Little Napoleons & Japan

Today I started helping my friend Larissa make costumes of characters in her paintings, (specifically Little Napoleons) to use in front of a bluescreen towards making a performance/painting video to explain her work at an upcoming show in Denmark. I'm going to fuck this up but in a nutshell they represent patriarchal/domineering/rigid, binary gender systems trying to take over a world of Cry Babies/Maternal Men:



I'm really excited to be working on something visual & physical with another person instead of putting all my creative energy into audio/virtual stuff all alone.

They remind me of these portraits my friend Jordan tipped me to by Japanese artists who couldn't visually comprehend newly arrived westerners after two hundred of years of isolationism.


[Link to Commodore Perry & the Opening of Japan]

Oh, and I really liked this painting she had clipped out for inspiration, The Battle of Lances:

Life Found on Mars

Simply amazing, this will put all scientific debate to rest. Virgin Galactic announces Mars game hunting packages beginning 2018.

A Visit to the Natty Hist. Museum

Liam Lynch's (aka one half of Sifl & Olly) Museum Rap
I really hope The X-Wing dance move catches on...

When I first moved to the city I spent 1 week deciding what my dream job would be (diorama builder at the Natural History museum), 1 week drafting a letter and 2 weeks waiting for them to call and offer me a job. After a month I figured out I should probably be looking for other work at the same time. I can't believe I was that stupid. I still love dioramas though, my friend Jeremy and I had this great idea to start making shoebox dioramas to send to each other in the mail. It never happened, probably because it would have required quitting our jobs and all other extra-curricular activities in order to get them done.

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This is a metal album cover waiting to (please guys) happen:

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I had an epiphany that owls are pretty much flying cats:
















































These types of mineral formations make me think about what an alien manufactured object would begin to look like, something completely divorced from the entire human history of creation yet recognizably designed. Actually it reminds me of the ancient alien tomb that surfaces a few hundred miles off New Zealand in HP Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulu. Some sailors come upon it and are sickened by "the geometry of the dream-place...abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours." This feeling, and Lovecraft's general deal (as far as I've read of him), is summed up in the opening paragraph of the same story thusly:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of disassociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

The guy is pretty much the anti-Sagan (and predictor of Reavers).

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Peking






























Alexandria






























I forget which city this is (note the flying carpet hovering above the city). The shifting scale and perspective on these things is really impressive.

Penate Busts Out

If I could pull this off I'd die satisfied:

Roller Disco Boogie

First off, I was hoping to post a mixtape every month on this thing but I've already fallen behind. That being said, I don't particularly care (all part of my new effort to dismantle my New England guilt complex) and somehow figure you don't either.

I was inspired to make this mix after my friend Caitlin told me about her being a passionate roller disco devotee back in 1992. I asked for her help in making this mix but she couldn't get it together in time/was too overwhelmed to suggest her favorite songs (Egyptian Lover - Egypt Egypt, Debbie Deb - When I Hear Music & Shannon - Let the Music Play to name a few). This mix is dedicated to that awkward 10-year-old in the orange leotard and classic quad-skates I wish I had been friends with back in the day despite the 3000 miles separating us.

Despite the recent closure of many of New York's roller rinks you can still go to Central Park (in the warmer months) and skate with the Central Park Dance Skaters Association who I wandered upon one weekend and was captivated by what can only be described as joy on rollerskates, a mix of disco-era holdouts and more recent yet just as zealous converts.

Two P.S.'s: First, I'm really excited about Timbaland's new song, a club hit about liking someone regardless of how little money they have (!?!) and second, all apologies for not including your song if you suggested I add it, sometimes a mixtape takes you places you didn't expect. As a perfect example (and I realize this defies logic) but for whatever reason Zapp & Roger didn't make it onto this mix, what the fuck?

Kool & the Gang - Spirit of the Boogie
Vernon Burch - Get Up
De La Soul - A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays
Mighty Ryeders - Evil Vibrations
Jamiroquai - Feel So Good
Timbaland - The Way I Are
Chromeo - Fancy Footwork
Calvin Harris - The Girls
Kano - I'm Ready
The Bee Gees - You Should Be Dancing
Jamiroquai - Canned Heat
Justice - D.A.N.C.E.
PJ - Happy Days (Beatstreet Remix)
Madonna - Holiday
The Jacksons - Blame it On the Boogie
Rick James - Give it to me Baby
The Bar-Kays - Freakshow on the Dancefloor
Prince - Uptown
Ohio Players - Love Rollercoaster
The Emotions - You've Got the Best of My Love
Earth Wind & Fire - September
Kelis - Roller Rink


Roller Disco Boogie Mixtape [right-click to download]

P.P.S. For all the haters (presumably in the United States) who immediately dismiss Jamiroquai as a one hit wonder, you obviously A.) Have never been out of the country, B.) Don't know know enough music history (i.e. Stevie Wonder and good disco) to understand what they're attempting to replicate and C.) Don't enjoy dancing.

P.P.P.S. I just discovered a Mac widget that allows you to click along to any song playing in iTunes to determine its BPM and automatically add it to the track's info in iTunes. If you don't immediately know what this is useful for, forget it, otherwise you can download it for free here.

Oh, and one more Freaks & Geeks clip (why is it so relevant to everything I'm in to?):

The Pogues!

The Pogues are playing Roseland Ballroom on March 15th and 16th and tickets are still available! I'm going Saturday and plan on being absolutely four sheets to the wind wasted. I labeled them punk but really they're just a soundtrack for living, a life apparently involving nothing but drinking, loving, fighting and mourning, but living all the same.

[Update: Syke! I'm going Sunday now...]

Gang Green!

I just saw a poster that says Gang Green is playing in Greenpoint at Europa for $12 [Tix] on Feb. 23rd! They have one of my favorite album titles of all time, Older...Budweiser (not to be confused with their album Another Case of Brewtality). If you get there before eight they're giving out free Bud and cocaine...just kidding...maybe...

Does anybody read all this shit let alone care?

Darkplace

I probably shouldn't drink and blog but my friend Noga just tipped me off to the BBC's Darkplace, an "unearthed" horror TV series about a hospital situated above the Gates of Hell (and is perhaps the best show of its kind since Red Dwarf or The Young Ones!) I think they're going to start (or have already started) showing it on Adult Swim. Just check out the opening credits to get a sense of what's to come:



It's also continuing in the same brilliantly demented vein as H.P. Lovecraft's Reanimator:

Dungeons & Drinking & Dragons

In case you hadn't heard, I am now a 4th level Elf Thief and I'm happy to report that just the other night, 16 year old Holly Sugar (aka Steve) and I successfully infiltrated a thief guild with a combination of seduction and deception in order to prevent an assassination attempt. This culminated with me stealing a diamond necklace from a mansion in the city of Suzail (helped in no small part by the wizard Liter Cola (aka Nick) casting a spell of invisibility on me. Stay tuned for further updates...

My Day

Today when I got off the train at 14th and 6th a dog (looking sort of like a lab/pit/boxer mix) ran by with a leash and vest on. Once I realized no one was chasing it I started after him. 8 blocks later I still couldn't catch him and at least a hundred people just stared even as I yelled out for them to stop him. I finally gave up partly because I was late for work but mostly because I figured if anybody was going to catch him it was going to be as he passed them. I got pretty close though, I hope he's alright.






















After work I went to see the movie Atonement alone. I invited Takei but he unfortunately couldn't make it in time. We had previously gone to see Pride & Prejudice together (another period-romance-Keira Knighty film) and when the lights came up I'm pretty sure we were the only people there who weren't a gay couple or girls. It was a very Vanity Fair movie (a term I think I've only ever thought to myself), with plenty of beautifully-lit, well-dressed, upper-class, very attractive people living in beautiful period settings which I still can't help but liking (plus they had sex in a library!). As I sipped at my gigantic rum-and-movie-coke it occurred to me that this should be my new years resolution, to see more movies in the theater. I found my own nebulous feelings about movies explained succinctly by Reynolds Price when he wrote:

"A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens—second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths."

(Which I only know about from the last post on Theresa Duncan's blog before she killed herself.) I also love Pedro Almodóvar's reflection that...

"Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness."

Good movies bring about a welcome temporary change in consciousness much like parties, sex and drugs, all of which I increasingly believe we seek out to try and fill the hole left by the end of childhood and therefore the death of magic. On a final note, one very minor character in the movie complains of not being mysterious. Whenever I find myself worrying about the same thing, of not being mysterious enough or Jordan-Catalano-Cool, I remind myself and take comfort in that just as Price equates telling stories with being alive, being mysterious and cool is really just about distancing oneself from any real human interactions, in other words a little death.

What I Did Over My Winter Vacation

1. I got up close and personal with an owl at my friend's film shoot

2. I downloaded 4 very promising gigs of breakdancing music
[download torrent]

3. I took weird pictures of my pets with a flashlight in the dark




4. I bought a perfectly fitting cashmere suit for $15 that I want to wear every day

5. I heard the new Alicia Keys song on the radio and liked it a lot although Prince needs to add a guitar solo over it. Plus in the video she's at my favorite place to sit by the river in Brooklyn! (Unfortunately Common is in it too and he's lame)


[Download MP3]

6. Oh, and I became Godfather to Finnian "Finn" Autumn Brown but because of my atheism I've negotiated my title into "Honorary Uncle."