p.s. Hey. Let's see ... It's David Ehrenstein's birthday today! A mega-happy one to you from the blog and me, David. And to any rich readers out there, I think a plane ticket plus hotel combo two week trip to Paris for David and his squeeze Bill Reed would make a fine gift. So if you have a big heart and money to burn, give it some thought, okay? Otherwise, I don't think there are any news items or upfront alerts in store today, so ... ** Steven Trull, Your comment made me dance. It had that beat my body likes so much. ** Oscar B, Now that we're waxed, what next? Telephonic discussion of this topic to ensue? ** Tonyoneill, Hey, Tony. I'm okay. Awesome to see you. You were listening to Syd Barrett too? I'm digging the alignment, and, fuck yes, 'Lucifer Sam' is one of the greatest songs ever recorded, in my all-time top five, in fact. The Mojo issue in question has Syd on the cover if it's still on the stands there. Nice, odd recent interview with Sly Stone in there as well. I'm glad to hear a new novel is percolating. Yeah, hey man, very cool. ** Empty Frame, I'd say my garden is more daffodilly. Well, if one was not going to look at one of the two parts of the escorts posts, the photos would be the parts to cut, I think. They're just illustrations of the texts to me. Paled aestheticism has struck me as an ideal state since I was a wee lad, so I think you're on a higher plane, if anywhere in particular. Cool post feedback, man. A pleasure to straddle. I'm post-rehearsals for a month before they start back up. Just have to fuss with the texts at the moment. That and novel and this. ** Alan, The Palestinian leader clip rubbed me the wrong way too. Yeah, the Barrett albums, totally. In the Mojo article, David Gilmour says he has a bunch of unreleased stuff from those sessions that aren't throwaways at all, and he might release them, and he didn't say why he hasn't already. How's the novel going, btw? ** Tosh, Thanks for that, Tosh. Yeah, I can't say too much about this here, but I'm judging a book contest/ prize at the moment, and among the giant pile of book entries I've received, a good three-quarters of them are self-published, and I ventured into reading the entries really hoping to find unexpected, top level stuff among the self-published books, but, to put it bluntly, 90% of those books are very poorly written and unimaginative compared to those put out by indie and major presses, which has made for quite a surprising and disheartening judging experience. ** Jose, Hey. Thanks a ton for the post. It got some very interesting responses, which is cool. Oh, I should ... Everyone, re: yesterday's post, Jose draws your attention to this link which leads to a page that lays out what Jubal Brown is best known for. ** Stan_cz, I had a pre-paid phone here in France until Yury gave me a yearlong plan for my b'day about a month ago, and the pre-paid thing was fine all in all, really. What topic has your op-ed tackled? ** Sypha, Neoplatonism sounds quite interesting in your telling. I know zip about it, of course, and pretty much zip about theology in general. Satan castrated himself? That I didn't know. I think at this point my mental image of Satan is most derived from the South Park movie where he sure acted like his genitals had business to attend to. ** Statictick, I did manage to see a couple of Kervorkian paintings somewhere online yesterday, and, yeah, it's probably smart of him to keep his day job. Jazz musician? Wow, that I'd like to hear. ** Wolf, Not having enlarged your avatar picture to see what it actually is, it looks like South America with a hard-on. How close am I? ** David Ehrenstein, One more hug-enshrouded happy birthday, sir! 'I Am Love' sounds very, very interesting. I'll watch for it, and hope I haven't missed it. Coincidentally, just last night I was asking our Italian friend Oscar B her opinion on why it is that Italian cinema, once so mighty and important and influential, seems to have fizzled out. So your discovery might just cancel out my speculation. Very interesting indeed. John Adams is doing a big concert of his works here, and I've been thinking of going. ** Bacteriaburger, Hey, man. Oh, that's awfully nice of you, thanks! You can send it here: c/o Centre International des Recollets, 150 rue du Faubourg St. Martin, 75010 Paris, France. You good? How's writing and everything else? ** Steevee, Don't know that cable show, of course. I'll try youtube. ** Realgreecer, Hey, welcome to here. And thanks a lot for the link to the petition. I signed it in a heartbeat, obviously. Let me see if I can add some names. Everyone, I've been blabbing here a bit with Heliotrope about our great mutual love for the sublime, brilliant, very underrated 60s band Spirit, and Realgreecer here, who seems to be a fellow fan, directs those who might know and hence revere Spirit to an online petition to get the band into the Hall of Fame. Even if you don't know their work, you could take my word and a few seconds and go sign the petition because they so incredibly deserve the recognition. If you're a fan or just game, go here. Thanks again very much, man. ** Tigersare, Hey, bud. Oh, gosh, you can definitely just show up at Book Soup for the reading. Maybe the power author trio nature of this event will make a difference, but whenever I've read there, the crowds have been pretty thin, so your appearance would be most warmly welcomed. Excited to see you too, Guy! ** Bill, No, I didn't write one of the escort reviews. Did it sound like me? I don't write any of the texts in the escort of slave posts, but I do sometimes edit them a little for maximum impact, so maybe my editing choices made one of them seem very me? U-sound videos, wow. That takes me back. Let me ... Everyone, the fantastically talented musician and artist (and d.l.) Bill (Hsu) is performing in San Francisco tomorrow night along with two fellow artistes. The event, titled 'Birgit Ulher, Gino Robair and Bill Hsu: An Evening of electroacoustic audio-visual improvisations', takes place at Artists' Television Access, 992 Valencia Street, at 8 pm, and a description and relevant info can be found here. I passionately urge you to attend if you're able. If you need further impetus, you can go here to see some recent 'audio reactive animations' by Bill, or, if you're disinclined to click, I've imbedded two of his 'ara's at the bottom of the p.s. for your delectation. Beautiful new pieces, Bill. I love them! The SF trip is still vague, but, basically, it'll be a quick one, I think. In the day of the reading, out the morning after the reading. But I'll tell you more when the plans properly sorted. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey. Another fine review. Everyone, read a fine review of a show by the artist Julian Oliver written by the artist and zine mogul _Black_Acrylic here. Sure, I think it's totally a good thing to write the reviews without pay. Or at least I write reviews and essays and stuff for nothing a fair amount of time for the very reasons you suggest. ** JoeM, Obviously, I think your attitude towards reviews is the sensible one. Of course exceptions arise once in a while, but it's best to think of the reviews that not only care but are intelligent as gravy. And I agree about the self-publishing stuff, and especially in the case of online publishing where the most unexpected things can go viral. I find myself reading fiction and poetry that's published online and available for free a fair amount, and increasingly so now that there are a growing number of fairly reliable, idiosyncratic online publishing sites/blogs, but reading novels online is still kind of a drag, for me at least. I suppose we'll all have iPads or Kindles or whatever in a year or two, though. Anyway, that's some sharp thinking and words to live by there, Joe. ** Uli, Hey, Uli! Great to see you. I'm sorry to hear about the recent health issues, but I'm glad you seem to be on the other side. No, I didn't know about 'Blank City', and, yeah, I for sure want to see that one somehow. A whole film about the Cinema of Transgressions movement?! What a good idea. I'll watch for it. Thanks a bunch, my friend. ** Creative Massacre, Thanks a lot for that TNA Wiki link. That helped my understanding a lot. Hm. Wow, yeah, I remember that Hogan vs. Michaels match at Summer Slam. It was kind of a sad joke. The Undertaker's health is dodgy? That's not good. Yeah, I really hope they let him go out undefeated. The Issues, huh? Interesting, hm, I'll try to hear them somehow, and that's cool news about the great gig. What is your association with the band? ** Stephen, Hey, S! Chapbook, very cool, and, yeah, I'd love one. I put my mailing address just up above in my response to Bacteriaburger. You can use that one. Thanks, man, that's very exciting. ** Misanthrope, The 'big dick' worship thing is pretty big, I think. Maybe even bigger than the 'big tits' worshipping thing, but I don't know. I never give a shit about someone's dick size. I guess that's weird. I had a credit card for about a year, and that was enough time to realize I'm not a person who should have a credit card, and my credit rating is fuck-ola in no small part because I never paid off the bill. The ATM card-only option works perfectly fine for me. I've never had a major problem going that route. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey. I think I'm supposed to meet those hitchhiker guys today if my friend doesn't forget to call me. She's great, but she doesn't always call when she says she will. If I can tell whether the guys are cute or not, and I'm not always such a good judge of that quality due to my rather narrow field of interest, I'll let you know. God love you for rescuing that poor cat. Plath's poetry is pretty easy to get ahold of, I think. Really, an 'Avatar' sequel novel? Ugh city. Oh, I bet it'll be a big hit. Do you realize how little it takes to have a best seller these days? I forget the figures, but it's kind of shocking how few sales it requires to be considered a smash. My day: I took a shower, and the lightbulb in the bathroom burned out, so the shower was a little treacherous, and since I was too lazy yesterday to go find a new lightbulb -- it's not a normal type, so I can't just pop down to supermarket for a replacement -- my post-p.s. shower today will be treacherous too. I wrote, of course. I watched some Olympics, of course. That Shaun White really is amazing. The French figure skater totally bombed out. My car in LA developed a bunch of problems, and it cost me $900 to get it fixed yesterday, and that was incredibly unpleasant. In the afternoon, Oscar and Kiddiepunk and I went to Musee Grevin, the big Paris wax museum, and that was a lot of fun, and I took a shit load of photos, so there will be a blog post about that, but I'm going to give it a lucrative spin. Least convincing wax figure: either Stan Laurel or Arnold Schwartzeneger. Most convincing: maybe Charles Aznavour or Ernest Hemingway. After we exited, Kiddiepunk really wanted to eat a hamburger at Hard Rock Cafe, 'cos it's literally next door to the museum, but Oscar and I couldn't bear the idea of sitting in that place two nights in a row, so he did a solo dinner, and we walked back here. I ate my veggie stuff. I watched some more Olympics while writing emails and having a couple of Skype calls with US pals, but the internet connection here sucked horribly last night, so the calls were short and pretty garbled. Presumably, that ended my day, crash. Thursday belongs to you. ** Justin, Hey. Bad weather, eh? Better now? Oh, don't worry about it looking crappy. Crappy looking is one of the blog's middle names. I call it punk. Go for it. Don't worry. Thanks! ** Blendin, A blog get together party thing at Sherwood Magazines! That's perfect. Excellent. Yep, let's count on that. I can organize it in league with your schedule when we get closer to the time. Good one, B. I peeked at the Portland pix this morning, and it looks really great indeed. Nice big looking, clean space too. I've missed the last four seasons of 'Lost', but I do really like that show pretty much for the reasons you do, so I'm going to do a DVD catch up marathon one of these days. ** JW Veldhoen, Still hope you'll get the right word. Time is just time. Karen Finley nice? Uh, I think it depends, ha ha. The last time I ran into her, she acted like I was some kind of horrible stench. Why, I don't know. Being the whatever kind of fellow I am, I'm going to step around your 'pop' question. ** Bollo, Hard Rock Cafe is better than Planet Hollywood. That much I can say. It has better memorabilia on the walls anyway. Where else are you going to get up close and personal with the halter top that Lita Ford wore in her 'blah blah' video, I ask you? It's probably better than TGI Fridays too. And Olive Garden. Actually, on the scale of American chain restaurants, it's kind of a class act. Weird. ** I think I'm done. Oh, see if you're interested like I am/was by the life and death of a strange housing project as seen in today's post, and then I guess let me and each other know. 'Til tomorrow.

Sun 2/17/10 from Bill Hsu on Vimeo.

Neon 2/17 from Bill Hsu on Vimeo.