog will probably be scaled back in that case. But, like I've said, I see the blog as my big artistic project of this time -- something I'm doing that's as important to do as a novel would be. And the form of the blog, working within it, playing with it, trying to find its limits, etc., is really fascinating to me as an artist. Plus, the community that it's inspired makes it seem easily as important to do as writing a novel. Thanks for asking, m. ** Ignacio, Gary and I are friends, I guess, though we have troubles, and I haven't communicated with him in a few years. But he seems to eventually insult and attack everyone he knows or admires. Very testy, angry, unpredictable guy. And if Bowles didn't sufficiently appreciate Gary, that would definitely create an attack. Anyway, Bowles is a great writer, and Gary's sniping at him is just a buzzing fly. Though I do like Gary's writing very much, especially his nonfiction. He has greatness in him too. ** David ehrenstein, You're not related to that castle's Ehrenstein, are you? I'm being too literal, aren't I? Side note on the Bowles/Chester/Indiana/Rechy combo that you probably know already: it's a funny coincidence that with that famous Chester review of Rechy, and Rechy's lifelong bitterness about it, Gary Indiana gave Rechy a negative if far less scathing review in the LA Times Book Review maybe four years ago, and Rechy is still seething about it. One time not long ago when I ran into Rechy, he started grilling me if Gary was a friend of mine and so on, and then went on an extended anti-Gary rant that concluded with Rechy telling me that the reason Gary wrote that bad review of Rechy is because Gary has a tiny dick. I was like, 'Wow, you think that's why, huh? And how do you know Gary has a tiny dick?' Rechy said, oh, everybody knows that, Dennis. Anyway, I thought it was interesting and amusing that Rechy seemed to take comfort in the idea that if he had to have a bad review, at least it was written by a guy with a tiny dick. ** David c., No, I'm the oldest child. I think that's partly why I didn't get as damaged by our fucked up family dynamic as my siblings did, and why I'm drafted in to being the peacekeeper now. Are you the middle child? ** Paul curran, Lovely Joyce anecdote. Great, I'm going to hold you to that process discussion over coffee/beer/food/whatever promise. ** Atheist, Yury ate your whole chocolate bar last night. On your questions, the process by which I take a rough early draft to its final form for me adds up to literally hundreds of drafts, but I'm obsessive. Knowing when things work or don't work? Well, for me it's all instinct now, but I've been writing and publishing for a long time. Others will be more helpful on that surely. The ultimate aim in writing fiction? Boy, that's a big, very hard to answer question. For me, it's not really a conscious choice. It's what I do, what I'm driven to do. I want to create something that wouldn't exist otherwise and which I feel needs to exist. And writing the book I would want to read is of course always part of it too. Really, there are so many reasons or one huge, very complex, hard to articulate reason/goal. ** Tosh, I'm so glad I'm a 'C.' It's probably not true anymore, but it used to be when you walked into Book Soup and headed straight down the aisle into the fiction section, if you glanced a little to your left as you walked forward, you'd see the shelf with my books on it right at eye level like you said. Does that change dramatically? What I guess I mean is, are there any notable shifts up or down in the number of authors whose last names begin with a certain letter? For instance, if there were a lot of new writers with a 'B' last name one year, my 'C' books would head toward the floor. Store bookshelves almost have currents like in an ocean in a way, don't they? Maybe not. ** Math t, Well, I hope I'm in LA for the next All Saints Day, and, if so, I'll join the party. Here in Paris, I fear the options are far, far fewer, from what I've seen, although I suppose I could celebrate on my lonesome. Anyway, thanks. Sounds real nice. ** Alice in chains, I have a total fetish for destroyed buildings. There are these picture books you probably know about specifically devoted to photographs of buildings that no longer exist in different cities, and those books are like porn to me. ** Dynomoose, On second thought, I want to be in New Orleans next All Saints Day. That grave caring ritual is fantastic. Maybe I'll adopt a grave at Pere Lachaise here and be its lady in black, as it were. Not a bad idea. ** 5stringaphasia, Gracias, my kind friend, as always. Bowles is one of our more magical writers, I agree. Cold and magical, a nice combination. ** Gregoryedwin, I read that Adrienne Shelly died, but I didn't realize it was suicide. That's really sad. I admire her in the Hal Hartley films like you do. Ugh. ** Matt, I love that Simba picture of you. I'm going to find a way to post it here soon so those who are link impaired can see. Listen, you're an awesome and super interesting, smart person, and having you here is a total gift, believe me. ** Garrison, How great that would be if what people are saying about the new Courtney Love album is right. I'd love to see her come back and do something as good as 'Live Through This.' She's a very intelligent, fascinating person who's gotten herself mired in tabloid hell for whatever reasons, and seeing her escape that and be a respected artist again would be such a victory, although, having just read that news thing yesterday about how she says Mel Gibson saved her life, I have to wonder how badly she wants to get herself unmired. We'll see, yeah? Thanks for the understandably censored report, pal. ** Antonio, I'm sure you've seen that episode of the Twilight Zone where a kid wishes it was Xmas every day, and the wish comes true, and the result is a world of tedium and horror. That said, I wish it would be Halloween everyday, and I don't care if it fucks up the world. I want my wish granted. Your list ideas ... wow. Naturally, I immediately gravitate to TOP 100 SEXY BITCHES BEFORE 1900. But 100? Maybe 10. Let me have a think. No on 100 BEST SONGS OF THE 80s though. You can guest-curate that one. 'Antonio presents the 100 Best Songs of the 80s.' Has a nice ring to it. SAY YES ANTONIO! SAY IT!!!! SAAAAYY IT!!!! Okay, NEW YORK. There, you happy? 'Dennis shops for clothes day:' That would consist of photos of me searching the internet for websites that sell organic clothes and enlarging thumbnails of organic shirts and socks and underwear and then rubbing my chin and entering my credit card information and clicking 'Purchase.' Does that sound like fun? No. Collabing on sculptures is cool though. I'm way down for that one. MAKE IT HAPPEN ANTONIO!!!!!! ** Michael karo, Everybody's coming out right now. What the fuck?! It's nice, though. Vincent Kartheiser, come out the closet and join your brothers. And reveal that you 're into hot, steamy quickies with older men. Be brave. ** Paradigm, You may not like attention, but since it's either your birthday today or tomorrow, Happy Birthday, my pal. ** Morgan, Yeah, it's 'The Sinking Belle' I was thinking of with that 'Fire Walk With Me' reference. That's the song we using in Kindertotenlieder, although remixed and extended by Stephen and Peter. Nice, isn't it? Living in what amounts to a slightly glorified dorm room myself these days, I completely feel your pain. I'd start with Bowles's short fiction. ** Postitbreakup, No, I haven't seen 'Hard Candy.' I'm curious about it. What were its plusses and minuses for you? ** Jax, I like your answer to atheist's question a lot. ** Lost child, You're welcome and thank you. ** Right, that's the totality. I love you guys. I mean that. Please don't let anything bad happen to you this weekend, okay? Unless you want it and just so long as you're still here in some form or another when I get back. 'Til Monday.

Self-Portrait Day: Favorite Architectural Works

2006-11-03T10:54:00.000-08:00

dynomoose

I love that this is your self-portrait theme this time around. Not so much because I know a lot (or anything) about architecture (I don't) but because this is the one subject that would probably cause a divorce in my house if we ever won a big lottery. Joe is an absolute fanatic when it comes to Frank Lloyd Wright. He looks at images of FLW's buildings in much the same way 'normal' men look at porn.
Now I am not in any way anti-Frank Lloyd Wright. His architecture is gorgeous. But I've always felt that, if we could afford it, we should have a home with more... er........ personality.
I love the Winchester Mystery house, but am afraid someone would tumble out of one of those doors to nowhere.
Okay, I have a fetish for buildings that look like other things. Can't get enough of them, really.
Sure, an historic home in the Garden District would be awesome but wouldn't it be even more cool to live in a giant cat? Or an elephant? Can you imagine giving directions to friends? "hang a left on Warbler Drive, it's the third place on the right. The giant cat with the kittens and yarn."
Oh baby!

2006-11-03T10:52:00.000-08:00

rigby101

Friedensreich Hundertwasser (born Friedrich Stowasser, Vienna, 1928 – died 2000 in transit on the QEII)
His taken name meaning ‘Peace-Kingdom Hundred-Water’
Hundertwasser was both founder and sole member of the Transautomatists.

Hundertwasser Haus

The common themes in his work are a rejection of the straight line, bright colours, organic forms, a reconciliation of humans with nature, and a strong individualism… strongly influenced by Schiele and Klimt in his art.
In architecture he remained stubbornly individualist although his work is comparable to Antoni Gaudi in its biomorphic forms and use of tile. He was fascinated with spirals, and called straight lines "the devil's tools". He called his theory of art "transautomatism", based on Surrealist automatism, but focusing on the experience of the viewer, rather than the artist.
He had commissions all around the world and settled in NZ where he created a sanctuary that used rivers as roads and featured his main building which was built into a hill and featured a front façade of wine bottles as insulation and light.

from the manifesto Your window right - your tree duty:
"A person in a rented apartment must be able to lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach. And he must be allowed to take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach. So that it will be visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardised man who lives next door." Also planting trees in an urban environments was to become obligatory: "If man walks in nature's midst, then he is nature's guest and must learn to behave as a well-brought-up guest."

Mould manifesto (1958)

kawakawa public toilets (featured on a BBC program fronted by comedian billy connelly about NZ)
kawakawa community board has proposed turning the toilets into a non-functioning art work… not something he would approve of

photos: here
book: here

*

Ferdinand Cheval
Born 1836 in Galaure (Drome) to become the village idiot and postman. In 1879 on stubbing his toe while on his postal route he explained the stone had transformed his life.. he went on to spend the next 33 years building a fantastic palace. Often working at night by lamp light he forged found stones, wire and cement into a construction influenced by hindu and babylonian design (though apparently with no conscious thought.. and created in ‘a trance-like state’).

Palais Idéal

“Whatever your age, whatever you wish to achieve, if you are courageous, persistent and hard-working, you are sure to succeed.” Ferdinand Cheval

Prevented from being buried within his magnificent structure by the local council he went onto build a crypt within the local cemetry. He died a year after finishing it (1924).
Today the local council and minister of culture deem it a cultural landmark and the Palais Idéal is now a protected site (open for visits most days of the year).

more links
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2006-11-03T09:17:00.000-08:00

math t

1. Everything about Brooklyn's incredible Gowanus Canal, New York City's major transit route for stuff like marble and concrete, and, in the past, sugar. I live only 2 blocks from it. The canal is very different from most people's image of Nyc. I go there almost every day.

2. Your basic skinny-style corner New York subway station entrance. They all make me feel so welcome and calm. I missed them so much when I moved away from Nyc, which I never anticipated at all. There's nothing special about the Broadway-Lafayette station in particular, but I enter and exit there a lot. And I like subway entrances with symbols for around 3-6 trains on them best.

3. Since my hard drive recently died, I lost most of my pictures from my recent 2-year stay in Los Angeles, so please accept this snap of the Hollywood sign culled from some tourism site. It was hard for me to choose between the Griffith Park Observatory, the LAX sign at the airport entrance, and the Hollywood sign. I don't know why, but I've always found the sight of the Hollywood sign extremely moving. Dreams writ large or whatever.

2006-11-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

gregoryedwin

Le Corbusier Plan Voison and interior of Chapel at Ronchamp

The plan voison for paris is ugly brutal and rigid. Le Corbusier's descriptions of it, however, are beautiful and persuasive. It was with this plan that Le Corbusier famously said of Paris that we would have to "scrape everything" and begin anew. Obviously it didn't work out. But the idea seems pretty much the wild pinnacle of modernism's creative destruction. There is something about that idea that is completely fascinating and seductive. This is probably the seduction of
fascism, with which these plans are often and pretty correctly associated (Le Corbusier supported the Vichy government) In any case it was this idea--that someone would not only want to rebuild Paris from the ground up, but plan to, and then become angry and disappointed when it didn't take--that prompted a two year investigation of Le Corbusier and began an obsession with architecture and urban planning and space and light and the artistic use of all of these that continues to intrigue me. My first attempt at a book was about him.

The interior of the chapel at ronchamp demonstrates that when not scheming up grandiose and slightly dictatorial urban plans Le Corbusier could be a fascinating and beautiful and effective architect. I think he captures here at least what I think of when I think of the spiritual, flashes of varying light in a dark silent space. Just the picture makes my body relax.

2006-11-03T08:59:00.000-08:00

paul curran

The shelter at Wilkinson's Lemonade Factory in north east England wasn't reinforced. When a bomb hit on 3 May 1941, the bottling machinery collapsed into the basement, killing more than 100 people. Seven of my relatives died. Two survived. For some reason my grandparents stayed home with their two sons that night.

Aftermath film footage - Author Unknown

2006-11-03T05:30:00.000-08:00

jax

Alexander 'Greek' Thomson's St. Vincents Street church

This is the St. Vincents Street church, in Glasgow, designed by Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, a jobbing architect who designed masses of buildings in and around the city where me and Joe live. Rennie MacIntosh gets all the international kudos, but for me Thomson has something special. When I was 17-18, there was a branch of ‘Habititat’ (Conran’s posh design store) just down the hill from the Thomson church, and you could go up onto its roof (1970s breeze-block architecture..gotta love it) and just gaze up at the Thomson building! I love the mixture of styles – hence the ‘Greek’ aspect of his name – and inside, the thing’s even more amazing. Pink walls, Abyssinian influences, ornate pillars, fuck knows what!

Sadly, Glasgow was full of so many of his buildings that our local council didn’t realise what they had til they pulled it down – something they’ve done in recently years with so many wonderful structures. The St Vincents Street church is now on World Monument Watch’s ‘at risk’ register, since it needs loads of work done on it which is going to cost an awful lot of money!

In a final irony, at present the building is used by the Free Church of Scotland - a particularly dour Presbyterian sect, who stress undecorated Spartan environments – so one can only guess at what they make of those pink walls:)

Here’s links to more info about Thomson and his work:-

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And this…

4. ---

…is just a really good site, where you can check-out old buildings and who designed / built them – and even buy one!:)

2006-11-03T03:34:00.000-08:00

vomitingghosts

The rabbit hole from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland

The Madonna Inn, San Luis Obispo, California

The Madonna Inn is a motel of flamboyant style in San Luis Obispo, California. Opened for business in 1958, the motel was the creation of Alex Madonna, who died in April 2004, and his wife Phyllis. The motel is a monument of unremitting kitsch, Swiss-Alp exterior and lavish pink common rooms. Each room in the Madonna Inn is uniquely designed and themed... and includes rooms with such unusual names as the Yahoo, Love Nest, the sets Ren, Dez, and Vous and Merry, Go, Round, Old Mill, Kona Rock, Irish Hills, Cloud Nine, Just Heaven, Old-Fashioned Honeymoon, Caveman Room, Elegance, Daisy Mae, Safari Room, Highway Suite, Jungle Rock, Bridal Falls and the Carin. The Inn is featured in Umberto Eco’s book Travels in Hyperreality (1991).

According to Eco: “The poor words with which natural human speech is provided cannot suffice to describe the Madonna Inn. To convey its external appearance, divided into a series of constructions, which you reach by way of a filling station carved from Dolomitic rock, or through the restaurant, the bar, and the cafeteria, we can only venture some analogies. Let’s say that Albert Speer, while leafing through a book on Gaudi, swallowed an overgenerous dose of LSD and began to build a nuptial catacomb for Liza Minnelli. But that doesn’t give you an idea. Let’s say Arcimboldi builds the Sagrada Familia for Dolly Parton. Or: Carmen Miranda designs a tiffany locale for the Jolly Hotel chain. Or D’Annunzio’s Vittoriale imagined by Bob Cratchit, Calvino’s Invisible Cities described by Judith Krantz and executed by Leonor Fini for the plush-doll industry, Chopin’s Sonata in B flat minor sung by Perry Como in an arrangement by Liberace and accompanied by Marine Band. No, that still isn’t right. Let’s try telling about the rest rooms. They are an immense and underground cavern, something like Altamira and Lutay, with Byzantine columns supporting plaster baroque cherubs. The basins are big imitation-mother-of-pearl shells, the urinal is a fireplace carved from the rock, but when the jet of urine (sorry, but I have to explain) touches the bottom, water comes down from the wall of the hood, in a flushing cascade something like the Caves of the Planet Mongo. And on the ground floor, in keeping with the air of Tyrolean chalet and Renaissance castle, cascade of chandeliers in the form of baskets of flowers, billows of mistletoe surrounded by opalescent bubbles, violet-suffused light among which Victorian dolls swing, while the walls are punctuated by art-nouveau windows with the colors of Chartres and hung up with Regency tapestries whose pictures resemble the garish color supplements of the Twenties. The circular sofas are red and gold, the tables gold and glass, and all this amid inventions that turn the whole into a multicolor Jell-O, a box of candied fruit, a Sicilian ice, a land for Hansel and Gretel. Then there are the bedrooms, about two hundred of them, each with a different theme: for a reasonable price (which includes an enormous bed—King or Queen size—if you are on your honeymoon) you can have the Prehistoric Room, all cavern and stalactites, the Safari Room (zebra walls and bed shaped like a Bantu idol), the Kona Rock Room (Hawaiian), the California Poppy, the Old-Fashioned Honeymoon, the Irish Hills, the William Tell, the Tall and short, for mates of different lengths, with the bed in an irregular
polygon form, the Imperial Family, the Old Mill.

The Madonna Inn is a poor man’s Hearst Castle; it has no artistic or philological pretensions, it appeals to the savage taste for the amazing, the overstuffed, and the absolutely sumptuous at low price. It says to its visitors: ‘You too can have the incredible, just like a millionaire.’”

The Land of Chocolate from the episode “Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk”,
of The Simpsons

The Winchester Mystery House , San
Jose, California

From Wikipedia: “The Winchester Mystery House is a famous California mansion that was under construction continuously for 38 years and is reputed to be haunted. Construction of the San Jose, California mansion began in 1884, financed by owner Sarah L. Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester. Construction continued 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, until her death 38 years later on September 5, 1922…

Deeply saddened by her husband's death and seeking solace, she consulted a medium on the advice of a friend. According to legend the medium (who has become known colloquially as the ‘Boston Medium’), told Winchester that there was a curse upon the Winchester family because the guns they made had taken so many lives. She toldWinchester that ‘thousands of persons have died because of it and their spirits are now seeking vengeance.’

Although this is disputed, many believe the Boston Medium told her she needed to leave her home in New Haven and travel West, where she must ‘build a home for yourself and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon, too. You can never stop building the house. If you continue building, you will live. Stop and you will die.’ Whether this tale is true or not, Winchester did move west, settling in California. Some believe Winchester followed the medium's directions to distract the spirits she believed were hunting her. She was reported to have slept in a different room each night for some time…” (cont.)

2006-11-03T03:31:00.000-08:00

bett williams

This is an installation by Tony Feher at a broken down armory building at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX.

I want to live here. It's my favorite building, ever.

2006-11-03T03:21:00.000-08:00

ignacio

Ziggurats get overlooked in the realm of imaginary, lost landscapes, as pyramids were larger and the remains better-preserved, whether in Egypt or Mexico, but when one conceives of barbaric splendor there’s a lot to be said for Ur, Ur-Nammu, Babylon and whatever exactly went on back then. Was the sky a different blue? How brightly did we bleed? Just as a child’s tastebuds cannot abide pepper sauce because every taste on the young tongue is still so intense, perhaps life itself was intense enough then to cut one in two. And if one became jaded and bored, one could wander off in search of novelty……sure to find it, one way or the other. “Let’s get lost” expressed something more than a forlorn hope.

“OD’d on Life Itself” was a song not yet sung.

One could just keep walking, forever, in search of a different sky. Different sounds and smells. New flesh.

2006-11-03T03:14:00.000-08:00

joe mills

2006-11-03T03:12:00.000-08:00

statictick

The coolest bldg. in Det. in my estimation. The old train station:

Gaudi:

LeCorbusier:

2006-11-03T03:10:00.000-08:00

marc vallee

brooklyn, nyc, 2006

alex and i spent a day out with our good mate andreas in williamsburg, brooklyn over the summer. it was so could in london today and this image just brings back some very warm and great feelings.

2006-11-03T03:09:00.000-08:00

sweetpiss

this is my favorite tag in nyc (does it count as architecture? i'm not so interested in individual buildings...maybe you could do a grafitti day?). it had been there for as long as i remember (about 9 years), until it was painted over earlier this year, shortly after this photo was taken. sad sad sad.

2006-11-03T03:04:00.000-08:00

lost child

The moon was riding in a cloudy heaven when Peter rose from his tree, begirt [belted] with weapons and wearing little else, to set out upon his perilous quest. It was not such a night as he would have chosen. He had hoped to fly, keeping not far from the ground so that nothing unwonted should escape his eyes; but in that fitful light to have flown low would have meant trailing his shadow through the trees, thus disturbing birds and acquainting a watchful foe that he was astir.

He regretted now that he had given the birds of the island such strange names that they are very wild and difficult of approach.

the grotto is from Ludwig the bavaria...
the mad prince...

here are a few more but on trees..

2006-11-03T03:00:00.000-08:00

young and stupid

I don't know a lot about architecture. But there are funny moments that I remember having a strong impact on me. I remember seeing a waterslide that had been built level with a grassy hill so that you could sail downhill level with the grass. That was one of the greatest ideas ever, I think. But I couldn't find it, that exists only in my mind now. So, this is a photograph of a place in Norway by where I live called "Oljemuseum" (The Oil Museum). It sounds horribly boring, but its really cool. The builiding itself was designed by Lunde & Løwseth and won a national architect award for the building design, which is made even more poignant because its this ultramodern steel monster seemingly floating above the sea. While this is astounding in itself, the real treat is a room inside the museum-the Petrodome. The room is the size of a movie theater, pitch black, and is completely covered in mirrors. There's a kind of laser like show going on in there and its really dizzying and intense, and strangely arousing. Plus, I like when you walk in, your feet make soft padding noises. It's a wierd contrast to the edgy, sharp mirrors everywhere, where you're falling, falling.....

2006-11-03T02:57:00.000-08:00

david c

Dennis's inclusion of unrealised architecture reminded me of the work of Alexander Brodsky & Ilya Utkin which I first saw at the Wellington City Art Gallery many years ago. Self-labelled "paper architects" their work is intricate, visionary and just fascinating. And they are Russian of course which just seemed appropriate.

2006-11-03T02:46:00.000-08:00

michael karo

Case Study House 22
1635 Woods Drive - Above Sunset/Laurel Canyon
Los Angeles, CA

2300 square feet
completed 1960
architect: pierre koenig

"An extraordinary view over a hundred square miles of the city of Los Angeles greets visitors to Pierre Koenig's 1959 Case Study #22 as they enter the courtyard from the carport and walled off street side of the structure. The house, boasted Arts and Architecture is a 'free floating roof shelter oriented to an expansive and spectacular panorama.' In fact Julius Shulman's photograph of the glass living area of this dramatically spare house silhouetted against the nocturnal cityscape - may be the single best known image of the Case Study Program."

- Blueprints for Modern Living : History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses edited by Elizabeth A. T. Smith.

"I am thinking, of course, of the heroic night-time view of Pierre Koenig's Case Study House #22 which seems so memorably to capture the whole spirit of late twentieth-century architecture. There, hovering almost weightlessly above the bright lights of Los Angeles, spread out like a carpet below, is an elegant, light, economical and transparent enclosure whose apparent simplicity belies the rigorous process of investigation that made it possible. If I had to choose one snapshot, one architectural moment, of which I would like to have been theauthor, this is surely it."

- Norman Foster, in the foreword of Pierre Koenig, by James Steele, David Jenkins.

"The pressure is so great that the architect is a captive. He functions best as a free agent."

-Pierre Koenig.

explore:

case study houses page

pierre koenig image archive

koenig tribute page at jet set modern

a short video clip of csh 22

2006-11-03T02:44:00.000-08:00

chilly jay chill

Cyberpunk housing project

2006-11-03T02:30:00.000-08:00

perspects

2006-11-03T02:29:00.000-08:00

adjoun

bricktropolis

Bricktropolis is a one of a kind city that has been designed using 43,500 bricks and built in 314 hours exclusively to entertain and delight the guests of FAO Schwarz the world famous NYC toy store

courtesy of seankenny.com

2006-11-03T02:21:00.000-08:00

alice in chains

An abandoned house somewhere in the lake district in England, dilapidated houses are the best, (I can kind of imagine someone getting murdered in a place like this).

Two factories in my old home town in England, both Victorian I think, well anyway from a time when they put a lot into even industrial buildings, lots of tasty symmetry. I think I’ve taken about a 1000 pictures of these buildings I was going through my Bernd and Hilla Becher phase or obsessively documenting buildings.

The London underground, which I’m nominating as a whole I almost wish I could live down there, whenever I’m in London I just ride around from station to station to admire the underground architecture of London.

2006-11-03T02:07:00.000-08:00

winter rates

These examples highlight my gemini-style dual personality.
The lighthouse represents my constant desire to become a reclusive artist.
The tavern represents my overwhelming need for comraderie. I feel most comfortable with a good friend or two, bullshitting over a dozen pints of ale.

2006-11-03T01:56:00.000-08:00

5stringaphasia

"The Silver Bridge" made famous by the movie The Mothman Prophecies.

The first governor's mansion, it sits looking over the valley, there are gardens out front and a second house just behind that was an art museaum for many years, the carriage trail goes down in front of the house, it winds down to the old train station below, there are caves, stone benches, memorial statues, it was where we went to trip and where we went to hide and sober up after long nights of tripping. It is now "the TV lawyer"'s office. =(

"The Mystery Hole." - mountain route roadside attraction

Krishna's Palace local

Grave Creek Burial Mound - late Adena Period

2006-11-03T01:47:00.000-08:00

brian curtin

Here is the building I see every morning from my home in Bangkok.

2006-11-03T01:44:00.000-08:00

derekmcc

Not a structure, but a room. The mirrored dressing table belonged to Brenda Frazier, the most ballyhooed debutante of 1938, "America's Favorite Debutante," LIFE magazine cover girl, spokesgirl for Woodbury Soap and Studebaker, the inspiration behind Brenda Starr. Stephen Sondheim mentions her in "I'm Still Here" -- "I got through Brenda Frazier." Frazier gave the table to socialite Anne Slater. It's pictured here in Slater's Fifth Avenue apartment. I would like to have it next. I could apply my acne cream.

2006-11-03T01:39:00.000-08:00

mark

My favorite building is the Seattle Library. It's designed by Rem Koolhaas. It stands out to me because while it is visually distinctive, and does not "fit" in with any of the bulidings with which it shares close quarters in downtown Seattle, it seems timeless and "true" and actually makes all the buildings around it seem out of place. It's the only one of his buildings that I've seen in person, but photos of the CCTV building in China makes me believe that those traits can be found throughout his work. Ontop of that, the interior spaces of the Seattle Library are interesting and give me an overal sense of organization and calm, which is great for a library.

2006-11-03T01:34:00.000-08:00

Disquiet

I don’t even think there is an architect that ever came close to Buckminster Fuller. But as a first alternate I would list Laurie Baker of Trivandrum, Kerala, India for reasons quite different from those that like Fuller. Here is Laurie Baker’s house in Trivandrum.

2006-11-03T01:27:00.000-08:00

sorrow

1- Ricardo's tomb in Montparnasse cemetery. I love funerary architecture in general, but Ricardo's place seems so out of place in the elegant Montparnasse; and it feels like Ricardo was not only loved, but a lot of fun. The lack of solemnity is just striking

2-A house in Santiago, Chile. When you pass it, it seems like just another mansion; but you look closer and it has tons of gothic details. The best thing is that is placed downtown, and it really surprises you when you finally *see* it, along the supermarkets and shops and whatnot.

3-Sanaa, Yemen. Never been there, my bf did and took the pic. It strikes me the way the building looks like its carved, or continues, the rocks-mountains. And it looks empty, or abandoned, like a lost city -its not.

2006-11-03T01:20:00.000-08:00

atheist

This is a really obvious one, but I really enjoyed going to see the Sagrada
Familia in Barcelona a couple of months ago ...

Sagrada Familia

2006-11-03T01:10:00.000-08:00

antonio

"this is gregor schneider's 'haus ur'. emily says 'mmmmrrrrmmmm chicken strrayyiipps mrrrrrrmmmm' *hand-drawing-boy's-gruff-rapist-voice*"

2006-11-03T01:06:00.000-08:00

alex

This is our house in SE Iowa. We built the original house back in 1993-94, and we started adding on to in in May 2003. It stopped being a full-time construction site about a month ago, and there is only some detail work remaining.

There are more pics of the house here.

2006-11-03T01:03:00.000-08:00

tosh

The Eiffel Tower I think is the greatest structure on this planet. I remembered, one night that I walked from St Michel to the tower. The beauty of the tower showing itself between buildings, fog, and various structures struck me, as I got closer to my destination. Once I got to the bottom of the tower I cried. The structure is very 19th Century. It read to me as not a tower of the future, but the 19th Century saying goodbye to its past.

2006-11-03T00:59:00.000-08:00

dandysweets

Vor Frelser Kirke (Our Saviour's Church) in Copenhagen, which was the view from my bedroom in my old apartment, pretty much like it is in this picture, only a bit further away. So this church will always remind me of living in that area of Copenhagen
(Christianshavn).

The Gherkin/Swiss Building in London (near Liverpool Street): I lived in Bethnal Green (in a houseshare, my room was on the third floor) and my view was, in the foreground a small park beneath my window, then a bit further away several houses and then even futher away in the background, The City skyline including the Gherkin. In daylight it wasn't anything special but at night it looked really beautiful, in fact my nighttime view (and a relatively low rent) was the only thing worth staying in that house for.

2006-11-03T00:46:00.000-08:00

paradigm

BONE CHURCH- KUNTA HORA

Kunta Hora is a town an hour south west of Prague. It's one of those small European towns with a long history and where one would retire at the age of 60 to drink wine and make arts and craft. The town itself as two churches. One with stain glass mirrors and interior art work that begun in the 1490's and finished in 1910's. The other the bone church. The church itself is quite a small church with a graveyard around the back. The church is also sinking into the surroundings (it has a slight riseat the back) which makes the place more eerie. The outside of the church itself is nothing special and come to think of it this is more like an interior decoratiors blog entry but to me architecture is about the inside and outside of the building and this buildings inside is so moving and strange. The story goes that the church was being built in the 1860's-70's they dug up the bones of 40 000 Hussite warriors and villagers. (The Hussites being a catholic split off religion founded by Jan Hus in the earl15th century. The villagers were killed when Bohemia (czech republic at the time) were fighting with the Ottoman Empire in the late 15th-early 16th century.) Stuck with what to do with all of the bones the architect design the church came up with the brillant although somewhat bizzare idea of putting the bones in the church. So what you get- and what the picture i included doesn't show- is four gaint pyramids of skulls, a chandlier in which every single bone is used and which sends shivers down you spine as you walk under it, and a coat of arms made from finger bones and hip bones. The church is dank, it sends shivers up your spine (not just because it's a church), and you will walk out feeling so relived and strangley settled. I hope this does something to wet the appetite. I feel in my haste i've failed to give it the life the place deserves. google the name kunta hora bone church and print out the images you'll find and you'll start to get the idea.

2006-11-03T00:45:00.000-08:00

killer luka

Kostnice Ossuary in the town of Kutná Hora, Czech Republic
In 1278, Henry, the abbot of Sedlec was sent to the Holy Land. When he returned, he brought holy dirt and sprinkled it on the ground here. So the burial ground was considered immediately holy and became very popular. In 1511 a chapel was constructed to house the bones of plague victims and moved graves. In 1870, František Rint arranged the bones of about 40,000 people into decor, like this chandelier including every bone in the human body. haha. morbid.

Waverly Hills Sanitorium in Kentucky.
a former TB sanitorium opened in 1926, then an old folks' home shut down in 1981 due to health violations and patient abuse. I've always had a fascination with sanitoriums, especially after reading Magic Mountain. This particular place has a dark, mostly forgotten history of bizarre medical experiments like deflating lungs, vivesections, etc. "Balloons were surgically implanted into the lungs and then filled with air to try and expand them more, often with disastrous results. Hydrotherapy often caused pneumonia. But some experiments were useful and these procedures are still used today. Pneumothorax was a procedure that consisted of deflating the infected area of the lung for a period of time and then letting it heal. Thoracoplasty was a very invasive surgical procedure where the chest of the
patient was opened and then cords of muscle and up to seven ribs were removed. The opening was then closed up with the idea that the lungs would then be free to expand further and allow more oxygen into the lungs. This bloody procedure was only attempted as a last resort because fewer than 5% of the patients ever survived it." 63,000 people died there. The walls themselves still stand after absorbing all that went on, so not only is it just a building, it's a silent witness. also morbid.

Mary Kings Close in Edinburgh, Scotland...
it was a 17th century slum crawling with disease. It was hit with the bubonic plague about 11 times in 100 years. In the 1750s, it was quarantined and blocked in (with plague victims still left to die there). Later, the upper stories of houses were demolished and The Royal Exchange was built on top, using the old streets and the old one story houses as the foundation. Eventually, the old 17th century Edinburgh was built on, but it remains today, now underground but totally unchanged as 17th century slums where thousand of people died. It is nicknamed "The Street of Sorrows". It was finally reopened and explored in 2003.

hmm...I sense a definite theme of morbidity in my choices, but such histories change the way a building is physically seen, felt, smelled and experienced. I don't see morbidity as a bad thing, but rather necessary, especially in culture that violently forces the reality of death away in every aspect of modern life. In these places, death was normal, inescapable, natural and absolute. The places are more like survivors and storytellers that transcend art, architecture and culture to attest to mortality and frailty of the very human beings that built them.

2006-11-03T00:39:00.000-08:00

KENVULSION

THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK: Designed and built by Alex Jordan of Madison, WI, the House is an architectural marvel perched on a 60-foot chimney of rock. Begun in the early 1940's, it overlooks the breathtaking panorama of Wyoming Valley. The 14-room House, sculpted atop Deer Shelter Rock, is the original structure of what is now an extraordinary complex of rooms, streets, buildings and gardens covering over 200 acres. A 375-foot ramp through treetops takes visitors to the entrance of the House where a bell gallery, waterfalls, massive fireplaces and walls of rock can been seen. Furnishings include Oriental art, stained glass lamps, bronze statuary and a three-story bookcase filled with rare books. The 14th room was added in 1985 and proves to be the most spectacular, the INFINITY ROOM. This unique room with walls of glass, projects out over the Wyoming Valley 218 feet. A glass cocktail table provides visitors with a breathtaking view of the forest floor 156 feet below. With 3,264 windows, there's no doubt about it, there truly is no other room like it in the world.

LINX:
Welcome
The House On The Rock Photo Gallery by Forbidden Donut at pbase.com

2006-11-03T00:31:00.000-08:00

land of the bat

Eero Saarinen, TWA terminal, John F. Kennedy International Airport, NY, USA, 1962

Completed in 1962, Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal at New York City's John F. Kennedy Airport has been closed since October 2001 while its owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, weighed options for the landmarked building's future. In mid-October, a deal was reached with JetBlue Airways to return the terminal to active use and preserve many of its original features, while adding a new passenger area behind the terminal, connected by underground rail link and moving walkways. The refurbished JetBlue terminal is expected to open in 2008-09.

Saarinen died a year before the terminal was completed.