frontal lobotomy

movies like Meet the Spartans (and the rest from that duo, whose names i can't remember) are designed to make film students with any kind of self-respect feel like ass. outwardly, they talk about how horrible the movies are and how they can't believe such travesties get made. inwardly, they curse themselves and wish for just the right amount of brain damage that would allow them to stoop low enough to make that much money on something so blatantly horrid.
i'm one of them. it'll pass, but in the meantime, anyone have an icepick?
sometimes i have to think that the filmmakers in question realize just how bad their movies are and are laughing all the way to the bank. which makes me despise them, because that's just vile. i hope they can't enjoy a cent of what they make. it would be much better if they were that genuinely stupid. i hate to think about things being made out of anything other than genuine-ness. which makes me a silly, fluff-headed idealist. oh well.

the shiny golden men

the last short, Peter and the Wolf. unfortunately, it's only a trailer - the full length was pulled.

rings and fingers

the distance from my house to the place where D was living when i first met him is roughly 575 miles. i left after work on friday, march 9, at approximately 6 pm mountain standard time, and arrived at his door at roughly 3 am central time on saturday march 10.
i don't know how to explain that meeting, really, beyond it being incredibly revelatory in many ways.
at that time, i wore two rings. neither had left their appointed finger for at least four years. one was a tiger-striped agate set in hammered silver that i wore, and still wear, on my right ring finger. the other was a silver sun face, worn on my left thumb.
when i left, i gave david the sun ring. he put it on his right ring finger, and he doesn't take it off.
when i am missing him, my thumb itches where the ring used to sit.

the shiny golden men

today i give you Moya Lyubov, by Aleksandr Petrov and Ivan Shmelyov

part one


and part two


sorry, no subtitles. watch it anyhow, it's worth it.

mis-taken

i collect old photographs, of various sorts. i have a few tintypes, and a single precious daguerreotype. i have early paper prints, i have copper negative plates for newspapers, i have stereoscopic prints. i have reproductions of old photographs and photographs of dead babies. but as much as i love the very old photographs, i have a special fondness for prints from the 40s and 50s - the era of the increasing popularity of the personal camera. there is a very specific reason for this fondness - namely, i like it when i can find photographs that are taken by obvious amateurs. there is a special something in camera mistakes: over-exposures, under-exposures, overly slow shutter speeds. they make me smile, and they feel so very human. the early photographs are all taken by obvious professionals, and the limitations of the early cameras prevented the spontaneity of their later personal use.
anyhow, before i continue to ramble, i present to you my most recent photographic purchases - all found for fifty cents apiece in a junk shop in Pueblo, Colorado.

painting

i am painting for the first time in many years. painting seriously, anyhow. there was something else i was going to say, but i don't remember what. my fingers are crusted in orange and white acrylic and i am smiling like a fool. painting away my nightmares. something about painting serves as an exorcism. in film i can live my dreams, but i cannot escape them. in painting, i make them dead, flat and false.



i am distressed at my poor memory, i don't remember anything that i ought. and i remember things that i oughtn't. i have felt happier lately, though. like my shell of self is not a shell anymore.

the shiny golden men

oops, so i promised a video yesterday and forgot. today you get two.

the trailer for I Met The Walrus by Josh Raskin


and

the trailer for Madame Tutli-Putli by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski


more tomorrow, i promise.

(i ought to move to canada. they like film there.)

the shiny golden men

the oscars give me reason to look at my favorite thing, short-form animation.
so you get to look, too.
the first nominee for short form animation: Même les pigeons vont au paradis, by Samuel Torneaux and Vanesse Simon. and here it is, in all its YouTube glory...



i'll post another one tomorrow.

concrete settles

i had a moment of panic in which i thought perhaps everything i'd ever done was lost and i would have to start anew.

it felt good, actually, when i got hold of the reins.

panic is a reifying agent of towering proportions.

and i am more real for it.

everywhere

i wonder where in this world there is a place for someone like me, or someone like you. where do we belong, we who know and see?
the nostalgia is strong for a time which i never knew and which no longer exists.
the past is an echo and the future is a void.
and now there is nothing.
and beauty is everywhere.

imaginary beings

my best friend is scared of spiders. i don't know if that is relevant or not. he doesn't shriek anymore, but he definitely doesn't care to be close to them.
when we were 17, i went to his house one afternoon to visit him - i was home from college for a week, he was still in high school. i always wore the same outfit when i visited him, at least when it was chilly - a black lace skirt with a skin-colored liner, knee high black socks, and a red and tan striped shirt. i still wear the skirt sometimes, it fits me better now than it did then. i don't remember the exact content of the visit, i'm not sure what we talked about. i'm not even sure of the date, but i think it was the middle of october. i do, however, remember the climax, and the sudden panic when we realized his mother had walked in upstairs. i remember that much.
it is hard to define the relationship he and i have, because it is so old.
it is hard to remember where i end and he begins, at times.
it is hard to imagine me without him.

I cannot hold back the walls when they close in but I think I can slow
them
down enough to see you go
from fire to smoke and rise.

marienbad

every so often i am reminded that i live in the wrong place to do one of my favorite things - that is, go to the movies. this time it was by the re-release of Last Year at Marienbad, in new york city. i've seen the film, a number of times - i've seen it projected several times, in fact. but to see it in a real theater, rather than a classroom - to see it with people who have never seen it before, who have probably never seen anything like it before, would be something else. seeing anything in a theater is a different experience. film is fresher, feels crisper, has a way of seeping in where before it was blocked out. to see it when i can feel the tension of those around me - their boredom, even - and to see it in a brand new, 35 mm print.

but, alas, i live in the middle of nowhere.

as i am

a true and devoted fan of Lawrence Weschler, and especially of his Convergences column on the McSweeney's Internet Tendency website, i feel it is only honest to pass on the most fabulous thing he has posted recently.
Aaron Koblin's time-lapse graphic of the flights entering and leaving U.S. airspace over a 24-hour period.

dear jj abrams,

shaky handheld digital footage and someone screaming 'oh my god!' for two hours does not a movie make.

especially if you show me the monsters.

you better not show me the fucking monsters.

thanks.

projects

as if i don't have enough things in the works, i've decided to work on a series of black and white male nudes.

the beginnings of the project can be found in this set on flickr.

dreaming

i dream of terrible things and wake up feeling as though i'll never sleep again, and i read for hours and then finally get out of bed because there is nothing else to do and all of the dogs follow me downstairs and they abandon him in the bed, alone and cold because he has no fat, just skin and the barest hint of lean muscle.
he sweats in his sleep and then he shivers and aches from the cold, and it's as though his body is trying its damndest to defeat him. his jaw works slowly, grinding his teeth against each other until i press lightly next to his ears and his face relaxes again, for a while. usually i am asleep before he is but when i am not his sleeping keeps me awake, fearful that someday he won't make it through the night.

there will be blood

it is worn and tired and beautiful and it is squeezing its way into my soul through my pores and i cannot help but wonder at its efficacy. soon i, too, will be seeping oil and burning, burning alive. like any good horror film the terrors come unbidden and without warning, a flash of death in the night. the landscape itself becomes a terrifying thing filled with black blood that will burst forth and drive men mad.

if you're curious

this is what i'm working on.

all attempts at realism are strongly discouraged

okay, really i just can't draw.

beautiful things

plump jade leaves in early morning light
the sharp smell of fresh-brewed green tea
magnifying glasses
the list continues

examine

my head is filled with holes and everything enters and nothing can leave.

scraps

i keep every bit of communication that transpires between myself and certain persons. i cannot bear to delete it. it's useless, generally. sometimes it is merely a terse question requesting information. it still stays.