p.s. Hey. It's kind of a bookish week going on here. I've been reading a lot lately. Long plane flights will do that to you. Anyway, I have no news at all this morning, so I'll read yours. ** L'etranger, Well, hey there, man. Thanks for the pop. Is it as cold up there as it is down here? Jesus. Ultra-appropriate and excellent Cassavettes clip. Nice thing to wake up to. You and yours good? I think you are, right? That's the drift I'm getting. Yeah, thanks for joining in. ** Wolf, I would have to agree that when the task at hand involves melding the arch and the mawkish, Newman is its god. Oh, right, Nick Cave, of course. I blanked. Yeah, going forwards aka Barcelona as opposed to backwards, however gloriously, i.e. France ... I can't begin to argue with that logic and strategy. Hm, Barcelona was just a wild guess on my part, ha ha. That's crazy how your granddad worked for Soulages. I still think it's crazy that I'd never even heard of Soulages before I walked into that show, although my far more contemporary art all-knowing friend Bruce Hainley hadn't either. Anyway, ... ** Allesfliest, Oh, the dreaded power-mongering committee/jury one must please thing. What is up with that tradition/ configuration anyway? It's so anti-artist. Or something. So the theater studies jury doesn't respect being surprised and/or blown away? They just want proof? ** _Black_Acrylic, Yeah, why isn't there a Cine Salon anymore? Welcome home to your laptop. ** David Ehrenstein, I just tried to find a link for you about the Moscow mayor's cooler wife, and I couldn't in the brief time I set aside. That guy's been the mayor for 17 years, but the only good thing is he's deeply mired in numerous corruption scandals and has a miniscule approval rating, although virtually every election in Russia is rigged, so being disapproved of may not matter at all. ** Tonyoneill, Love that set they use on The Word. It begs for craziness. Nice Momus clip, thanks. Yeah, I should have thought of him for the line up yesterday. His recent novel from Dalkey is quite good. How's the scrambly edit going? How are your gums? ** Adjoun, That clip of 'Tears Run Rings' was accompanied by like a zillion comments in Dutch paying respects to some DJ named Arjen whose favorite song it was and who apparently just died. Ring a bell? Happy to have helped inch up your visitor stats. ** Bollo, That is one important cat. I guess all cats are. Never had a cat. I like their slinkiness, though. I got your email, and I'll try my best to do the letter in time if I possibly can. ** Math, Hey, pal. Yeah, I'm heavily jonesing for the Mario game, but my novel's beastliness promises a long wait if I don't just end up saying fuck it. Everyone says the game is so hard that I have a feeling I won't get far in it anyway. Is 'Just Kids' that book about Mapplethorpe I've heard about? ** NB, I've got a Meatloaf guilty pleasure gene. If I was to have a few drinks right now, I'd go on and on. ** Will Decker, Hey. Ha ha, I seem to be really good at getting a lot of of great opportunities in which to flex my artistic muscles that barely pay a cent, which is not to say I haven't chosen my poison wisely. Enjoy the Jackson flick. I'm not a fan of his, but I am curious to see that hologram of him on the Grammys. ** Jose, Delicious sentence, especially the first half. Thanks. Good old Kobe Abe. How's school going? ** Bill, Yeah, I had a bit of a little jet lag relapse last night, but I'm trying to pretend it was a random fluke. Atom Egoyan's archness is a very interesting, subtle thing. Nice call. It got me thinking and wanting to rewatch his stuff. What's your fave of his? ** Tosh, Did I know that Sparks and Maddin are collaborating? I think you told me that, but ... Do you know what they're doing together? What a heavenly batch of promise right there! ** Misanthrope, No, you didn't tell me about those particular funeral attendees. I guess they meant well? Oh, my goodness, that character is back? I just saw the link, etc. Okay, I haven't even peeked yet, but I'm very piqued to do so once this stack of language is launched. I think Cameron should ask me to write the 'Avatar' sequel, don't you? Doesn't everybody? ** Robert-nyc, Hey, Robert! Yeah, weird weird stuff, that troll thing, no? I'm too old to have owned or played with troll dolls myself, but my young sister had a few, and the sight of one of them lying on the floor launched one of my scariest ever acid trips. The Pallett album is really sweet, isn't it? He's kind of on fire now. Kind of very cool that some of the most daring, best music making guys right now also happen to be queer: Pallett, Brandon Cox, Xiu Xiu, Stephen Merritt, etc. ** Pascal, No, as a smoker, I never stay for movie credits, bolting instead for fresh, smokey air. so I missed the power ballad, sadly. I suppose it's pretty imaginable. Did Black Beauty come to you already named, or that is that your bestowal? ** Steevee, Yeah, I thought about Scott Walker, of course, but I couldn't find a clip that fit the category perfectly enough, which kind of surprised me or else speaks to my not so open mind on the task at hand. ** Thomas Moronic, I pulled out 'Sebadoh III' the other day after not listening to it in a while, and it's just as great as ever. That whole period up through much of 'Bubble and Scrape' is killer. Thanks much about the affordable, enlarged 'Weaklings'. I need to find out what's going on with that, come to think of it. ** Chris (British), You have the Meatloaf guilty pleasure gene too? High five. I suppose for me it's more of a Jim Steinman-related gene. Curious to see or hear that Roman Polanski/ Steinman collab. musical 'Tanz der Vampire'. 30 degrees, wow, enjoy. It's like a meat locker outside here. ** Statictick, Awfully nice to see you, man. You can talk health issues here anytime you want. Yeah, Jesse raved to me about the ACT film stuff when I was visiting him. Well, it would be a bonus to see you out west in March, of course. Stay free, sir. ** Kier, You're back. Good for us around here if less so for you? Let me try to blogify you into perkiness. Tell me how. I'm okay. Trying to work and write while I'm between more outside type things that I need to do, basically. How's your second day home going? ** Creative Massacre, My pleasure, pal. That advanced baking class is sounding more exciting all the time. No, I don't think I've seen people blow sugar like that, only the results a few times. No obligation, but, yeah, I'd love to see pictures from the class and, of course, I'd love to spotlight them on the blog if that seems like a bright idea to you. The links were great. Is cotton candy related to spun sugar? Yeah, very cool all the way around. Thanks a lot. I'm on the edge my seat over here. ** JW Veldhoen, I'm retarded? Did I miss something? Retardation will do that, apparently, ha ha. ** Alan, I was going to sing you a little song about my family, but I couldn't come up with any lyrics that weren't arch. I think I kind of agree with you. ** Sypha, Very glad to see you're back to writing, and that new project sounds great, surely needless to say. Love your process. And, yeah, your new blog is already fascinating as well as super promising. Everyone, the great writer, musical artist, cyber-label honcho, d.l. and more aka Sypha just started a new blog called '21st Century Absurdum'. Let me pass on his description: 'It's basically meditations on my obsession with religion, theology, mysticism, the occult, the supernatural, the esoteric, and so on. It's also about my lifelong spiritual quest and my interest in the absurd and irrational. I'm kind of doing it as a reaction towards many of the anti-liberal, anti-gay, anti-abortion religious/spiritual blogs I've come across on the Internet, actually. I'm not sure if the atheists on here will find much of interest in it, but who knows? Anyway, here's the link.' I checked it out, and it's terrific, so I recommend visiting, reading, and bookmarking it post haste. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Oh, jeez, RIP: your computer. Suicide is so disturbing. What now? Heroin's in it? Christ, stay far, far away from that stuff. And Bendy should too. You're so not depressing. Wtf?! So not an insightful person there. Anyway, your day wasn't sucky at all, actually. Mine, I don't know. Let's see ... I'm kind of boring right now partly 'cos I need to build the blog's future since I didn't work on new posts at all while I was in the States and then, starting on the 1st, I'll be in rehearsals for the new theater piece for huge chucks of every day for two weeks straight, leaving me little to no blog-related time during that period either. So I've been a blog hound, and I've managed to get this week and next week almost polished off so far. I did that for most of yesterday. Oh, and it snowed literally for about two and a half minutes. I did get out and about for a while with Oscar and Kiddiepunk. We metroed to St. Michel and shopped for a while at Shakespeare & Co. I bought a Clarice Lispector novel I hadn't read -- 'The Hour of the Star' -- and it's pretty great so far. Oscar bought Flaubert's 'Sentimental Education' 'cos she hadn't read it before. Kiddiepunk bought nothing, I don't think. We had coffee on Place St. Michel, which was talky and very nice, but it was also very cold yesterday, even under the cafe's heat lamps, so we rather quickly descended into the metro again and headed back here. Then I just worked on the blog some more and fiddled with my novel for the rest of the day. And I worked on revising the theater piece texts. And I watched a wee bit of TV -- a bunch of French celebrities and brainiacs discussing Sarkozy's determination to ban the burqa in France. Most of them think he's a two-faced, closeted racist and manipulative scum for wanting to do that, which he is. I ate my normal vegetarian stuff. I ran out of my beloved American Camel Wide Lights and switched back to the blah Camel Blues. Hm, nothing else, really. Bedtime arrived, zzzz. Gimme yours. ** Pisycaca, Oh, ha ha, I was kidding about Barcelona, but you know that. I just think that every cool person I know should live in France. Can you blame me? But you got me with those pretty linked pictures. I surrender. Nice about the Herzog fest and the class. Nice to see you using the words 'very happy' about yourself, my friend. ** Justin, Hey. Oh, yeah, you can just tell me where the videos are and their names or give me the links to the pages that they're on or anything like that, and then I can imbed them in the post myself. No problem at all. Thanks, thanks! ** Lord_s, You bet I want to hear the clutch of pop songs you have in the can. Say so more. Liturgy, hm, yeah, you know I've never actually listened to them, weirdly. I've just reveled in the hearsay. Okay, done as of soon. That Chaos in Tejas festival does sound tasty, yeah. So cool you saw eyehategod. I've never had that privilege. All I've got in my immediate future is Sunn0))) live at a teeny tiny art space near where I live, but that's enough, and I haven't seen them with Attila on board yet, so I'm okay with that. ** Oscar B., No great saxophonist would ever play 'Phantom of the Opera' or admit to having played it at least, so it's all for the best. Yeah, we'll do something today. Or I want to if you do. Talk and plan in a short while, yes? ** I've gotten through this p.s. kind of relatively early today, weird. That's good. Yeah, so, post-wise, there are some more books I've loved recently for you to approach in whatever way you think best. That's all. Here's to tomorrow.