... SONGS THAT PRAISE THE MAN WITH THE GOAT'S HEAD IN ORDER TO CURRY FAVOR WITH HIM: Bandmates, Ephemera, Fellow Travelers, Side Projects and Blood Sacrifice, Plus NEW Interviews with JOHN DARNIELLE and FRANKLIN BRUNO, BONAFIDE STARS of INDEPENDENT ROCK 'N' ROLL
[image via]
PAGE FROM JOHN DARNIELLE'S EPISTOLARY-NOVEL-IN-THE-FORM-OF-A-CONTINUUM 33 1/3-BOOK, MASTER OF REALITY
about the Black Sabbath album of the same name, narrated by a kid you will feel a deep affection for if you care about tMGs song “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton.”
One of the guiding principles of this day is: no posting videos of tMGs playing tMGs songs. After all, DC's already hosted an excellent general interest tMGs day last September, “Thomas Moronic presents … “I'm coming home to you with my own blood in my mouth”: A celebration of the music of The Mountain Goats” and you can also check out a great post by Alec Niedenthal (w/an assist from Justin Taylor, sometimes known hereabouts as Maximum Etc.) over at HTMLGIANT. This day is instead a chance to gather together some things that are not songs by John Darnielle, tMGs fan videos, and educate myself about some people who are (or have been) members/ associates of tMGs. For that last category, I ended up focusing on Franklin Bruno, John Vanderslice and Peter Hughes (sorry, Jon Wurster, etc!). Most info here is cobbled together from the Internet - so please correct, expand, add favorite albums and so on in the comments. Also: I had half-wanted to lob a couple questions at JV and PH, to balance out the short interviews with JD and FB, but I figured I'd hassled enough people already. That said, John and Peter, if either of you see this, can I tempt you with the “early anecdote” question, applied to anyone else herein profiled?
So: you will find here absolutely no links to tMGs songs; however, as there is an entire tMGs subliterature comprised of JD's onstage patter; and since the patter in the two versions of “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” embedded below are so closely related to the 33 1/3 book, I include them here, on the condition that no one watch the second past the 00:46 mark, which is when the song proper begins. I am serious. You can search for it yourself on Youtube if you want to hear the rest.
There's another great piece of stage banter which I swear I had on a bootleg somewhere but now can't find: anyhow, it goes something like this: Between songs, JD says how Chuck D of Public Enemy would ask live crowds, “Who's my motherfuckin DJ?” and the crowd would shout back, “TERMINATOR X!” Then, JD asked his own crowd, “Who's my motherfuckin producer?” and a few people in the crowd shouted “JOHN VANDERSLICE.” Which built into an epic call and response: “WHO'S MY MOTHERFUCKIN PRODUCER?” “JOHN VANDERSLICE.” “WHO'S MY MOTHERFUCKIN PRODUCER?” “JOHN VANDERSLICE.” “WHO'S MY MOTHERFUCKIN PRODUCER?” “JOHN VANDERSLICE.”
JOHN VANDERSLICE
[Photo credit: Autumn de Wilde]
JV's website, his his tumblr, his twitter.
JV was born in 1967 in Gainsville, FL. In the 90s his band was MK Ultra. You can download MP3s of all three MK Ultra albums for free on their website. Maybe start with the song "Catastrophe Practice" from 1996's Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, or "I Miss the War" ] from 1999's The Dream is Over. Since then, he's released six solo albums, most recently Romanian Names, which includes the song “Fetal Horses,” which is just so great:
Here's the recording studio he founded in 1997, Tiny Telephone. Lots of cool people have recorded there. I found the studio's FAQ page pretty interesting, as someone who's never set foot in one - It's $350 a day (sounds reasonable, right?) plus $200 for a “first engineer” (a “second engineer” is half that). Also, have you thought about the tape you are using, and who will deliver it? Well and are you using the piano? If so, you should check out FAQ number 6:
6. Who is responsible for piano tuning?
The client is solely responsible for piano tuning. It's frequently moved and treated, both of which knock the C3 out of tune. We'll gladly have you in a few days before your session to check the tuning. If the piano is central to your project, we strongly encourage you to book the tuner for the day of your session. He has keys, so he can start well before you load in. Try to book him in advance.
Piano tuner: Israel Stein, 510 558 0777 (he's around $100)
The big board is a Neve 5316. As it happens, Tiny Telephone is the top result if you Google "neve 5316." (The second is "gearslutz.com", and the consensus there is that this a damn good board!)
JV's tumblr is very active. A recent post showed a photo of jars and bottles of: black bean garlic sauce, spiced vinegar, chili paste with garlic, chile oil, garlic chili sauce, and two other bottles, one dark, one light. "All this for $13. Manila Market, I love you."
A PIECE OF SEMI-PALINDROMIC JD PROSE FROM THE LINER NOTES TO ALL HAIL WEST TEXAS, PLUS JD'S MUSINGS ON THE PANASONIC RX-FT500
FRANKLIN BRUNO
[photo credit: Michael Cargill]
FB was born in Upland, Califronia in 1968. He has been recording in various capacities since the early 90s. This paragraph, copied from The Human Hearts MySpace page, sums things about a few things. "The Human Hearts is a flexible branding medium for the realization and dissemination of songs (and other musical work, but let's face it, it's gonna mostly be songs) by Franklin Bruno, also known as 1/3 of the Southern California power trio Nothing Painted Blue, 1/2 of The Extra Glenns, and as a solo artist in his own right." To round that out, FB also played keyboards on tMGs albums Talahassee and The Sunset Tree, writes poetry, and is sort of notorious for a review he did in the 90s of a terrible novel about indie rock. It is the FUNNIEST FUCKING THING EVER and was actually my first exposure to FB - I think it was my friend Gabby who showed it to me when I was an undergrad, and it was a couple years later before my friend Steve gave me the FB solo album, A Bedroom Community.
Most recently, FB released Local Currency (Fayettenam Records), a CD of early solo singles and compilation tracks. And he and JD have recorded a followup to Martial Arts Weekend, the first and so far only Extra Glenns album. For those who haven't heard that one, it's a collaboration between FB and JD, and sounds - surprise! - like a hybrid between John and Franklin's sounds, which is a very happy space to inhabit. They will release the new album under the moniker The Extra Lens, for reasons which were not made clear to me but are probably mysterious and interesting and none of my business.
Here are three FB things you should listen to:
Pilot Light by The Human Hearts.
The Nothing Painted Blue track (or "N∅thing Painted Blue" (or "∅PB") “Another Child Bride”:
And an amazing live version of an unreleased solo FB song with characteristic nerdy banter about Leonard Cohen and Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government:
And a live Extra Glenns track:
FB has an infrequently updated blog; in one of the more recent posts, he discusses the whole thing of releasing under your own name versus a band name:
Nothing against those who do, but I think that I have not cared to use a bandonym for much the same reason that, as a show-goer and -performer in L.A., I dressed in a staid manner that I'd call "neutral" except that it of course revealed some sort of affiliation to my class-fragment. To spell it out: If you disdain me before you know anything about me because I'm not bearing the mark of cool, it is as well that I don't know you, and that you don't know my music. If you can't figure out that an individual who records pseudonymously may be implicated in all manner of objectionable (or not) Romantic self-expression, and that one who does not may not admit of any direct equivalence between the "I" of songs and the person who happens to be performing them, then, again, it is well that, etc. Also, good luck with fiction and poetry.
Should one at this point exclaim "but the self is fragmented/decentered/illusory," I reply: Perhaps, but if so, then this is the case whether or not I fuck about with self-presentation. "Franklin Bruno" may well be held together with spittle and memories, but this is so, and is reflected (or not) in the work, quite independently of whether or not he goes to the trouble of rebranding himself Ziggy McPersona.
QUESTIONS FOR FRANKLIN BRUNO
MD: It must be weird to listen to/think about the Local Currency songs as a group. Are there any of these songs you hadn't listened to since they were first released -- or, maybe I should say instead: which song had it been the longest on? Which was the most surprising? (That is, unless you go home most nights, uncork a bottle of Chilean wine and play your old singles and compilation tracks. There's a joke on the Home Movies season 4 commentary track where the other voice actors repeatedly insist that since it was cancelled, the show's creator, Brendan Small, has kept the DVDs of the show on perpetual loop in his house. I have to imagine there are a few indie rock guys who more or less live that.)
FB: Well, among Inland Empire bands, it's Wckr Spgt who are most noted for listening to their own stuff incessantly (like, at breaks from practices). Me, not so much, which is also related to being a poor archivist. I think the songs that had faded from memory were mostly those on the odd one-off compilations that were a staple of indiedom during the '90s -- you recorded something-or-other, sent it off on a cassette or (if you were fancy) DAT, received some copies many months later (except in a few cases where the label just flaked or ceased to exist), with or without the return of your master. These tended to be songs that I wouldn't be likely to play live for one reason or another, with the result that it would be a real feat for to remember how just a couple of these songs go (especially the ones in open tunings, like "Rice King.") Perhaps no great loss.
All that said, it wasn't all that strange to listen to the Local Currency material as a group, as many of the songs were written in a short span of time (though some weren't released until quite a bit later), and some of them, the first three 7"s especially, always felt like an album-in-disguise with some, ahem, "themes" (the shared character of money and language, love triangles, martyrdom, the material limitations of the four-track method). I was pleasantly surprised in a couple cases that I'd taken trouble to come up with and execute fairly interesting guitar parts, and taken aback that I hadn't bothered to sing the damn song effectively. But, again, that was the '90s.
MD: I asked JD the same question about you: Please relate one mid-length, or two very short, anecdote(s), possibly humorous, from the earliest days of your acquaintance with John Darnielle.
FB: (1) Very first thing John and I ever tried to work on, before there were any Mtn. Goats or Extra Glenns/Lens recordings extant, was his idea of setting the Vachel Lindsay poem "Factory Windows are Always Broken" to music. I actually did this, but ended up playing it in Nothing Painted Blue instead of w/ John, for no reason I can remember. It's never been recorded, and wasn't so hot anyway -- basically a "Sweet Jane" chords. But still a good idea. (2) Though I'm glad that John appreciates my aliveness to the Goat Head (but wasn't it "Evil Goat Head"?), and while I've sometimes suspect that whatever worldly success or cultural currency our efforts have attained may ultimately result from our obeisance to said demiurge, I'm surprised that he has failed to bring to light another early, unrealized project: "Obnar," our improvised sound-poetry opera in the manner of Kurt Schwitters "Ur-Sonate."
THE YOUNG THOUSANDS: SOME MOUNTAIN GOATS FAN COVERS
PETER HUGHES
[photo credit: John Vanderslice.]
Peter Hughes has been playing bass with the Mountain Goats live on and off since 1995, and has been on all the albums since 2001, when JD switched from recording mostly on boombox to recording with a full band instudio. The first times I saw them, TMGs toured as a two piece with PH and JD, which works really well since JD's guitar playing is so percussive that you don't necessarily need a drummer (though they've got a very good one now in Jon Wurster). PH also played in Nothing Painted Blue.
PH will release a solo album this year called Fangio. Per his website: "Fangio--the album-length sequel to a song I wrote for my Casio-powered solo project, Party of One, in 1987, a song that imagined five-time Formula 1 World Champion and Argentine folk hero Juan Manuel Fangio piloting a Saab 900 Turbo SPG across the Andes mountains on a covert mission to assassinate Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet--currently sits in pit lane, crew scurrying about, final preparations being made before advancing to the starting grid."
DiscothiQ (pronounced "dis GOTH uh cue" - the name comes from how an American might pronounce “discotheque” if they didn't know better) was PH's 90s band. Again, per PH's website "DISKOTHI-Q (hyphenated when all caps, nonhyphenated with cap Q when uppers-and-lowers dontcha know) is Peter Hughes, Kevin Hughes, Kevin Trapp, and, at times, Rob Garlt. We haven't done anything since Trapp and I moved away from the Empire in 2000, but from 1991 up til then we kinda did a lot."
There are a whole lot of free DiscothiQ mp3s on PH's website. Maybe start with "Pomp & Circumstance” from 1996's Waterworld? Though you should also check out this other kind of insane project, where the band recorded a song for each of the 32 NFL teams. This has to my mind a number of advantages over Sufjan Stevens 50 State Project, for instance the fact that 32 songs rather 50 lps means that one's children and one's children's children would not be forced to continue toiling on the project long after one's own death. Per PH's website: "No longer trying to be anything other than the semi-competent indie-rock band we in fact were, we turned our ambitions to more worthy endeavors. Namely, 32 songs about 32 teams. Yes, we really fucking did this. Realignment and free agency have rendered these works largely obsolete and irrelevant, but the immutable and outrageous genius of these CDs--the fact that we actually accepted the dare and made good on it--still shines as brilliantly as ever."
Here's a YouYube video tribute to the Bengal wide receiver Chris Henry backed by Discothiq's "Bengals." (I recommend starting this one at 1:41 and stopping it at 3:40, for reasons that will become obvious if you fail to follow these very simple instructions.)
There's a fascinating long interview with PH from 2007 on the Merlin Show in which he talks, among other things, about how different it was to tour before the invention of cell phones, and how kids these days, they just don't have the first clue:
"The way we did it in 1993 was if you needed to advance for the club, or you needed to get directions or you needed to call your girlfriend you had to find a payphone. You had to get a calling card, pull off... Gawd, when I think of what we had to go through.... being in the middle of B. F. Ohio, and being late, so you have to call the club. You have to find a town with a gas station or some place that's going to have a pay phone. You get off at some random exit. I remember driving for like 20 minutes just looking for a freaking pay phone. So now you're making yourself later and you're crossing your fingers that there's even going to be someone on the other end that you can tell.... it sucked."
He also talks in the interview about how to build a career in music, and speaks extensively about his LiveJournal, which he uses as a tour diary and for interacting with fans. (You have to start your own LiveJournal and friend him to see his posts since 2005, cos anonymous people on the Internet are dicks who ruin everything.)
And, lastly: PH interviewed in 2009 for the Loyola Phoenix, where he gets a little nerdy about Stephen Colbert:
Q: The band played on the Colbert Report last week and Stephen Colbert, in a rare moment of sincerity, confessed he was a huge fan. What was that like?
PH: When someone who is a part of your life, a part of your universe in a way that Stephen Colbert has been a part of mine -- and your's too, I'm sure -- and all of a sudden you discover you're equally part of his universe ... it's such a mind-blowing thing. It was a surreal day.
A RECENT POST FROM LAST PLANE TO JAKARTA, JD'S INTERNET HOME, WHICH IS WORTH EXPLORING FOR ANY NUMBER OF REASONS, FOR INSTANCE IF YOU NEED LISTENING SUGGESTIONS, OR IF YOU NEED OCCASIONAL LIFE-COACHING, BOTH OF WHICH ARE ON DISPLAY BELOW
note all qualifiers
if you're going to sing
in the screaming punk style
which took hold
sometime toward the end of the eighties
then the way to do it
is in the way one hears
on the new album
by noted Krishnacore act 108
with passion that seems to actually spring
from somewhere
screaming like you feel a need to scream
not like it's a formal constaint
if you're going to sing
in that screaming style
which is now so common
that it almost never sounds angry
or desperate
or rebellious
or sincere
or interesting
or anything but profoundly conformist, really
then do it like that guy from 108
if you're going to do the scream-sing thing
repeat: if you are
QUESTIONS FOR JOHN DARNIELLE
MD: A number of authors get name-checked in your songs, from Cicero to Sax Rohmer. What writers have influenced you that maybe don't have a song yet?
JD: Quite a few, but I am weirdly private about my reading list - I like being the only person who knows the exact combination of poetry & prose that makes me write the way I do, since I do think that pretty much any writer is the sum total of what he's read, plus the tiny spark of self that he brings to the process. You can't discount that spark, and without it there's nothing, but the main thing is the reading list, and it's as personal & important as the "this is the tiny new bit that I brought to the table" part. Having said that, I quoted Norman Dubie on the sleeve of the Nine Black Poppies EP, but I haven't really given him a song, but I think reading him when he was kind of the hot name for a while there - around the time of Groom Falconer and the Springhouse and Radio Sky - had a pretty big impact on me.
MD: How do you think influence works between genres -- maybe a specific instance or two from your work?
JD: Well - I steal images from film all the time; for me, that's the primary function of film: to provide visual images for me to play with. "Oceanographer's Choice" is the sort of obvious one, where the characters in the song are watching a giallo on television and describing it in the song's first couple of lines as though the action on the screen were happening outside in the room. I mean, really, this is going to sound like some rainbow-prism-eyed stuff to say, but I think genre is at least 1/2 marketing conceit. It's a useful concept for enthusiasts of a form, you know, for the pleasures of taxonomy - is this really a horror movie, or is it just a particularly grisly mystery? is this a comic novel, or are its comic aspects a formal gesture to make its uglier parts seem even uglier by contrast? - but I always feel like it should be emphasised: that sort of question-posing is kind of the critical equivalent of sudoku. I like to play sudoku, too, but in the end it has very little to do with, you know, the glories of higher mathematics, and I think for me in the final analysis genre, the whole concept, is a toy. Fun toy if you want it! Useful tool for making delineations between things. But in the end, I don't believe in genres as anything more than that -- songs, movies, books, photographs - these are all forms of the same impulse: the narrative or performative impulse.
MD: What are your favorite songs about books?
JD: None come to mind - my brain immediately starts thinking up songs with "book" in the chorus, two of which involve Walter Becker ("Green Book" and "Book of Liars," the latter a favorite) and another that has a nonsensical but awesome chorus ("Black Book" by Stephen Malkmus). Why are books known for their colors in songs?
MD: People often speak of certain common technical mistakes in the work of young fiction writers -- POV that doesn't gel, overuse of adverbs in dialog tags, that sort of thing. Are there specific technical problems you see repeatedly in the work of beginning songwriters?
JD: Yeah there's one, a pet one, which I'll get to shortly, but the main thing is less technical than - well, for lack of a better term, "moral." Not moral problems in the sense so much of "what you are doing is morally indefensible," but more of a "the terms of the moral universe in which you are setting your song are lame, and since you're the one setting those terms, this is a problem you should fix." What the hell am I even talking about -- this: young men (this problem really doesn't seem to exist for young women who write songs) often like to present a narrator whose self-destructive "urges" (they usually aren't real "urges" so much as cosmetic choices about how to present himself) are clearly placing him on a collision course with doom. The narrator of these songs often seems to hope that the important people in his life will be both very impressed by the special nature of his pain, and that some people who have spurned him will be so horrified by the things his pain has made him do that they will either a) give him what he wants from them or b) speak with awe about him.
Really can't stand that kinda stuff. There is one thing special about your pain: it's yours. That ought to be enough, in my opinion; you can describe it from there, and take control of it, detail it lovingly, etc. But when a narrator seems to think that he is somehow beatified by his own particular collection of neuroses, well, this bugs me. I was as guilty of this early on as anybody, and one of my most popular songs is pretty much One Of These Types, and it's not that all songs like this are bad. In fact many of them are quite good. But it's a tendency that should be outgrown quickly. Often there are two main characters in a song like this, and almost always, the song would be a much better one of the two weren't acting like a child.
MD: I asked Franklin the same question about you: Please relate one mid-length, or two very short, anecdote(s), possibly humorous, from the earliest days of your acquaintance with Franklin Bruno.
JD: Because my memory is pretty unreliable I usually have to make stuff up for questions like this. 1. Once Franklin and I were at a performance of La Boheme at the Dorothy Chandler when an earthquake struck. "Earthquake?" quipped Franklin. "I hardly knew her!" 2. Ages and ages ago, before I knew Franklin, some friends and I used to make up songs & stories about the imminent takeover of the earth by the Dark Lord, who would appear as a well-dressed man with a goat's head, seldom seen save from the corners of one's eyes as he turns the corner just after some disaster strikes. (This was long before the days of the Mountain Goats.) One friend and I thought that the songs in praise of the infinite wisdom of Mr. Goat's Head were about the funniest things in the world; we would drink coffee til dawn refining them. Our other friends were less taken with the process. They would leave the table if discussion of Mr. Goat's Head started to heat up. However, one day, some years later, I told Franklin about the whole thing. He was the first person outside of the original Goat's Head Circle to not only be amused by it, but to further contribute to the canon of Songs That Praise The Man With the Goat's Head In Order to Curry Favor With Him. When Franklin laughed at goat's head songs, I knew we were in for the long haul.
----
*
p.s. I think this is the first time in the blog's shortish history that there have been two completely different posts about a single artist (or, in this case, artists). The Mountain Goats are certainly ultra-deserving of the honor, and Mark aka NMTK has obviously created a really extraordinary post, paean, introduction, or what have you. Please enrich your weekend and this place by exploring his creation and passing your thoughts back to him. Thanks incredibly, Mark. Otherwise, I'm back in Paris and feeling strangely very exhausted this morning. That'll surely show. Sorry. ** Thursday: Bernard Welt, There seems to be a fairly good consensus on the place(s) to start reading Straub. Thanks, B. I thought about you when I read about the DC earthquake, naturally. Sure, I remember Ed Cox, or his poetry at least. I think I might have even met him once. I think you told me he had died. It's very sad to think about again. Again: strange. ** Wolf, So, you made it home for better or worse. Thanks so much again for being there. Jonathan S. was so happy to have met and connected with you guys. He said to tell you that he really hopes he'll get to see you guys again before too long somehow. (Me too, by the way). And Stephen sang your and Marc's praises a lot too. Seems you were as much of a hit as our piece. I didn't get done with the interviews until after 3:30 pm that day, and I figured you were on your way out by then. Anyway, tons of love and thanks. ** Shane Le Vein, I love pinstripe shirts. I don't know why. Well, they're very lovable, I guess. Oh, don't worry about overburdening me, but it's kind of you to wish not to. So, at long last ... Everyone, the brilliant writer, visual artist, and blog master Shane Le Vein (aka Memoirs of a Heroinhead, a.o.) has added a newish blog to his already great little array of blogs, and it's entitled 'Horse Meat for Swine', and its subtitle is 'Where the unpublishable gets published. Depravity spits back', and if that doesn't get you to click the blue words, add my high recommendation. ** David, Pleased that the past week especially pleased you. I couldn't find 'offensive touching' over at Nick and Shane's place, but I'm a burn out today, and maybe others can. Everyone, somewhere in the awesome 'Sometimes They Don't Come Back' blog is something called 'offensive touching' and it is recommended to you by David, and, even if you can't find 'ot', it's such an excellent place in general that you should go over there in any case. ** David Ehrenstein, 'TIHYWD' plays the Centre Pompidou in Paris on April 21, 22, 23. Thanks for asking. Obviously, do try to make it if it all possible. I heard LA got the big heat. I just left the heat behind, or about 10 degrees C of it, and I think my body is in shock. ** Oscar B, Hey! I'm back. Kind of totally pooped, but back. See you later today, I hope? ** Kiddiepunk, Hey! What I just said to Oscar. I'm technically back, a bit wrecked, but here. Later? ** Empty Frame, Hey, man. Yeah, we were kind of a big hit. Trippy, and it does feel very good. Thanks for the congrats. Dude, start wearing those sewing protection things ... what are they called ... thimbles, I think. Safe trip back East. ** Joseph, Oh, I see. 'Progressive' advertising agency ... in the Huffington Post-like sense, I assume. In any case, hope you got that gig. How were Robinson and Young? Yeah, they're terrific. How was the earthquake for you? Thanks for sending the link. I'll insert it. Take care, man. ** Killer Luka, Almost everything should be 44 seconds long. Wait, I take that back. Our piece was the student corrupter, and I was sort of the students' corruption manager or something. Love to you, pal. ** Sypha, Thanks, James. Feeling better, I hope? ** Stan_cz, There always seems to be a police helicopter flying around near my LA pad with its spotlight trained downwards. Our neighborhood seems quite 'safe', so I'm not sure why. I like it: the light, the sound. It's kind of apocalyptically pretty. ** Steevee, I wonder if the US version of 'LDW' has been edited vis a vis the version I saw here. I quite liked it, as you know. My only really problem with it was the Paul Reubens parts. I love him, but I thought they were kind of really forced. ** Bill, Hey, Bill! Glad you made it there in one piece. Top floor, no air-conditioning, no internet ... That's exactly what I just left behind. Hope you can make the best of it. I tried. It's the fall here in Paris. Oh my God, it's such a relief. My body seems to be having a lot of trouble adjusting to the air's niceness. Strange. Enjoy and report back please. ** Trees, Hi, Trees. Hot in San Francisco. That's just wrong. Wrong to me, I mean. Very cool about the new poems, the reading with KK, and the starring role on your friend's blog. You will link us up when the time comes, right? And very cool about the synth-punk post! That's super kind of you. ** Emily, Hi, buddy of mine. I think it's so great that you're writing a lot. Now that I'm back in my usual, regularly linked-up spot, I'll read what you've written and share my thoughts, you bet. Everyone, a new fiction piece of undoubtedtly great interest by our pal Emily is right here. Have a weekend of excellence, okay? ** JW Veldhoen, Pound your ass ... oh, no doubt, man. No conspiracy theory going on there. The thing you sent ...I haven't read it yet, to be honest, because I haven't done almost anything but nurse our theater piece for the past month(s), but I will as soon my brain quits its love affair with space. ** Tomas, Hey, T. Yeah, the Arte thing was shockingly long and really good. I couldn't believe it. Very trippy. Have you gotten through your finals okay? How are you? Yeah, hope to see you soon. ** Math, Hey. I said heroin is evil the way I say Robert Pollard is God. It's shorthand, a logo, whatever for feelings very negative or positive. One thing it wasn't is kneejerk. I have very good reasons to hate the stuff just as I'm sure you've got very good reasons to like it. But it's a tough topic for me, so, yeah, I'll borrow your 'we do as we do', use it as my closer, and leave the topic to those around here who have less emotional trouble discussing it. Very happy about you finding that new and safe pad. I returned home so sweaty and soaked that even Yury declined a hug, understandably. He likes my suntan, though. Have a great weekend, pal. ** Alexandre, Hey, A! Yeah, me on Arte, weird and cool, right? How are you? Are you post-finals? Will I see you soon? ** _Black_Acrylic, That Wire article on cosmic disco is pretty good. Enjoy your days off work and your karaoke constructing and, last but not least, your head's new and greater access to any bypassing breezes. ** 萬宇萬宇 , Well, hello yet again. ** Nb, I thought about you when I heard LA got hit by a sudden heat wave. Bad luck there, if you like hiking at least. Unless global warming has changed everything, LA tends to get blasted for a few days, and then it eases off for a while. What have you done since you posted? The traffic, yeah. When you live there, you know all the smoother back routes to things. Maybe I can help. ** Jesse Hudson, Hey, Jesse! Okay, I think I'll go with 'Ghost Story' since you picked it, and your opinion seems to have a lot of back up. Hopefully, I can find it in Shakespeare & Co. or its equivalent here. I'm kind of into the romance of buying books in bookstores right now. Anyway, thanks a lot, J. Talk to you ultra-soon. ** Will Decker, Hi, Will. Thanks for looking in on my world of the past 12 days. I'll add some pix to the mix in a day or two. Not a lot because it was so hot there that my interest in taking photos was at an all time low. It's very nice to be back where one can be cool without having to be artificially cooled, but it won't last long, I guess. ** Alan, Hey, man. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Thanks for being so kind and interested in my theater adventures. You're a good friend. Sandwich ... oh, it was goat cheese and a scatter of vegetables on a baguette. And probably some kind of mustard or something, I can't remember. Yeah, I'm immensely grateful for the strangely cool weather Paris is having, even if my body and mind seem to be stunned by the sudden change. That night sky you stared at sounds beautiful. Continued 'oh, fucking hell' about your misbehaving ear. Has there been any noticeable improvement? I'm sorry your days weren't magical ones. Maybe the weekend will make up for it, I hope? I guess I'll do my catch up days report right here and just say hi and so on when I get to your comment from yesterday. I'm having trouble remembering, hm. The last performance went really well. I think only two measly people booed. As soon as we finished, they started taking down the set and packing it up. That was kind of sad. We cleaned out our stuff, and then we watched the Arte interview/ segment with/on Gisele and me and 'TIHYWD' via Jonathan C's iPhone. We were kind of blown away by how well it turned out and how beautifully it was done. I wish it was viewable on Arte's website because the clips from the piece were really good and actually gave a really good sense of what the piece is actually like, for once. Then we all gathered for a farewell dinner that was also a birthday dinner for Stephen O'Malley. We were all pretty happy, and the food was pretty good, and the restaurant closed off their outdoor garden for us, and it was shaded. I took pix. You'll see them. After that, some of us (including me) were exhausted and went to our temporary homes to sleep while the rest of us went to the VIP bar and probably partied 'til very late at night, I'd guess. The next morning, I packed my stuff, headed out, met up with the guy organizing the meeting with the students, and we walked to the school. There were about 70 students, a really big group, again between the ages of 15 and 18. They were great, very thoughtful and smart and inquisitive, and most of them seemed to love our piece. A few of them said they felt like it had changed their life, which was really sweet of them to say, of course. After the q&a, I hung out for a while talking with about twelve of them who were particularly into the piece, and, yeah, it was just a great, rewarding thing. Then I sat around at this huge sort of patio area near Festival's office where people buy tickets and have drinks and so on for a couple of hours waiting for my assigned escort to show up and drive me to the train station. The effect of the Arte show was obvious because people were staring at me and coming up and telling me how much they liked 'TIHYWD' and/or my books, and that was very unusual. I got my ride, caught my train, spent the two and a half hour duration reading Mojo and looking out at the landscape. Paris was a wonderfully pleasant temperature like everyone had said, and even the metro wasn't a steam bath. I bought some food, went home, threw my stuff down. Yury came home and commented on the sweat residue all over me and my new suntan, and I ate, we hung out, I got tired quite early, and crashed. I think that was all. I'm hoping I'll be adjusted and fully woken up by the next time I see you. And your weekend, sir? ** Chris, Hey. I think we've got everything squared away now on the phone thing, yeah. I think I'll talk to Ish today, and we can talk in group mode soon. Bon weekend! ** Creative Massacre, I'm really sorry to hear about the break up, pal, although it definitely sounds like the break is the best thing for you, yeah? You're really due a right one, and I sure hope that, whoever she may be, she'll be your next. ** Ken Baumann, Hi, Ken! Yeah, we can/should talk Carrie, etc. in person or by email or something. That level of hype re: 'Inception' sounds scary. It doesn't seem to be getting an especially big push here. The usual amount of posters. They almost never show ads for movies on TV here. It's kind of weird. I don't know if there's some sort of rule about that or not. The movie that's swamping the most wall space here at the moment in that Tom Cruise/ Cameron Diaz movie, whatever it's called. No thanks. I think 'Toy Story 3' is next for me. No, I didn't see 'The Box'. After the director's cut of 'Donnie Darko' and 'Southland Tales', it would take a lot to get me to deliberately watch one of Kelly's movies, I think. But, yeah, he's a real weirdo, for sure, which is potentially cool. ** Tigersare, Hey, Guy. Glad you like the Days. It's been a very musical week around here, which is a good thing. Great about the Melbourne Writers Festival gig. Even I know about that Festival and of its rep as a very good, cool event. And re: the August show with Xiu Xiu, ace! I forget, have you met Jamie Stewart before? Any news or progress on your new album? ** L@rstonovich, Yeah, totally awesome about the GbV tour, and they're playing LA just around the time I was planning to be there anyway. So psyched, so glad I don't have to fork out the huge bucks, etc. for Vegas, even though seeing that Matador line-up would have been killer and all that. ** Misanthrope, Hey, man. Basically, I'm like you. I don't want the dead body to ruin my mental image of a person, and it would, and since the body isn't even him or her anymore, no thanks. I don't even want to see dead celebrity photos, and whenever I accidentally do, I regret that. ** Frank Jaffe, Hi, Frank. I'm back safe but in a very spaced out state for some reason. Very cool about the '2001 Maniacs' screening plus Hooper and Garris. I'll be way up for that if/when it gets here. 'Splice' finally opens here in a few seconds. Still looking around for 'Human Centipede'. I have to say that the live show add on to 'Hedwig' sounds scary to me, but I'm remembering the 'Rocky Horror' one. Oh, I think a food related post from you would not only be completely awesome, but it's kind of the perfect 'you' post, so, if want and don't mind, I'll be most, most grateful. Thanks, Frank! ** Friday: David Ehrenstein, I think RedSilence looks like he's ready to be the runway, and I'm ready to be the 747 jet, ha ha. ** Pilgarlic, Hey, P. Oh yeah, I do remember The Strawbs. I owned at least two of them albums way back when, and I'm pretty I really liked them. You don't hear much about them nowadays, strange, although they're mentioned a lot on the sites about Mellotrons. Yeah, I wonder what happened to the rumored 'Total Filth' Sotos/ Gillis project. I'll have to remember to ask Peter about that. Man, I wish you so much luck with your brother. That's really hard. I've been there myself. On your side of things, I mean. It's really great of you to try, and you have all my respect and my very best wishes on that front for absolutely sure. Let me know how it goes, if you feel like it. ** David, Atraktion was a most pleasant find indeed. I wonder who 'Alan' is. That was some night you had there. Mine was its usual blank. ** Bernard Welt, Oh, I jumped the gun on my earthquake comment up above. I forgot you were in LA for the '94 quake. Now, that was a quake. Dream groups are the new book clubs: Wow. Your status as a pioneer is finally going universal! How fast can they rush your book out to cash in? ** Memoirs of a Heroinhead, Hey. Oh, I admire your writings on heroin very much, as I hope you know, and I've definitely learned things too. My thoughts about heroin are of course very complex. The substance necessitates very complex thinking. Emotionally, though, I hate it. I do. It's not intellectual or pragmatic or logical, it's emotional, and it's there, and I can feel it, and I negotiate my feelings about it as best I can. I've had so many awful conversations about the so-called 'Heroin Overdose Myth' with people, two of whom are now dead, and it's not a conversation that I personally can bring myself to have again, but I will read what you write, and if others here want to converse with you about it, obviously, that totally fine. Take care, lots of respect, and thanks a lot, Shane. ** 'Stoopid Slapped Puppies', Hey, Nick! The TGV ride was pretty okay. Shortish (2 1/2 hours), no stops (I chewed gum furiously), and some of France's prettiest turf flying by the window. I feel sad about the end of the Avignon run of shows, but since the show is going to be playing a lot for years, I expect, it's not so bad. Plus, being able to get back to my novel more than compensates for it. I saw your email, and I'll go open it this afternoon. You want me to see if it looks okay, doable in the version you sent? If you're concerned about the loss of the colour and font stuff, hm, yeah, maybe a pdf would work. I think I can imbed pdfs in a blog post. It's strange that when you moved it into a new blog, the look of it changed. Anyway, I'll have a look at what you sent, and I will write back to you. We'll figure something out. And thank you a lot for doing that, Nick. Oh, apropos of nothing, I guess, have you been in touch with Kier? He hasn't been around in a while, and I suppose I'm a little concerned that he's doing okay. Yeah, 'TIHYWD' is touring Japan. How cool is that? I am lobbying as hard as I can to get to go along on that tour. Gisele and her managers are trying to convince the Japanese financiers that my being there is important. There's hope that I can come, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope. It's an expensive show, and I'm the first thing that gets cut when it comes to budget stuff re: the tours, understandably, and there's no way I can afford to go on my own. Best weekend ever, my friend. ** Bill, Ha ha, I was just as provocative, but they didn't seem to realize it. I kind of figured Mellodrama would be heavy on the talking heads. I won't hope for too much. How are you hanging in down there? ** Stan_cz, LA does get the very odd bit of humid heat, and it's misery central on those days, but the good old desert and/or ocean winds usually knock the wet away ere long. Pabst ... I didn't even know they made Pabst beer anymore. It was kind of popular and heavily advertised when I was young. ** Trees, 'ImAllYrsBby' looks like a guy who would trek down to SF as often as he possibly could, no? Unless I'm underrating Sacramento, and I don't think I am. So, keep your eyes peeled. ** Jose, Wow, that looks pretty great and ready to go to me. That's beauty, man. But I'll help you try to poll everybody else. Everyone, here's Jose in his own words: 'Hey guys, maybe you can help me. I"ve been working on this image for a few weeks and cant decide if it's done enough to take it to the print shop. Whaddaya think?' Yeah, so what do you guys think? Help a fellow d.l. out please. ** Creative Massacre, Jesus, pal. Yesterday you said you were feeling pretty good physically, and now this all of a sudden! Surgery, ugh. Well, optimistic me says, yeah, major suckage there, but at least you'll be free of whatever the fuck has been fucking with you at last, you know? Too bad it has to happen so drastically. I'm so sorry for that. Keep me up on how everything is going, okay? Lots of love to you. ** Colin, Hey. Yeah, ha ha, hotbutthere, very good. I also like how the name doesn't seem to go with the picture he chose to represent himself at all. 'Trash Humpers' lived up, huh? Damn, when is it going to get over here?! ** Steevee, Hey. I don't know if Artforum is having financial troubles. It wouldn't shock me, but I'm very out of touch with them. Like I think I've said before, I've always found the magazine to be very picky according to the whims its own inexplicable drummer. ** Killer Luka, The make up of your top two is most understandable. ** Little foal, Hey, Darren. And Atraktion is in northern Holland where business must be rather poor and loneliness must overwhelm him with some regularity. I sure like the idea of your 'meatphysics'-like novel. That can't surprise you, I guess, ha ha. The Kip Kinkel confession .. well, yeah, I think you know it inspired a whole novel from me. See what you think/feel. Have a fine weekend in every aspect. ** Changeling, Hi. I think I saw an email from you in my blurry first glance at my mailbox this morning. I'll go open it and check it out and let you know. Thank you a lot for that. You mean you're physically fucked up from that strange biting thing from the seaside? Whatever caused the fucked-upness, I curse it furiously. Doubt that will help much, though. Still, my curses are so rare that they might hold some strange power thereby. I'm cooled, yes, thank you. But it's a weirdly disorienting change so far. My skin is confused, I suppose. I'm really looking forward to catching up with your writing, and I'll get that started this weekend. Hope you feel much better come Monday. ** Ken Baumann, Ha ha ha, wow. I think Mel wiped the floor with my buddy. He made my buddy there sound like a squeaky voiced whiner. Ha ha, that was great. Thanks a lot, Ken! ** Will Decker, Thanks, Will. If anything, I feel too relaxed being back here. I'm not used to not sweating and stressing profusely at the same time. I suppose I'll get used to that pretty quickly, though. Have a lovely weekend. ** Sypha, I don't think that's odd at all, but you know me. ** Alan, Hey. Thanks a lot for linking to that little review. Our only one in English so far, that I've seen. Great weekend to you, A. ** Statictick, Hey, N. That Spanish 'Dracula' sounds awfully fun, especially the coked up Eugene Levy Van Helsing, wow, thanks! ** Inthemostpeculiarway, I saw Marilyn Monroe's house when I was a little kid and when my family went on a 'Homes of the Stars' drive. She'd just died. And, at least from my view through the gates, yeah, it wasn't a big place at all. Like I said in so many words above, your weekend simply must be a wonderful one. I decree it. ** No more teenagekicks, Hi, Mark! Thank you so, so much! It's just an amazing post. Luckily, I saw your comment just when I was getting started with the p.s. this morning, so I slipped the live Extra Glenns track in. No prob on the essay's absence, of course. The post is a stunner even without it. Take care, enjoy, and more this weekend. ** Tfcinnyc, Hi, greetings, and welcome to the blog. Well, I don't have exact percentages in mind because I don't pay that much attention to such things, but the escort posts are at least a little more racially diverse than you say. For instance, in yesterday's post, RedSilence is Hispanic, Lost_Hope is of Arabic descent, Archel is Latino, dreambottom is Latino, and Titmale is Indian. Looks can be deceiving, I guess? I don't make a point of pointing out the escorts' racial make-up because doing so doesn't really interest me. I don't know what to say about the posts being intellectually dishonest. I guess I would say I don't think they are. As for provincial, well, the posts are constructed from websites where escorts advertise their services, and almost all of said sites that I know of mostly cover Europe, the US, and sometimes Asia, South America, Mexico, and other countries, but not often. They're my resource. My greatest interest in doing those posts is in the way the escorts choose to represent themselves, the language they choose, the style, etc. So, I basically use ads that are in English and geared towards English speaking customers. The posts are not meant to be represent the state prostitution in the world. They're a specific kind of exploration, I guess. I'm not sure if that satisfies your question, but that's best I can do as far as explaining why they are the way they are. Thanks much for being here and posting. ** Stephen, Hey, S. This will probably sound strange, but the escort posts aren't really about the erotic to me. Not that I'm immune, mind you. I used to call the posts 'best ... blahblah escorts under 30 ...' at the beginning, and that was my sort of pre-set guideline, and I stopped using that qualifier in the title, but I guess I still use it. For one thing, it makes my searches on the sites a little more focused and less labor intensive for me, and I suppose my personal tastes come into it as well. But to answer your exact question, I think the oldest escort I've come across in my searches whom I found attractive was 38, if memory serves. ** Misanthrope, Oh, poor you being forced to read the texts, ha ha. One of these months, I'm going to post nothing but blurred faces, so watch out. ** Math, Hey, bud. Wow, that was kind of a heavy couple of commenting days there. For me, at least. Interesting. This place never ceases to evolve and surprise. Envy on that Air France/raratat PS1 show you're hitting. Enjoy. I think I'll do 'Toy Story 3'. Let's compare notes on Monday. Lots of love to you, Math. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, I caught your comment just as I was lowering my finger towards the 'Publish Post' button. Hello, sir. Bon weekend. ** I need to go find some kind of stimulant or something and wake up a little bit more than I am. I know Mr. Mark Doten and his Mountain Goats will take good care of you this weekend. See you on Monday.
No comments:
Post a Comment