p.s. Hey. So, two mighty locals aka the musician/ writer Marcus Whale and the musician/ artist/ filmmaker Aspen Michael ('Kiddiepunk') Taylor recently formed a supergroup that produced the album I'm showcasing for you today. It's a real beauty, as you will see or have already seen by the time you reach these words. I hope you out there will explore the evidence, give your ears over to the samples, tell the guys what you reckon about their work, and maybe even buy/ download the thing itself should you decide your tastes form its proper home. Thanks. And many thanks to Kiddiepunk for fulfilling my request to put this post together. With that, it's Monday, and let's initiate the new week. ** Killer Luka, First, let me take this opportunity to finally thank you so incredibly much for the amazing gift. I'm staggered to have it, wow, and the book as well. Yeah, just thank you so much, KL. The University of Minnesota sounds like the Tea Party of the art world. Christ, what a bunch of absolutely blind dopes over there. Fuck them. It's their fatal loss. You sent my stuff to the one and only Johnny? Gosh, that's really cool of you and a trippy thing to think about. If I ever see him on the streets of Paris again, I'll puff out my chest or something. Mega-love to you for every bit of all of that. ** David Ehrenstein, I'm always kind of surprised I never run into hardly any of my fellow expat artist guys, especially David Sedaris with whom I was buddies in his pre-famous days. I did see Depp and Vanessa Paradis walking down the street once from a window. Yeah, I'm a real fan of Whit Stillman's films too, all three of them, 'Last Days of Disco' being my favorite for some reason. He's had several somethings in the works for years, apparently, but nothing ever seems to come of the projects. If I see him around or more, I'll definitely let you know. ** Joseph, Yeah, right? About 'Frontieres'. I should check and see what else its director has made. ** Kier, Oh, you should get Skype, yeah. It's both easy as pie to get/install, and it knocks no small amount of money off long distance phone calls, and, as I'm sure you know. Skype to Skype calls are free. I don't how they make money. Sure, any advice on the Recollets or whatever else will be yours in a heartbeat. No, I don't think the Recollets supports people staying here financially. I suppose in the cases where residencies are arranged via sponsoring organizations, those organizations might provide that kind of funding sometimes maybe, but I don't know. Rooms here aren't cheap, no, but for Paris and what they offer and the great location, the rent is a real bargain. Hope you had a blast and a half with Asthmabunny. Oh, now I scroll down and see you already have Skype, cool. Easy, no? ** Allesfliest, This one. Nothing fancy, but pretty enough. Jealous? Please, ha ha. How many times have you been there, and how many times have I not been there? Crumb actually lives almost all the time in the south of France somewhere, but they say he has a Paris bachelor pad. ** Chris Goode, Hey, man. Lordy, those are some beautiful posts by you over there at Transductions, wowzer. I'm not linking to them right now 'cos I'm putting together a Transductions post, so I'm saving up. Rodefer is a very, very good poet, I agree. I've never crossed paths with him. I've thought about making the effort, but everyone I know who seems to know him does that Giant in 'Twin Peaks' crossed hands warning thing when I mention that idea. I mean, how much of an asshole can he be? I guess I'll remain careful not to find out. Thanks about my response to that guy, man. Oh, I did ask Gisele the script question. She says that, in a way, there is a complete script of 'Ktl', but that it's not all in one place or on one sheet of paper but rather subdivided into pieces designated for the tech people, the performers, herself, and so on. She said she could put together a solid, overall one if necessary, but she thinks that, as weakened as the video documentation of the work is, it's the best representation. She said there's this formal language or form or something where the dance/movement parts could be precisely graphed and written down, and she's interested to maybe have someone do that for the works, but she hasn't pursued it yet. Oh, mail, from you? Thank you, Chris, and I will let you know as soon as it arrives. Not to barge in on your thing with Kier, but what's this QUN thing you guys are bandying secretly about? Don't tell me, obviously, if it's best left untold. ** David, So the heavy snow happened on cue? You stocked up? Yeah, Stillman's films are lovely. And I love Henry Fonda in 'The Wrong Man' and quite often in general. ** Will Decker, Thanks for the correction. Yes, that's better, and that blog you linked to looks very rich and helpful indeed, so yet more thanks to you. Oh, yes, I have Google Translate, and it is quite a help, as you said. ** Tosh, Ideally, speaking from my heart as it is configured right now, I'd like to live roughly half the year in LA and half the year in Paris. If/when the immigration issues are resolved, that's my goal, or I want the opportunity to test that arrangement out and see what happens. It's pretty hard for me to imagine I would just stop living here entirely as I love being in Paris too much, and it has been a great place for me as an artist, but I continue to miss living in Los Angeles a lot, and that feeling never goes away. ** Sypha, I hope your talk with the manager pays off. That staying late thing does sound ridiculous. Interesting that your interest in short stories has gravitated to Poe's, and I guess it's not so surprising. I haven't reread Poe in ages. I do really like O'Connor's short stories, but I've always felt some kind of at least partial kinship with her work. Very glad to hear your stories are continuing to build well, and if the novel takes off, awesome, though, knowing you, I'll maintain a wait and see kind of hoping, ha ha. Great you updated your blog. As usual, I'll go visit when I'm finished here, but ... Everyone, the maestro and d.l. Sypha has a new illustrated and autobiographical entry up on his new occult/religious blog today, and if you've checked it out already, you know it's calling to you right about now. Go here. ** Stan_cz, Oh, you know, schools like to have their own rules and all that, and I would imagine LACC has a reasonably high percentage of students for whom English is a second language, so it's probably just protocol or something. ** Bill, Well, most of those artists you mentioned are relatively late comers in terms of becoming Parisians, so I guess the Americanism of their work was pretty set in stone before France took them over. I saw Rhys Chatham at the Sunn0))) gig the other night, across the venue. I'd really like to meet him. Stephen is friendly with him, so maybe I can. Yeah, I'll keep on keeping on here re: the application whenever needed, and hopefully it'll finally get figured out soon. ** Christopher/ Mark, I figured you must have known her to some degree. I think her husband died some years ago, as did her daughter, who committed suicide. I knew the daughter a little. Elaine has been living in Paris for maybe twenty years now, and she's still a total fireball in her late 80s, I think. ** Oscar B, Yep, it was intense, all right. I hope your night at the Opera is intense in its own sweeter way. I wish I'd seen Johnny Depp from a Recollets window since he would basically need to be in the Recollets grounds for that to happen, which would be intriguing, but it was from my temporary, yearlong pad in the Marais. ** Jose, Hm, that new engine in the 'Silent Hill' remake sounds very intriguing. How sophisticated is it? Is it up there with or more advanced than the 'Eternal Darkness' engine? I've only sort of quickly read a bit of Payne, and, honestly, it didn't seem that hot. ** Amccartney, Hey, Alistair! The novel is feeling a bit less daunting at the moment. I think I've figured out how to do a couple of important things that were fucking with me, and I could be wrong, but I'm implementing them and feeling okay so far. Oh, I remember that Aus friend of yours, yeah, and his advice is wise, for sure. Great that yours goes well, and totally understood about that apparatus problem. That's basically what I'm dealing with too, how to lay one down and how overtly or not. Take care, man, and, yeah, see you before too, too long. ** Laurabeth, Hi, Laura! Hm, the TA was saying reading Ginsberg would help you get into Whitman? That was the advice? I guess. I mean, Ginsberg dug Whitman big time and maybe fancied himself a similar figure. Frankly, as great as both of them are, I'm not that into either one of their work all that much, so it's hard for me to say, really. All that extroversion and fulminating isn't really my thing. ** Thomas, Howdy there, my friend. It's a fine thing to see you. Someone mentioned here a while back about the similarity with Jeremy Reed's title. It's pure coincidence. Our title came from very slightly revising the title of a Scott Walker song, and maybe Reed got his title from the same place? You good? What's new, man? ** Bollo, My ears are still buzzing, yes, no surprise, but I was afraid I'd still be hearing sirens like I was post-concert and most of yesterday. It's just a crackly little hum now. Pavement, yum. I was just wondering yesterday whether to get tickets for their Paris reunion show in May or not. I mean, I saw them a bunch back in the real days. I still can't decide. I'd better hurry. ** _Black_Acrylic, I really like 'Last Days of Disco'. It's very much itself. Actress = Sevigny? The snaps of the Y'n'Y presentation look nice. I half-expected to see Steve Jobs stroll in, ha ha. Everyone, pix of _Black_Acrylic and friend's recent powerpoint presentation of the little zine that could aka Yuck 'n Yum are yours for the clicking. ** Steevee, Yeah, gosh, I have no idea how they do that. Is 10,000 the proper number for good health or something? I don't count mine, but maybe I will today, which should be easy since I'll be sitting in this very chair for 90% of it, I predict. ** No more teenagekicks, Dude, if I have to hold my coke spoon under Sophia's big nose on a pulsing dance floor one more time, ... I don't even know. Oh, nice alert. I'll take it to heart, and I'll pass it on thusly. Everyone, listen to No more teenagekicks: 'My friends at the excellent Spank Zine are soliciting art/songs/poems/stories on themes released every other week. Their last theme, "ANIMAL SPIRITS," got some really cool art, which you can see here, and I encourage everyone to submit for their next one, "YOU'RE UNDER ARREST." I think they are currently receiving more pictures than words, so poets, fiction writers: go!' How are the thesis and novel going? ** Armando, Hey. I was just talking about and wanting to rewatch 'The Red Desert' this weekend. Yeah, I figured my memory of its sublimity was not a matter of my mind playing tricks. Naturally, I'm extremely impressed and excited about the essay/analysis that you and your friend wrote on a scene in 'Le Diable Probablement', and wishing I could read it. Which scene? Fantastic! I know Nan Goldin personally a little from the years when she was living in NYC and I was in and out of there a lot, but I haven't hooked up with her or run into her over here yet. I really should. She's swell, yeah. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey. Oh, very brutal ... don't worry too much. It's so hard to make onstage beatings look realitic at all that we'll probably be lucky to even achieve that, but, yeah, hopefully it'll it'll be painful to look upon at least. That Dallas Burlesque Festival looks like quite the saucy yet tasteful thing, yeah. Sorry, man. Everyone, want to have a little taste of what the Dallas Burlesque Festival is all about? Thanks to Itmpw, you can. Nice about the cleaning. I so need to do that. 'Enter the Void' is settled in for April here now? Good to know. Really, is SXSW really unaffordable? Is it the gas, the ticket, the inevitable motel room, all of the above? Good, write everyday, excellent plan, and I'll expect to see that referenced in your day-to-day. I don't like McInerney much, but people do. My weekend: Uh, hm. Oh, I was supposed to do rehearsals all day Saturday, but I developed a splitting headache, so I bailed, which was fine. I'll just watch the videotape instead. Instead, I went 'ouch' a lot and tried to nap and chug aspirin to fend my pain away, and it worked kind of vaguely. Something else happened, but I can't remember. At 9:15 pm, Oscar B and I walked to Point Ephemere to see Sunn0))) play, and so we did. They were humongously good and incredibly loud and relentless and just fucked up to the max. Singer Atila ended the show wearing this costume that simulated the scariest hit of acid I've ever swallowed -- mirrored all over with lazers shooting out and a horrifying mask with this giant headdress thing that looked like a giant Satanic variation on the Statue of Liberty's crown. I stumbled home satisfyingly wrecked and way beyond deaf. I looked for a youtube clip to share, but none have been uploaded yet. So that ended Saturday. Yesterday, I mostly wrote and did desk/computer-related stuff all day. Tentative arrangements were made to have a tarot card reading for Kp, Osc, and me done by Scott Treleaven, who's knowledgeable about such things. That might happen tomorrow. I was excited to get an email from the very great young artist and filmmaker Ryan Trecartin saying he's coming to Paris and wants to meet, hang out, and talk about me maybe writing something for a forthcoming book about his work. That was a highlight. I also had a coffee at the train station with Kp and Osc, but otherwise it was pretty much just writing and other things too tedious to describe in the detail with which I would need to describe them to be accurate. That's the story, I think. Now ... you! ** Misanthrope, Well, the new Lost Generation is really lost since we mostly never see or, in many cases, even know each other at all or anything. There are posters all over the metro here right now for some lame ass looking teen superhero movie called something like 'Percy Skywalker' (?) that I thought you might want to see anyway since the boy/actor on the poster looks like someone you would like. I'll check out your Facebook pix, you bet. Your home life seems like it's at the peak of its terrifying and fascinating sitcom meets reality show phase right now. I'd watch. ** JW Veldhoen, Paris is nice. Paris is jam packed with beauty of both the human and architectural/city planning kinds. Not sure how welcoming it would be. The French are a little standoffish, but in a most graceful and interesting way. Holland is stand-offishness and cold shoulder central. In my experience, I must add. Read ... read ... that was a beautiful comment, John. I stopped thinking about how to respond and simply read for pleasure. That's a nice picture to picture, but I could do without the Bruce Weber-y studs, yet that's just me. ** Justin, Okay, I'm probably just spacing out or maybe I am deprived of knowledge of something I should know, but who is Temple Grandin? I'm guessing that's a really dumb question. I do know who Claire Danes is. So, she's doing HBO things nowadays? I feel like I never see or hear about her, but HBO isn't on my radar here. ** James Greer, Great to see you too, Jimbo. Oh, yeah, I guess you can post that picture, if you want, sure. I'm not fancy about that kind of stuff. Change noted on Constance's status. She was cool, and that's what counts. Yeah, if you re-head up here, let me know, for sure. I'm gonna check out the Sturtevant horror house maybe this week. I hear it's not un-good at all. ** Slatted Light, Hi David! Dude, you and your people are totally knocking it out of the park over there on Transductions. I'm working on my upcoming homage/post-as-wormhole when I'm not doing this. Awesome that Peter wrote to you. He's such a great guy on top of being a great writer. Knotty points, I understand. I might have figured out how to untie a few of them in my novel, so it's going better for the moment. Well, I already ran into Alice Notley once, and we have a vague tea time visit in the works, and, as for Wes Anderson, if i could find an in, I'd use the American fraternity card with no trepidation. Thanks for being you and for being here, man. ** Gotta go. Devote yourselves to the sonic works, etc. of Mr.'s Whale and Taylor, please. See you tomorrow.