p.s. Hey. Today the wondrous writer, artist, and d.l. Put The Lotion In The Basket is back in guest host mode to lead us into and through the life, photography, and videos of Mr. Ari Markopolous, so please click and gracefully drag your attention into the post if you haven't already. Your thoughts are requested, thanks, and my huge thanks to PTLITB for his generosity. ** Steven Trull, Is there such a thing as too small, I sometimes wonder? ** David Ehrenstein, Hey, David. Oh, there's an Inter/View book? I'll have to hunt that, and I'll save my scanner for rarer tasks then. I wish they'd do a coffee table book of the early issues of ID Magazine before it decided to be like every other magazine that shares its fashionable interests. Now that was a magazine. ** Dorna, Hey. Oh, yeah, 'Stoszek' is astounding, right? That's too bad but okay about Mark/Redcat. Let's see each other anyway. Who needs him, ultimately. I'll call or write to you today to hopefully make a plan. ** David, Oh, Baumbach. I never saw 'The Squid and the Whale'. There is a nice precision even in the 'Greenberg' trailer. I'm a great lover of 'Big Lewbowski', oops. ** Mark Gluth, Awesome, man. And great that Matthew Simmons intro'd you too. What an excellent writer, that guy. I borrowed a few pix from Erin's tour slideshow for my tour slideshow tomorrow. I hope that's okay. ** Sypha, Yeah, the blog's time change is even kind of disorienting to me. My laptop's clock if not my entire body's is still on Paris time, and it's weird to post when the stats say it's getting dark. ** Empty Frame, You sound pretty chipper yourself. Even chippier than me. My chipper has the famous LA negative ions as its qualifiers. Never kissed a horse that I can remember anyway. A horse bucked me off his back when I was wee, and I've tiptoed around the species ever since. Happy Monday. ** Chris, Hi. Interesting: I'm a pretty giant Duvall fan, but I'd never even heard of 'Tale of the Mummy' before. I'll squirm through anything in which she's situated, so I'll not avert my eyes if it wanders into view. ** Steevee, Oh, that's comforting about Mary Ann's for some strange nostalgic reason, I guess. ** Justin, Gisele digs the Japanese Ballfie thing big time. She keeps almost buying one when she's there. Hm, I don't know or haven't seen 'Bedtime Stories', just most of the Fairytale Theater stuff. Are they on DVD? Well, I can find that out myself, obviously. Geeky is definitely okay here, yes. When 'Mars Attacks' was first released and flopped badly, there were all these dirt cheap MA souvenirs and action figures in the discount stores, much of the loot mightily cool, that I still smack myself about the head for not buying lustily for reasons I can't remember since I adored that movie from the start. ** Stan_cz, Well, until I relocated to Paris, I always wrote lying in bed or sitting on a couch or wherever, and the idea of having a desk seemed like having a job. I'm sleeping on an inflatable mattress while I'm here, and it fucking 2/3 deflates over night, so I wake up lying in a plastic puddle, and my back is killing me. ** Slatted Light, Hey, pal. I'm really sorry to hear the same old is getting to you. Persevere, my friend, and if there's anything LA-based and magical that I can send or vibe you, say the word. Say the first syllable even. Yeah, what you say about 'Fences' in that comment is not unlike my thought at all. I guess the only possible difference is I thought it worked beautifully as a whole, or I was carried through by excitement, and the broken transmissions and bumps and stuff only interested me. I know what you mean about them, but for whatever reason, perhaps given my thrills, I felt curious about them rather than critical or something. Anyway, I hope you're feeling better by now, man. Of course, I look forward to talking whenever the time becomes right on your end. Lots of love, D. ** Trees, Yeah, the weird thing to me about that loud talking boy on the plane was that it was just this long winded identification of me, very clinical and trainspottery without any particular fondness or dislike, like I was a thing in a museum and he was a tour guide or something. Anyway ... Kate Bush theme party, nice. To what degree? Were there costumes, and, I don't know, Bushian decor or Bushian snacks or ... ? No, I won't be here after Saturday, sadly, but summer is hopefully a go. ** Alan, She's completely sublime in 'Three Women', I agree. Yeah, that's so interesting about how hard it is to say something reasonably definite about anything. I'm with you, of course, and I've always assumed that's the price I pay for my anarchism or something. I like it, but I've never engaged in the kind of work you're headlong into at the moment, and I know I couldn't know where to begin. ** JW Veldhoen, I think I made it through the weekend without a bite of Mexican food, didn't I? Oh, apart from a 7-11 microwave bean burrito, but that hardly counts. ** Math, Real nice blazer/ haircut combo. Everyone, check out Math's new haircut & blazer if you know what's suave for you. Dude, you're making my mouth all gushy (as in water not praise, although I guess praise would work too) with that fried pickle stuff. I'd better find one while I'm here 'cos I'm pretty sure France isn't too into that idea. ** Dan Callahan, Hi, Dan. My thoughts precisely on Duvall and Haas as mom and son. If remakes weren't such a horrible idea, a 'Harold and Maude' reboot with them inside it might be okay too. Oh, what a great looking Shelley Duvall post by you! I'm going to hover over and devour it as soon as I'm free of this p.s. thing. Everyone, the very fine Dan Callahan has written what looks to be a really fantastic piece on Shelley Duvall over at Slant Magazine, and I so very highly recommend that you go read it. The only current news things I found on Duvall when putting together that post were some highly suspicious seeming, TMZ-style article-ettes claiming she's gone semi-crazy and thinks aliens are living in her backyard and trying to kill her or something. ** Misanthrope, You feeling any better this ... afternoon? Oh, yeah, blah blah blah on that WP porn argument. ** Bill, Hey. I think the possible new family war might have been averted, I hope. Looks like it. Are you scrambling for/towards your trip yet, I'm guessing? ** Wolf, Yeah, the French regionals turned out pretty nice. I was watching it unfold via tweets and stuff. The FN's whatever ... 8 percent showing is most uncool, but, being over here where the far right is semi-running the whole show these days, it seems less ... ominous or something. Dude, I've got my Viking lance ready to brandish against 'Lebowski' bashers too. On three? ** Bollo, Real glad you liked the Zac German novel. Definitely among my very, very fave recent fiction books. The portraits in that Ryan McGinley show are being gathered together in a book, and RM talked to me about writing the intro, but timing and stuff dashed that possibility before the discussion went very far. I say 'great' every five or six words, so no worries. It's an LA thing, and, hm, a Dublin thing too? ** L@rstonovich, Oh, 'Three Women' is so incredibly good. My fave Altman. Well, that and 'McCabe', I guess. I want your book, man. My address is: c/o Centre International des Recollets, 150 rue du Faubourg St. Martin, 75010 Paris, France. Thankee! ** Rigby, Cool, and cool again. Little Haas was so cute when he did winsome. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh shit, about that mask. Me too. I mean I want one too. Correction: all of them. Everyone, Just hit this link that comes courtesy of _Black_Acrylic. Just do it. ** Creative Massacre, Oh, hm, it shouldn't look like a burnt pancake. It looks more sort of like a huge pancake that you removed from the pan before flipping it, if that makes sense. But it tastes really good, not like an uncooked pancake at all, of course. Your happiness is an awesome thing to read about and feel by proxy, pal. I missed 'Zombieland' when it was in the theaters. Seems like a possible candidate for a plane movie, so maybe I'll get lucky. Yeah, it looks terrific. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Glad you liked it, sir. Good, I'll try to catch the Chelsea Handler show tonight. Turns out my buddy/ roommate Joel watches it, so that shouldn't be hard unless it's post- my bedtime. An untalented Holly Golightly, ha ha, that's good. More Texan snow? That's crazy. Too crazy? I'm starting to think so. If it ever snows in LA, that will be the official end of reality as we know it. Oh, gosh, I love 'Romy & Michele's High School Union'. It's a big cult fave of mine. I think I'll watch 'Julie & Julia' or whatever if it's on my next plane ride. It was on my last plane ride, but I decided to rewatch '2012' instead, which I guess is kind of weird. My weekend: Let's see ... On Saturday, the family war thing sort of maybe got resolved, which is good, but that took some time. My pal as well as the d.l./pal of yours Jesse Hudson is in town, so I hung out with him a bit. In bookstores, mostly. I didn't end up buying anything, did I? Hm, no. Fear of a heavy suitcase, I guess. But the day was kind of irksome otherwise because my back was killing me all day due to a combo of (1) a shitty, deflating blow-up mattress and (2) doing the p.s. while sitting on a couch that had bad-to-no back support, I guess. I talked to some people and made some plans. I did something in the evening, but I don't remember what it was, I think because of the back pain endorphins' onrushing effect or something. Anyway, that was mostly that. Yesterday, I drove around a while. I had to buy Yury some Creme de La Mer products, and that meant going to Nordstrums at this faux-fancy mall called The Grove. A band was playing on this stage by the faux-European fountain. Some oldish guy was singing vaguely familiar oldish songs backed up by a slightly less old looking band, and I think he was famous when he was younger because it had that vibe and because people were vaguely excited and singing along, and I tried to imagine his face younger and much more hair on his almost bald head, but I still couldn't place him. He couldn't have been that famous if he was playing at a mall, I guess. I also went to Amoeba Records about bought three of the many Robert Pollard CDs that have come out since I was last here. And other driving-related stuff. Then I came home and got totally caught up in both the health care vote and the French regional elections, and watching coverage of them that pretty much took up the rest of the day/night, apart from ordering food from this pretty good local restaurant Home and watching a couple of episodes of this Discovery Channel show called 'Life' about animal behavior. Mm, I know I missed a bunch of stuff, oh well. The missing stuff must not have rated. Your turn. ** Alec Niedenthal, Hey, A! Spring break, more posting: hooray! I haven't seen 'Antichrist'. I don't know if I will ever see it at all since I can't stand Von Trier's films. I'm basically positive I would hate it too. His stuff's combination of ham-fisted obviousness, condescension, dumbness, transparent manipulation, etc. is not my thing, let's say. I'm still here in California, yeah. It's been nice. Busy but not too, and relaxing. That's what I wanted. There's never enough time to see enough of my friends, and that sucks. Yeah, be around here, catch up: that would be awesome. How are things, pal? ** Changeling, That piece about Mr G kind of said it all, actually. You do a lot in a very concise space. One of my admiration points. The tone was actually pretty stable and even. The petulance was blended. And not cutesy. Well, there have been maybe, oh, six or seven escorts who've seen the posts they were featured in and then written to me. The response is kind of all over the place. A couple of guys said they'd quit escorting recently and asked me to delete their entries, and I did. Mostly I hear from guys who are artists or into a lot of the things I'm into and who escort on the side or for extra income. They usually get what the posts are about and seem to like/ appreciate the contextualization. A couple have joined in here as commenters, but I won't say who because that revelation or not is their decision. I guess the most interesting response was when I included an escort in one of the posts, and then the next time I was searching for new escorts to include, I noticed that he had updated his ad to include the tidbit that he had been picked by me as one of the top escorts of whatever month. So I posted that revised ad in the next round-up post, and he subsequently popped in here and started commenting for a while. Turned out he's a really good writer, and he and I have become real world friends. So I guess that's the biggest success story or whatever. Oh, interesting that you're writing a novel or *novel* if you prefer. I'd love to read it or some of it sometime if you ever want to share. You know I'm quite the admirer of your writing, so, of course, I'm kind of excited to hear about that. ** Little foal, Oh, I think I need to finally get off my ass or whatever and play those recent Myst games. Your mention of 'Journeyman Project 3' took me back. Loved it, of course. McGee's 'Alice', yeah. That same guy did a couple of other really good games too. 'Dust' was done by this company from North Carolina called Cyberflix whose games I was really into. Spin Magazine let me write a big piece about them. Their best known game was 'Titanic', which pre-dated the movie. The company went defunct way too early. Brilliant games. Yeah, ha ha, careful with Sotos, at least in UK customs. UK customs are the scariest ever in my experience. Where are you going away to? I like magic mushrooms, but they're mildly psychedelic sometimes, so it's a matter of whether very low key hallucinations -- mostly slight visual alterations rather than full on waking dreams -- would be okay with you. ** Oscar B, You should absolutely see 'Three Women'. It's a must. Wow, tomorrow's the day. Enjoy the fuck out of everything, pal. Take lots of pix, both of your show and your adventures too. And, yeah, I've been scary slow on the collab, I know. I'll get back there. Nudge me whenever. Nudges are what I live for, almost. Postcard me from Sicily at the very least, and see you ... on Easter! ** Killer Luka, Oh, I have to ask Gisele what the dolls are made of. I knew that info at some point, but I totally forget. I'll find out. The back up plans sound too good to be back ups. The Italy one, wow, how likely is that? Kind of an amazing idea, not to pooh-pooh the NYC one either, of course. And then, even more of course, a Paris plan. ** IF, Hey, man. I just got an email this morning me you have some excellent thing, an essay or something, over on HTMLG, and I was already planning to head over there any minute, so ... Very nice to see you, man. I'll track down Nick. Thanks! ** Well, better very late than never, I guess. Give almost everything you've got to Put The Lotion In The Basket's post today, if you don't mind. I'll go do some LA kind of thing, and then I'll see you tomorrow, right?