7

"The wines were too various"
---Evelyn Waugh


This is it. Came back to Austin today. I heard on the radio today that Detroit is almost 2/3 deserted. I want to go up there and see it.




"Under the Volcano"--- John Huston movie from 1984. Fucking great. I can watch a pompous, drunk Englishman 24 hours a day and be happy. The character is one of those poetry dribbling drunks that make me laugh. Shot in Mexico. God, Mexico's good.

6

"On this occasion Lovecraft tried to play "Yes, We Have No Bananas" on the church's organ, but was 'balk'd by lack of power, since the machine is not a self-starter.'"
---Lovecraft Quoted by S.T. Joshi





Look at those pigs going to put out a fire. Fuck the pigs, man.






Since I've been in Dallas I have been on an intense Quest to find a suit jacket (blazer?) that fits me. I'm a little guy so I figured I needed a small or something. Well, it turns out I'm a ridiculously little man or else everyone in the world is a big fatso giant because there is no such thing as a jacket that fits me. I went and tried on the super-rare size 36 jacket at Dillard's that I had to call around looking for, and that is too big for me too. I'm a freak! I am having to resort to getting my friend John to buy me a jacket from a H&M in NY and send it to me. Apparently people in NY are all tiny or something because that size 36 fits me. Is this the most boring story I can think of?


I watched part of "Two Weeks Notice" on TV last night as I was eating some Cheerios. That Hugh Grant is one charming son of a bitch. He should have went with the redhead over that lame-o Sandra Bullock.

5

"This is the fifth communication from the Weathermen Underground. Rosemary and Tim are free and high."---Statement from Weather Underground when they broke Timothy Leary out of jail



In 1970, The Brotherhood of Eternal Love paid the Weathermen to break Timothy Leary out of prison for 20,000 dollars. They literally didn't care about Leary but were such hard-asses that they could bust someone out of jail just to make some money. Then Leary escaped to Algeria where a bunch of Black Panthers had set up an independent state within the country's border. Why is no one this cool anymore? I wish there was a draft now so it would force us all off of our asses and do something interesting instead of being a bunch of dildos making music that sounds like it was written with the intent of being used for a future I-pod commercial. We are such a generation of pussies. Fuck us.

Oh and for posterity, last night I went to a party at John Magary's house who I was friends with in junior high and I haven't seen him in like 10 years. I ate a bunch of cheese dip and talked to Alex Kuzio, Shelly Acker, Toby, David Lowey, and Yasmine about G-d knows what. Actually, I spent most of the time taling to Alex about ayahuasca. I really want to try it, but I'm also pretty sure I would hate it while it was happening. Hmmmmmmmmm.


I'm about to watch "The Damned" by Michelangelo Antonioni but I have nothing to report yet.

post: 4 of 7, Chanukah: day 5 of 8, and some Christian thing too

"If you are sixteen or under, try not to go bald."
---Woody Allen


I went to a party at the Moon Mansion in Dallas last night as I have been doing every Christmas Eve for the last 4 or 5 years. 3 or 4 years? I don't know. I saw some Austin people there, and I generally see the same people there every year. It has a kind of time warp element to it because some of the people I see exclusively at that party once a year so it seems like déjà vu and that it is a continuation from the previous year. It is an old Dallas traditional kind of thing where a bunch of people go to this old hippie artist Ashley Bellamy's house. His house is a huge old church that I think might literally go on forever underground in a series of crazy shambling, cluttered basement rooms. Last year I got too drunk and ended up wandering around down there and it was incredible. It was surreal because every room I went into seemed to have some weird activity going on in it that was unrelated to the party. For example, there was some band that was practicing down there who seemed to have no idea there hundreds of people above having a party. Unfortunately, this year the basement part was locked. I spent a lot of time talking to my friend Alex K. about his psychedelic spiritual quest he has been on for the last few months. It was revealed that he was carrying a magic crystal in his pocket, and we both expressed concern that he might turn into a new-age fruitcake.

"Vertigo"--- I was actually a little disappointed by this movie. Maybe it was because I expected too much as it is supposed to be one of the best Hitchcock movies ever. It started pretty well and was mysterious and stylish, but I thought it got a little bogged down with melodrama the romantic aspect of the story. It's true that I'm a baby who hates seeing people kissing onscreen, but I thought it lost the cooler mystery element in favor of a more creepy love/obsession thing between James Stewart and the lady. It had a lot of really cool San Francisco locations and scenery. Not terrible or anything, I just expected more.

3

"Solid elements, contained and brewed in water animated by erotic movement, shoot out in the form of flying fish."---Georges Bataille


So the other day I was complaining about the fact that I haven't been writing as much of these gaylogs lately. In response, the international blogging sensation and local newspaper lady Leah demanded that I write a post every day for a week. She's the editor of the Daily Texan so making insane, life threatening demands on people to write is a conditioned response at this point. I instantly saw the horrible truth which is that she is a frenzied Queen bee sending her hapless workers off to die in the honey mines. Although she was clearly off the clock when she gave me the assignment, and the fact that I'm just some dude on blogger and not a writer at the Texan, I got scared and agreed. So, this is my third post out of a proposed seven. I'm scared! What can happen? Who could die?
Anyways, I'm in Dallas for a few days, and tonight Toby attempted to teach me some ridiculously complicated and nerdy card game called "ConQuest of the Galaxy," or something. Man, I lead a life of the most shocking decadence. Here is a sample of the game description:

In Race for the Galaxy, players build galactic civilizations by game cards that represent worlds or technical and social developments.Each round consists of one or more of five possible phases. In each round, each player secretly and simultaneously chooses one of seven different action cards and then reveals it. Only the selected phases occur. For these phases, every player performs the phase’s action, while the selecting player(s) also get a bonus for that phase.For example, if at least one player chooses the Develop action, then the Develop phase will occur; otherwise it is skipped............

Christ!


"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"--- Watched part of it the other day. Frank Capra tends to be a little overly sentimental and schmaltzy, but I am more willing to accept that kind of thing when Jimmy Stewart is the one being that way. It would probably be unbearable if it starred almost an other actor. Lots of snappy 40's-type dialogue and brassy broads. It's just a little too perfect and tidy: corrupt politicians defeated by the well-meaning townie and his multitude of boy scouts. The good guys win and stuff, and I feel like there was a literal, waving American flag at the end.

(2) Sir Alec Guinness

"Lovecraft was in New York when an earthQuake that affected the entire Northeast occured on February 25th, 1925. His only contemporaneous account of it is found in a laconic diary entry for that day: "house shakes 9:30 p m"--- Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi


I mentioned last time that I had watched "Great Expectations, " and that it had Alec Guinness in it. The man cannot be stopped. I read a hilarious story about when he was in that pussy Lucas' "Star Wars, " and played Obi Wan Kenobi. He told Lucas that it would strengthen the character if Obi Wan died and became a ghost. What actually happened was that he just wanted to get out of having anything to do with the subseQuent "Star Wars" movies. He said, "what I didn't tell him was that I just couldn't go on speaking those bloody awful, banal lines. I'd had enough of the mumbo jumbo." Bwah-ha. Lucas is a faggot. He also refused to sign an autograph for this guy who had seen "Star Wars" 100 times unless he agreed to never watch it again. What a hard-ass.


"A Christmas Tale"--- Yet ANOTHER modern-day French movie I have seen in like the last month or so. This was another example of things becoming over-French and disgusting. Everyone makes eyes at each other and hits on each other and it had this really annoying "look at how life is such a beautiful, nutty thing. What a crazy world, can you believe it!?" etc. It was like "Rachel Getting Married" in that it assumed you wanted to see family portraits of and hear inane stories about a family that is imaginary and that you actually don't give a shit about. It's like someone you don't know sticking their baby pictures in your face.
It was half standard American sappy Christmas movie and half weirdo-Frenchness. It was kinda cool how they don't mind breaking character expectations. The mother character openly just didn't like one of her sons. She was like, "you're the son I never loved." And he's all, "yeah you're gay too." And then they laugh and it's whatevs.

(1) lady shirts and Lean

"Titties are Jewish."
--Lenny Bruce

what the fuck is going on with these girl shirts? i have a shirt meant for a lady and it buttons backwards. what is the point of this? is it just to create an arbitrary distinction to make a bunch of faggots more comfortable? like, "i can't wear that shirt, it's lady shirt. aha, here's a good old-fashioned man shirt, thank jesus." or is there a biological reason for it? ladies little lady fingers work backwards from a man's or something? does anyone know? it's hard to button. i have big dumb-man fingers that are used for strangling my enemies to death and throwing the ole' football around with the bros. you know, regular daboub-ish shit.

alexei illiovitch


"Great Expectations---(the 1946 one by David Lean, what the fuck you think?) David Lean can't do wrong by me so far. My lord, this is so good that it is basically the Platonic form of film. Alex Guinness plays Herbert Pocket, and he's probably my favorite actor of all time. The movie is so flawless and classic that it lulls you into this trance, and eventually you aren't even watching a movie anymore as much as you are floating down a river of inevitability. This might not make any sense, but it's the only way I can describe it. The movie is your life, and when it is over you are in outer space, outside of the universe and you have seen all of time because you are now the godhead. Deal with it pussies."

Hypothetical

"This is your farewell kiss, you dog!"
---Muntadar al-Zeidi (Great Arab Poet)


I heard somewhere that some division of the Secret Service is devoted solely to making sure that no one steals anything that has the President's DNA on it. Like a glass or tissue or something. This is insane. The Secret Service has so much money and weird technology we don't know about that it hurts my head. What could someone do with the President's DNA? Awesome stuff, mainly. You could make little mini-Prez-clones.

It made me start thinking though about a hypothetical situation that I will pose to you now:

• There is a criminal faction that has cloned you from DNA.
• There is a baby version of you that these people have basically kidnapped.
• They call you and demand millions of moneys to release baby-you or murders time.

What do you do? Do you even care? Are you emotionally attached to baby-you you have never met? It's basically like they have your actual child kidnapped, right? Head hurts.


"Fearless Vampire Killers"--- Roman Polanski comedy about vamps. Sharon Tate, Polanski, and others frolicking around in the snow together. I love watching Polanski act. He plays basically the same character as the guy from the "Tenant," a really Quiet and shy little guy. It's really charming. This movie was a little slap-sticky but I don't mind in this context. Lots of funny Eastern Europe accents and tons upon tons of snow. I liked it.

Correction

I wanted to say that upon further reflection, I didn't like "Milk" as much as it seemed by what I said about it the other day. It was a little too feel-goodie and heavy handed than I can really get behind. It is true, however, that I can handle these 2 Qualities less that almost anyone I know in the world. That being said, my friend and I have decided that the movie reminded us of a slightly better version of "Blow." It was biopic, and all glossy and seventies and stuff. Plus "Milk" and "Blow" are practically the same title. I think I was just expecting more from the movie so I was disappointed, but when I wrote about it originally I was under the influence of the 2 people I had gone to see it with who really liked it. Anyway, just wanted to go on the record, you buncha Queers.

love,
alex

Ze French and Ze Blacks and Ze Jews

"Life ain't nothin' but bagels and money"
---NWA


Is it me or do black guys now officially love money more than the Jews? Doesn't this mean that blacks are the new Jews? Yes:
Black People Are The New Jews.




Shalom, my good man.




"La Fille Coupee en Deux - Girl Cut in Half"--- New movie by Claude Chabrol Greg and I saw at the Dobie tonight. Jesus Christ, this was the most French movie I have ever seen. Maybe the most French thing in general I have ever seen. This movie is Frencher than an old man with a big mustache and white hair eating a croissant on a train. It was too French, I guess. I don't dislike the French necessarily, but they do creep me out. They are always kissing and hitting on each other and their language sort of grosses me out. I have a real love/hate relationship with them. They seem so right on about so many things, but at the same time excessive Frenchness is one of the most annoying things in the world. From what I can tell, every French old man gets to have a young lover. It's not even considered an affair, really. It's just something that happens. Anyway, the movie was sort of gross and boring. Just a bunch of different people hitting on this blonde girl and implied sexual depravities. It shared what I dislike about some modern day Woody Allen movies, as well. I feel that, like Woody Allen, Claude Chabrol has probably spend the last 20 or 30 years very rich and surrounded by nothing but wealth and rich people talking to him about culture and art and so forth. That's OK, but it turns up in his movies in this really boring "old people sitting around drinking wine and talking about Art" way that I don't like. It seems a lot like pointless wanking. There were like 5 scenes in this movie where people were just talking about wine in this needless way. Anyway, it was interesting in its Frenchness, but pretty boring otherwise. Thank you and goodnight.

Prop 7: boobs for gay babies

"What a bunch of faggots."
---Harvey Milk


Went to see "Milk" tonight with Greg and Hannah. I was talking about how maybe it was time to put Gus Van Sant back on the directors wall at Vulcan, and Greg siad he had been thinking the exact same thing ever since we saw "Paranoid Park." We have both been spending sleepless nights tossing and turning over whether he has redeemed himself enough yet to overcome "Goodwill Hunting." It's good to know that the Vulcan Hive-Mind is still ruling our lives. Greg has more say as to who goes on the Director's Wall, and he was the one who violently tore him down from there after the appalling trio of "Psycho"(remake), "Goodwill Hunting", and "Finding Forrester." After seeing his last few movies though, Gus's tearful reQuests to be returned might be answered.



"Milk"--- Yeah, pretty good. Sort of heavy-handed with the emotional god-damned music. I hate really typical soundtrack music that tells you when something triumphant is happening. The swelling violins and clashing cymbals and all of that nonsense. Poop, sir. It was really good in most other ways though. Glad I saw it. It was pretty true to the story. I want to see "The Times of Harvey Milk" next to round it out.

Sorry Steve Martin

"There is nothing but Syphilis." ---J.K. Huysmans




I would like to take a moment to point out that Steve Martin isn't actually the devil. He's a close, personal friend of mine.


"Pickman's Model" Short film by Cathy Welch on HP Lovecraft Collection Vol. 4--- This Vulcan customer Cathy Welch, who has been coming in forever and works as a film professor at ACC, shot a film based on "Pickman's Model" in 1981. We started talking about Mr. Lovecraft and she shoed me the movie on the shelf. Well, I'll be damned. I brought it home, and it's good! It was her thesis film for UT. HP Lovecraft is notoriously hard to adapt to film because a lot of the "horror" occurs as a narrative in the characters' minds. This version was really charming and good, though, and obviously done by a fan of the man himself. Why don't I just stop pretending and have an HP Lovecraft blog?


The man himself.

Expose Yourself to Children

"We watched Shopgirl."---Jacob Stewart
"Was it good?"---Alex Daboub
"Well, Steve Martin is the Lord of the Pit, he's the Devil."---J.S.
"So, not good."---A.D.
"No, no listen, he's the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demonic flute held in nameless paws"---J.S.
"Sounds OK."---A.D.




The other day I noticed one of Hunter's old posts which read:

God, it's so weird to find out when bands are right-wingers. I mean, I know this happens from time to time, but it's still a bit disconcerting nevertheless. This is particularly egregious, however: playing a party for Tom DeLay? WTF?? It certainly doesn't dissuade me from my stance that "All Star" is the Worst Song Ever Recorded.

I then wrote Hunter a response by electronic-mail on my machine which read:

smashmouth, ha. i think the general impulse to play music originates in a fascist part of the brain so denoting which bands are right-wing is redundant. some bands may be liberal in their off-stage lives, but the desire to play music on a stage is right-wing to begin with. fascism and conservatism are generally anti-intellectual by nature, as is rock and roll music. maybe i'll blog about it.
alex

And I did. My ideal rock and roll show involves me standing on a stage with a guitar. I plug it in and stuff, and then I take a screwdriver and painstakingly, methodically dismantle it piece by piece. I put all of the pieces in a plastic bucket as I take them off. Then I slowly put all of it back together again. Someone could do a performance art thing like this, and the NY Times would give it a hundred boners in a review.
The other thing is that GG Allin was sort of a genius in an accidental, demented sort of way. He took what most musicians pretend to do and took it to the absolute logical limit. Some rock and roll pretends to be out of control and dangerous. He just gave up on playing music and physically assaulted the audience. He was also an absolute idiot and genuinely insane. At least he wasn't pretending though.

"Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"---Still watching it.

A. Daboub Covers Current Events

"Pirates could be seen roaming on the upper deck of this vessel with guns and rocket-propelled-grenade launchers."
---Some Officials


What's the big deal about letting U.S. car companies go out of business? It's ridiculous to give these A-holes money. American cars are the absolute worst. I hate them. They take 1 million gallons of gas per mile of driving car-driving for cars driving. Hmmmm.

Would it be so terrible to not have 5,000 Ford Tauruses everywhere you look? I think American cars are uniformly trashy, even though my Mom drives them exclusively. There is a reason for this though: it is a remnant and sort of tribute to my grandfather's policy of refusing to buy Japanese or German cars. Japanese cars were out because he loved whales, and Japan continues to fight anti-whaling laws and all of that. Plus he was around during all of that WWII stuff; whatever that was. German cars were out because he was Jewish, and there was some minor conflict between the Jews and Germans at some point in the 30's and 40's. I think it was a dispute over who likes sauerkraut more. One time my grandparents were flying to Italy, and they had a layover in Germany. My grandmother steadfastly refused to step foot on German soil and wouldn't get off the plane at all. What a hard-ass.

So I say fuck American cars. Let them go out of business. Maybe all of the factory workers can get jobs at Jamba Juice. Or maybe they can become pirates.

I heard about these Somali pirates who captured a tanker ship full of oil. Pirates! How exciting is it that there are pirates, fucking pirates, in the world in this day and age? That is so awesome. I hope they get away with it. Maybe they could just keep the oil tanker. It has like 100 tons of oil or something. I want a boat full of oil.
Wow, this is like my current events day.

"Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"--- I am watching episodes of this show, and I have decided that I'm going to read some original Sherlock Holmes stories because I never did as a kid or whenever it is you're supposed to read them. I was shocked to find out that Holmes is some crazy junkie. In the story The Sign of Four, Watson comes in and Holmes is shooting speedballs.

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel- piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

I had no idea. The show is really good so far. Greg says that besides myself there is literally no one else who rents these British mystery shows other than old ladies. I don't know how I feel about that.

Encounters at the End of the World

"The sea continuously jerks off."
---George Battaile



Someone was talking about having stocks, or something. I really don't want to miss the boat on getting a lot of money for no reason. There are 2 problems, though.

1. I don't have any money to invest. Will they take like 3 dollars a month? Or 200 one month and then 25 cents the next? I feel like in order to make any real money you have to invest in really risky companies or sketchy semi-illegal guys who have slaves in India that carry big rocks up hills, or something.

2. What if I invest a bunch of money and then the Mad Max scenario finally hits? It's going to be like 200,000 people lined up outside of Wall Street demanding their money, but their money doesn't exist anymore, and there are tons of little pieces of paper-bits flying around everybody in a tornado-thing.

I don't need that. So you either just give your money to a bunch of imaginary guys in suits or you spend it all now and bet on the end of the world. You could always try to prepare for the Mad Max apocalypse, I guess. You could invest strictly in gigantic jugs of gasoline and stock pile them in a fort and buy a bunch of metal spikes for your post-apocalyptic jacket outfit. It's hard to know what to do. Plus, do I need to get metal-spike outfits for the cats? These late 2000's are fraught with peril.

"Encounters at the End of the World"---New Herzog documentary about the end of the geographic world Antarctica, and a little bit about the other kind of end of the world as well. Not much about the end of the world actually, it was pretty subtle. Good movie. It was like a lot of his modern day documentaries with long shots of nature accompanied by ethereal droning music, and interviews with eccentric scientist types. Some highlights:
Herzog wondering why chimps or other animals of higher intelligence haven't learned to exploit lower intelligence animals. We see a painting of a monkey riding off into the sunset on a goat. (Did he commission a painter to paint a monkey riding a goat?) He also says he can't stand the feeling of sunshine on his skin. Sweet! I give it millions of stars.

Painting the White House Less White

"I am writing this under appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes my life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the sQualid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death."
---heavy shit from the man H.P. Lovecraft


So every black musician in history has one song about painting the White house black, right? Well, that Obama fellow better do it on his first day or there's going to be Hell to pay. The other thing: why is Barack Obama black? He's just as white as he is black. His mom was whiter than I am. She's from KANSAS. She was English, German, and Irish or something. But everybody says he's black. Let us refer as we always do to a Public Enemy song:


Fear of a Black Planet

You have to get to :54 to hear the Quote from guy that goes:

Black man, black woman, black baby
White man, white woman, white baby
White man, black woman, black baby
Black man, white woman, black baby

Who is this that they sampled? I can't figure it out. Anyway, Public Enemy rules. That was the first tape I ever bought, and I listened to it 1,000 times.

Last night I worked on a thing for Arthouse at Broken Neck. It is film footage for an art installation about punk rock by some English guy. I was in back loading film all night, but I heard the music. Loading is insane, my hands hurt from repetitive motion. Everything was going great until the very end when the 2 cameras caught up to me and I got the panic fear. One camera was without film for a couple minutes, but no one seemed to mind. I was set up in back and they had runners continuously running mags to and from the cameras to me. That's a crazy job.

"Up the Yangtze"--- Good documentary coming out on DVD Tuesday. I liked it a lot. It's about how they dammed up the Yangtze River in China, and how it caused millions to move out of the impending flood plain. The movie follows one family thus affected who send their daughter to work on a luxury cruise liner that is taking a "farewell cruise" up the Yangtze. It is crazy to see her dealing with the culture shock. Neither of her parents read or write, and she is learning English to cater to the tourists on the boat.

Sorry

"An attempt has been made on her life by the skeleton, Aith"
--M.P. Shiel


I didn't write for some time owing to not being able to locate the E button on my keyboard. I found it under an urn in the West Garden, and so now all is as it should be.

I have nothing much to say, actually. I have been watching a lot of movies and trying to edit some video footage for fun. Bah, nothing to say.


"Tell No One"--- French movie I saw with Greg , Hannah, Mike Wachs at Dobie. I (what?) liked? it? (huh?) Improbable, yes. Impossible, no? I don't usually like modern-day French movies all that much. Not modern-day thrillers either. This movie was pretty great-ish. It was all exciting and stuff, and not stupid. And in this French way, there were a lot of "fuck you's" to the police. It was charming. Fuck the pigs, man. Right? There were only a couple of really annoying things. One was when this guy was drowning his sorrows with a big glass of vodka, and the soundtrack at the exact instant was a Jeff Buckley (Tim Buckley? eh, who fucking cares.) song with the words, "I drink too much," all heartfelt and stuff. It was embarrassing. They're French, what can you do?

"The Red Shoes"--- Whoa. This was one of the best movies I have ever seen. No shit. It even made me think that the Ballet is cool. What is happening to me? My grandparents would be trying to give my Hannukkah gelt right now just for saying that. That might not make any sense, but I'm tired, and there's a cat on my good typing arm. This movie has this character Boris Lermontov, who is like the one of the coolest guys of all time. And I have to give credit to Isaac Mizrahi in Unzipped for pointing out how baddass this movie is.

"Porcile"--- Passolini movie, good stuff. One guy likes effing pigs, one guy likes eating human flesh. We all win.

Happy Black Guy for President Day

"Sometimes I think of all the places I don't wanna go. Then I think of all the things I never wanna do. I think of all the people I never wanna meet. I close my eyes and go to sleep"
---NOFX


Well, all the white people of Hyde Park are celebrating. They are out honking their horns, and shooting fireworks, and shooting speedballs into their arms, and drinking the blood of the Republicans in West Lake, all because their cool black friend is president. I have to admit that I'm happy too, although I tend to get nervous when I'm in agreement with the liberal fagéts of Austin. Everyone thinks they're so progressive for voting for Obama, well I did one better. I voted a straight negro ticket. Anyways, mazel-tov everybody. We have shown the whole world that less than half of us are retarded hillbillies who routinely talk to the Jesu Monster on the telephone. We can be proud.

Wow, so I thought I was going to spend all weekend riding around on mopeds and being stupid, but some fancy L.A. lady called today about a job. I am actually a little mad that I have to make money instead of going and having fun, but I'm so ridiculously broke that it's a fucking shame to the Jews. So I have no choice, goddamn it. How dare someone offer me a job. It's some reality show, that's all I know so far. Oh well, what're ya gonna do.


"NOFX - Ten Years of Fucking Up"---I took this home just because I have been feeling nostalgic for my high school punk rock days. It was a little disappointing actually. The whole fun of NOFX is that they are funny on stage and ridiculous. The video was just live footage with the studio songs laid over them, totally defeating the purpose. It was fun anyway. Goodnight my fellow Negroes.

Monday Night: Poo York and stuff

" I saw at last a fearful truth which no one had ever dared to breathe before -- the unwhisperable secret of secrets -- that fact that this city of stone and stridor is not a sentient perpetuation of Old New York as London is of Old London and Paris of Old Paris, but that it is in fact quite dead, its sprawling body imperfectly embalmed and infested with queer animate things which have nothing to do with it as it was in life"
--H.P Lovecraft

Hannah and her band are going to Jew York to play 5 shows in 5 days. I have been hearing from a few people who live there that New York sucks now. I don't really want this to be true because I have a soft spot for the place. Basically I heard a lot of things about how safe and boring and predictable it is now. From what I can tell, it is now a New York themed amusement park with a Whole Foods in Union SQuare that all of the yuppies got giant boners about. I think people are possibly just caught up in this whole mythology about themselves living in this place so they end up trying too hard and being unbearable. I mean, you get a bunch of people from all over the country (including Iowa) who are like "I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna move to New York. See ya' later DubuQue." I moved there too, ya know. But it was way back in 2002 or some year like that. Plus I didn't try very hard to do anything but buy drugs in Tompkins SQuare Park. Woops. I have no point to make yet, I'm just a ramblin'man. I need to gather more information from the field.

Today, I went to Vulcan and pushed all the dvd's forward into the other room to make room for more dvd's so I can push them forward again later. Gratifying work.

"Lady in White"--- Hoe-lee shit, man. This is supposed to be a kid's movie I think, but it was by no stretch of the imagination a thing a kid should see. Right? Am I too protective of my kids I don't have? Maybe it's good for kids to see little girls strangled and thrown off a cliff? I don't know. Prepare them for upcoming Mad Max scenario around the corner? It was a good, scary, ghost story, and I don't usually like kids movies or fantasy stuff that much. It was charming and scary and good, ok? And there were a lot of Italians in it.

Sunday

"The terrestrial globe is covered with volcanoes, which serve as its anus."
--- Georges Bataille


Hmmm, what happened? Tonight Greg and I went to Fiesta to see about getting some bad movies for 1 dollar. I bought a movie made in Czechoslovakia about a cat wearing glasses that make him see peoples' true selves.












See? Earlier in the evening Hannah, Mr. Shiv's, Greg, Mike Wachs and I went out to the suburbs to see the new Jonathan Demme movie at the Arbor. Man, I'm really spoiled by Alamo Drafthouse. I forgot how weird it is out there in the real world. Also, it was irresponsible to spend money on a movie ticket given how I have no money at all. Bah! I even spent 10 dollars on some migas at Trudy's afterwords. I'm dumb.


"Rachel Getting Married"---New Demme movie. Getting great reviews. I hated it. This movie made me sQuirm around in my seat a lot. It was super melodramatic, and everyone was always crying and freaking out. I just wanted everyone to shut up. Plus, a lot of it was like watching the boring wedding video of someone you don't know which includes all of the bad sappy jokes and heartfelt toasts to people who don't exist in real life. I kept mouthing the words "The End" to myself over and over again. One ridiculous thing about the movie was that the wedding party looked like a United Colors of Benetton ad or something. It was a white girl marrying a black guy, and all of the friends represented every race on God's Green Earth. It was inexplicably an Indian(India) themed wedding where the bridesmaids all wore sarongs, and everyone ate Saag Paneer. There was an excessive amount of time devoted to people dancing together at the wedding party, but don't worry because every culture in the world was represented musically by the DJ. While everyone was booty-dancing and joyously smiling together, suddenly a group of salsa dancers busted in (to everyone's delight) and did a little show. Yay! How fun! It was like the fantasy world of some middle aged, NPR listening white man who lives in Vermont or something. Yeesh.
For the record I listen to NPR whenever it's on for 5 seconds in-between the 15 hour stretches of white men playing the blues on KUT.

Please Kill Me...
Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories-H.P. Lovecraft...
Herzog on Herzog...
A´ Rebours-JK Huysmans...---This is for my own record keeping purposes, don't pay attention if you don't wanna.

no fun

"meow"
--cat


i want to bitch about something else. these people and their Z's. "wordz" "funz" you know what i'm talkin' bout. i've been known to do this myself, but i started thinking about it after some dumb guy was making fun of it on his blog. what it actually is, though, is people being self-referentially over-white. like "i'm so white, it's ridiculous when i use this black slango talk." you get to show that you are aware of blackness, and that you know it's lame to try to be black if you're not at the same time. come to think of it, i don't care. i am going to keep doing itz.

it also really annoys me when people try to act like they are legitimately into hip-hop because it's really good. it's really not that good usually these days, and it's the same type of sensation as trying to convince people that Lost is great art.
the logic goes like this: "just let go and admit that goofy dancing to rap music and watching comic book movies are the best we can do. stop pretending to like art-films and esoteric things, we know you're just trying to be cool. we don't believe that you actually enjoy it."
People that say this are lazy or not that smart, and they feel really threatened by things they don't understand. they overcompensate by calling art films gay and boring.
sorry bout the ranting blog-man,
alex

more wacky-time products from A. Daboub

"The last representative of an illustrious race, appalled by the invasion of American manners and the growth of an aristocracy of wealth, takes refuge in absolute solitude."
---J.K. Huysmans describing my plans for the weekend















Hey Constant Comment tea, will you shut the fuck up?


"The Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf"--- Uh, well you know. Greg brought this over. It's ridiculous. It has some of that werewolf/vampire confusion that happens in movies sometimes. For example, they go to Translvania in order to infiltrate headQuarters of werewolf operations. There are some gnarly werewolfian sex scenes with tufts of fur glued to nakeds who grossly do it. There is a shot of Sybil Danning ripping off her top at one point, and they show it 17 times (literally) in the closing credits highlight reel thing. "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." Or something.

Breakfast in the Dystopian Future

"The Elect Transcend the World"
---Basilides


I suddenly remembered the other day that my entire childhood was spent eating this cereal called "Product 19."


See it's real. I thought i made it all up. (I'm trying to find it online to buy and eat.) Why didn't my mom or anyone else in my family ever mention or notice how weird this is? I never noticed until a few years ago, and then I started asking my friends about it, but none of them had ever heard of it. They all acted like I was crazy, because obviously there could be no such cereal with such a crazy name. was my mom some trailblazer or something, an avant garde genius?

I guess when you're a kid, the names of some things aren't really words in the sense we mean now, they're just sounds put together. You don't really stop to think as a kid what banana the actual word means, and you don't wonder what product 19 means either. It was just a mush in my head like "pradanynteen." That's how I regarded it as a word.

Then a few years ago, i was like "product 19?!" what kind of insane 1984 science experiment name is that? Scientists in white lab coats around chemical vials and a sterile container of cereal neatly labeled "product 19."

Scientist 1: "Jim, what is it?"
scientist 2 "We're not sure... a comet landed in a farmer's field, and three days later he found this stuff."
Scientist 1: "that would be funny if we sold it as cereal."
Scientist 2: "fuck you."

The other possibility is that capitalists have huge factories where they just churn out endless "products" of all kinds, and this one cereal just happens to be Product 19.   So product 20 is like a chair, and product 18 is cunt rags. sorry.

Well, anyway when I told Greg about it, he said it sounded like what we will eat in the dystopian future after all the Mad Max shit goes down.


"Unzipped"---1995 documentary about Isaac Mizrahi coming out with a new collection of clothes? or however you say that. This is about the fashion industry which I care less about than a Gaultier seQuined turd, but I thought it might be interesting anyway...plus models or something. People in fashion strike me as sort of the worst people in the world. It's missing the point to just say that they are shallow, it goes way beyond that. Anyway, it's not a bad documentary, and I enjoyed it. Mizrahi comes off as not a bad guy actually, although like everyone else in the fashion world, he is a fucking parody of what you think of as a guy in the fashion industry, i.e. Quoting iconic gay movies all the time, pretending to be a diva, using lame catch phrases with his super ass-kissy, parroting assistants, and being self-absorbed. Does anyone actually care about Isaac Mizrahi anymore? I have no idea. I don't follow this shit.

crack

"You wanna freebase I got them hovers for your ass
a boulder on your pipe and you can have a megablast"
---Queen of England


Geez, smoking crack's not that cool, what's the big deal? However, megablast is a really cool word, and it sort of makes me want to take a megablast and go to outerspace.
love,
alex


"Doctor Zhivago"--- I have been trying to watch as many David Lean movies as possible. This is one of the true epics, and it was truly epic. Epic-ly true? No. Not epic-ly true. I really enjoyed it a lot. It has tons of cool stuff about the communist revolution in Russia, Klaus Kinski has a small role as an insane anarchist in a train, lots and lots of snow, and Julie Christie being a badass. The only thing that bothered me is that it is one of those movies based on all these crazy coincidences. This might be the book's fault? I'm not sure. But it's like Russia's a huge country, right, and I don't believe you keep running into Julie Christie every five feet you walk.

Obama Commercial

"achieves notable heights of cosmic fear"
---H.P. Loveman

Today I worked on an ad supporting the Obama campaign. It's sort of a "spec" ad because Obama isn't in it and didn't hire us to do it. It had the guy from that 90's hip-hop act "Black Sheep"...

Black Sheep video

In the thing Iworked on, he sings that song with revised lyrics about Obama and stuff, and it is all animated and about being over the war. I loved that song in the 7th grade, but I realized there is no way to tell Dres (of Black Sheep) this without being insulting. "Man I really loved that song you did 15 years ago." It is impossible to not convey the sense that I have no idea what you've been doing for the last million years. So I said nothing like a big coward, and he rapped in front of a green-screen and left. The End.

Then I went to Vulcan and worked and watched:

"Weather Underground"---Seemed like a good idea to watch something topical at work and so near the election. I'm doing my part to plant the seeds of doubt in O-bomba supporters. It's a good documentary, and the soundtrack is just this eerie buzzing noise, which is awesome. The thing that struck me the most was how much people used the word "motherfucker" in the 60's. (look in to it.) There were a lot of groups called the motherfucker-this and the motherfucker-that.

"24 Hour Party People" --- Happy Mondays part is worth the price of admission.

These are the Jews I Know

"mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number of men."
---Jorge Borges





So today my jew friend from college Dave Cohen (cousin of gay-hero Andy Cohen of Bravo TV) came to visit from jew-florida. We ate and walked around at Whole Foods, and we talked about how we could never own a restaurant because we couldn't tolerate throwing away so much food. (That place is so overwhelming, they have like 500 of literally every food you can imagine, I can hardly go there because I just imagine all of the stuff people don't buy getting thrown away.) He told me about how when he buys like sandwich meat, he will be at work just imagining it getting older and older in his refrigerator, and he feels an overwhelming pressure to eat it all as soon as possible. What a Jew! I'm the same way though. Buying groceries is so stressful because I get it all home and immediately start trying to figure out what I have to eat first so it won't go bad. I need to make an eating schedule where it's like, "Monday: 2 bites apple, 3 spoons yogurt," and then I take the last bite of my groceries 10 seconds before it reaches its expiration date. That's excitement.
After that I went and had coffee with PJ at the Driskill, and there were fancy Austin Film Festival people everywhere. He was trying to convince me start working on a documentary project of my own, and giving me advice. Overwhelming. I need to settle on a subject. Hmmm. Butts?

I was thinking about this other Jew Sarah Silverman today. Why does she have so many of those baseball-type 3/4 sleeve shirts? She has an infinite regenerating baseball shirt machine? Is there a reason for this? Does it make your arms look longer? Shorter? Does she have odd-length arms? What the hey?


Crass Documentary --- Hell yeah, son.

"Snow Angels"-- Pretty good, although it has a lot of cheesy indie cliches and is remarkably depressing. Good snowy cinematography.

El Paso Theory

"I killed my father, I ate human flesh, and I Quiver with joy."
---some guy

Dearest Bloggie,
I haven't written in a while. I went to this cave the other day with Hannah called Cascade Caverns, and it was retarded. When we walked in there was this kid wearing tight jeans, his septum was pierced, and all of these other terrible things I can't bear to think about. He completely interrupts the guy who was selling us tickets and said "Where are you guys from? Austin? You know Cory Smith(?) or Mark Jones(?) (some cracker names like these), they are like way into the scene." At that point I blacked out, but he kept going on like this for a while. I was just forcing myself to look away from him and stare intently into the eyes of the man selling the tickets. He was obviously embarrassed by the kid who was now saying that his friends are the "hosts of South by Southwest." I fled.

We went outside and were waiting for our tour guide under some flag poles. It suddenly dawned on me that maybe that guy was going to be our tour guide. I shuddered internally, but assured myself that no one would let such an idiotic cunt "guide" anything . Just then the door of the office opens, and I see this motherfucker, now wearing sunglasses and carrying a flashlight, walking towards us in slow motion. "I can't do this," I said. We literally almost got in my car and drove away, but some demonic force kept us rooted to the spot where we stood. He eventually was projected to us by black magick and sorcery, and his hideous voice once again bubbled out of his "mouth." He said, "Are you guys going to the CFI(?) show," or some bullshit like that. The gentleman continued, "They are an industrial-techno band with a punk edge." We said we had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. He laughed with incredulity. "You don't know them!? How could that be?"

We began our descent into the cave. This was not a very good cave. There were pipes everywhere and cables and it was sort of trashy, if a cave can be trashy. I kept trying to steer the conversation towards the cave-related and away from stupid cracker-ass bands, weed, and every other retarded thing this small town asshole wanted to talk to us about. The problem was that he knew nothing about the cave. He kept pointing out rocks that looked like different things: this rock looks like Charlie Brown, and there is a turtle. At the end of the cave was a huge pool of blue water. He must have seen this pool 500 times in his cave tourguiding career. I asked why the water was this strange blue color, and it seemed as if he had never even noticed it or heard of pools of water in his life. This cave is run by the worst employees any business has ever had.

As we were ascending, we passed this other guide with a family. This guide says to our guide, "Heyman, I've gotta take off early, I'm gonna add my group to your group and take off." He was talking about them as if they weren't there. Ours says, "Noman, my girlfriend ran into a deer, I'm leaving too." They are arguing about having to deal with us, in front of us , and we are standing around looking at each other so embarrassed. It was awful, terrible horrible, I know nothing about that goddamned cave. All I learned is that small town teenagers are the worst shit in the world, and especially the ones who have ideas about being cool and escaping to the "big city." I swear, it's always these hillbilly cuntz who are the most annoying people you have to deal with because they are totally overcompensating for their provincial upbringing. I call this my "El Paso Theory" because whenever I see some idiot with stupid hair, trying way too hard with his wacky sunglasses, who has way too much reverence for gay ass rock and roll bands, I just know he is from El Paso or some place like that.

It's the same with gays sometimes. Most of the super flamboyant gays who look like they are trying to become the Platonic form of gayness with bleached hair and stuff come from small towns as well. They had to hide their gayness their whole lives or were picked on and now are letting it all hang out. This isn't always true, of course, but it happens a lot.
Look at this:



The thing is, I know that I will inevitably see that tour guiding nightmare at some place like Emo's in like 2 years, and I am dreading it, and it makes me want to wear a suit and vote for George W. Bush to be Emperor of the Universe Forever just because it is all so embarrassing and it just seems right to do the most reactionary thing I can think of.


Besides that, I went to a pumpkin carving party that was fun, and I figured out a new way to go back in time which I will talk about once I do a post about my list of ways to go back in time. I worked on an ad for Obama, and I am trying to figure out what a good subject for a documentary would be.

love,
alex

"Films of Kenneth Anger" I really enjoyed "Scorpio Rising." It's a good document of weird NY sleazy bikers in the 60's and some other stuff I'm too tired to remember right now.

"Sins of the Fleshapoids" I found it sort of boring but I should give it another chance.

"Neon Genesis: Evangelian" I'm a sucker for this one. It does incorporate so many of my favorite things: giant robots, it's post-apocalyptic, an underground city named Tokyo-3, Japanese school children, and a pet penguin. Come on.

sunday - the homeless

"Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse."
---Howard Phillips Lovecraft

I went to Spiderhouse with Mike Wachs and Mr. Shivers today, and that's literally all I have done besides reading an interesting article about the internets....

I have always wondered at what exact moment a man becomes homeless, or something. I heard a song on the radio the other day that proposes one theory:
"Bad, Bad Whiskey" by Buddy Guy (here are some of the lyrics)

"I went out last night
Finally knocked myself outta sight
I got full of that bad stuff
And almost started a fight
Bad, bad whiskey
Bad, bad whiskey
Bad, bad whiskey
Made me lose my happy home
Made me lose my happy home"...

So I guess this guy had a totally valid house, went out, drank some bad whiskey, and forgot where he lived? That's terrifying. He has a perfectly reasonable house just sitting vacant somewhere, and he just has no idea where he left it. This has actually always been my theory, that homeless people just can't remember how to get back to their suburban homes. I always imagined these guys in suits, they leave the house to go to work, they lose their keys, get hit on the head, and they spend the rest of their lives wandering around becoming increasingly dirty and dilapidated looking. Their once fashionable and freshly pressed suits slowly turning into 1930's-era proper hobo costumes. They have floppy shoes, drink Cisco out of bags, and ride trains. For example, this man was once the president of the World Bank:



Scary shit.
For this reason I always draw a rudimentary map for myself before leaving the house. That's one thing I don't want to have to worry about.


I found an old video of one of my professors speaking about the areas of his expertise: namely, those well-known men who project movies from their penises:




Love,alex

I'm still watching The Larry Sanders Show - Season One DVD

TV on DVD

Blog,

People are killing each other in the streets trying to get DVD's of the Wire season 5. I completely just made that up, but have you seen the look in the eyes of these Wire fans when you mention that show? A lot of people are really into this idea that TV isn't really TV if you are watching it on a DVD. I'm calling bullshit. I was one of these people. I have seen the light. If you watch enough of any soap opera(Lost, Six Feet Under, 24) it sucks you in, and at that point you no longer have any critical perspective on that show. You turn into a formless mass, and you will watch every episode forever until there aren't any more. I know from experience, OK? I feel like we're being lazy, and we should watch movies because they are almost always better than watching 500 episodes of Sex and the City. Can we not delude oourselves by saying that we are in a "GOlden Age of TV?" I'm done with my bombast, and I Love You, love face.
love,
alex

Saturday Night

"Then we'd drink this concoction the Black Panthers called the "Bitter Motherfucker." It was half a bottle of Rose's lime juice poured into a bottle of Gallo port. So we'd sit down, smoke reefer, drink that, and shoot guns. I guess we thought, We're all gonna end up in a shoot-out with the Man, you know, we'll shoot it out with the pigs."
---Wayne Kramer


Dear bloggo,

I just found this video about this place in california where 700 cats live and it's no-cage, no-kill. I crazily just gave them 50 bucks because its really late, and seeing 700 cats on a youtube video is really disorienting in a very specific way. We should all now stay up until 5AM and watch youtube cat videos and then give them 50 dollars.
(ps. I'm not drunk)
love,
alex



The Larry Sanders Show: Season 1--- I've been talking tons of shit lately about people watching TV shows on DVD, but I'm making an exception for this. Garry Shandling is fucking hilarious and weird looking, bros, and it's cool to see all of these 90's-ass actors all in one place. The problem is that they only released one season on DVD for some reason. It's TV, yes, but it isn't the fucking Desperate Housewives ruining the minds of women everywhere forever.

Friday Night Wooo.

"I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness....Space belongs to me, do you hear?"------H.P. Lovecraft


lady of the blog,

So I think I'm going to work at Vulcan tonight. I'll be there to see all the video-couples. I've been working at Vulcan long enough to start to see some trends in the customers, and junk. On weekend nights we get a lot of people who are like in early stages of relationships who don't want to leave the house because they are so in L with each other. They hang all over each other and point out all of the movies that they like to each other. We don't get many single party people because they don't want movies. They are all restless and stuff so they go out to bars to try to find people that they can bring to the video store at a later date. There is also an in-between stage though, which gives us another genre of customers: drunk people who are at the video store as an excuse to go home together to make out. They were at bars and they guy said, "we should go watch a movie at my house." It's a perfect excuse. So we get drunk people who are kind of awkward with each other still, and they joke around a lot. I don't think it even matters what they rent because they won't make it through the opening credits anyway.
There's also regulars that are like dudes with beards, bro couples who like to watch movies, middle aged couples (with or without children), and nerdy people who don't want to go out anyway. Guess which I am.

Also, I joined the Austin Film Society yesterday. I'm going to try to meet fancy adults. Since I have vague plans to shoot a documentary sometime before I die, it seems like I should be an actual paying member of AFS. It's just what one does.

I changed the lightbulb in one of the headlights in Hannah's truck today. Who says Jews can't work on cars? I even got grease on my hands. whoa.

I have to go to work now.
love,
alex


"They Shoot Horses Don't They?"- I liked this movie even though it was really stressful, icky, and unpleasant to watch. I really didn't know Sydney Pollack could produce such an unrelenting piece of utter bleakness. In a good way.

"Moment to Moment" I've been trying to go back and watch every available Robert Downey Sr. movie. I was a little disappointed with this one. It didn't have much of his usual wacky half-jivetalk-half-Groucho Marx sense of humor.

"Chafed Elbows" Another Robert Downey Sr. I really liked this one. It's half stills with narration and half live-action. Really good 60's New York jive avant-garde scum-ball cinema. Robert Downey Sr. has this cool habit of always having people say"don't worry about it" in a beatniks sort of sense. I like it.

keep your laws off my Q's

dear blog,
That title doesn't actually relate at all to what I'm going to write. Is that bad blog etiQuette? Oh my God... netiQuette?!! I can say netiQuette! What has my life become?
Anyway, as you can see, my Q button is busted. It only works when I do caps. So I figure how often do I need to use Q's anyway, right? It's my thing, I always use caps-Q's. I do have an elaborate way of getting regular Q's in a pinch: like if I have to write to a fancy adult or something. I misspell a Q word in Google and then it says "did you mean Quart?," or whatever. Then I copy and paste the lower case Q. It takes about 2 hours, but I think it's worth it. So that's all I have to say about Q's right now.

love,
alex

curry

So yeah here it is. Its all happening. There comes a time in every man's life when he has to start his gay blog. This is my time. Our time. My time. I think I'm going to just tediously list everything that happens to me like a diary, and then if funny stuff happens (like pies) it will be bodacious and a bonus (like pies.)

Anywayz-orz. I made curry, and it's not so good. I don't know what went wrong, man. I had everything I need, I guess. It's spicy but sort of flavorless. You would think to make "curry" taste like "curry" you would just need to add more "curry." Not so, idiot. God you're dumb, you have to add other stuff too. Thank G-d I'm here. Seriously, I added a lot of curry paste, but that doesnt make it taste good; it just tastes spicy. You see the distinction. It is lacking something. My method of cooking the curry was a little dubious. I used no recipe, measured nothing, and was basically cooking the way Luke Skywalker would by which I mean I turned off my tracking system and just used the force.
The way I cook is that I take everything out that I think will in any way end up somehow relating to the thing I'm cooking. Then I put it all in pot and I put heat under it. I'm tired.

love,
alex