worth a look

Brian Eno - Kings Lead Hat - 1977- Written & Produced by Brian Eno

2011-10-17T07:09:00.000-07:00

Brian Eno - The True Wheel

2011-10-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

Lou Reed Hangin' Round Acoustic

2011-10-17T06:54:00.000-07:00

velvet goldmine - satellite of love - velvet underground

2011-10-17T06:51:00.000-07:00

Velvet Goldmine - TV Eye [Curt Wild First Apresentation]

2011-10-17T06:48:00.000-07:00

Velvet Goldmine- Tumbling Down

2011-10-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

Velvet Goldmine (Ballad of Maxwell Demon - Shudder To Think)

2011-10-17T06:39:00.000-07:00

David Bowie - Ashes to ashes (live by request)

2011-10-17T06:37:00.000-07:00

The The - Love Is Stronger Than Death

2011-10-17T06:13:00.000-07:00

Robert Fripp - Exposure - Mary

2011-10-17T06:05:00.000-07:00

Peter Gabriel - Here Comes The Flood

2011-10-17T05:59:00.000-07:00

Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill - LYRICS

2011-10-17T05:50:00.000-07:00

Bryan Ferry Taxi (HQ)

2011-10-17T05:44:00.000-07:00

Roxy Music- Like A Hurricane

2011-10-17T05:37:00.000-07:00

Morrissey There is a Light That Never Goes Out (live)

2011-10-16T23:40:00.000-07:00

Morrissey Suedehead (live on Later with Jools Holland)

2011-10-16T23:36:00.000-07:00

Henry Rollins on Morrissey

2011-10-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

Morrissey -- Interesting Drug

2011-10-16T23:32:00.000-07:00

Morrissey - The Never Played Symphonies, Live NY 2004

2011-10-16T23:17:00.000-07:00

JUDY COLLINS - In My Life (1966)

2011-10-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

The Beatles Two Of Us (2009 Stereo Remaster)

2011-10-16T22:52:00.000-07:00

John Lennon on Dick Cavett (entire show) September 11, 1971 (HD)

2011-10-16T22:46:00.000-07:00

Ray Charles - Eleanor Rigby

2011-10-16T22:18:00.000-07:00

ELEANOR RIGBY ★ Joe Jackson (Audio)

2011-10-16T22:15:00.000-07:00

Joe Jackson - Real Men - Sydney, 1991 (9 of 17)

2011-10-16T22:12:00.000-07:00

Josie Cotton - Johnny Are You Queer

2011-10-16T21:59:00.000-07:00

Is it Gay? - Steam Room Stories

2011-10-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

Don't keep guys together too long...lmao (Part 2 of 3)

2011-10-16T21:53:00.000-07:00

guy shakin it

2011-10-16T21:49:00.000-07:00

Army guys dancing

2011-10-16T21:48:00.000-07:00

Robert Wyatt - East Timor

2011-10-16T21:37:00.000-07:00

robert wyatt caimanera

2011-10-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

Safety Dance- Glee Cast [Live at the HP]

2011-10-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

Glee Cast - Baby, It's Cold Outside (Glee Cast Version)

2011-10-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

Maybe This Time

2011-10-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

cabaret - If you could see her through my eyes

2011-10-16T21:09:00.000-07:00

cabaret - If you could see her through my eyes

2011-10-16T21:05:00.000-07:00

"Money" from CABARET

2011-10-16T21:03:00.000-07:00

CABARET - Two Ladies

2011-10-16T21:00:00.000-07:00

What Keeps A Man Alive - Recording for Mack The Knife (1989) - From The ...

2011-10-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

Jerry Orbach - Mack the Knife [From "The Three Penny Opera"]

2011-10-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

Morrissey -Mexico (Royal Albert Hall)

2011-10-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

Public Enemy - 911 (Is A Joke)

2011-10-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

Rickie Lee Jones - Letters from the 9th ward / Walk Away Rene

2011-10-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

THE LEFT BANKE- " PRETTY BALLERINA" (W/ LYRICS)

2011-10-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

Arthur Lee and LOVE - My Little Red Book- Burt Bacharach

2011-10-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

Roxy Music on Jonathan Ross 'Dream Home'

2011-10-16T06:30:00.000-07:00

Roxy Music on Jonathan Ross 'Dream Home'

2011-10-16T06:27:00.000-07:00

The Man Who Sold The World -- Velvet Goldmine fanvid

2011-10-16T06:19:00.000-07:00

Morrissey - Trash

2011-10-16T06:12:00.000-07:00

Morrissey live cover of Suede's "My Insatiable One"

2011-10-16T06:06:00.000-07:00

Morrissey We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful

2011-10-16T06:02:00.000-07:00

Morrissey - Action Is My Middle Name (Live at Maida Vale 2011)

2011-10-16T04:54:00.000-07:00

Morrissey - The Kids A Looker (Live at Maida Vale 2011)

2011-10-16T04:51:00.000-07:00

TLC - Unpretty

2011-10-16T04:48:00.000-07:00

Lou Reed - Make Up

2011-10-16T04:44:00.000-07:00

LET'S PRAY THERE WILL BE NO MORE...NO MORE PART II

2011-10-16T04:35:00.000-07:00

Grateful Dead - Second That Emotion - Fillmore East 4.25.1971

2011-10-16T04:30:00.000-07:00

David Byrne & Richard Thompson - The Big Country

2011-10-16T03:48:00.000-07:00

5 - Talking Heads - Drugs (Live in Rome 1980)

2011-10-16T03:43:00.000-07:00

5 - Talking Heads - Drugs (Live in Rome 1980)

2011-10-16T03:41:00.000-07:00

The Smiths - 06 I Want The One I Can't Have (Salford 86)

2011-10-16T03:31:00.000-07:00

I'm Straight (Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers)

2011-10-16T03:26:00.000-07:00

last day of the year

2011-10-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

tmy own calendar, to answer the burning question. With my %&th b.day popping up like a medusa's head tomorrow I've decided to devote today to musical visual comments that, oblique as they may be, genuinely reflect certain aspects of my year.

2011-10-08T01:06:00.000-07:00

from 3penny op

morning spake

lyric bbrecht

music kweill

adapted into english by dkelso

MADE LIKE GODS IMAGE

AND UGLY AS SIN

smelly as the bed ya slept in

one more fascist whore in my street

try me baby i cant be beat 2

2011-09-27T04:42:00.000-07:00

ATTENTION, ANYONE WITH CONTACT INFO FOR WILL DECKER. PLEASE SEND IT ME AT

davidkbuch55@yahoo.com

rollin and tumblrin

2011-08-07T05:39:00.000-07:00

Both of my loyal reasders are probably aware of my new scamperings on tumblr, namely http://iloveagenre.tumblr.com and its' heavybreathing kid brother http:/dial-a-lad.tumblr.com. They're both good sources of momentary visual and erotic diversion, but lacking in depth.

Dear reader, am I capable of depth? am I a mere gibbering dilettante, rolling in pools of my own fluids, my harlequin costume darkly stained as a biscuit bag? Go to my livejournal, where,as davidbuch5, I intend to chronicle the day-to-day life, culinary, vinous, cinematic and even sexual,of a country-inhabitant who is queer as fuck.

a word to the weird

2011-06-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

It's a greyish afternoon in almost - summer Delaware. A few of you might remember my abortive essay in genre fiction, iloveagenre.blogspot.com. Specialists such as James Champagne, Oscar d'
Alessi and George Wines were very generous contributors. As the sky fades to a color like exposed Ilford paper, I ask, no, I beseech everyone of you who have something to say, even if it's only a question, to pipe up. I'm usually perching at Facebook, iloveagenre.com @tumblr.com or buchcond7@gmail.com.

Song of the Loon

2011-04-22T14:40:00.000-07:00

Thinking back on the various tributes and remembrances of the late Elizabeth Taylor that I read in the past few weeks, I don't recall much, if any mention of her appearance in George Steven's ponderous but memorable A Place in the Sun. In Stevens' visual strategy, Taylor is often seen at a distance, a prize to be obtained, a goal Montgomery Clift must achieve or die. She was in transition from ingenue roles like Father of the Bride. Sometimes her real uncertainty shines through very effectively.

A Place in the Sun is not a great movie. Stevens tries too hard to make a significant film and fails to make a thoroughly enjoyable one. But there are two and a half great performances here - Montgomery Clift as the ambitious but weak George Eastman, Shelley Winters living comfortably in her role as a factory girl in trouble ( her scene with a doctor she hopes will abort her out-of-wedlock child is still startling) and the freakishly dogged Raymond Burr as the prosecutor at George's murder trial. Get yourself an espresso and enjoy a languid movie that, if not great, is still some kind of classic.

Lady Sings The Truth - movie review

2010-07-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

Sidney J. Furie's adaptation of Billie Holiday's memoir Lady Sings The Blues is, to use the kindest
word, a mediocre film. When it is not mediocre, it verges on the idiotic. But when Diana Ross, who plays Miss Holiday ( and does her own singing), is performing in character, LSTB is suddenly transformed into a better-than-respectable work of art. Diana Ross looks as much like Billie Holiday as I look like Morrissey. As a Motown artist, she was always my least favorite. But she has the wit to sing in the manner of Billie Holiday rather than do an impression of Lady Day's singing. If that was all they wanted, they should have cast David Sedaris. ( He does a really swell Lady impression on the audio version of, you guessed it, Holidays on Ice.)
When LSTB - book and film were newly released, there was a resounding chorus of "hey, that's not how I remember it" from friends, admirers, critics and ass scratchers. Holiday's Daily News
pal William Dufty cut, pasted and "collaged" material from decades of interviews, thus generating her best selling autobiography. For the researcher, the book is about as useful as Tennessee Williams' Memoirs, another popular work of fictional nonfiction. Regarding veracity,the movie is
even worse. I love to see Richard Pryor in almost any movie context but why was it necessary to
create Piano Man when Holiday had many accompanists in her all-too-short career. Why couldn't he have played Lester Young, the brilliant sax player who was also lady's closest friend?
Well, we sighed when we heard Diana Ross was being cast as Billie Holiday. Although Furie's movie requires tolerance and generosity ( and maybe half a joint) from its viewer, it's worth seeing for Diana Ross's musical performances and, to a lesser degree, her movie acting. After doing a couple hours of compare / contrast Ross vs. Holiday, Holiday wins. But I have to say Miss Diana Ross could have been a more than adequate jazz singer. Honest.

a personal note - SPOILER ALERT!

2010-06-09T04:32:00.000-07:00

Rainer Werner Fassbinder made forty films - or more, depending on whose list you're citing - in a seventeen year period. I recently watched Fox and his Friends, an indictment of the German gay bourgeoisie. It's not as compelling as the epic Year of 13 Moons, but it comes close. I was surprised
to see Karl Boehm, ( Peeping Tom ,1960, Michael Powell) in the role of a posh antique dealer and possible smuggler. Fox wins 500,ooo marks on the national lottery. In 1975, this was enough money to buy an apartment, save a financially strapped business and enjoy the usual lifestyle crap. Fox's woes begin when he signs over the flat to his false lover so that it can be used as
collateral. We see him lying dead of a valium overdose in the Berlin subway. Peeping Tom and Fox's
old lover examine the body and leave. There's nothing they can do now.

as long as he lies perfectly still

2010-06-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

In the spring I think of sex and means to end
summertime I like to sit upon the grass
autumn nights I go to parties with my friends
winter time I like to think about the past.
- The Soft Machine ( Volume 2)

- In summer 1979, the year Skylab fell, the queers of Rehoboth Beach speculated exactly where Skylab, as if it would survive its fall intact, would impact.
" It's headed straight for the Pentagon, honey."
" Oh, little Miss Amerika, when will you get your act together, girl?"
" The back yard of Paradise, on a Saturday afternoon, when they're all swigging vodka tonics and wrapping cucumbers in wet briefs."
" Right on Carter's goddamn head."
" Off the pier in Key West at the height of sunset, just as Henry's called a cop 'girlfriend' for the last time."
" Baby, this is some crazy grass. Hmm. It's gonna fall on that club in New York where Warhol and True Man Capott and them hang out. BLAM BABY BLAM! There goes some sorry ass excuses for ... well, hello sailor ..."
" Right on top of your roller skates, Herbert."

If I had an opinion, time and alcohol have worn it away. Memory's wall gets thinner.

A Night on the Town ( concluded)

2010-05-10T04:42:00.000-07:00

Entering the Fantasy Room involved passing through something that resembled the transporter
deck from Star Trek. A rush, a push and you stood in a dark smelly bar whose main light source
was a jukebox. Some unkempt pool tables made it practically impossible to navigate the room without rubbing against someone " whether ya fuckinwannernut."
Todd's Grand and other refreshments were agreeing with him splendidly until the Chrysler Gallery intern he'd fucked a month ago walked by and cut him dead. In his own special form of retaliation, Todd had a confederate at the bar pour him a neat triple that he tossed off like a rent boy. Evan noticed this as he usually noticed Todd's pathetic attempts at subterfuge but decided to wait it out. At this rate, he and Marcus would have to carry him into the house after last call. He
might do his dog imitation and crawl up the front steps on all fours.
It was all very George and Martha.

"Havig fun?" slurred Todd.
"Yeah sure. Is there something about tie dye that gets y'all hot, like the matador dude's cape?"
"Naw it's, um, just that, you being a stranger to this scene and young and ginger and all, um, makes you exciting new meat." Marcus had turned down fifteen propositions in the last two and a half hours. Todd leaned against the wall, about to slide to the floor.
He slid to the floor. The bartender whistled loudly.

"Where we goin' now?"
"We're going home, Todd."
" I want a nice greasy breakfast."
"Maybe Marcus will whip something up for you."
" I'd like that. Can I have you for brekkers, Marco?"
" Aw man, shut the fuck up."
Todd fell asleep, awakened by the transcabbie.
"Time to wake up, honey."
" Ummuh, yeah, 'mkay."
Marcus and Evan steered him to the front door steps. He looked around like he couldn't believe his luck. Evan knew what usually the this-is-all-mine? look .
"Marco? Ev?"
They nodded.
" I love you guys. I don't deserve your friendship ..."
" Come on Marcus, let's carry him in while he's on this crying jag ..."
" Okay .."
" On three. One two three."
They carried their burden into the house like pallbearers in a hurry.

A Night on the Town

2010-05-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

Marcus can't believe how long Todd and Evan spend in the bathroom, getting ready to go stand around in some dark smelly bar for six hours, only to go home disappointed or whoop it up with friends in a greasy spam and eggs joint. He's spent fifteen minutes with a bar of Tom's soap and felt like a new man who smelled slightly of mint. After being offered a succession of gay garments, he donned his tie dyed outfit. No one else at Club FracAss would be dressed like him.

When the boys finally descended the front stairs, they were as casually dressed as they'd been for yesterday's little afternoon party. True, the stench of cologne could paralyze an attacker at twenty feet but that's the desired effect. Evan's perfect blond hair stood up in unbreakable spikes. You could impale answered correspondence on those spikes. Although he was nearly thirty, Todd still believed that the hair-in-the-eyes moppet look worked for him. Actually, after a few lines and some pernod, it rarely failed.
They both knew rough Marcus would be a cynosure, especially sans underwear.

"How about a little drinkie for the road?"
"Who's driving?"
"I don't know. Some person from Transtaxi."
"Goody, that means I can have a Grand Marnier."
"Just watch yourself, Todd. I'll get you cut off if you start in with the ..."
" Okay. Okay. Okay. I only want a gigantic line of coke and some Grand."
"Marcus, what's your pleasure?"
" You don't have any paper, huh?"
" Usually, no." Evan reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a tiny vial. He unscrewed it and knocked an almost invisible yellow barrel into Marcus' hand. " He said it was clean as a whistle and good for eight hours .... and you only need one."
" Thanks, man. We'll see about the dosage."
A burst of loud dance music in the street. "Your carriage awaits" announced a voice over a bad p.a. system.
" We'll have to do it in the cab. Todd, get the security module, let's go!"

When Freddie Argo was a farmer's son in Suffolk, Va. he never had the slightest longing to deck
himself in Frederick's of Hollywood and prance in front of the mirror. Sure, he was a typical queer farm boy who'd inherit his dad's acreage, find a likeminded companion and live a gentleman farmer's existence, far from the shrieking parrots of Homo Heights.
Freddie had no business sense and lost almost everything except the family manse. He sold it for a ridiculously high price, moved into town and took work as a dispatcher for Transtaxi. Freddie was a slip of a boy who could wear women's clothing convincingly. The talent spotter at Trans made him an offer - wig or welfare. He took the wig.
" I don't think I've ever met a tran who could discuss pork futures", Evan remarked after they'd arrived in darkest downtown.

FracAss was a huge building with poorly lit entrances. Once inside, you were briefly doubled over by the bass in the dance music and unnerved by the near illegal bpm. A boy wearing a frilly apron
emerged from the crowd.
"Hi, I'm Eric. Do you want a table or banquette?"
"Do we look like a table?"
"Banquette. I always know. Please follow me." His apron did a poor or excellent job of barely concealing his heartshaped thong - bisected ass. He seated them and took an elaborate drink order.
"I hate this fucking place", Todd said, staring at a passing basketball player, or someone in a basketball uniform, it didn't matter. " I only come here for the Fantasy Room."
" It's like an acid trip for scaredy cats, Marcus. They recreated one of the putrid old downtown sailor bars, complete with real sailors working off the books as, er, taxi dancers. You can play pool and have a conversation without screaming."

to be continued

THE SEX SCENE Part 2

2010-04-29T20:47:00.000-07:00

for ns and all the real sex scene writers

TODD i've got him i've Got Him! in my mind i'm jumping up and down like a little boy who's burst the pinata, smiling while its garish guts flutter down. he leans back pouts as i roll his cock between my slicked-up palms, squirting drops of juice between my fingers. His shaggy balls jumped. I must get down to business

marcus aw fuck how am i going to explain this? the other times i was so fucked up dude or i just deny it completely or once or twice i needed the money how many times before you become quear?

it feels good of course i mean the faggots are right, a guy knows best how a guy wants his thing sucked and ow migod

TODD I want him to sodomize me, fuck me, whatever. i have a blackmarket vial of oxymyl inhalant, that ER drug that was banned the same week it hit the streets.
Wriggle my ass closer, rub against his hard bony hip and scrawny thighs. The upper part of marcus is porn quality definition for the shaved twinko muscular type, smooth naturally smooth chest, a dusting of belly hair, a twisting trail that covers a scar...
he's on his back looking up at me and i offer him the sniffer he takes it i descend my ass all slicked up OH he slides up into me like an alien probe but warm and pulsing
it can't be but i swear my ass feels the vein in his dick throbbing his eyes are closed i do all the work he clenches his fists and then grabs my legs he comes

marcus sleep i need sleep

The Deadhead - SEX SCENE part one

2010-04-27T22:07:00.000-07:00

SEX SCENE

Marcus opens his eyes and winces. We learn that he's in bed with Todd, who's still asleep. A look at the clock - 412 am.
/was i that wasted?/

Todd's bedroom, four hours ago. T and Marcus are sitting on the edge of the bed doing long sloppy
lines. The boys take turns furtively peeping at each other.
- well Marcus what do you say?
- yeah uh sure ummKAY wow todd hold up a second.
The clang of that ridiculous hippie belt as Marcus' jeans hit the floor and get kicked out of the way.
In the intervals of Todd's ministrations, Marcus wonders how he can breathe with such a large object in his throat.
- whew Marcus i need some air. Yeah, smile for your humble servant and official cocksucker.
- official huh
- yeah i know this subdom ...
- sub - dum??
- submit or dominate
- m and s okay
- the bottom boy is slave to the top at least that's the facade he has to submit to
- aw man shut up and suck my goddamn COCK NOW..
- yeah you get the idea
- no i fuckin mean it
Marcus grabs a handful of Todd's hair and pulls him back into oral sex posture. They are both naked now that Todd's wriggled out of the ridiculous striped underwear he wore for the occasion.
He picks up where he left off, feeling happier than usual.

The Deadhead - a very short story

2010-04-21T06:03:00.000-07:00

for M.B. and C.R.T.

The deadhead pushed his red hair out of his eyes and pulled a smelly bandanna from his rear pocket, the one that wasn't torn and patched. Probably an ordinance about ragged attire here in Homo Heights.
He felt like a housebreaker going up the little townhouse steps. The place was a castle. What did
Todd and Evan do for work nowadays? The last time he'd seen that little blonde motherfucker Evan
he'd been manning a falafel booth at an Alternative Party rally. Falafel must pay well.
- Oh heyy. It's the renegade scumbag.
Todd smiled and opened the screen door. He was skinny again, or at least not fat verging on obese. If Todd's skin didn't hang off him like a Shar Pei's , he would get laid more often and not be a park pervert. Talk about picnics under the trees.
- You got a pubic hair on your nose, dude. Check me out.
He was wearing a vivid tie dyed ensemble: white tee shirt, painter's pants and ugly boots. No underwear, of course. He capered around the living room, shaking his ass and wriggling his arms in some deadhead dance.
He was very tired but maybe if he gave horny Todd an exhibition now, the fat cocksucker might keep his hands to himself after the partying. The word "PARTY!!" with neon pink exclamation pts.
had been scrawled all over the back of Evan's museum shop postcard. ( The photo on the front would not have been legal under the old regime.)

Evan walked down the street like he owned the neighborhood. In a sense, he did. Welcome to the hub of homo heights, Marcus. The guy was a sweet fool and clown who had sold them marijuana, cocaine, gas in balloons ( once),primo hash and bootleg ludes made of pulverized Canadian diazepam. Marcus probably didn't have anything with him ( who knows when you live in Free Key Zone, once called Florida) so Evan had called his "caterer", a despicable person with links to the best a thriving pleasure industry could offer. Even his boy whores were relatively fresh.
He smiled proudly at his blonde curls as he mounted the steps and shrieked: there's some kinda hippy creature in my living room.

Tableaux: Marcus, rubbery legs intertwined, sitting back on the yellow sofa near the window. Evan and Todd napping in their personal chairs like someone's grandparents. A disgusting mess littered the coffee table. Small mirror, stray rails of powders, an odd pipe, metal straws, crumpled
bag of smoke, beer bottles, glasses with melting ice. An unopened bottle of champagne sat tilted in a gleaming pail.
Marcus awoke and took a quick survey of the room. Nap time, eh? You used to be able to main - tain. Must be all that liberated dick and ass making you soft and light. Marshmallow men. Todd had a bit of a hard-on in his sleep. Evan was still as a cadaver on a slab.
His head hurt. He hoped it wasn't another redheadache.
- Todd. hey Todd.
Todd opened one eye. - Yeah? He was hoarse from smoking.
- You got anything good, I mean good, for a headache?
- I have these new things, um, oxyhydrocodone that the doctor gave me for my ass. Then he opened his other eye and laughed.
- Sicko. Does one, you know ...
- I'll give you one cause they don't grow on trees except maybe in F.K.Z. If it still hurts afterwhile,
well, tough. I'll give you another one if you let me fuck you. It won't hurt as much haha.
- Man, do we have to ...
- Can't you take a joke? If I wanted a pay date he'd be cuter than you. Sorry. Here.
He shook two big white lozenges from a narrow vial and dropped them onto Marcus' upturned palm.

to be continued

.

A note on Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox

2010-04-04T02:26:00.000-07:00

FANTASTIC MR. FOX( Wes Anderson co/w Noah Baumbach) An animated Wes Anderson film? The Darjeeling Limited had not seemed animate except for the Kinks song at the beginning and those kooky OTC Indian meds. But, dear me, FMF is hardly a feelgood movie but it certainly made me feel good. And I'll cuss up any one who says different. I've always loved puppetry and stop action animation ( I'll sit through any old cuss if Ray Harryhausen's name is on it). Anderson had me. My opinion of his other movies, except Bottle Rocket and The Royal Tenenbaums has always been mixed. Sometimes greatness, sometimes a cuss of a lot of visual frou -frou. For now, however, he and his fantastic cowriter Noah " son of Georgia Brown" Baumbach can do no wrong.

Shame - a memoir

2010-03-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

This post is a fictionalized account of a true event. Many details, large and small, have been altered for the sake of artistic effect.

Newark, De - March 1978. Sir Angus Wilson, author of A Bit Off The Map, Kipling, Anglo Saxon Attitudes, Death Dance and, most recently, As If By Magic is a visiting professor of English literature
at the University of Delaware's Newark Campus. - Wilmington News Journal, 3 March 1978.

Sir Angus gave a reading one Thurday night. Craig and I decided to go and invited the smitten Scotty to join us. " He sucks with absorbent lips", Craig had nicknamed him after a middle-of-the-night nude tussle in the flash of a dying fire. " My dear, it's utterly Women in Love." We were friends again, taking turns playing Anthony Blanche and Lottie Crump and our other favorite literary characters.

The visiting novelist cut a Victorian figure with his red face and luxurious hair. He commented during the reading that no reviewer had seen fit to mention Wilson's homages - quotes, really - from Beardsley's Under The Hill and Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. " Mr. Wilson, I haven't read de Sade but I did read Under The Hill and I didn't catch the .."
Wilson gave us a meaningful look and said " It's a chapter heading. ' ... how they tousled them and mousled them ...the rorty little darlings."
"Our little friend has never been mousled," Craig said, indicating Scotty, who was helping himself to yet another glass of bad sauterne.
This conversation occurred, not in some den of iniquity, but in a hastily decorated "social room" across the street from the auditorium where Sir Angus read. Everyone seemed half tanked except Craig, Sir Angus, his tough looking companion Joe and your humble correspondent. I don't know if Sir Angus was a reformed drunkard or the victim of some dreadful malady whose treatment required abstinence from alcohol. There had to be some good reason for him drinking Fresca.
"Well, someone should teach him the mechanics of mousling."
Craig nodded. "Have you ever been to Rehoboth Beach?"
" Oh dear. No, I haven't. Joe, what was the place with the lads who had a shop?"
" Lads? Them old queens? Llhooze, there's a ferry to New Jersey."
" Lew-es. It's a nice historical town but all the action is in Rehoboth. You should come back home with us. My wife went to visit her sick mother. We'll have casa Craig all to ourselves."
"Ah, well.."
"Craig."
"Yes, er, Craig, that's a very exciting invitation. What do you think, Joe?"
"Angie, if it suits you, I'm all for it. Are there clubs, Craig?"
" There's a dance pick up club that's busy on weekends and there's a place called the Nomad. The fishermen drink there all day and after they're gone, it transforms itself into a gay bar."
The half quaalude Craig had given me must have kicked in because there's a deep ravine of forgetfulness until I wake up, fully clothed, in bed with Craig.
"What happened?"
" I'm not sure but judging from the noise Scotty got mousled last night."

Sir Angus and Joe spent the weekend with us. You won't find any references to this impromptu orgy in Margaret Drabble's exhaustively researched biography. You can learn more about Sir Angus' dirty weekend but only if I get enough comments.

Fame - a memoir

2010-03-27T04:48:00.000-07:00

In May 1977 my friend Craig and I went to an Ann Beattie reading in D.C. We'd been reading her stories faithfully in the New Yorker, these tales in which little or nothing happened, usually written in the present tense. If she can do it, so can I. The audience at the reading were kind of sickening and precious. They made little noises of appreciation when Beattie said," I decided to call this story 'Distant Music' ... I guess because we were reading Dubliners in class."
After the reading, there was the usual signing flurry. It was a Sunday evening but people had places to go.
I accosted Beattie and her husband David Gates on the street, outside Second Story Books.
" I wanted to ask you something .... but there were so many people."
"Yes?"
" The New Yorker's a pretty staid magazine. Don't they get upset about the pot smoking and stuff in your stories?"
" Actually, my editor Roger Angell is really good about that sort of thing." The bearded guy cleared his throat.
"Do you feel like a spokesman for your generation?" ( I was really obnoxious in those days.)
" Oh, no no no, absolutely not. I have to get my dinner. It was nice talking to you", Beattie said and zipped around a corner and out of sight.
I glared at Craig. " Why didn't you talk to her instead of hanging around like that? She probably thought you were a purse snatcher."
" I just went alienated all of a sudden."

A Movie I Wish I'd Missed

2010-03-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

Tim Burton has a handful of impressive movies to his credit - the Batman duo ( one great movie might be cobbled together out of Batman / Batman Returns) Ed Wood ( a genuinely quirky biopic with what could be Johnny Depp's best Performance) Edward Scissorhands ( a messiah movie on a level with Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth) The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice and Big Fish. I used to be a real cheerleader for Mars Attacks! but it hasn't aged well. Sweeney Todd is visually gorgeous but doesn't warrant a second viewing. Even though the trailers looked hideous, I took in a matinee of Alice in Wonderland.
Vladimir Nabokov said that "some odd scruple" prevented him from alluding, in Lolita, to Lewis Carroll's "pathetic perversion." Tim Burton is apparently more scrupulous than old VN. He obliterates any trace of Carroll from his loud brutish film. Not only that, he can't be bothered much with the events of the titular book and its sequel Through The Looking Glass. Instead of a dreamchild, he gives us an insipid nineteen year old out of a bad Merchant Ivory film who apparently needs corrective eyeglasses.
I'd be dishonest if I said there are no laughs ( there are a couple real snorters) and no real visual jazz ( a few of the 3D stunts are truly impressive) in Burton's travesty. It's just that these odd glints of beauty don't compensate for a dull eyesore of a movie. Let me put it this way. Anyone who takes you to this film with designs on your person is probably the worst sort of perv. Just say " Not tonight. These damn glasses have given me a headache."

Films I Missed or Fell Asleep Watching 1

2010-03-23T20:20:00.000-07:00

My favorite movie of summer 2009 was District 9. I was really excited and pleased that it got a Best Picture nomination, although I knew it hadn't a chance of winning. I saw D9 in a theatre. I didn't see Tarantino's Basterds until tonight. The idea of a QT WW2 movie didn't really excite me much. Deathproof had been so talky and awful that I really wasn't much interested in what our national film lummox had to say, or make of, the second World War European Theatre.
I was happily mistaken.
True, Tarantino's characters still talk too much. Some of his concessions are odd. He seems to have agreed to let Brad Pitt do his character in a bad George W. Bush voice. But it's the ways in which he makes this unmistakably a Tarantino film that are actually, well, almost enchanting.
The rest of the casting is good to fine, like the contents of a bookseller's catalogue. Christoph Waltz, even in his Springtime for Hitler moments, is a fine actor who's also great fun to watch. I was glad to see Julie Dreyfus again. She makes the most of a tiny role. Melanie Laurent ( cineaste Shoshonna) really surpasses Uma Thurman. Her character is as tough and noble as Jackie Brown. I actually did a little fact checking before writing this piece. Rod Taylor, who plays Churchill, is that Rod Taylor, the one known to scifi movie fans old enough to remeber The Time Machine and First Men in the Moon.
Basterds is a really satisfying, even elegant film. It's not as good as Verhoeven's Black Book but it's good enough to mention in the same sentence. I'll have to withhold judgement on Tarantino's next project, even if it's a gangster version of Firbank's Sorrow in Sunlight.

Book Proposal - CONTAINS SPOILERS

2010-03-20T00:27:00.000-07:00

Didn't someone write a book about contemporary male identity as seen in the popular / semipopular films of 1999? I just watched Fight Club after not seeing it since its' release. Forgot how comic it is and also how davidcronenbergian. Really. Elements of Dead Ringers, Scanners, Crash etc. are compressed into one film. As I watched Tyler and Marla watching those buildings collapse, I tried to remember if there was really that much fin de siecle' anxiety in 1999. Who am I kidding? The televangelical / teleprophetic crowd was working the Y2k angle for all it was worth. I worked in a bookstore and filled plenty of orders for some truly worrying survivalist books. We didn't know how good we had it.

Schoolboy Cinema : Another Country

2010-03-17T18:03:00.000-07:00

Another Country poses the following question: did the English public school system, with its' cruel little hierarchies and fledgling young-boy-networks, turn Guy Burgess against Western capitalist heterosexual civilisation? Guy Bennett ( Rupert Everett) and budding Marxist Tommy Judd ( Colin
Firth) despise their school. Judd sees the school as a training academy for the bourgeois status quo. Bennett regards it as the enemy of homoerotic feeling and love.

They're both right.

30 Nights of Terror Halloween party

2009-10-31T08:09:00.000-07:00

( how was i going to say anything new about this ?)

Arbogast puffed a Lucky and watched the long legged young man walk up the steps to the Charles Addams house he called home. Jeez, the kid moves all regal like goddam Miss America. Something stirred in Arbogast's suit pants. Young master Bates was a swish! Master Bates. Arbo, you drove right into that one with your bright lights on. Neiman or Norman - yeah Norman said he still changed the sheets weekly. Did Norman take the sheets, as his colored buddy Miss Otisia put it?
Arbo, you're due for some action. That swabbie in San Diego was two weeks ago and he wouldn't go all the way. Don't brown me, he'd whined. I ain't Betty Crocker, kid, he'd said. I want to fuck you, not fry you.
Norman was a pretty thing. You could tell he was confused. He'd never stick his wick in that gash Marion Crane but he'd be suskeptical to her charms. All women had a mantrap between their legs
but Norman hadn't gotten his pecker caught yet. He was a v-i-r-g-i-n. It'd take a lot of spit and persuasion to get in but what a sweet ride. Arbo set the scene. He'd hide in the shower while Norman changed the sheets, getting an eyeful of Norm's sweet ass as he bent over. Arbo springs out of the bathroom and chloroforms Norman. He pulls down his jeans and applies a huge gob of Vaseline to his schvontze and the kid's pretty pink rose. oo la la. The chloroform was only to expedite the fucking. Otherwise Arbo would have to dress up as a broad to catch Norman's eye.

30 Nights of Horror October 30

2009-10-30T02:39:00.000-07:00

This is for Bernard Welt and David Ehrenstein.

The Seventh Victim is, after Cat People, my favorite Lewton movie. A young student ( Kim Hunter) is informed that her sister, perfumier Jacqueline, has quit paying Mary's tuition and cannot be located. Fearless and naive as all Lewton heroines, Mary sallies forth into the Village bohemia of the '40s iso her sister. She learns that Jacqueline has quit the perfume racket and left her business to the overbearing Mrs. Redy ( Isabel Jewell). She meets her brother-in-law Hugh Beaumont, an italian hostess named Bella and, of all people, Jacqueline's psychiatrist ( Tom Conway). Obviously, in the timeline of Lewtonia, Conway has not yet met Elena the cat person.
A queer logo catches Mary's eye. We learn that it is the symbol of the Paladys, a cabal of "non-violent" satanists. "Non-violent", my eye. They have already murdered private eye Irving August and dispatch a knife wielding killer after Jacqueline when, at last, she turns up. All the fuss is over jacqueline's blabbing the secrets of the Paladys. I don't know why she'd want to belong to a club that can only afford a one armed pianist.
Mary is confronted in the shower by Mrs. Redy, a scene that presages the Marion Crane murder.
Jacqueline had taken a small room containing a chair and a rope slung over the rafters with a noose at one end. Mary meets her tubercular neighbor, who's determined to go out and trip the light fantastic and damn her health. I will not reveal the ending of this film. It's the grimmest ending in the Lewton canon.

30 Nights of Horror (for Inthemostpeculiarway)

2009-10-18T16:18:00.000-07:00

Strangers in the night - Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation. Until recently I had only seen the rated version of this film. At the end of the credits of the original vhs release in '96, Araki berated the distributors, the Clinton administration and everyone else imaginable for nobbling his gory road movie. I did some quick research before sitting down to write. When will I ever learn? The only piece of useful information I found was, of all places, on wikipedia. ( My rule with wikipedia is simple. If I can only find a fact on wiki it's either a factoid, in Mailer's original sense of something unproven repeated until it's accepted as truth, or a lie interpolated by a prankster, propagandist or provo.) The "no thanks to Cheryl Ladd" at credits' end was Araki's flipoff to the former Charlie's Angel for not allowing her daughter Jorfan to play Amy Blue, the Rose McGowan character. Ladd did appear in the dystopian Nowhere, GA's next film.
Like The Living End, TDG is a road movie, a gruesome hilarious and finally numbing road movie. The sexual geometry of Jordan ( James Duval at his beautiful doofus best), Amy and Xavier ( the handsomest man-man to adorn an Araki picture) has been compared to Pasolini's Theorem but in a twisted way i was reminded more of Rebel Without a Cause, if Ray's classic had been dark and post-analytic. X is a sex object and a father figure to Jordan, who is fascinated by X the second he lays eyes on him. Although J and Amy are "virgins", Amy's clearly the more experienced virgin. She functions as a maternal figure to cute, sweet but sofuckindumb Jordan. The increasing attraction between her man and her bf doesn't faze her in the least, her protestations notwithstnding. Before I get to the horror ( and if this isn't a non-genre horror film, what is it?) i want to say that the bathtub sex scene between J and A is immensely lovely. The comic verisimilitude of James Duval having trouble getting his jeans off fast enough, hairy ass crack and all, is worth a thousand Pitt - Gainsbourg - Garrel fashion layout sex scenes.( The Dreamers is almost as false and sickmaking a film as Oliver Stone's NBK monstrosity, a film I detest.) I gasped when I recognized the foreshadowing in J's nosebleed as I witnessed the rape - murder -castration finale, filmed as if seen in secondary glimpses through hands covering eyes.

This night of terror is dedicated with admiration and respect to a young man with a critical future.

30 Nights of Terror October 7

2009-10-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

Beverly was about to pack up her stuff and go when the Portises finally arrived, twenty minutes late.
She had considered peeing in the back yard of this wretched place but the memory of her colleague Susie Temple stopped her. Susie was so annoyed by her dilatory clients that she squatted and, well, defecated in front of the fixer upper in East Jesus as, guess what, the clients walked up the driveway. They'd had a flat tire three miles away and weren't amused by Susie's antics. Susie lost her realtor's license and bungled her new career choice, meth cook, in a literally flamboyant way.
Oh well, here are the fucking Portises at last.
Darren and Samantha Portis were a slightly attractive couple in their late twenties. They both spoke in an elongated upper New York state drawl.
" Hi, I'm Beverly Pills. Why don't .."
" Oh, Dare, this is it. They've painted it and landscaped but it looks juust like that Ann Roool book cover."
" Doctor Dickbiter's house! Get some pictures with your phone, Sammy."
" Darren, the owners prefer no amateur photos of the house or grounds."
" Oh shut up rreal estate lady. Grounds. That's rich."
" Yeahh Dare are they like the grounds Doccy Dick had for suing Ann Roool? As in nonexistent."
Sammy let out a horrid, braying guffaw. It didn't even sound human.
While the awful couple strolled around giggling and taking phone pictures Susie thought about the relative isolation of the place.
She'd have to improvise.

Dare walked around the corner of the house first. Susie let him have it with a nice two by four she'd found in the basement. The combined blood and mold was really pretty but Susie didn't have time for aesthetics. While Dare stood wobbling Susie rammed her pistol into his mouth and squeezed off two shots. Sammy was speechless for a second when she saw what was left of her DH on the ground. Exhaling loudly she grinned and said " Thank you, Bethany. I'm sorry i called you rreal est -"
Beverly only shot Sammy once, in her stomach. She screamed and complained while beverly kicked her repeatedly in the head. Beverly was reaching for her gun when, quite suddenly, Sammy quieted down, nice like. These goddamn crime tourists were always more trouble than they were worth. How long would it take to dispose of the bodies? The old sinkhole near Grippe's Farm was almost full. She tried to remember the Farmer's Almanac weather for this anniversary day. Nope, she thought as she doused the couple with accelerant, the rain should hold off long enough.

Tonight's movie: Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham's Last House on the Left.

30 Nights of Terror Oct.6

2009-10-06T06:46:00.000-07:00

When Peter Lorre was acting in Fritz Lang's M , his night job was singing and hoofing in a musical comedy. Lorre always seems a very modern actor, even in an early film like Mad Love aka The Hands of Orlac. Cinematographer Karl Freund directed, Gregg Toland was dp. A digression: in Pauline Kael's The Citizen Kane Book, she presents stills from ML ( Lorre in baldpate, the drunken housekeeper's pet cockatoo) with similar images from Citizen Kane, visual ammo for her controversial theory that Kane did not spring Athenalike from Orson Welles' head. Toland, of course, was the cameraman on Kane and, I guess, responsible for Mad Love's lively Vorkapich montages.
Lorre is Professor Gogol, a brilliant surgeon who can restore lost limbs. He's hopelessly enamored of an actress, Yvonne Orlac. Nightly he visits the strange theatre where she performs and ogles her wax figure in the lobby. Yvonne appreciates Orlac's attentions as a fan but she's devoted to her concert pianist husband Stephen Orlac ( Colin Clive). When Orlac's hands are crushed in an accident, Gogol sees a chance to win his beloved. As this film can be seen free on TCM on demand, I suggest you check it out. Seventy three minutes of delicious weirdness. Another magesterial American movie seems to have nicked a detail from Mad Love. Can you guess its title?

30 Nights of Terror - Oct. 4

2009-10-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

Hannibal Lecter is the best known villain since Professor Moriarty. Red Dragon, Thomas Harris' first novel about the FBI'S Behavioral Science Unit, was filmed twice. In 1986 Lecter wasn't a household word. He appears in Michael Mann's adaptation of RD three times and is played by Brian Cox. Manhunter is the story of the empathic Will Graham, called out of retirement after a serial killer has begun murdering entire families in a ritualistic fashion. Graham can enter a killer's mind fairly easily. It's the exiting that's difficult.
Graham ends up consulting Lecter in his cell at the Antonioni-white Chesapeake Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Lecter toys with him and sets off a panic reaction in Graham when he tells him
" We're alike, you and me." When it's discovered that the wanted perp aka the Tooth Fairy has been corresponding with Lecter through a tabloid's classified section, Graham stages an interview and photo op with the odious Freddie Lounds, tab journalism's star. Freddie is abducted and tortured by the Tooth Fairy. His awful reentry into the outside world is captured in a mere four shots.

Enough of the synopsis. Red Dragon was filmed again in 2002 with Anthony Hopkins in his final appearance as Lecter. It's a dismal film that shows us its best sequence ( Graham's capture of Lecter) before the credits roll. Michael Mann's somewhat dated version is, according to me, the better of the two. Tomorrow - Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat.

30 Nights of Terror - 10/02

2009-10-03T10:58:00.000-07:00

In October I try to watch at least one horror movie, or what i deem horror, a day. This is a log of those afternoons, evenings, nights and mornings.

Cloverfield - JJ Abrams' American Godzilla movie, shot a la Blair Witch Project, is a first rate roller coaster movie. No one will ever cite it for psychological depth or great characterization. It's a good example of social observation that answers the question: What would a group of blithe upwardly mobile 20somethings do if their party was interrupted by a monster attack? A lot of dialogue was apparently improvised. Although the film was actually shot by a number of camerapersons and edited with a finetooth comb, it's easy to believe you're watching the calamitous events of that night through one person's POV.
Ok. Fine. My only reservations about this movie began rising to the surface as the credits rolled. Abrams and company seem to have watched all the available 9/11 footage. This very enjoyable movie is, on some levels, a terrorist attack restaged as a thrill ride.
Die Monster Die - An American International adaptation of Lovecraft's Colour Out of Space with Boris Karloff, Nick Adams ( looking very spruce) and Suzan Farmer. Lots of fun. Tonight may be Hammer Night. You six will have to click my link and see.

Prawn to the People / District 9

2009-08-26T07:16:00.000-07:00

District 9, the South African science fiction tale of exoskeletal aliens segregated in Johannesburg townships, is the best foreign genre film since last fall's Let The Right One In. Its' mockumentary format, which breaks down after about thirty minutes, is so deadpan and hilarious that I thought I was watching an ultradry comedy, more Mars Attacks than Independence Day. Wikus, a moronic bureaucrat, heads the project to relocate the disliked, unwanted catfood noshing aliens. After being exposed to a mysterious fluid, his mangled right hand is replaced by a prawn claw, giving him the ability to operate alien weaponry, which requires alien DNA to work. Humans can't fire these weapons, at least not until Wikus, who's become the most wanted man in Johannesburg after news of his transformation spreads. He falls in with Christopher Johnson and his son, little CJ. Big CJ has a very interesting secret that it would be unfair to reveal.
As a matter of fact, as much as I'd like to babble on about this movie, its' various borrowings and the really weird treatment it's gotten from reviewers, ranging from the clueless types who have no business writing about this sort of film to more perceptive mainstream / "alternative" critics who don't seem quite sure what they've seen, I'll keep my peace until at least one of my four readers has had a chance to see this unexpected gem.

OP ALAS 1 - I,JFK

2009-08-25T04:55:00.000-07:00

( first in an irregular series of posts about books which have gone out of print to my great sorrow)

I, JFK is a comic fantasy by Robert Mayer, author of Superfolks. It was published in 1990 by St. Martin's and appeared in paperback in time to get on the Oliver Stone JFK fantasy bandwagon. Kennedy is in heaven with his brother Bobby, LBJ, Martin Luther King and Marilyn Monroe. He must explain himself before moving on to heaven's next level. I bought this book in paperback and initially suspected that it was the work of Gore Vidal or perhaps Thomas Disch. Wrong. It's the work of a novelist who is proud that he never repeats himself.( That's fine but it makes the people in marketing reach for the Xanax.)
It's an awful temptation to recount the funniest parts of this book but I shall resist. I'll only say that Mayer's vision of November 22 Dealey Plaza outdoes Robert Anton Wilson's fantasia of multiple assassins in Illuminatus! It's topped only by the account of what really happened the night Marilyn Monroe died. A book that deserves more readers.

WV or Terror of the Random

2009-08-23T04:49:00.000-07:00

Blogger likes to keep the spammers at bay with its word verification device. In order for his comment to appear, the poster must type a more or less random series of letters that sometimes form an actual word but more often are a bizzaro portmanteau wordoid. At times the WV seems to possess an oracular editorial spirit. Some have called it the I Ching of the internet.
That way lies madness, according to Portland writer Ronnie Cordova, who refers to the wv as a schizophrenia test. If you think its cybergibberish means anything, you should be on Prolixin maintenance. Cordova's brutal common sense approach to anything spooky or outre' has its merits.
But I must disagree. The wv is the happiest, and most treacherous, verbal accident since Brion Gysin's discovery of the cut up technique.

Ten More Things About Me

2009-08-18T04:40:00.000-07:00

or, when in doubt, post a list.

1. Someone gave me a zucchini the size of an Invasion of the Body Snatchers pod.
2.A friend and I invented hip hop rhyming in 1975, aided by a rhyming dictionary.
3. I have never seen Gone With The Wind.
4.I own a copy of The Wind Done Gone, the revisionist version of the novel.
5. If we wrestle, you'll win.
6. I am afraid to be alone with the zucchini in #1.
7.If you send me a SASE, I'll send you the recipe for that powerful cocktail, the fantod.
8. I have never actually drank a fantod.
9. After waiting for three years for the new Morrissey album, I got around to buying it a couple of weeks ago.
10. I hate it ( not really).

Truth in Blogging,or, Ask Me No Question

2009-08-06T00:28:00.000-07:00

As a shy type, I am not a natural blogger. I don't feel compelled to show pictures of my pet or significant other, although I've seen some very saucy ones recently. My blog is personal but not terribly autobiographical. If it's the minutiae of everyday life you're after, I'm not your boy. However, just this once, I'll tell the tale of a blogger who got blogged down in his own version of the truth.
When this individual lived with a friend of mine in Baltimore, he sent me a link for his livejournal or whatever he was using at the time. I was surprised to see him describe the house where he rented one small smokefilled room as " my investment property." He posted a photo of himself nude that had been hideously photoshopped to make him the envy of Dirk Diggler.
He inherited some money and bought himself a Vespa, which was eventually stolen but not before it became the love object of a phantom fetishist who jacked off on its' smoothrunning leather seat before dawn each day M-F. He began disappearing regularly and calling. he claimed, from the ICU of various local hospital. He was dying of a rare cancer triggered by recovered memories of witnessing the murder of his older brother in childhood. At last he moved out of my friend's house. I stopped receiving e mails from him.
Two years ago I idly Googled him and found that there was an entire site devoted to the discrepancies, pseudonyms, embellishments and plain damn lies that permeated his various blogs, posted under various names. The photo he displayed of his bf turned out to be a dj photo of a childrens' book author in Texas. He has complained of cancer in nearly every organ of his body and lives camped at death's door much of the time. Unmasking his online personae has almost become a cottage industry in da blogosphere. I suspect that some of these disgrutled folk expressed support, sympathy,etc. on one of his many blogs before smelling a rat. Not nice, Steve, not nice at all.
It's 4:17am, rain and thunder, lukewarm Diet pepsi at my elbow. Isn't reality revolting?

Famous Authors 2

2009-08-04T04:09:00.000-07:00

blogger Viddy Knobs said...

Vida and I are in Maryland looking for chiroptera. As this is a nocturnal activity, our days are free. We eat horrific food at unspeakable "joints" as Frank and Peggy and Tony vocalise on the jukebox. Yesterday I ordered a bowl of oatmeal at breakfast. A moth came flitting through the room. "Maybe we should be collecting them instead of bats, darling."

If Famous Authors Left Comments at DC's

2009-07-30T04:18:00.000-07:00

blogger Frank Jafja said:

The office is really going to drive me out of my mind. My dreams have gone from being simply prurient to unspeakably strange. Last night I dreamed I awoke transformed into a gigantic pig. At soome point in the man-to-piggy transformation i devouured the Goyutat book Dennis had posted a few days ago. My sister came into my bedroom and screamed, at which point I woke up .... I think.

25

2009-02-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a lot of lists on Facebook and even found a Facebook -inspired list on the Dodie Bellamy blog. 25 facts and statements about myself:

1. I'm a bit of a namedropper ( see above - and below}
2. I am lefthanded and not at all ambidextrous. My right hand is a stupid but attractive appendage that does all the heavy lifting and carrying.
3. The first time I ejaculated, I thought I had some kind of disease.
4. Deranged, even schizoid people are drawn to me.
5. I wish I knew the reason for #4.
6. Although I think she is not bursting with ideas and is in many ways an artistic coward, I have seen Laurie Anderson perform in seven different venues.
7. Bowling is not part of my skill set.
8. I've got a never ending love for you, whoever you are.
9. All my dreams are in widescreen format.
10. In 1976 I delayed Ann Beattie's supper.
11. What did I tell you? Larry McMurtry used to hide when he saw me crossing M St. heading toward Booked Up.
12. I have never written anything that could be described as journalism. However, you could call it reportage.
13. I have mixed beer and Campari and survived, but not without sustaining neural damage.
14. When I am alone, I do not talk to myself. Peace and quiet is more important than "vocalizing the interior monologue."
15. Gus van Sant's Gerry is a fuck you to the pseuds and poseurs.
16. The first time I had a dry orgasm I thought I was dying.
17. I lent my best friend three Dennis Cooper books. He used them to prop up his weights bench. He read at least one of them but he can't remember which one.
18. The last Woody Allen movie I saw in the theatre was Small Time Crooks. I fell asleep.
I also fell asleep during The Matrix Reloaded.
19. In Ottowa I was twice accosted by prostitutes, one male, one apparently female.
20. A barroom discussion about Edgar Allan Poe and necrophilia almost came to blows.
21. My grandmother bought Dale Cooper's FBI memoir not realizing it was a television tie-in. Waldenbooks wouldn't let her return or exchange it.
22. I like brie on cheeseburgers.
23. I'd blog daily if all I had to do was complile stupid lists.
24. All my sex partners have been human or at least humanoid.
25. I have no animal phobias.

Snow Day

2009-01-27T20:14:00.000-08:00

The Outlaw ( Howard Hughes)I have probably seen fewer westerns than any other type of genre film. If this vanity piece was the first western one ever saw, one wouldn't be in a great hurry to see another. Hughes' inflated ego floated through Hollywood for several years. Clamor and outrage surrounded this movie, with its unequivocal "suggestive" music cues and bizarre camera angles ( courtesy of Kane camera man Gregg Toland)that drew the viewer's eye
to the generous bosom of Jane Russell. When Hughes isn't steaming up the room with Ms Russell, he's telling a version of the story of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Pat's best friend Doc Holiday is cleverly played by Walter Huston. This isn't a dull film but the absence of la Russell only emphasizes Hughes' sub- Ed Wood directorial prowess.

Master and Commander ( Peter Weir)Peter Weir hit America with Witness, a sound variation of his theme of cultures colliding. He made one more picture that was on a par with his Australian films, Fearless, the tale of a man who has no business being alive ( he's survived an airliner crash)that has affinities with Phillipe Mora. Master and Commander is a precis' of the work of the popular nautical storyteller Patrick O'Brian. Weir depicts the archetypal homosocial milieu, the life of the sea, but plausibly keeps everything on a friendly basis. It's still enough to wring a tear from even the phlegmatic likes of me. Russell Crowe gives us another 3D portrait, his best after John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. Paul Bettany offsets Captain Aubrey's genuine piety as the ship's doctor, an amateur naturalist whose idea of heaven is the Galapagos Islands. It's no The Last Wave or Gallipoli but a worthy film. I'm sorry I missed it in the theatres.

Dance With A Stranger ( Mike Newell)Nightclub hostess and retired prostitute Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in England. Scenarist Shelagh Delaney presents the events leading to Ellis' execution as the impossible triangle of the lady, aspiring race car driver David Blakeley and unrequited lover/ protector Desmond Cussen. Blakeley is besotted
with Ellis and even breaks off an engagement to "the kind of girl my mother wants me to marry". But this is England in 1954. The kind of slumming popular among the toffs was still several years away. Ellis is played by Miranda Richardson as a collection of tics,twitches and tantrums. She conveys so much through shrieks and cries that she's almost the female Nick Nolte. I've spoilt the movie already but I hope my description of Richardson's acting drives you to find this movie and watch it anyway. There were at least two other very good British true crime films during the late 80s - early 90s, Peter Medak's
The Krays and Let Him Have It. The latter was most people's first look at Christopher Eccleston.

When it snows, I watch movies.