the bad baroque

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:26:36 GMT

christopher hitchens is waterboarded

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:49:54 GMT

at the risk of spreading around the bad cheer, i'm cross-posting a video i found on atthesametime's journal of christopher hitchens being (voluntarily) waterboarded.

* the video is HERE.

* hitchens' article about the experience is HERE.

obviously, this is disturbing stuff, so consider yourself warned.

and to those of you unfamiliar with hitchens, i'd be hard-pressed to find someone with more peculiar political allegiances. the official story paints him as a "reformed" leftist turned neo-con, or a "liberal hawk," or simply a contrarian alcoholic. all these tags are at least partially true, but the full-picture is more complicated. hitchens was and remains an ardent supporter of the war in iraq, but is also sharply critical of the occupation of palestine. he speaks favorably of people like paul wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense under rumsfeld), but also authored the trial of henry kissinger-- in which he argues that one of the key administrators of our last giant, publicly-debated foreign policy catastrophe (vietnam) should be tried internationally as a war criminal. recently, he's received a lot of press for being perhaps the most belligerent anti-theist in the public sphere-- having authored the not-so-subtly-titled god is not great: how religion poisons everything.

i'm including this long, weird bio because i think it absolves him of any clearly-define-able political opportunism going into this. sure, there's a sense of bravado to it-- and hitchens is almost certainly trying to generate publicity/controversy for himself (in fact, he's a total showboat in this department). but it's not a gesture that can be reduced to, say, a moveon.org prank or a ploy to get obama elected. in a way, the fact that he's alienated himself so deeply in the public sphere (the right AND left typically deplore him) makes him an interesting candidate for this horrible experiment.

but enough political yapping. for whatever reason, some potent evidence that waterboarding is DEEPLY fucked up has arrived on the internet. if you have the stomach to check it out, click the links above.

done.

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:33:14 GMT

Lights Out (2008, mixed media: pencil, gouache, india ink and paper collage on board), 18” by 24”

this came out a little wonkier than expected. not sure how i feel about it yet. i wanted to loosen things up a bit, so mission accomplished on that front, i guess? i think i need to scale up again. my ideas are starting to need more space to move around. detail to follow after the cut...

... that's the bottom/right of the image.

ok, my butt is off to chicago and milwaukee... i'll return to more textual blogging when i get back. i have ample ten good things material already, and hopefully more to come upon my return?

do sumthin nice for the old man

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:33:33 GMT

"landscapism" at the armoury gallery in milwaukee

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:27:07 GMT

hi folks. sorry things have been so quiet on this here journal. part of the reason is that i've got a show coming up. it's in milwaukee-- a city i've never actually visited. do any of you guys live in or near milwaukee? if so, you should come. i'm actually gonna be out there for the opening, as part of a week-long trip to (mostly) chicago. hell, if chicago peeps want to come along, we might round up a little posse? i'm not entirely sure how to hype this thing, since it's in a city where i know literally no one. but the gallery is brand new, they're showing some really nice work, they've been super professional and accommodating with me, and they're excited enough about what i'm doing to showcase 10 of my paintings. some more details:

Landscapism @ The Armoury Gallery
June 20th - July 18th
Opening Reception Friday, June 20th 7-11pm
All artists will be in attendance
http://www.thearmourygallery.com/

The Armoury Gallery is pleased to announce Landscapism, the second exhibition for the new gallery, with an opening reception to be held Friday, June 20th, from 7-11 pm. Philadelphia artist Dan Schank, and Chicago artist Elizabeth Ann Lopez will exhibit new and old works, while recent MIAD graduates Mark Schieber and Erik Baden will collaborate on an installation for the show.

if anyone isn't totally tired of looking at them, most of my paintings can be viewed on my flickr page. as i said, ten of these will be on display, and nine are visible on flickr... it's essentially all of my work since about 2005, save broken eggs for breakfast (which was too heavy to ship) and december in the dust (which i sold, appropriately, last december).

the tenth painting is still unfinished! however, i took some in-progress shots of it today for a lecture i'll be doing later in the summer (i'm teaching a course on collage at a local university). i figured i'd post them here as well, since i often fear that the cut-and-paste aspect of what i do doesn't translate well into JPEG format...

...so here's all the pieces laid out on the board. there will be a few more as well, i'm sure. eventually i'll start adhering all these pieces on top of one another. sorry these images are all green and barfy...

...a few of the more detail-ish parts (the paper i laid these out on top of is super gross!)...

...and this is the piece i had the most fun with, i suppose.

anyway, spread the word... if you're local, definitely try to check out the space, regardless of whether or not my work is in it. the show following my own will feature another fine philadelphian, jackie hoving (who is an awesome artist/really cool person). i'm excited to make my trip out in a week or so...

Sun, 11 May 2008 18:57:40 GMT

...a round of applause for the ladies that introduced us to this little planet of ours...

some spring-time music for the internets

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:54:45 GMT

hey folks. i made you all a cyber-mixtape.

i was gonna make one of those muxtape things, but i included too many songs. and i didn't feel like editing stuff out. so i'm uploading it as a RAR file. if you have trouble opening it, let me know. and if i screw up sharing this, please bring that to my attention as well. anyway, here's what's on it:

1. enquanto seu lobo nao vem- caetano veloso
2. smiling ladies- heron
3. darling be home soon- billie davis
4. on the beach- the paragons
5. march! for martin luther king- john fahey
6. errare humanum est- jorge ben
7. go and tell your father- the cannanes
8. patrice- simon finn
9. simply couldn't care- tracey thorn
10. children laughing- wendy and bonnie
11. por todos lados- las malas amistades
12. web weaver- hawkwind
13. fed-a-ray- lord beginner
14. mountain book- OOIOO
15. the bloodbells chime- current 93

(46.7 minutes: DOWNLOAD HERE)

i tried to keep things fairly sunny and season-specific. save maybe the current 93 song. if people are feelin' this i'll do it more often?

(the cover image comes from my favorite website of the moment, square america)

happy election/earth day

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:53:44 GMT

1.

since my state held its primary today, i thought you guys might get a kick out of this awesome tv funhouse skit from SNL. it's from the beginning of the primary season, so all the original candidates (and a few who never actually ran) are parodied. laugh out loud funny-ness.

2.

and for earth day, i thought i'd share this great new york times article about piet ouldof, a dutch garden designer who welcomes dying plant-life into his layouts. an excerpt:

For Mr. Oudolf, in fact, the real test of a well-composed garden is not how nicely it blooms but how beautifully it decomposes. “It’s not about life or death,” he said, admiring the dark, twisting lines of the fennel. “It’s about looking good.”

i've been thinking a lot lately about the various worst-case-scenarios of climate change. and i'm not sure ouldof's work does anything terribly substantial to alter them. but if we're entering an age of unprecedented ecological ruin, then i'm in favor of his shift in aesthetics. in ouldof's cyclical world, i can admire the universe's magnificent ability to reclaim human artistry.

celebrity impersonators

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:15:38 GMT

sometimes i like it when things go undocumented.

i was thinking today about a cartooning class i took when i was twelve or thirteen. it was at a university downtown, where me and my friend chris would be dropped off each saturday morning. i was just old enough to comprehend the potential of a city-- the scale, the variety, the strangeness. and i got to see it through the lens of an art school. at 31, i can roll my eyes at many things about art school. but in 1989, i'd spent a decade being pelted with dodge-balls in a suburban catholic grade school... and art school looked downright utopian.

the cartooning class was a total misfit convention. and a sausage-fest, to boot. a sea of teardrop hairdos, greasy mullets and awkward hormones. everyone was trying to out-gore the next guy... blowing ink through rapidograph pens to make blood splatter.... over-rendering muscles, breasts and bulges at the expense of all else. it was lord of the flies by way of dungeons and dragons. only much more fun than either.

the teacher was a 40-ish dude named stu. stu came from a more doonesbury-esque school of comic-making, and greeted his cast of superhero-obsessed gore-hounds with great bewilderment. he expected students who wanted to be funny, and instead he found himself in front of people who actually took judge dredd seriously. stu overcame his initial disappointment by roasting us for the duration of each session. and he was funny as hell. being the youngest, smallest, and most-totally-uncontroversial suburbanite on board, i was dealt my share of his wrath. but it was a grand old time regardless.

when i try to picture stu, all i can clearly remember is that he both looked and acted like george carlin. there's a funny tension to the memory-- george carlin appears in my head, along with the sense that he doesn't belong there. too much time has passed to conjure the authentic stu. so i subconsciously replaced him with a dude from the SNL reruns i was watching around that time. my notion of celebrity is reversed-- george carlin becomes a stu impersonator, instead of the other way around.

a part of me enjoys this tension. the distance between event and memory becomes intimate, despite signaling the corrosive effect of time. if i discovered a photo of stu, my concept of him would alter substantially. something factual would emerge; something that doesn't defer to my imagination. by substituting the image of carlin, i created a new path toward the original event. documentation would break that path, and the work i put into it.

there are certain undocumented events in my life that live on through a hodge-podge of affect, consequence, romance and embellishment. my brain is an inexact instrument, assembling whatever evocations it can to keep these moments alive. i like photos albums and home videos as much as the next guy. but sometimes those foggy, half-assed brain chimeras really do the trick.

new painting + plug for carl's show

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:51:58 GMT

just finished this lil' guy...

Heads Up, 2008 (16" by 20": watercolor, gouache, conte crayon, cut paper collage on board)

here's a close-up of the center/left of the image:

... when i began this one, i figured there'd be more messy stuff like the blurry tree-branch outlines in the background. but i fell into my usual habits, i guess. lately, at some point i end up painting plaid patterns with tiny little brushes, regardless of any intentions otherwise. i've decided to stop fighting the impulse. i figure it must be part of that weird, contradictory, unconscious game-plan that typically concocts my best ideas anyway.

while we're on the topic of painting, my good friend carl baratta has a show opening this friday (april 4th) here in the city of brotherly love, titled choke the river with stone fingers.

here's a recent carl painting, titled The Faithful Protector (After Nick Englebert), to give you a taste:

(again, if you're just casually scrolling, that last image is CARL's, not mine)

the show is at vox populi (located on the 3rd Floor on 319 north 11th street, in philadelphia), and the opening is this friday from 6-11pm.

on an equally exciting note, there will (hopefully) be an exclusive private screening of the following AWESOMENESS at my house the night prior. the philly cyber-homiez should keep this in mind as well:

(and no, i'm not kidding... the dvd is in my possession as we speak...)

things are looking up here in danschank land... my employment situation appears to have brightened, and i might have some gallery-related news of my own on the horizon (details to follow later, on that front). on the other hand, i have an enormous zit on my right cheek that is totally swollen and feels like a black eye. i'm almost afraid to leave the house on account of it. i look like a leper in a monty python movie. you'd think my thirties would be a safe refuge from such humiliation, but no...

i can no longer resist posting about politics

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 05:09:45 GMT

(this entire post is kind of a re-tread of a conversation in olamina's comment threads...)

the optimistic narrative of the 2008 election, i suppose, has been about "moving past" race and gender. the official dialogue has been an awkward attempt at cultural invisibility, with the clinton and obama campaigns both trying to appear as un-controversial as possible. personally, i've felt deeply out of sync with all this superficial good cheer (don't look so shocked). in the awkward scramble to make what is, indeed, a historical election as un-threatening as possible, both clinton and obama have (almost dialectically) created a counter-narrative of american xenophobia itself.

sad to say, my own preference for obama began with a sour, pragmatic assessment-- barack is great at making his "blackness" seem unthreatening, and hillary is incapable of doing the same with her gender. that said-- after 8 years of george dubya-- i'd personally like nothing better than an angry, unapologetic black OR female president. if it were up to me, i'd elect angela davis. but as the current hateful baloney about reverend wright makes painfully clear, if either dem finds their way to the white house, it'll be a delicate game of eggshell-walking that gets them there.

i think the reverend wright scandal-- or something like it-- was inevitable, regardless of who gets the nomination. if hillary was ahead in delegates, we'd undoubtedly be learning who bubba's been screwing for the past eight years... and looking for subsequent signs of botox upon hillary's poor, overanalyzed face. on a brighter note, i think it's good that this story broke now-- prior to the nomination; prior to the republican smear machine kicking into full gear.

what i didn't expect from this careful climate was obama's "race speech." here it is, in full, for those of you who live under rocks:

cynical as i may be, i'm kinda with the majority on this one. it's an important speech-- undoubtedly the best thing in a presidential campaign during my lifetime. there's a few sour notes, but-- at its best-- it reminds me of james baldwin's the fire next time. in baldwin's assessment (as well as obama's), racism not only subjugates those of color, it also eats away at the heart of the racist. take 40 minutes and hear him out. it's honestly well worth it.

i want to use my favorite passage to get at something that excites me about obama:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

first and foremost, it's EXTREMELY REFRESHING to hear a politician speak as if he's addressing ADULTS. and the risk in this strategy is a depressing one-- do people want to be spoken to like adults? can the country that re-elected george w. bush even HANDLE this? i think the answer is yes, and i think an unlikely figure has proven it:

... that's right, folks. HUCKABEE. god-fearin', bible-thumpin', NORRIS APPROVED mike huckabee.

as far as i'm concerned, huckabee represents a strange paradox in american conservatism. progressives like myself rarely look past his social credentials (and with good reason). his stubborn rejection of homosexuality, evolution and abortion are high on his agenda, with no tolerance in sight. but beyond that deal-breaking veneer of ignorant hate, huckabee is also an economic moderate... and perhaps the bizarro-world, right-wing equivalent of a "populist". matt taibbi (my new favorite snark-meister) gets it exactly right:

Mike Huckabee represents something that is either tremendously encouraging or deeply disturbing, depending on your point of view: a marriage of Christian fundamentalism with economic populism. Rather than employing the patented Bush-Rove tactic of using abortion and gay rights to hoodwink low-income Christians into supporting patrician, pro-corporate policies, Huckabee is a bigger-government Republican who emphasizes prison reform and poverty relief. In the world of GOP politics, he represents something entirely new — a cross between John Edwards and Jerry Falwell, an ordained Southern Baptist preacher who actually seems to give a shit about the working poor.

i mention huckabee because, to me, he raises a very timely distinction in my country's psychology-- the difference between stupidity and willful stupidity.

as most of us know, huckabee appeals to the willful stupidity of vulgar prejudices: fags are bad, the ten commandments belong in the constituition, abortion is murder, etc. when huckabee addresses social issues, he asks us to react, rather than to think. but when he turns to economic stuff, he reveals a crack in that veneer. through huckabee, i sense that working class republicans realize ted kennedy isn't shipping their jobs overseas-- the country-club-fat-cats they elected are.

stylistically, obama's recent speech sounds similar to huckabee. in place of his greco-roman oratory, he adopts a calm, down-to-earth humanism. perhaps more than any political speech in recent memory-- including what he's offered himself-- he asks for reflection rather than reaction. more importantly-- he appears to sincerely believe his country is capable of it.

i wouldn't call myself a humanist or an optimist-- especially in the political arena. but one thing i do have faith in is this-- people often feel obligated to appear stupid, regardless of whether they are or not. stupidity is comforting in its conformity, and addictive in its righteousness. bush didn't merely capitalize on the country's stupidity-- he invited us to PERFORM it. performative stupidity leads to reactive anger. and anger is addictive.

huckabee once said: I'm a conservative, but I'm not mad at anybody about it.

in content, this is a lie. huckabee is rather upset with gay people... and secularists... and probably women's vaginas. but in form, he's calm and inviting. hell, he's even funny. his target demographic is used to being treated as NASCAR-worshipping yokels by both sides of the political fence. but this time around, they seem to prefer his eloquent, empathetic tone to the usual right-wing blowhard chorus.

obama's speech offers something more substantial. it's inviting in form AND content. rather than play to his strengths or sweep shit under the rug, he encourages an intelligent discourse, and makes no righteous assumptions about which americans are up to the task.

in my own life, i can applaud myself for having sophisticated opinions about gilles deleuze or alfred hitchcock. but if you handed me a wrench and stuck me under the hood of a car, i'd be useless. my intelligence asserts itself in the ways i feel comfortable. i'm inclined to speak up in a discussion of slavoj zizek... and to keep quiet about my unfortunate ability to retain the alice in chains lyrics i once loved in high school. what's brilliant about obama's speech isn't that he invites people to discuss race, as if its never occurred to us. instead, he acknowledges that we're already discussing it, and invites the country to discuss it together, and more openly.

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 15:34:48 GMT

ten good things (after considerable delay)

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 08:07:39 GMT

it's been a fairly dismal few weeks, folks. haven't been able to muster the energy to put one of these together for a while. i'd like to get back into the habit though. hopefully the SHEER LENGTH of this will help compensate...

10.

as my obsession with caribbean music grows, my interests are splintering off in two directions-- super upbeat, happy stuff (desmond dekker, prince buster, most calypso... albeit not lyrically) and moody, ethereal stuff. regarding the latter, i've become increasingly enamored with nyahbinghi music.

labeling "nyahbinghi" a genre isn't entirely accurate. more specifically, the term refers to a particular type of chant performed by rastafarians, with its roots in african history. at its most elemental, nyabinghi chants require three specialized drums and human voices. but in jamaica, the practice was later combined with reggae music, most notably (and initially) by count ossie and the mystic revelation of rastafari. it's ossie's music-- and that of those that followed him-- that interests me most.

the nyabinghi sound is often slower and more percussive than most typical reggae. like a lot of my favorite jamaican music, it's usually melodic-- but the melodies have a distinctly hypnotic quality. rastafarianism isn't a practice i can claim any personal investment in (which i'm sure comes as a big shock), but it's tough to listen to things of this sort without an awareness of a spiritual dimension. it's meditative and contemplative. and a lot of it is deceptively simple.

my favorite album in this style (thus far) is fittingly titled nyahbinghi, by ras michael and the sons of negus. the album takes the atmosphere of count ossie's early music and applies it to bare-bones pop/folk structures. the results are gorgeous. here's an mp3 of ras michael re-working a song you'll find familiar:

ras michael and the sons of negus, "rise jah jah children," mp3

and here's a clip of ras michael performing:

9.

without question, the best movie i saw in 2007
was mohsen makhmalbaf's a moment of innocence.

the film tells a peculiar real-life story: film director mohsen makhmalbaf (who some of you might know from kiarostami's equally crazed close-up) interviews dozens of aspiring iranian actors for his film salaam cinema (also awesome!!!). during the process, a giant, uni-browed gentleman named mirhadi tayebi strikes him as familiar. when tayebi's opportunity to perform arises, he explains his familiarity-- it turns out the director stabbed him with a knife during the iranian revolution. makhmalbaf was a young radical, later imprisoned for the act; tayebi was employed by the shah to police a demonstration. tayebi explains that he's always been a rough looking man, but that he would like to play someone noble in a film, despite his strange looks. he answers the casting call assuming that makhmalbaf owes him an acting opportunity because of the attack, twenty years ago.

what results is a compromise of sorts (a moment of innocence is not an easy film to summarize)... makhmalbaf and tayebi agree to construct a film based on their initial encounter (i.e. the stabbing), and the events that lead up to it. but in fine, prankish, iranian-new-wave form-- it's also a document of the two of them staging it. in a style that jumps back and forth between documentary and fiction (often several times per scene!!!), we watch as the actor and director cast their younger selves, explain their motivations, scout locations, and-- most amusingly-- argue.

the film that emerges is a brilliant collage of contradictions. on the one hand, it's stylistically quite radical. sometimes it's downright confusing. but it's also watchable, entertaining and often hilarious. it plays constantly with empathetic allegiances-- to this day, if you asked me which scenes were scripted and which weren't, i'd be at a loss to clarify. on the surface, it's prankish and cerebral-- even insincere, perhaps. but somehow, all this poker-faced baloney-- the bluffs, the con-jobs, the verite trickery-- burrows into the nature of memory with great intensity.

thematically, innocence calls to mind chris marker's la jetee. both are experimental in form. both deal with the irreversible nature of past events. both are deeply personal, and both are political. more importantly, they examine the entropic movement of history without (entirely) lamenting its corrosive effects. in both films, there's a desperate desire to re-create a past event, and to reconcile the present through its reconstruction. in both cases-- as this reconciliation becomes increasingly unlikely-- a reverence for the forward movement of time arises. as with most things dealing seriously with the issue of age, there's a melancholy to this reverence. but there's something enigmatic about it as well. in a moment of innocence, this heavy, complicated, vertiginous feeling-- of time and its erosion-- arrives in the form of a joke. and its comedy makes it more enigmatic.

8.

i've been noticing lately that, fashion-wise, i'm drawn to a certain false utilitarianism. i like things that look functional, but i'm ultimately indifferent to their use-value. i went shopping for shoes a few weeks back, and the stuff that impressed me most was almost deliberately dull. there's something mesmeric about the impression of functionality. even when it amounts to bullshit posturing (as in my case).

anyway, here are the sneakers i bought:

7.

i've been a fan of mike davis for a few years now. he's mostly an urban theorist-- but he has a literary sensibility, an occasional fondness for the vernacular, and a sense of political disgust that i can typically get behind. he's also, at times, incredibly fatalistic. but his bleakness almost always points towards legitimate, urgently-needed questions.

accordingly, planet of slums is both a bummer and a real eye-opener. it's davis' attempt to assess an often ignored global dilemma-- the more than one billion people living in informal, and often undocumented, slum conditions throughout the "global south." i'm no expert on this stuff-- and i can't account for the specifics of davis' research-- but the book is an illuminating introduction to a truly infuriating problem. it's full of sharp, bitter little morsels throughout-- attempts to re-prioritize larger debates, and take widespread ignorance to task. here's a powerful excerpt from the book's conclusion:

The demonizing rhetorics of the various international "wars" on terrorism, drugs and crime are so much semantic apartheid: they construct epistemological walls around gecekondus, favelas and chawls that disable any honest debate about the daily violence of economic exclusion. And, as in Victorian times, the categorical criminalization of the urban poor is a self-fulfilling prophecy, guaranteed to shape a future of endless war in the streets.

rough stuff. but worth considering.

6.
a new time-waster of mine-- which i highly recommend-- is to figure out whether or not public figures you like have blogs. there's a lot of good ones out there! especially when you factor in blogs sponsored by legitimate publications. here are a few i've been keeping up with:

* george packer's interesting times at the new yorker is a nice resource for grounded, unsensational political commentary. packer wrote a brilliant book about iraq called the assassin's gate, which i mentioned in an earlier ten good things (but am too lazy to link to).

* i discovered dennis cooper's blog (NSFW) because murdermystery occasionally links to it. i've actually never read any cooper, but he seems like an interesting guy. i'm not entirely sure what's going on over there... it seems as if he only writes about 30% of what's posted. but it's an interesting look at the graphic side of contemporary culture, regardless of who's responsible for it. i probably only read about 20% of what's posted, but i'm always happy to scroll around on there.

* mo rocca's blog is pretty much what you'd expect. sometimes he writes more-or-less seriously about politics, which is surprising. WHICH REMINDS ME: i think i saw him IRL on market street about 2 months back.

* NYTimes columnist nicholas d. kristof's blog is pretty interesting. i like that he seems open to discussion. there's a string of high-profile, often-interventionist progressives (i'd include george packer in this category, and samantha power as well) that seem to be causing a stir right now. i'm not sure if i can get behind them 100% necessarily, but i think they're raising interesting questions (about darfur, for example) at a time when it's *really tempting* to retreat into stubborn isolationism (in america, at least).

(sorry folks, i go into political mode around elections, i guess)

* finally, the mountain goats' john darnielle maintains a great blog, but you knew that already. you should check it out even if you don't like his music. he's a thoughtful dude, and he rarely writes about music that sounds like his own, actually...

5.

no explanation needed for this, other than it gets good about one minute in...

thanks rubens!

4.

i have to say that moving three blocks away from my old house has been a smart decision. my oldest friend/roommate actually bought this place, so now he's my landlord, as well as my surrogate sibling. the new street isn't burrowed as deep into the neighborhood, which has reduced the heckled-by-teenage-eminem-impersonators aspect of my life considerably. plus i got to paint the place. i've been filling in the blanks financially with house painting, so if anyone local wants to hire me, i work cheap! anyway, here's my new bedroom, in all of its green-ness...

3.

the idea of plowing my way through fernando pessoa's the book of disquiet in 50 page installments, like a conventional narrative, seems somehow inappropriate. pessoa's tendency to drop aphoristic observations like:

"To understand is to forget about loving."

... makes the linearity of the reading experience disappear. when i read a line like that, i'm no longer concerned with anything as trivial as "finishing the novel." closing the book and spending a few minutes thinking about it often feels as crucial as reading it. accordingly, disquiet belongs in a rare category of books i enjoy because i feel no obligation to finish. calvino's invisible cities would be another. i've been reading disquiet for two months and i'm only 54 pages in. but i can already tell it's one of the best things i've read in a long time. here's another illuminating excerpt:

We should wash our destiny the way we wash our body, and change life the way we change clothes - not to preserve life, as when we eat and sleep, but out of objective respect for ourselves, which is what personal hygiene is all about.

There are many people whose lack of hygiene is not a chosen condition but a shrugging of the intellect's shoulders. And there are many whose dullness and sameness of life is not what they wanted for their life, nor the result of having wanted any life, but just a dulling of their own self-awareness, a spontaneous irony of the intellect.

2.

every once in a while, something comes along that re-connects this boring 31 year old sourpuss to his inner thirteen year old girl. the latest awakening within this vital cavern of my consciousness comes thanks to a post-punk band called dolly mixture.

like many of my favorite things, dolly mixture doesn't easily fit into a category. musically, they might be described as a cross between x-ray spex and the shangri-las. they came out of the british punk scene, but they were only punk in the sense that they might have sounded like the ramones if they turned the distortion off ~~and their weiners fell off too~~. dolly mixture's sound owes more to 60's pop, in all its romantic glory. but unlike a phil spector produced "girl group," they don't rely on orchestration to back-up their melodies. this stripped down approach makes them precursors to much of the indie pop that has unfortunately been gathered up under the umbrella term of "twee". they're much more raw and vital than the worst of that genre, though. anyway, here's two of my absolute favorite songs by them, since picking one was driving me CRAZY:

dolly mixture, "my rainbow valley" (love affair cover), mp3
dolly mixture, "spend your wishes" mp3

1.

if you've spoken to me IRL in the past two months-- or if your username is mrwaggish or never_the_less-- then it should comes as no surprise that the number one spot on here goes to the wire, which sadly came to an end this week.

i've lived in philadelphia for the past five years, a city with similar afflictions to baltimore, where the wire takes place. accordingly, i'd like to say i can relate to the show, but i can't. as an educated suburbanite transplanted into a gentrifying, white, working-class neighborhood, i'm kinda safe from the wire, and its nuanced bureaucracy of drug dealers and junkies. the show doesn't simply expose the world of poverty, violent crime and a bankrupt war-on-drugs to me-- i've had plenty of college courses devoted to just that. the wire isn't about pity or hysteria. it aims much higher. first and foremost, it affords the urban poor the full-on, 3-D respect they deserve. from there, it reveals the overlapping institutions, hierarchies and ideologies that, too often, prevent that world from mixing with my own.

like most police dramas, the wire begins with a dichotomy. cops and drug dealers. but in place of the usual dull, dualistic morality (good guy/bad guy), it turns the baltimore ghetto into a dialectical hall of mirrors. the drug trade and the homicide department become dual bureaucracies capable of mirroring each other directly.

in the universe of the wire, few drug dealers can adequately be described as thugs. they're also diplomats ("proposition" joe), free-market economists ("stringer" bell) and social darwinists (marlo stanfield). concurrently, the show exposes high level thuggery in the mechanics of political campaigns and interrogation techniques. the pursuit of profit on the legal side of the fence often makes direct contributions to the criminality it purports to address.

as a narrative, the wire's most brilliant device is its usage of parallels. again and again, i am allowed access to developments on either side of the law, concurrently. there are young blowhards in the police force (herc and carver), and young blowhards on the street corner (bodie and poot). each side has its charismatic vigilantes (mc nulty/omar), and each side attempts large-scale structural reforms ("hamsterdam"/the co-op). it's not as simple as a reversal-- the point of the wire is not that cops are inherently bad, and the kids on the corner are inherently good. instead, it suggests that people adapt to a much larger, more ambiguous array of circumstances than we like to consider on television. and that developments on one side of the law can resonate within the other. it reveals how choices change lives, often unintentionally.

i should confess that the wire mirrors my political sensibility remarkably well, which probably contributes to my love for it. on the one hand, it seems to share my belief in civic solidarity. in many ways, it's a desperate plea for drug policy reform, well-funded social services, unionized labor and quality public education. on the other hand, it appeals to the anarcho-libertarian within me-- bureaucracies are fundamentally bankrupt... only "outsiders" have any real chance of reforming our institutions (and they're usually punished for trying)... and most importantly, hierarchy-- or the often-mentioned "chain of command"-- is typically at the root of most catastrophes.

finally, as sad as i am to say it, it appeals to the fatalist within me, as well. at my worst, i can defintely relate to the following scenario (which unfortunately will only make sense if you've been following the show)...

when i decided to write about the wire, i wanted to be vague enough not to spoil the series-- because i sincerely recommend it to anyone reading this. it's probably the best thing i've ever seen on television. better even than my beloved deadwood. i figured i'd end this post with two cryptic screen caps. the first is from season 3; the second from season 4. neither of these will make much sense unless you've seen the episodes. they represent two of the most intense moments in the series for me, and i've tried to present them in ways that won't spoil their impact for the uninitiated. i can explain them in the comment threads if they're unclear...

p.s. everyone should check out this long, amazing article about the series and its creator, david simon. an absolute must read.

personal quirks

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:35:37 GMT

(btw, a new ten good things is in the works... looming job applications just keep me from devoting any time to it...)

anyway, tagged by biblionerd_girl...

a) List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself
b) Tag seven people to do the same
~~c) Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it."~~

(do this if you feel like doing it)

1. i'm not a tech-y type in any way. i'm miserable with tools, instruction manuals and most crafts. even with painting and drawing, my mentality is always "whatever gets the job done." there's a part of me that would be perfectly happy to just pick up a ballpoint pen and a pad of paper and be done with it. when people start talking about glazes and sable brushes and shit like that, my brain turns off. i kinda dislike this about myself sometimes.

2. as we speak, i've had fifteen separate roommates throughout my life, and i've gotten along with all of them. in fact, barring about 5 or 6, most of them have either been close friends or people who became close friends. the weird thing is that i'm not a good roommate! i'm a complete slob, i'm bad with paying bills on time, my cat is a pain in the ass and i'm often up until the wee hours of morning.

3. i've done something similar to this before.

4. sometimes i genuinely think i could live in the desert. not forever, but maybe for about 6 months or so. i used to love trekking out to joshua tree national park when i lived in san diego, and sometimes i'll suddenly get a MAJOR urge to be out that way again. i'm a lot more outdoorsy than people seem to think i am.

5. my father's side of my family has its roots in the coal-mining industry of upstate pennsylvania. some of my relatives were believed to have been members of the molly maguires, a secret society of radical irish miners responsible for numerous acts of insurrection in the late 19th century. one of my uncles actually found a series of secret documents when he decided to drywall his basement about ten years back. some of my relatives even claim we are directly related to "black" jack kehoe, the group leader portrayed by sean connery in the film about them. my dad thinks that's bullshit though.

6. i think the way my brain works and the way the internet works are kinda similar. i learn through names, links, analogies and allegiances. if i'm interested in something, and people give me a list of things to look up inspired by it, it usually makes me happy. i have trouble considering things in isolation, and separating my own internal commentary from what i absorb. i'm often overwhelmed by the amount of things out there to learn about, and sometimes it's kinda crippling, creatively.

7. i feel a lot more comfortable socially right now than i have in years. but i still don't get out much.

youtube is my valentine

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:16:36 GMT

hi, i'm still here. everyone should take a look at hannah's awesome bollywood-themed youtube meme, in which i was "tagged." i'm not ordering anyone to do this, but "5 youtube music videos" seems to be the theme, if you wanna give it a shot. i figured i'd do mine for valentine's day (with no particular sweetheart in mind, dearest peanut-gallery)...

1. first up is a supremes song that i've recently decided is one of the great pop songs ever. the trick is to erase all associations with phil collins, and experience it anew. it also offers advice that i should personally consider, since i have a tendency to play the "fool who rushes in" in these circumstances. most of my choices are little bits of pop-philosophy, i guess. i like the idea of love-song-as-folk-wisdom. (unrelated: there's something a little scary about diana ross)...

2. i must confess that i've been won-over by the youtube celebrity phenomenon of fancy nancy. nancy is a hybrid of pee wee herman, homestarrunner.com and a less-emo miranda july. i like that she puts an aggressively "girly" spin on that weird adult swim-style non-sequitor humor that always irritates me-- and is a total BRO-FEST, 95% of the time. after 2 or 3 videos, nancy started getting my nerves, but by the 5th or 6th, she started getting my nerves so much that it became endearing again? maybe i just like hipster girls in giant red glasses?

3. here's a gal costa clip from her heyday. the stage set kinda reminds me of henri rousseau a bit. i <3 youtube...

4. i forgot that unrest had real-deal videos back in the day. it makes sense though... the first and only time i saw them was on the lollapalooza "second stage", hahaha... anyway, mark robinson apparently directed this video. but instead of him singing it, there's some dude who looks like a cross between scarlet johannsson and spicoli from fast times at ridgemont high. are there still cute, simple indie bands out there that don't fuck up their charms by being overbearingly "twee" about them? the older i get, the more i enjoy revisiting this no-frills breed of indie-pop from the early nineties. i downloaded a tsunami record the other night!

5. finally, here's a clip from neil young's super-underrated mtv unplugged appearance... this revisionist take on "like a hurricane" is my favorite recording of the song. i like the way form and content overlap. there's something really fragile about neil's love-ballad voice, and it collides nicely with the natural disaster imagery. the haunted house organ is creepy enough to prevent things from becoming "precious" as well. finally, i like the contrast between this sweet performance and neil's SUPER scruffy attire. he looks like a homeless man at a casting call for a dolph lundgren movie. but his voice is pure sugar.

and love is "like a hurricane," isn't it? c'mon, you know it's true... <3 <3 <3, internets...

another new painting

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 03:40:33 GMT

ok, i've been working on this one since-- YIKES!-- april of last year. not steadily, i suppose. it went through a lot of transitions. in fact, the two "studies" at the bottom of this post have literally been cut/pasted into its composition. if you compare the studies to the final image, you might get a clearer idea of my weird process than you would from JPEGS (i.e. how everything is painted on paper, cut with an exacto blade, and then re-assembled, one piece on top of another, in the final image). anyway, without further adieu...

Broken Eggs For Breakfast, 2007 (mixed media: pencil, gouache and paper collage on board) 36" by 36"

just to qualify, what follows are details of the above image... meaning cropped portions of the larger whole. since the majority of these are painted with tiny little brushes, i generally try to provide a few, so that you can see what's happening up close. these are not separate paintings. the first one is from the center of the image, and features three of the initial "studies" from the earlier post...

this one is from the top center (and came out with a bad glare, unfortunately)...

higher resolution images can be seen on my flickr account.

and now for some narcissistic rambling...

having finally finished this one, i'm ready for some changes. i feel like i've exhausted a number of approaches here. i think i may have overworked it a bit. expect the next few to be smaller and quicker, with more concentration on drawing and "touch." i'm beginning to get bored with the "graphic" look of these-- i'd like to move away from the comic-book type aesthetic, and try to create atmosphere through drawing techniques. i've been making a big mess in the studio for the past few days, brainstorming ideas. it feels pretty good.

a shout out goes to ironchefpinoy (an old grad-school homey) for turning me on to the work of 19th century japanese painter tsukioka yoshitoshi, who i've been oggling for the past few days. here's a reproduction of The Ghost of Okiku at the Dish Mansion that i'm particularly excited about...

... and since you've been patient enough to get this far, here is our favorite little furry man arthur, chillin' on the recently installed new wood floor outside my room...

in other web-related news, i changed my page layout a bit... added a new l'atalante-related avatar... and joined two nerdy websites, goodreads and the surprisingly lively art review, if anyone wants to be friends...

happy new year folks! (check me out bloggin like three days in a row)

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:13:17 GMT

(picture stolen from the amazing square america website.)

well, as resolutions go, i DID manage to knock it off with all the dumb smoking i was doing this time last year. and i guess i made art in waves of inspiration and complacency. hopefully '08 will yield more of the former. i don't work retail anymore, but i do still need a steady job-- so that's a mix of good and bad, i guess.

this year my resolutions are pretty simple: read more, write more, make more art, get an adult job that i can either throw myself into or ignore entirely at the end of each shift, be friendlier, be more unapologetic about being myself (which is working out for me more and more, i must say), start conversations at random and generally get out of the house more often.

it's 7pm and i'm still hungover from last night, but i'm excited about going out anyway.

i hope everybody's peachy!

new painting; general debauchery

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:59:58 GMT

as a little challenge to myself, i decided to whip up an entire painting in two sessions. just a little guy. it was a worthwhile little experiment, i guess. it's certainly not the nicest thing i've ever made, but whatever...

december in the dust, 2007 (16" by 20": india ink, gouache, cut paper collage on board)

and a detail, as usual...

in other news, the holiday season has been surprisingly fun. i've seen a variety of good people-- some of which haven't been around in weeks... months... years... and in one case, many years. i'm fortunate enough to have maintained friendships throughout my life-- ranging back to elementary school, even. sometimes i'm not great at keeping up with all of them, but over the past few weeks my crew's been formin' like voltron...

ALSO: about two weeks back, my extended family went off on our second annual holiday trip to the poconos. the level of squalor that occurs during these trips is really quite impressive. my dad's side of the family is in a nice grey area right now-- we're all adults (my sister katie is the youngest at 23), but none of us have children yet. so we scream and holler and carry on without worrying about impressionable young minds, bedtimes, standards of decency, etc. and for a bunch of old-heads, this crew drinks like they're celebrating their 21st birthday with keith richards. take a look at the following picture, & keep in mind that those are my RELATIVES falling all around me... the pic was taken just after an ill-fated attempt at a "human pyramid"...

god bless us, everyone!

spacing out with kiyoshi kurosawa

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 08:42:25 GMT

i've just finished kiyoshi kurosawa's new film, retribution, and i wanted to jot down a few thoughts about it. i've written about k. kurosawa before-- highlighting his peculiar take on identity, and his rather contemplative approach to nihilism and entropy. the same conclusions apply to retribution-- which is in many ways a re-tread of themes explored in 1997's cure-- but i think i can further specify what i find so effective.

retribution begins with kurosawa-favorite koji yakusho on the trail of a serial killer, and encountering a supernatural young woman in the wake of each crime. her presence triggers a certain amnesia within him, causing him to think he may be personally guilty of the crimes he's investigating. however, the facts don't align to his theory. the more guilty he feels, the better he becomes at finding the real murderers. his desire for personal incrimination is (ironically) thwarted by professional ingenuity.

kurosawa's films cultivate a desire for time and its mechanisms (history, memory, evidence, context). the detective fits perfectly into his sensibility. in many ways, he's a built-in spectator. as yakusho's investigation becomes more and more futile, his thirst for meaning mirrors my own. like myself, i find that yakusho is never really threatened in a horror-movie sense. he evades the dichotomy of death and survival, and my desire for either goes unfulfilled. i feel no lust for gore, vengeance or "justice"-- i'm more interested in a past or a future.

but retribution rejects my notion of time entirely, and offers space in its place. kurosawa creates an immense "non-environment"-- a terrarium of office cubicles, industrial ruins and garbage heaps. a labyrinth of flickering banalities that hints quietly, but explains nothing. a static space where solutions erode instead of bodies. yakusho is land-locked to an ever-expanding landscape of the present, and i'm shackled beside him to the bitter end.

HO HO HO

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:43:27 GMT

"doin' the freddie" in polite company

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 06:32:25 GMT

the other day-- on my secret blog mistress the willow house-- someone posted a clip of freddie and the dreamers performing their bubblegum hit, "do the freddie". i've watched it about eight times now, and it occurred to me that i was attracted to it for many of the same reasons that i respect the dance stylings of a certain mr. stipe (scroll to the bottom if you click that link). here is the clip in question... if you're at work, just watch it with the sound off, and you'll kinda get the picture:

oddly enough, the clip reminded me of michel foucault's history of sexuality series. i only read the first two volumes, but they effectively reconfigured my understanding of sexualized bodies (ooh la la), and how they fit into political systems. in foucault's assessment, the easy distinctions between repression and liberation are called into question. sexual expression (through discourse, as well as action) doesn't necessarily transgress ideology; quite often, it reconfirms it.

PICTURED ABOVE: foucault, in a parisian cocktail bar, midway through a spirited karaoke rendition of neil diamond's 1980 classic, "september morn."

the second volume in the series, the care of the self, deals with greco-roman antiquity. foucault calls into question the typical (perhaps uneducated... if "typical" refers to ME) layman's logic, which would take an orgiastic "pagan" greek culture, and contrast it to a prudent, christian, "roman" one (following constantine). as foucault sees it, it's more a shift in ideology than a case of the cosmos proclaiming the party to have ended. in ancient greece, sex was judged according to the maintenance of one's body. christian rome would make the act metaphysical-- sex, particularly in its overlap with reproduction, makes an ideological link to the soul.

as dramatic and romantic as the SEX + SOUL COMBO must sound, it's the earlier (grecian) model that most interests me here (i.e. in relation to "the freddie"). a code in which degrees of excess and moderation replace the taboos and transgressions we've inherited from the A.D. calendar. for men-- and i should mention here that 50% of the universe seems to have gotten a pretty raw deal under either ideology-- the central issue was the expression of bodies. the how, where, and when of sex moreso than the "why?"-- who does it to whom, how much affection should be shown, how old are the participants, who's on top, who's on the bottom, and so forth. a complicated game of etiquette, with the movement of the male body as its central emblem of scrutiny.

in 2007, my world is perhaps a conflicted hybrid of both mindsets. sexual expression is by and large "permitted," provided that it drags a healthy dose of stupid nonsense off to the bedroom with it.

paris hilton's image strikes me as emblematic... the randiness she offers is a salacious glimpse into something fundamentally obscene, but "aristocratic" enough to deny me carnal access. she emerges as an idealized egotist too embedded in her own hipster malaise to ever properly enjoy anything. her hyper-conscious-ness toward social status reduces the bacchanal to breadcrumbs, offering me a leftover casserole of envy and moral outrage. i'm expected to hate her for trangressing a fantasy of "good-standing" i can't quite commit myself to. paris introduces me to a world-in-decline-- half-heartedly lap-dancing in dialectical tension with "beaver cleaver" americana-- offering a tepid array of nip-slips as my substitute for wonder and inspiration. self-hate is peddled off in the form of an erection.

freddie, however, will have none of this de-caf baloney...

take another look at that clip if you have to. as a citizen of the 21st century, can you think of anything more out of synch with your standards of proper male behavior? when michael stipe throws his typical tantrums he can at least hide behind "artistic" eccentricity. but freddie and the dreamers were as mainstream as it gets. the infantile strut they offer is a precursor to the pop-and-lock-routines we see today. the definition of a gimmick.

the always reliable lester bangs offers the following:

"... Freddie and the Dreamers [had] no masterpiece but a plentitude of talentless idiocy and enough persistence to get four albums and one film soundtrack released ... the Dreamers looked as thuggish as Freddie looked dippy ... Freddie and the Dreamers represented a triumph of rock as cretinous swill, and as such should be not only respected, but given their place in history."
let's consider the dance specifically. what's amazing is what it is not:

* it's not difficult-

the gesture celebrates its own sense of the lackluster... as a signal, it appears to exclaim "I GIVE UP", and to somehow mechanize its sense of futility.

* it's not controversial-

this is the british invasion at its most vanilla. in fact, its melody is so unconcerned with innovation that it begins to mirror the kind of re-examined innocence that gave birth to punk. freddie becomes a strange bedfellow to jonathan richman, albeit lacking the latter's vitality. their commitment to frivolity would become the tool by which the ramones would later antagonize a sea of hotel california fans in the seventies.

* it's not tantalizing-

if "the freddie" demands a female partner at all (and does it?), it's only out of conformity to social norms. it's hard to imagine its successful mastery getting anyone to second-base behind the malt shop. even the dance chaperones must have looked on in horror.

what "the freddie" ultimately offers is perhaps what is prohibited on the dance floor today-- an almost "pre-sexual" sense of abandon, and a lack of self-consciousness. initially, i found the dance effeminate-- but i think this is the wrong way to look at it. it's precisely the kind of hoedown children whip up when they're still young enough to avoid the foul social strangehold that so mercilessly divides us into "men" and "women." looking on in 2007-- since god only knows what this meant in the early 60's-- it contains a radical rejection of the notion of embarrassment. it's a celebration of egalitarian meaninglessness, making its very sense of invitation physical.

**consider the enthusiasm prompting its most awesome youtube comment**:

Im 12 this is my favorite song!!! My dad has it in his jukebox! I wanna learn this on my guitar!
god bless you, little one... i thank god that i haven't internalized enough of the world's baloney yet to look past such loveable "wrong-ness." not that i want to retreat back to childhood innocence or anything. instead, i reserve the right to set aside constipated male adulthood from time to time-- and to let loose. i wanna live in a world where shameless displays of enthusiasm are still possible-- where rump-shakin' amounts to more than ego-trippin', psycho-sexual foreplay. where skill-less-ness and belly laughs and unbridled glee require no apology, and offer no explaination.

GIVE THANKS, TURKEYS!!!!!!

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:03:29 GMT

have a great holiday, folks. and to all you non-americans, have a great TOTALLY ORDINARY THURSDAY.

sometimes i live for witty remarks

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 05:54:21 GMT

the weird thing about adding lj feeds is that there's still a comment option. like, you could post a comment... but who's gonna receive it? i mean, why bother, right?

a while back, i added the bbc world news feed, figuring i'd trick myself into following current events more rigorously by sneaking them onto my friends page. it's had mixed results as a strategy.

anyway, every once in a while, someone will post a comment on a feed update. they usually venture between funny and soapboxy. but they always have this quality of-- i dunno-- shouting out into the void or something that i like.

what i'm trying to say is that the greatest bbc feed comment i've yet read appeared tonight, and i thought i'd share it with you all. it's the first one, obvs:

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/bbcnewsworld/14952082.html

happy halloween (slightly late)

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:08:20 GMT

... all the dancing in this video used to really freak me out when i was little...

user interests meme, ahoy!

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:48:45 GMT

i was tagged by murdermystery to do one of these interest list memes. i like this one better than most memes, so here it is:

"If you comment on this post, I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along."
if you want to comment and not do this on your own journal, that's fine by me, obvs. i'd like to read the accounts though. anyway, here's what mike picked for me...

1. 14 iced bears are a british band that can be described as indie pop, lo-fi, twee pop, etc. they were part of the C86 scene, so chances are they pre-date all the bands you currently resent for fitting the labels i just listed. i'm not wild about their second album, wonder, to be quite honest. they drifted into a bland "college rock" sound that i can't really hang with by the early nineties. but their early stuff is pop music at its simplest and most loveable. listen to this track, and picture me dancing like michael stipe throughout my house. you know you want to.

14 iced bears, "shy like you" mp3

michael stipe has nothing to do with this band, by the way.

2. chinua achebe entered my life after a phase where i was reading a lot of graham greene novels. greene is a fantastic writer, but i wanted to look toward a different kind of voice in relation to his typical subject matter (end of colonialism, etc.). achebe was the perfect follow-up. like greene, his novels are concise and economical. and as a native of nigeria, his perspective on colonial occupation, etc. is obviously much different than greene's. achebe has a real knack for balancing a variety of allegiances and ideologies, and writes with a seemingly effortless lack of pretension. my favorite book of his thus far is a man of the people, but there are many i have yet to get through yet.

3. exact change press is a fantastic publisher, and i'm *really* glad mike picked this one for me to write about. they specialize in re-issuing lesser-known literature from the major art movements of the twentieth century (with a special penchant for surrealism). it's through them that i discovered novels like leonora carrington's the hearing trumpet, louis aragon's paris peasant and unica zurn's underrated dark spring. furthermore, exact change is run by damon and naomi, the psych rock duo that once made up two thirds of galaxie 500!

4. philip guston

...is probably the painter with which i feel the greatest affinity personally. he was pre-occupied with apocalyptic imagery... felt powerless in the face of an abysmal socio-political landscape (vietnam, upheaval surrounding civil rights, etc.)... worked with a fine-tuned vocabulary of icons and images... added immense amibiguity to the identity of his own icons (e.g. what exactly am i to make of his cartoon KKK hoods?)... and, hell, he even did his best work at night, apparently. minus his gooey application style, there isn't an awful lot i can't relate to about the d00d in my own work, honestly.

5. regis philbin reminds me of my grandfather. and jack lemmon. and jack lemmon reminds me of pretty much every man over the age of 60 on my mom's side of my family. somewhere in that chain of associations, i developed an affection for regis. we all have our quirks.

HEY LOOK IT'S YOUR NEW FAVORITE HAT!!!

6. ryszard kapuscinski is someone i wrote about not too terribly long ago. so i'll merely add that since i wrote that, imperium has become my new favorite book by him.

7. and finally, weird mouths are something i find sexy in the ladies. i'm particularly hot for big teeth, crooked-or-otherwise-irregular smiles, and-- sometimes-- big lips (though pouty lips are starting to become maxim magazine fodder in a way that doesn't do it for me). an example of a girl with a weird mouth that i'm smitten with: