Keef

I take back almost everything I said about the book by Keith Richards. I decided yesterday morning that I really needed to finish it.  So I brought it out to the couch in the living room and convinced the dog to sleep up on the couch with me. Such is my threat to the world.  I've reached the "Goats Head Soup", "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll" and "Black and Blue" era so I appropriately put those albums on in order.  Ron Wood joins the band.  This was the birth of The Rolling Stones that I knew.  

Aside from the book, as for Keith and the way his fans have always talked about him...

His fans do not seem to have genuine admiration for him. That's why there are so many endless jokes, even cruel ones.  They are able to enact their rock and roll fantasies through him and because of that they secretly despise him, even want him dead, but it's always done through the facade of jest. Even his talents are denigrated because to consider that he can act the way that he acts, escape punishment, and still be talented is too much for many people to accept. They want to be him but they can't stand him being him.

In the Mick/Keith dynamic most would imagine themselves to be the "Keith."  I've had several friends throughout my life describe themselves this way, strangely. By doing so it assumes the Mickness of the other: an either visible or invisible falseness, an unneeded pompousness, the classic front-man criticisms, etc.  But what could be more pompous than assuming you share recognizable qualities with Keith Richards? If anything it reveals a homo-eroticism that most people would recognize as much more of a Mick quality. So aligning yourself in your imagination with Keith makes you much more like Mick just by doing so.  

Nobody struggles with Iggy Pop in this same way.  Some people also want to be Pop but they don't seem to struggle with him being Iggy Pop.  Sure, jokes are made, but they don't seem to have the same dark source. I'm not sure what the difference is, or even if there really is one, or if it is all just another product of my imagination.

I blame Keef, of course.  That's the interesting part of him, how he becomes an all-purpose blame doll, and always has been. People need somebody that they can blame for their behavior, or someone who makes their behavior seem acceptable in comparison. Once they've put you in that role it is very difficult for them to allow you to be anything else.  It is an endless circular trap.

The bio is an interesting report of a time, of many times.  It is unfortunate to see Keith with the unquenchable need to bash Mick, and everybody else he's ever had issue with. There are only two types of people in Keith's world, the fun and good ones, and then the ones that are like Mick.  It gets tedious, much like drugs and drinking buddies do.  But the book is a lot of fun, even if it is just the collected ruminations of a bitter, old, once dynamically flawful man. 

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self-portrait

(self-portrait)

I need a photographic theme.  There is only so much poking fun of Star Wars and Selavy I can stomach.  I walk around taking snapshots but very little emerges. I shoot the same parts of New York endlessly on my way to work and back again.  Ground Dog Day.  I get duplicate pictures over and over with only occasional differences.  I need to find a theme and then go out shooting with that in mind.  But where am I going to find black and white springtime nudes frolicking in the fountains of NYC in slow motion?  Women, that is.  I know if I didn't qualify I'd have Selavy posting about the male proboscis again. I wonder how his bonerville series is developing...

No. I trust that everybody sees the good-natured jesting in yesterday's post.  I see all things as harmless and funny. But I have learned that my judgement is not always to be trusted in that regard.  I've had to be pulled back from the edge and reminded many times that cancer is not funny, nor is polio, AIDS, the holocaust, JonBenet Ramsey, and jungle fever.

I think I might be autistic.  

Symptoms:

1. Difficulty in mixing with other children

2. Inappropriate laughing or giggling

3.  Little or no eye contact

4. Apparent insensitivity to pain

5. Prefers to be alone; aloof manner

6. Spins objects

7. Inappropriate attachment to objects

8. Noticeable physical overactivity or extreme under activity

9. Unresponsive to normal teaching methods

10. Insistence on sameness; resists changes in routine

11. No real fear of dangers

12. Sustained odd play

13. Echolalia (repeating words or phrases in place of normal language)

14. May not want cuddling or act cuddly

15. Not responsive to verbal cues; acts as if deaf

16. Difficulty in expressing needs; uses gestures or pointing instead of words.

17. Tantrums - displays extreme distress for no apparent reason

18. Uneven gross/fine motor skills (may not want to kick ball but stack blocks)

Sounds like most dj's I know.

    

I stopped writing for a minute and went and read my buddy's post from today.  It is for this reason, among others, that I read his site. His insight into the world and his knowledge of photography.  That is part of what I lack, historical perspective, knowledge of photography and photographers. 

I need to start reading again.  I have slowed even on the biography I was reading, which is appropriately Keith Richards'.  It is a sometimes fun read but it starts to come off as just another old millionaire rock star grinding his axe. Yes, it is amusing to hear him take down Mick Jagger but it takes some of the pleasure out of listening to The Stones. I had promised that I would stop reading rock-and-roll bio's but then a friend gave me Bill Graham's and another gave me Paul McCartney's and another lent me Keith Richards', a friend suggested and so I bought, Art Pepper's... 

Yes, this last one is jazz. But he lived his life in a very rock and roll way.  

As I said before, you must be very careful with what you read. It will make you want to live life that way. That's why I've stayed away from The Gospel.

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The fuller pink moon

(Image provided by Johannes Kepler)

Just to be clear... The full moon was last night.  Even if you live in England on GMT.  It happens at the same time for everybody, pretty much. Though some of us live in different time zones and use different standards to recognize those various "times."  It has to do with the earth being spherical and rotating on its axis just as much as it has to do with the moon being round and going through various phases as it orbits the earth.  

My astronomer friend over at selavy tried to snarkily challenge me on this...  

Just a few days ago I wrote a post about how he was my science teacher and I used to ridicule him and question his facts.  Good thing.  If I had listened to him then we'd be celebrating a second full moon again tonight.  

Some people you just can't reach....

All fallacious astronomy aside, there's always next month, Princess...

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The Pink Moon

There is a full moon out tonight, the pink moon of April. I went outside to walk the dog and snapped this inner-city picture of it. 

There is an album by Nick Drake called "Pink Moon."  It was his last.  I am listening to it now.  I would not suggest it unless you are in the mood for nearly unending melancholy. 29 sparse minutes of it anyway.  It was his Madame Butterfly, sort of.  He was its Madame Puccini.  23 years old when he recorded it.  At 26 he was dead by his own hand, the sorrow from which there is no return, the eternal woe.

Apparently the significance of the name of the pink moon comes from a sprouting moss that is one of the earliest widespread flowers of spring.  That little tidbit of information is for all of you who live in cities and might not be aware of this very common rural knowledge....  No, I just discovered it myself.  But I figured I would save all of you the time spent in online research.

Today has been a slow day spent mostly in bed watching movies and ordering food, steak and vegetables.  That bed from which I came, the place to which I now return, armed with a pint of ice cream and dreams of tomorrow.

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Love USA

There are many stories that I can not tell here.  Being married is preventative to some of my tale-telling ways.  Perhaps in time I will be able to relay some of those fables. But for now the wife has issued a clear decree of: No.  It is understandable, of course. I shudder to think how her site, if she wrote one, would read from time to time, with me as a subject.  I create absurd stories and situations with the least effort imaginable, sometimes none at all.  I oftentimes create the best tales as part of actively trying to prevent them from reaching the tale level.  Or perhaps it is only the way I see the situations that makes them absurd.  I can never be sure. Who really can?

The cook pictured above sure does "Love USA"... He saw me taking pictures so he came over to get in the shot, I think.  Or perhaps he wanted to see if I myself wanted a "Love USA" steak-and-cheese sandwich of my own.  I was out and taking pictures of graffiti/tags/street-art, trying to accumulate some images from which to work.  I am beginning to suspect that I will never get the interview that I was hoping for. Though this guy seemed willing to talk about, or sell, his art.

The day before yesterday was our 2nd anniversary, my wife's and mine.  This was more of our "secret" anniversary, as we snuck off to the courthouse and got married on tax day two years ago. Nobody knew we were were going to do it, save a few inside accomplices and the civil servants who facilitated it. Then we had a wedding ceremony nearly 6 months later, almost to the day.  We didn't even know we were going to elope a few days before it happened.  We hadn't spoken in months.  I had a girlfriend. We were trying to break up, once and for all.  It didn't work.  

We do one thing better than break up and that's get back together.  

So be it, we agreed.  

It is written....

Love US

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Inter-Galactic Fundamentalism

I began writing this post three times and then stopped what I was writing, deciding against each of the subjects.  They were all too inflammatory, in one way or another.  So, I decided that I would write about nothing, or close to nothing:  Hollywood films.

I watched "The Social Network" last night.  It was slightly more adult than an after-school special, but had the same tone.  The only thing that made it more interesting than an after-school masterpiece was the subject matter, Facebook. I've recently encountered some social problems on Facebook so it made for fun and informative viewing.  People who are partially dehydrated seem to hate Facebook and what it represents.  They fail to understand that nobody really wants to get to know them any better than on that level. They wrongfully assume that human interrelations were far preferable when people were forced to avoid them in real life.  They ruminate with artless surmising that they actually do have much more to say than can be conveyed in a single sentence. 

I'm amazed at the films that get nominated for Academy Awards. None of them seem very good. But I am supposed to keep quiet about that.  I already have far too much of a reputation for being a nay-sayer when it comes to these things.  It's no wonder that Jack Nicholson hasn't been to the award ceremony in the last few years.  He's trying to keep his prestige untainted by the new wave of cinema-of-uneventfulness.  Things don't-happen in film now with far less impact than when he was not-doing things.  Five difficult pieces, to watch.

I mean, "The King's Speech"... really?  I thought it was okay but it wasn't a film that deserved "best picture."  The "best" that can be said about it was that it was a watchable piece of reflective history. The climax was not only dialed in, but it was the triumph of what? A king had to speak to his subjects, to convince them to die for their country, and then did so with the help of a charming commoner? An Australian no less?  The way people were rolling over themselves about this film you might have thought that the king had actually enlisted to fight. What an absolute triumph of the eternal royal spirit.  Out of seeming necessity he befriended the only mortal man that was able to help him.... A victory for all of humanity.  Kingly catnip.

I really started noticing this trend of overtly flimsy filmmaking with "Juno" winning the best original screenplay a few years back.  If that's the best that the film industry has to offer then it's no wonder that what's her name (Legally Witherspoon) and the other (Sandra Bullock) have won best actress in the last few years.  

Don't Sarah Jessica Parker and Sandra Bullock's faces look like shaved knee caps? I did a search to verify how much I don't care for S. Bollocks and in most of her online images she just looks like a tired demon, a worn-out Barbizon gargoyle.  

Holy crap, I just looked back at the last 11 years of "winners" and here they are, in order: Julia Roberts, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, Hilary Swank, Reese Witherspoon, Helen Mirren, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Sandra Bullock, Natalie Portman... The best actor category is no better: Russell Crowe, Denzel Washington, Adrien Brody, Sean Penn, Jamie Foxx, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Forest Whitaker, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Penn, Jeff Bridges, Colin Firth.

I was going to comment further on that lineup but it speaks for itself.  A smattering of good performances among them, but mostly just adequate roles, written and performed adequately.   Forest Whitaker should be neutered and Russell Crowe should be spayed.  Wait.  Maybe I got that backwards?  Which actor was born with male sexual organs?

So, Darren Annoyingofsky

"Black Swan"... Daronoffs (as his pals call him) shoots most of his films as if they are horror-suspense thrillers, but without the horror (he probably feels it's beneath him), and the suspense is always far too heavy-handed (nothing ever really shocks because every scene is shot as if it's a remake of an an entire Hitchcock film condensed down to music video length and style).  

"Requiem For A Dream" was actually a very straight-forward horror film that substituted drug-use for gratuitous hockey-masked murder.  It rendered the same effect, but with moralistic overtones that were, and long have been, cinema's version of fundamentalism.  All drug users suffer a similar fate: double-sided anal dildo sex for money, while revealing a sustained inner forlornness. There is no way to feel ambiguous about that film. The best one can do is to defend themselves from it by looking away and humming a battle hymn. This is not from the incapacity to look, but from disinterestedness in being a willing accomplice.  Or from the fear of getting a inconsolable lonely erection. 

The film exploits the subject that it pretends to explore more fully than almost any other I've seen.

There were rumors that Russell Crowe had to be gently escorted from the Soho hotel when he rented it on pay-per-view. Witnesses queried why he was wearing his Gladiator chains.

"The Wrestler" was pure horror, at least to me.  It was about an individual's inability to accept any other life other than the one they had chosen previously for themselves. Even though that life will most certainly bring about their demise.  If this doesn't scare the shit out of every person who saw it then I congratulate you on a life well lived and choices well made. They made a remake of it called "Crazy Heart" except the main character finds jesus, country music and AA at the end.  He is rewarded with massive publishing checks and a new pair of boots and blue-jeans for having done so.  Unsurprisingly, the lead actor won an Academy Award for being so cinematically penitent.  I mean... the victory in the film is that a sloppy drunk finally goes to AA... That's not a great film.  It's only an important part of driver improvement school.

"Black Swan" was just plain silly, again.  I only made it about an hour into the movie before I fell asleep under the dancing eye and doleful hand of uber-uncertainty-cinema.  I almost held on for another scene of Natalie Portman playing with herself (I knew there had to be another one coming) but the image of her running across the sand in one of those later still-born Star Wars films kept playing across the theater of my mind.  It's like hearing a girl fart when you first have her alone. It's difficult to ever really care about her after that.  

Does anybody remember Natalie's awkward run? It's a shot in one of the Star Wars films?  Suddenly they all need to make jedi-haste because there is some ripple in the force, so they take off running across the sand.  Her run is so exaggerated and false that it's pricelessly laughable. Anybody?  Wait, what am I talking about? I know guys that have probably just soiled themselves at the mere mention of it, Star Wars.

Star Wars.  Just seeing the two words together brings them galactic genital pleasures. STAR WARS...

Where were we?

Yes, American films of the last 10-20 years have been mostly awful, with only occasional glimmers of hope.  There have been some good films here and there and an isolated great one (though I can recall none off the top of my head) but the big Hollywood stuff is just boring.  All of that money and no ideas.  Once they started focusing their energies on doing biopics (Aviator, Ray, I Snort The Line) then the whole industry just became the big-screen Reader's Digest.  Is that reference too old?  Probably. Does Reader's Digest still exist?  Yep, I checked.

Well, you guys get the idea.  We're out of time. And this was the condensed version...

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Unpainted Huffheinz

(Unpainted Huffheinz, edition 1)

Spring is here. The beautiful days are split up evenly by rainy days that aren't exactly cold but they are neither very pleasant. For all of my complaints I really do love New York and I will miss it if we leave. I will even miss the rainy days spent alone or with Rachel. Rain in New York is wonderful when you don't have to work.  If you have to commute through the rain then it is a sky filled with liquid misery, a sky that's always heading south. To ride your bike in the cold rain through the streets of New York is one of the most common, dangerous and joyless acts that man has devised.

Yesterday I hit 300 published posts to this site.  I have been wanting to find a selection of posts that would function as a resume, of sorts. Any suggestions would be welcome.  I am trying to get yet another real job.  One can not have too many jobs in these uncertain times.

I have been working to make arrangements to interview a local street-artist but it has been difficult.  The people involved do not seem interested.  Either that or they are skeptical of any white guy with a camera asking questions. I do look like a cop, I guess. I probably sound like a lawyer. They have plenty of troubles of their own right now and probably don't need any additional ones.  I wrote an entry that I have not posted yet because I don't want it jeopardizing my chances of the interview or the possibility of getting footage of him getting out of jail. I will go and try again today. To talk with the contacts I've met and hope for the best, hope that what I say doesn't scare them. Perhaps I can convince them that I'm a fireman rather than a deputy or detective. 

I sat and chatted with a friend last night. We discussed aging, the difficulty involved with the maintenance of the self, the near impossibility of it.  I said that, I'm half the man that I used to be but twice the size.  Everything hurts, mirrors most of all.  I've tried to start exercising again, knowing that it will confer benefits, that it relieves pain and makes brave the spirit.  But it is a hard sell. My mind rejects it flatly.  My inner-monologue can be quite convincing.  I have written volumes of closing arguments with myself on the shadow of doubt, the questionable benefit of a pushup.  I start with attacking the value of one repetition then I expand the argument to the entire process.  I am prepared to appeal the case half the way to the supreme court, or until I'm out of breath, whichever occurs first.  Perhaps I am a lawyer, a flagging ambulance chaser, quickly losing ground....

I told my wife that if this street-art project gets off the ground then there's a reasonable likelihood that I will get arrested filming it. The police make a distinction between those committing an act of vandalism and those recording an illegal act with the intention of distribution.  It would mean that my camera would be seized and I would be thrown in jail, only getting my camera and freedom back with difficulty and great expense.  So, I might very well be looking for donations through this site soon.  Get your $5 bills ready.  Send them directly to my bail bondsman, he awaits on retainer and 24 hour call...  Inquire with the clerk for details. 

I'm selling signed and dated prints to the works above and below.  These would look great in your bathroom, bedroom or boudoir... the finest selection in fixtures and appointments.

(Unpainted Huffheinz, edition 2)

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Too far?

(photo used with vague permission of the artist)

Too far?  Probably.  I snapped.  I'll admit it. 

Some truths can only be heard from overstatement.  So rather than repeat myself more often that necessary, I opted for "the best defense"... Though overstatement often generates some confusion along with it, the shock of the unnecessary.

Writing is an act of sometimes intense self-consciousness.  Writers are customarily a miserable collection of people.  I've only known a few published writers and nothing that they had published did I think was very good.  But I've known hundreds of unpublished writers, of all sorts, and they are a twisted and wretched set.  They will repeatedly try to draw conversations into their closed and claustrophobic perspective of the world. They speak in rehearsed phrases, failed fragments, or from the stolen lines of other, better writers.  

They will habitually try to best you with their knowledge of writers' names and works.  They don't seem to notice that their name-dropping is a turn-off for others, almost as much as when they discuss their writing openly to a disinterested and unsuspecting victim. Or worse, they see their knowledge of writing being a turn-off merely as assured self-validation. They view it as an evident indication of their superiority and largess.  

I should know.  I was like this for many years.  I assumed that the world would want to know what I knew, and what I thought.  I suppose I still do, hence this site.  But people who are consumed with literature have this special sort of condescension that assumes not only the ignorance of the listener but that the listener would desperately desire to trounce this ignorance if only they were made aware of what the speaker is clearly aware of, and has been for many years. Oftentimes early childhood is when they first dipped into the masterpieces of world literature, you know, usually delving in from the native tongue....

When I say that they are miserable I do not mean that they lack humor. Writers are often the funniest people I've ever met.  Pain is the source of much humor, especially the self-inflicted variety. If they're not always able to be funny themselves then it is oftentimes just as easy to have fun just listening to them. Again, intense self-consciousness routinely produces humor, one way or another.

So, writing... no other art-form suffers as much at the hands of the amateur.  Just look around.

See?

The image above has been treated and only resembles the original, but the photographer was unable to find the source image.  So I tired of waiting and used this version, which is a screen-shot from an online show of his that can be found at this site. The online exhibit is called Lonsomeville, but I encourage anybody interested to look around the site for other pieces as well.  

One day he will print, sign and date this piece, then send it to me as a gift.  

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C'est la vie

I have finally lost my mind, once and for all.

I have a friend that I've mentioned here many times.  He has been a mentor to me since I was about 16.  I dropped out of high school for reasons that I won't go into here or now. But he was a teacher at an alternative high school that allowed for the enrollment and advancement of students like myself, as well as others that needed a high school degree in a different fashion, for any variety of reasons.    

He was my science teacher at first, then literature, then video production. There might have been other classes he taught as well but those were the ones I remember. The ones that stuck with me and affected me most deeply.  

He used to bring books of poetry into science class and read from them.  Strange and unexpected verse, illicit subjects dealt with in a very straight-forward manner. He encouraged us to not shop at the local (and mostly useless) book stores. But instead to drive the 2 hours to Gainesville and shop at Goerings. A college book store very near The University of Florida campus. So I did.  This is where I first bought books by Bukowski around the mid 1980's, among other books, but those were the ones that jumped out at me, as he suggested they might.

I was a young, arrogant, pain in the ass.  I would challenge his authority in class, make fun of him, questions his facts, interrupt his lectures, etc. But I would also listen, as much or more than anybody else there. Eventually I would contribute productively, though admittedly it was mostly just to show off.  As I said, I was arrogant and young.  But I would search out his classes and take them specifically. Somehow we became friends.  The moment that I realized it had happened was once when he asked me to help him move a washer, or dryer, or refrigerator, or some large appliance. I had a truck and he needed help. He offered to pay me.  I was glad to help and we made the arrangements.  When we were done he offered me money and I tried to decline but he insisted.  That is the way that I remember it anyway.  But then after forcing the money on me he handed me a book.  It was Cormac McCarthy, "All The Pretty Horses."  He had written an inscription in it thanking me.  So, I read the book. You can figure out the rest.  I learned how to more gracefully acknowledge admiration for someone.

There was a passage in the book that I have tried a few times to appropriate, but have been woefully unable to. It is the moment that John Grady Cole encounters his destiny and the description of that awareness.  It was so simple that there is hardly any way to imitate it without stealing it.  One day I hope to. I would not be the first to steal from McCarthy, or Bukowski.  I have stolen from my friend throughout the years as well.  A part of who I am, and even what I have rebelled against (including him), has been through my imitating of him.  Having known him for more than 25 years now this aspect of our friendship has been a part of what has allowed (and sometimes forced) me to grow up. But also it has been a way of gauging that maturation.  He has never been one to let me forget what I was like when I was just a loud-mouthed kid, long before I became a loud-mouthed adult.

Well, there are many other stories to tell in that regard, but that is not the purpose of this post.

He writes to a site of his own daily.  It is an interesting site and one well worth reading (www.cafeselavy.com).  There are two women who comment on his posts quite often.  I made the mistake of confusing and merging these two women to make an amalgam of awfulism.  That was my mistake and I admit it. It turns out that one of them was deeply skewing my perception of the other.  The one that I had an aversion to was named Lisa.  She uses my friend's site to variously post her own work and criticize his.  Her work is dull and uninspired. It is the type poetry and thought that most young writers keep hidden, and for a reason.  But his site emboldens her in this regard and she trots out her insipid poesy whether it relates to his post or not.  I sometimes wonder if she has realized that she herself is not actually the author of the site. In addition to these substantial weaknesses she also lacks humor, though she is probably writing a poem about how funny she is as I write this.

It seems to me that he has tried to hint to her that her sometimes barbed criticism of his work is not welcome, but that he is also thankful to have the readers that he does.  After she criticized the subject of his photography he posted image after image of the very thing that she seemed to dislike most. He would drop sometimes subtle and sometimes unmuted hints at the effect that criticism has on an artist. She would encourage him to, "fuck em" and march right on with her boorish "insight" into his work and how it could be corrected and improved, sometimes with response-poetry, sometimes with almost motherly advice on how to live.  Though don't let this last observation skew your perception of her too deeply. She has also referred to herself in the comments section as a "word whore", etc.

   

I couldn't take it any more.  There was a post from yesterday that was titled "Critics."  It seemed to me to be directed at her, if not exclusively then at least partially.  It addressed how "... people are manipulative and always seeking to make the world in their own image, some much more aggressively than others."  Then it went on to state that it is easy to defend the work of others but not as easy to defend one's own.  What greater invitation could I ask for? I won't trot it all out here, but if you follow the link above and read the post and the subsequent comments section then the story is told more fully there.  

I am certain that it is not over.  Lisa does not respond well to hints.  I can only assume that direct written confrontation will elicit a response poem that is a confused farrago of assertion and dismissal.  It will attempt to correct my criticism of her, unsurprisingly.  She will go on stalking my friend. As all evidence works to support the mind of the obsessed.  

But I will rest easier knowing that I tried, and will hopefully think twice before posting any more poetry on this site.

April is the cruellest month....

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Cut Rate Cosmetics

(Cut Rate Cosmetics)

So, my mother-in-law read the better portion of this blog yesterday. Her report back to me was encouraging.  She said she admired the dedication, that I tried to post each day. Her daughter and I are on the verge of making a much bigger commitment. Perhaps I am practicing a little bit. 

She wondered why I didn't write more about my years spent in the music industry, as a performer.  I was a dj for many years. It is a form of performance art involving music of which I have written about many times before on www.xpander.nl (which then became www.365mag.com ).  I went to look for those writings just now and I couldn't find them. After many years they seem to have been taken down from the site.  A few weeks ago I discussed having my dj dna re-animated from internet amber at any moment by somebody simply doing a search for me.  I suppose that is even less true now than it was then, with a large remnant of my body of written work suddenly gone. 

I had done an interview many years ago for the people mentioned above. It was my first encounter with them. I thought it would be interesting to administer the exact same set of questions 10 years later, approx.  Perhaps there is little interest from the electronic music community in the thoughts of a semi-retired, aging dj. But perhaps it would reveal more than only reader disappointment.  Who knows.

I have always felt that dj's inflate what they do so much that I felt it my natural responsibility to examine the form more critically. Not so much with a disinterested eye, but rather an extremely interested and vested view, and from a very short distance.  They tend to not like this so much, dj's. (I try not to start a sentence with "dj" as it requires me to capitalize one of the letters, etc.)

My friend at selavy wrote this morning about one of the potential effects of criticism, and critics.  I want very badly to begin an organized criticism of one of his critics but am currently showing great restraint. If it begins then do not worry my gentle readers, you will be the 3rd or 4th to know....

I get to meet many interesting people at my job.  It is unfortunate that I don't get to talk with them more than I do, but that is the nature of the arrangement.  It is still pleasant to occasionally have interesting conversation in what I do for work, however brief.  I also meet many dj's and one day perhaps I will relay the experience of meeting dj's when they have no idea that the person they're talking to was once also a dj.  It makes for some funny situations and in certain ways it supports the long-running assertions that I have made about them.

(the coat room of an outdoor party)

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Exodus

This morning we're going to have an adventure if we can get out of the house.  Writing this post won't help.  We were given tickets to go see the Edward Hopper exhibit at The Whitney.  I hate The Whitney.  I imagine that people who live in Paris must feel the same way about The Pompidou, though I'm uncertain about that.  Perhaps the good citizens of Paris cherish The Pompidou as they do their wine and cuisine, with utterly unrestrained indulgence and enthusiasm.  That is the Paris of my imagination anyway.  I have never been able to understand how they eat the way that they do and remain thin.  I'm convinced it is moderation alone.  Can there be such a thing as extreme moderation?  If so , then they must possess it.  It is infuriating.  I've gained a pound and a half just writing this paragraph.

If you look carefully at the picture above you can see a miniature Statue of Liberty, that famous gift from the French, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge.  It must be going to Grimaldi's then to the park on the far shore.  Even statues must need a weekend day off at times to lie around and drink wine in the park with their statue friends.


All that it takes to recognize why one doesn't sit around their apartment on a Sunday morning and listen to Genesis is to do so.  I had forgotten how bad much of their music was.  It's as if Rush got a fat, bald, midget Michael Bolton to be the lead singer of their band, then went on to release a string of obnoxious tracks that make very little distinction between the verses and the choruses.  It's as if the song only exists to advertise and echo its bland chorus.  Somehow I always knew their terribleness would eventually find its way back to me.

It finally did this morning.

Actually... as soon as I wrote the paragraph above the song "That's All" came on.  Some credit where credit is due...  That track is brilliant.  I suppose I am a closeted Genesis fan, I guess.  What an abysmal secret to harbor, an even worse one to confess.

Yuck, then "In Too Deep" came on.  I'm not going to provide a link. It's that terrible. It sounds like Simply Red but without a hook.  Okay, here's the link.  See for yourself, but you've been warned....

I have some punk-rock associates that will never read this site again after those last two paragraph fragments above.  I will get ridiculed for months over it.  Listening to Genesis on a Sunday morning wondering if the wife and I are going to go to a museum... Ah, adulthood.  Here we come.... Griswolds.

Phil Collins recently announced his retirement, but then retracted it, then his agent denied his retirement, then he asserted, announced and then rescinded it all once again...  I was following it only because I'm a media pervert with an internet fetish.  But it struck me as hilarious that nobody had even known that he was still active in the music industry. If they ever thought about it at all then most assumed, and rightfully so, that he had stopped exporting his monochrome form of misery decades ago.

Even funnier: He is apparently an amateur expert on the Alamo.  That's right: The place where the Mexicans kicked America's ass in San Antonio.  Now:..... P. Collins is from London.  You do the math.

Peter Gabriel must be rolling over in his gravity ball laughing.

What the hell am I talking about this morning.... Genesis sucks.  Phil Collins somehow even bested them in utterly uninspired crass commercialism.  P. Gabriel is somewhere happily dreaming of floating above a rain forest in a rubber thought bubble, silently saving it for future generations as he goes.

You can almost hear him singing.... And in this proud land we grew up in.....



The Lamb's Been Run Down On Broadway.

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... the flag of decency

This site is, of course, highly fictionalized.  Yesterday's post gained some enthusiastic support, but I felt it best to be honest. About halfway through the post it becomes pure fantasy, though admittedly a recurring one.  It was what I dreamed of doing. What perhaps should have happened, in a just world.  The truth of it didn't function as much as a story.  So the truth had to go.

My wife's mother asked me in an email for the address to this site.  I don't quite know how to tell her that it is a partially, and sometimes fully, fictionalized account of my experiences. Especially as so many of the experiences documented here actually did occur. She knows this.  Perhaps the anonymous approach that my friend over at selavy has taken is preferable.  I see that now.

There is the sudden feeling, the hushed aftermath, of somebody hissing, "Chill-Out! My mom's here..."

So I will reduce the toilet humor for a while and we will make this place respectable again.  We'll hire a whole new cleaning staff and start operating on a stricter schedule.  We'll paint the bathroom walls and hang high the flag of decency.

We'll see.


I finally got my new computer.  I had to get a second one as the first one had some troubles right out of the box, which is to be expected from time to time. But the new one is a wonder, a thing of beauty, a marvel of the modern age.

In addition to that I also got my camera back. So, I am back in business, dangerous again.


Sometime soon I will return to the storefront and inquire about the street-artist who has taken my interest.  I will see if it's going to be possible to get an interview with him, and possibly shoot some other footage as well. I will navigate my way through that experience with as few threats and screaming matches as possible.  I have documented all of that in an unpublished post.  I'm waiting to see what luck might emerge, and trying not to ruin it all before it happens.


Ok, I have a full day today.  One filled with problems that I am expected to resolve, creating no new ones in the process.

We'll see.

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The birth of the cool

I was eating lunch yesterday in Soho.  As I was by myself I sat in the corner of the restaurant, at the bar.  The bar is backed up to a small hallway that ends in the only bathroom in the place.  I call it a hallway but it in fact only seems like a hallway because the bar is there.  The bar ends at the the wall where the bathroom is.  A man who was also eating there at the restaurant with a few people walks towards the bathroom with a baby in his hands, tries the door, finds it locked, immediately sets his baby down on the floor in the corner and begins to change its diaper.  I was having a grilled chicken salad with added avocado slices.  They make a creamy mustard dressing that tastes much richer than it actually is, though I use that sparingly and augment the dressing with a little bit of balsamic vinegar and oil.  I always use more pepper than anybody I know on salads.  The one thing that I don't normally add to my salad is infant feces, or the smell of it.

As it is my friend's restaurant, and he happened to not be there, I didn't want to make a scene and subsequently have that scene relayed to my friend in my absence.  So I suffered through and said nothing.  I was almost finished with my lunch anyway. There were other things that I wanted to do in the short amount of time that I had.  In truth I never even smelled the little child's by-product, thankfully.  Shortly after he had begun the process the person who was using the bathroom exited and left the bathroom open, though he had no real use for it any longer as he was already elbow-deep in the changing of the specially designed dooky-diaper.  I thought about my wife and I wanting to have a child of our own, and I asked myself if maybe one day soon I will change my attitude so much that I will also be wafting baby shit across the restaurants of this city at my convenience. I thought: No, no I wouldn't.  I sat there and wondered about New Yorkers, their crazed sense of assumed inheritance and disaffection. That imbalanced mixture of assertion and anxiety. I thought about how so many of them are assholes.  I thought about that poor child.

As I was leaving my friend was walking in.  I was thankful that I hadn't screamed at the man, that even if he was buying my lunch I'd appreciate it if there wasn't a layer of baby-crap garnishing the top of it.  We stopped to hug and say hello where the tables separate and also make an imaginary walkway that leads towards the door.  I stopped with my back facing the table where daddy-infant-excrement was, so that I wouldn't be tempted to stare.  My friend asked how long I had been there, and did I have to run right now, and did I have time for a glass of wine?  I answered all the questions with the best answers I could muster and then that's when it dawned on me... I had to fart.  I asked how his wife was and when were they going to Europe.   It was Italy.  That's what I thought.  And were they going to Israel too?  How long would they be gone?  Hadn't they just gone to Italy last year. Of course, she has family there.  Any other inane question I could think of.  It was brewing.  I was preparing my response. Soon it would be ready.

I smiled and we hugged, breathing in almost imperceptibly as we embraced in departing.  As he turned and walked into the restaurant I held my breath just enough to allow for the abdominal pressure that forced the evacuation of gas, freely filling any space available.   At first I hoped for silence, but as the excitement and joy overtook me I squeezed perhaps more than I should have, or would have otherwise, and the unmistakable sound of a lone gaseous emission made itself known, announced its entering the world with an almost jazz-like sadness, never truly deciding on a single key or note, but rather a portamento drifting from one note towards its final.

I was in New York, after all.  The birth of the cool, and all of that.  I was Miles Fucking Davis.

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Chase the demons lightly

("Two Tahitian Women" by Paul Gauguin)

“I feel that Gauguin is evil. He has nudity and is bad for the children. He has two women in the painting and it’s very homosexual. I was trying to remove it. I think it should be burned. I am from the American CIA and I have a radio in my head. I am going to kill you.” - Susan Burns, 53 (attacker of Gauguin's painting, "Two Tahitian Women")


Apparently she tried to pull the painting from the wall while screaming, "This is evil"...


In other news:

(Tracy Morgan's "Woodrow" character from SNL)

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The Children's Bible

My friend sent me some Erik Satie to listen to, which has been helpful.  For some reason lately I feel claustrophobic, more than normal.  I feel as if my time off goes by far too quickly and with me not doing much of anything. I dread going to work more than usual. The time there is more excruciating than it has been in the past.  The Satie has helped a bit.  I have been trying to ignore what is happening to me. Just pretending that it is not really me that it is happening to. But that I am studying a character to shoot a film about and am just looking through the raw footage.  That has helped a bit too.

I just want to ride my bike and sweat out the demons, evil and otherwise.  But all things that I used to enjoy are now somehow the harbinger of evil.  Bike riding causes cancer of the testes, of course. Water is a radioactive threat. Oxygen has long been a useless and contaminated danger. Life has its limits. The old health is the new threat. The new health is just witch hazel, ushering in the winds of a dangerous Japanese spring, of course.

I just did 30 pushups to see if my heart could bear it.  I feel a little faint, but otherwise okay.  No heart-attack is trotting across the horizon heading towards me yet.  None visible, anyway.

The picture above is from an unmade, undeveloped, unknown, remake/sequel of "2001: A Space Iliad"

It is still in the early development stages.  I was going to change the setting to inner-city New York, of course. I was hoping to show the degeneration, the devolution of a lone, misunderstood monolith, called dil-dobelisk, told through the eyes of live-streaming security cameras.  The HAL $9000...

I did another 30 pushups. I am beginning to see the faint outline of a rider's slow approaching, on his trusted steed, Shadowfax-machine.  I have grown a beard to try to disguise myself.  We'll see.

Perhaps instead of 2001 I should work on yet another remake of the children's bible, Star Wars.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day. He was relaying to me that this site is patchy in terms of interest.  He then went on to discuss great sequels being as good as or better than the great originals. He cited Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.  I hadn't realized that anybody actually ever considered either of those films as great, beyond technical considerations.  But I suppose it is something to think about. There must be a children's category when discussing such things, or a category based solely on cultural phenomena... (This has only been a joke, executed by trained professionals in safe environment. Do not attempt this at home. Any likeness to persons either living or Alec Guinness is purely coincidental.)


Music from today's program provided by cafeselavy...

We will see

I started to write an entry today about a local street-artist who has gotten himself into a bit of trouble recently.  I went by the store-front where he seems to operate from and had two very different discussions.  One ended in some screaming and threats. The other, later one, ended in a conversation that might result in me interviewing the artist, once he gets out of jail.

So, keep your eyes trained to this spot. Who knows, something edgy and of local interest might appear here soon.

We'll see.

Construction Psych

Another work of personal fiction:


I just don't know.  I think that I have finally become, once and for now, sick of it allah, once again.  I walk around New York and it occurs to me, in ways over and over anew, nothing new is ever really built for me, or by me. It is built to keep me out, sort of.  It has an irresistible way of being magnetic to any revenue that I might have accidentally accrued. It soon enough sorts and separates me from it.  These grand things are built to facilitate a level of trade diligence that either doesn't cater to me, or is vaguely hostile to me. Though this production vigor is somehow always attractive to what might have been mine, whether it be time or money or, oh lost bright coin, whither thou goest...

I'll call me Ahab.


There is so much skyblocking wealth, at all times, and in all directions, high above one always in New York, that it's easy to understand how this city appeals in basic ways to people everywhere who see in that rise, that perpetual erecting upon aging erections, the echoes and representations of their own cultures.  It can be seen reflected in the glass buildings, across oceans.  It is the culmination, the climax, the pinnacle... the nation, the max, the manacles of minds forg'd....
    
It is go,natty, go...

Gonad, young man.  But go west while you can.


I don't know, just.... I feel tired and crazy and loose in my mind describing it, denouncing it, living it, allowing it, accomplicing it... and there is so much pressure to just be a silent and quite accomplish, even by those who you might have thought were most against it.   It turns out that most of us were not revolutionaries, we never even turned around, much less revolved.  Or if we were, then we radicalized ourselves so far into an unknown misunderstood underground as to be insignificant, unseen, silent, or worse: poor.  But not impoverished, and still with ideas, quantities and qualities lost and drifting in blind orbits, helpless though not alone.


The barely noticed revolution that has been taking place is the collective and willing triumph of media ignorance, the mistrust of intellect. It's the conquest of industry over inspiration, of data over meaning, of witness to judgement, of story to spin, of intent to action, of awfulism.

The dual lures of abstraction and analysis, the perpetual incompletion of sustained thought, the reduction of mindful contemplation. Subjectivity supreme, where partiality and preference dissemble as an indivisible whole in the place of content and form, in the place of art, of living.

There exists now only entertainments, with hardly any pleasures left.  I am at all times surrounded by the evidence of it.  It solicits a drowsiness of the spirit, and then invites the deadening agents; the intoxicants, the endless azure pleathers.

To the comforting cult of the new high market, I pray.

When did ignorance become a point of view, and worthy of defense? I blame Oprah Winfrey and the talk-show culture of our time.  Once we accepted the idea that everybody is worth listening to, then we were forced to do so, endlessly.  It is a short and easy step between the assertion that: everybody deserves a vote, to: everybody deserves to be heard.  Ideas are not democratic, they are imperialistic. Some ideas should be valued and heard over others.  Some ideas defeat others.

Doctrine is not thought, but rather a retreat from thinking, thinking reveals this, and thinkers will naturally resist it.  "Policy and Procedure" is the corporate version of doctrine, and they are often used as articles of enforcement and uninvited change.  Once you hear the dual cadence of blind compliance, "Policy and Procedure" then run... and run as fast as you can.  The marching drums are coming.... the meter is beaten for you.... Especially when they tell you that, the policy is changing. That means that they've just changed the accepted deal on you, and the hammer is swiftly coming down, in time. Because a change in policy hardly indicates an increase in pay, or any other improvement, for you.  It means that you just got demoted.

Save yourself if you can't save others.

Fuck, save me... save Charlie Sheen and Sarah Palin from themselves, from us, for us, from Forrest Gump.  run, fire, Fire, FIRE.


It is late, and I am tired, and have had a very rough week, or more. I have had years of rough weeks.  Lack of sleep, lack of meaning, and loss of understanding, and then enforced sycophancy, in ways I am not currently able, or at liberty, to describe.  I won't bore you with the details, but rest assured, my life is bowing to a new god, and not one of my making. This new god is not a god of benevolence, understanding, or mercy.  It is a hostile old-testament-style-god that must have been edited out of the later, secondary drafts. It neither respects life nor limb, nor gardens, nor fruit.  It is rapacious in its unending desire to devour.

We did not get kicked out of the garden of eden, we only went there to weekend shop, and as it got late, the mall had simply closed. We got gently blocked by garden security, dressed up for the occasion as sentinels of liberty, the marching statues of...

I too have snacked lightly from the food court of knowledge, you know?

The mannequin above and below...
in lifeless, limbless, slow naked non-being.
In orange uprising, and continuation,
It has alerted, and signaled, and protected me so....
a construct really should, shouldn't it though...?

So, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.... I'm in the mood to fuck.

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I'm gonna party like it's $1999

I'm getting a new computer today. I needed one, but hadn't expected that I'd be getting this one.  The old one died. The relentless march of technology moves onward and upward.

So, I went to the dog park, of which I have written about many times here, and ran into an old friend and his family.  We sat and talked about the neighborhood and the changing face of New York.  There was a guy sitting across from us who looked familiar.  He overheard us talking about the documentary, "I Like Killing Flies" and he piped in.  It turns out that he's a local butcher from the Essex Street Market, and he now has his own pilot that he's developing, and he's signed to the William Morris agency.  Of course... the butcher is signed to William Morris.  Sherman probably owns his own network by now...


The wife is at yoga. She tried to get me to go but I was in no mood to be shamed in front of a roomful of women this morning.  I am inflexible in this regard, until the mood strikes me.

Soon I will have my photo library back, and my camera, and then I will be dangerous again.... Google-willing.

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Victory Q6...!

(photo of my friend, the educator, looking for work)

I have been forced to learn things since my last post.  One is that by having a free Google blog then a Picasa web album was automatically created for me, one that has size limitations.  I had just been assuming that Google had been downscaling the size of the photos as they are not available in full size from my blog.  Since then I have discovered that I can easily access my Picasa web album and downscale them myself, though this is painstakingly slow.  In this process however I have discovered that I can see the exact number of times each blog post has been accessed because there is a number below each picture telling me how many times it has been viewed, another budding sickness for me, one more sad obsession.

I was going to have to turn this site into a donations-funded institution.  I still might.  Calls came in from both coasts with offers to support the site. These kind souls were prepared to make personal sacrifices to pull this blog back from the brink of financial failure and final degraded ruin. If I were to lock those potential patrons into a binding contract I could have made as much as 10 or possibly 15 dollars a year.  Something fiscal to think about.... Make no mistake, these are tough times.


The strange thing is that Picasa seemed to be automatically downscaling the photos from one of my cameras but not from the other, up to a certain point in time.  So, now I will have to go through and perform the function manually using their primitive editing software, picnik.  It is painfully slow and rudimentary, which is perfect for me in the latter way, but abysmal in the former.

But the good news is that seanq6spot will not be relegated to internet stasis, yet.  I owe it to my 3 paying readers.

Based on my calculations, and my newly found navigating knowledge of the vast seas of the internet, I don't think I'll have to seek donations to keep this site alive for at least another year, possibly more.  But I have learned my lesson.  Never assume anything, and avoid paying anybody any money, no matter how much time it costs you.


Those are my words of wisdom.
I pray that they serve you well.

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Googled...

I was going to write a blog entry about how my friend is at the precipice of a big decision, with lasting moral implications (for him).  I tried to upload a photo of Santa Claus talking on his phone on Avenue A, to suggest the type work that my friend might be doing once he leaves the coddled academic environment he is in. But then I got this message about how I've used up my 1GB of free storage space for photos, and that I should purchase more.

They want $5 for 20GB.

I thought that Google has been downscaling the photos, as they are in a drastically reduced form on my site, and I've never seen how anybody could access the higher-res versions.


So, that signals the end of this site.


Goodnight and good luck...