Mark Allen's Top Ten for 2/10/03:
 

1. Hello
    ?
 

2. Mayor Bloomberg finally passing a law to get rid of those apocolyptically enraging and way too long "Don't forget to fasten your seat belt New York! See ya on Broadway folks!" full volume recordings that play (by law) ...no not play, SCREECH... out of the sound systems in taxis right as you are getting in and are trying to tell the driver where you wanna go
    Every once in a while when I would be out at a bar or having a conversation at a party or whatever... and the subject of these taxi seat belt recordings would come up... and I would hear someone say "You know... I LOVE those taxi recordings of Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Jackie Mason! I think they're fabulous!" their next words were usually ""Please kill me" spoken through bloody, smashed teeth - because after hearing them approve of those pre-recorded audio nightmares... I would drag them into the nearest bathroom, lock the door, and proceed to cruelly torture them for hours with a toilet brush. You know... to show them what I was feeling whenever I heard one of those electronic evolutionary mistakes that assaulted my soul every time I got into a cab.
    Apparently, a few years ago, some focus group somewhere decided that they REALLY needed to tell passengers in NYC taxis to fasten their seat belts - probably because the ridiculous lawsuits were piling up. I'm sure they racked their brains for quite a while until someone thought of a RECORDING that would automatically play out of interior speakers whenever the driver re-started the meter (meaning right when a new passenger got in). This was mistake #1. New York City is already filled with LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of VERY LOUD and ASSAULTIVE noise pollution to just make an executive decision to add another flute to the orchestra.
    It's like that really cruddy band you had in high school that only did Husker Du covers... and every one of your friends wanted to be in this Husker Du cover band - but they all only played guitar (crap-ily). So the band had like 8 guitarists at one point, one drummer, and one bassist (who was a girlfriend of one of the guys) - and they sounded awful. And your friend who's mom had just died a year ago asked if he can join the band and you didn't wanna say "no" because his mom died when he was only in the 10th grade and so you said to him "What instrument do you play?" and he said "Guitar!" all enthusiastically and you just kind of gulped really hard and looked down at the ground and put on a fake smile and say "Hop aboard!". Then when you played at the "Battle of the Bands" in the high school gym everyone threw sno cones. That's it in a nutshell. The band is the noise level in NYC, the guy who's mom died and enthusiastically wanted to join is the guy at the focus group meeting who wanted to add recordings of celebrities in taxis telling people to fasten their seat belts, you are the mayor or whoever who says "yes", and the fellow high school students who threw sno cones at you now even-worse Husker Du cover band are the citizens of New York City. All "Booooooooooooooooo!!!"
    Wait... where was I? Oh yea... now don't get me wrong... New Yorker's love their noise. It's just that all the deafening sound is in perfect harmony and balance... it's like noise feng shui. Adding something that doesn't fit into the puzzle is just going to throw that violent balance off and cause someone... somewhere to have "Back Seat Taxi RAGE!" I'm surprised it didn't happen more often.
    Now... OK the guys at the focus group decide to make the recordings happen when people get into cabs... then mistake #2 was coming up with the brilliant idea of having b-grade New York "celebrities" do the recordings... and include some of their "shtick" in the recording. You know when telephone answering machines first came out in the 80's ...and everyone was trying to out-do one another with clever and funny outgoing messages on their machines. Remember how funny some of those outgoing messages were the first time you heard them? Then you had to hear the same clever joke over and over and over every time you called and it was kind of annoying?
    Imagine these celebrity's agents pitching the idea to them; "You're gonna be heard in taxi's all over New York every day! It'll be great! Yea it will be the same recording over and over... but trust me, it'll be great! What's the sound system like in taxis? I don't know... I'm sure the speaker and volume controls are rock solid - like the sound system at Caroline's!" I would love to see a list of celebrities that were approached to do the recordings that said "No". That would be the list of celebrities that had brains.
    You know it really hurts your credibility as an entertainer when the sound of jackhammers and people getting stabbed and the sound of the World Trade Center twin towers falling sounds BETTER than your pre-recorded shtick coming out of scratchy, malfunctioning taxi speakers. When the recordings would finally end... the passengers would hear the sound of a million car alarms and fights breaking out and guns right outside the taxi and be all "Aaaaahhhhh! How peaceful!"
    So anyway... Mayor Bloomberg had a heavy-handed moment and decided to pass some law to wipe all those fucking recordings off the face of Manhattan and be banished to The Island of Unwanted Ideas. This is the first thing that I have ever really noticed Mayor Bloomberg doing. He's so QUIET compared to  Giuliani (who was always in the news making a loud big deal about something). Anyway... there you go. They're gone. The nightmare is over. Thanks Mayor Bloomberg.
 

(article below reprinted from the New York Daily News, www.nydailynews.com)
By MICHAEL SAUL
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
Originally published on February 8, 2003

*Mayor Bloomberg to Elmo: Get out!*

The ride is finally over for the furry red Muppet, the Rockettes and all those other grating voices that remind taxi passengers to buckle their seat belts.

Bloomberg said yesterday that he's booting the celebrity voices.

"We've been doing a study on people's like or dislike for the announcements in the back of taxicabs. We haven't found anybody that likes it. Everybody hates it," he said on his weekly radio show.

"They will be going away in the very near future."

According to a survey of roughly 4,000 cab passengers, 67% said the announcements urging riders to buckle up, take their belongings and get a receipt had no effect on their behavior. In fact, 12% said they were so irritated by the announcement that they purposely refused to use their seat belts.

The number of lost items in cabs hasn't changed since the program began in 1997.

Matthew Daus, who heads the Taxi and Limousine Commission, said the announcements could be out of all taxis by March or April, at the earliest.

He said the city will explore a number of ways to encourage taxi safety, including putting up more signs.

Over the years, riders have been captive to the voices of Jackie Mason, Dennis Franz, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Joe Torre, Judd Hirsch, Joan Rivers, Paul Sorvino, Isaac Hayes, Bernadette Peters, Chris Rock and Walt (Clyde) Frazier.

"It will be a piece of New York history," Daus said.

copywrite 2003, The New York Daily News

 
 
 

3. News of a new Madonna album
Due out in April... titled "American Life". This is exciting news to me. Go here for the Drudge-leaked, hype-y press release. Look at me!
 
 
 

4. Domenic moved back into my apartment
    Yep. Believe it or don't. It was done instantly - and on a whim (complete with a 'psychic' moment when we both called each other simultaneously to ask each other the same thing). Weird.  Although to be honest, I think Domenic had been dropping by occasionally to perhaps, subconsciously (even on his part) warm me up to the idea - perhaps sneaking knockout drops into my Diet Coke and then hypnotizing me in my sleep. He's brought all kinds of technological wonders with him... as well as power strips and extension cords and fancy soaps and body washes and his warped sense of humor ...as well as friends who work at Starbucks' and supply us with free coffee beans (thanks Cauliflower!) So he's back... there you go. Destiny? Common sense? Insanity? A mix of all three... the weird Mark and Domenic sitcom continues (a hybrid of early 'Three's Company' and 'Small Wonder' and 'Sigmund and the Sea Monster'). We've already talked about doing another "The Jar" - but how can we top it?
 
 
 

5. Should Domenic and I get a pet chicken?
    In case I haven't mentioned it before, there is a LIVE chicken mart around the corner from me. Yes... you heard me right... they sell LIVE chickens... all kinds. You can either have them slay it for you there - or - take it home live and do it yourself! Sometimes I think my neighborhood is a third world country. Sometimes IT IS! I love telling clients "Okay when you pass the live chicken mart... make the next left!" It's a colorful (and very, very smelly) addition to an already colorful neighborhood, and it's been here forever. So zany. I call it "The Zoo".
    So anyway... Domenic loves chickens. He has a thing about them... and he has always said that he wants to get a chicken at this store and keep it as a pet. He has this ingenious idea of keeping it in a cage right on the fire escape that is right outside his window. You know... letting it into the apartment every once in a while to be all hilarious and entertain us. Except I think it might get chicken poop everywhere. Maybe we can make it wear diapers. Domenic says he will feed it a steady diet of wild bird seed, dried fruit, wheat grass, corn chips and bugs (he claims traditional chicken feed seed is not good to feed them).
    Apparently Domenic HAD two chickens once... in NYC... in the mid 90's... on a second floor fire escape on Essex street (right next to the new McDonalds), in a wooden cage constructed around the fire escape (they weren't actually locked in -  they were free to get off the fire escape at any time - and the cage was just like a little dog house they could get under - and they chose to stay), which was lined with growing sod grass (growing out of carpet swatches) and always had bird seed on it. When I asked him if they crowed loudly when the sun rose every morning he said "Oh they crowed all the time! They never shut up!" Okay. AND to make matters more interesting... one time one chicken LEFT THE FIRE ESCAPE and Domenic thought he had lost it forever, that is UNTIL  about a month later when his roommate at the time FOUND it walking down the street in the Lower East Side... apparently surviving all that time on whatever it could eat and, being bigger than all the pigeons, it wasn't harassed by them (Domenic says it was a female game hen - that sort of looks like a bigger, lighter pigeon anyway - so I guess it kind of blended in). Then back onto the fire escape home it went! When I also asked him what eventually happened to them... he said he had to give them away to a friend when he moved.
    So anyway... I was passing the live chicken mart this week and I noticed the sign in the steamy window (above) advertising Japanese Silkie chickens (spelled wrong) for $6.99! Buy three and get one FREE! ...AND you could also get a White Rooster - three for $10.00 or five for $14.99! Wow! Whatta bargain! Silkie chickens are quite nice. There was a great episode of "Strangers With Candy" where Jerri Blank had a Silkie chicken named Suki that would, quote; "Eat eggs out of anywhere I put them!". Eventually Jerri's Silkie chicken baked herself to save Jerri's life because Jerri was becoming anorexic in this episode. Aren't Japanese Silkie chicken's smart? I want that one! The Silkie one that bakes itself for you to save your life one!
    Actually... I'm sure having a chicken in the house could have it's advantages. I mean it IS a food source! ...in several different ways. It lays eggs... and you can also eat it. I guess we could eat PART of it at a time and still keep it alive. Like eat only one thigh and give it little chicken crutches to walk around in it's chicken cage (or a little chicken wheelchair) while it re-grows another leg for us to eat. Actually chickens can't re-generate their own limbs (yet), although it seems that there is a legend claiming that Colonal Sanders had already figured out a way to do this before he died
    So maybe we should just keep it for "pet" reasons. Who could kill and eat a Silkie anyways? I mean... look at it!
    I think I could work a chicken into my massage somehow. I could advertise "Chicken Massage" and then have it walk all over the client's back while tossing miniature basket balls into miniature basketball hoops for corn chips. Or have a whole bunch of chicken's walk all over a client's back... Silkie ones! Oooohhh! That would feel good! Or how about a whole gaggle of baby Silkie chicks walking all over a client's back! Hey what a great idea*! I'm gonna clean up! I'm sure my clients won't mind the smell and other things that come with chickens one bit!
    So... we may get a pet chicken and we may not, but... as you can see as with the usual case in life... the possibilities are endless...
 
 
 

6. Domenic's photo of the old, abandoned Thunderbolt roller coaster at Coney Island - and his news to me that it was finally torn down in November of 2000 a week after he took this photo (and didn't even realize it until much later)
    I remember always seeing this abandoned roller coaster whenever I visited Coney Island ...about a half a mile from the rest of the hullabaloo of the amusement and beach area. A visit to Coney Island has always been more haunting that "fun" in my opinion. But this abandoned roller coaster always added a "Carnival of Souls"-ish vibe to a place that is already halfway there anyway.
    Built in 1926 and perhaps most famous from being featured in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" (it was the roller coaster that Woody's character's childhood home was apparently built under)... the Thunderbolt ran and ran much like it's sister coaster, the Cyclone, up until 1983 when it closed (due to ongoing damage started by a bad fire way back in 1977). After that it sat there in this overgrown field... away from everything... slowly creaking and rusting in the beach wind. It was always kind of darkly warm and centering to be around it. You could walk right up to it and just... stare. I wish now I had had the guts to crawl through one of the many holes in the flimsy security fence surrounding it (a beckoning?) and explore it's insides.
    I was informed by Domenic that he was shocked to learn it was finally torn down on November 17th, 2000 (Domenic just happened to take this photo on November 7th of 2000).
    Bye.
 
 

7. Opening of the official Coyle & Sharpe web site (CoyleandSharpe.com)
    Starting around 1963, Jim Coyle and Mal Sharpe were the first artist to use 20th century entertainment technology (radio. TV, etc...) to play sinister-ly humorous PRANKS on unsuspecting people on the streets. They lived in San Francisco and on it's sunny, winding streets - they daily, dressed in conservative business suits and haircuts, and with a portable tape recorder and microphone, they pounded the pavement looking for unsuspecting victims to accost and and propose things like (posing as scientists): "Would you be willing to surgically graft chicken wings onto your head... for us... in the interest of aviation research... you will be paid!" or (posing as entrepreneurs) "Would you quit your job and join us in a recreation of Hell traveling show... you will be the main player in a pit that has poisonous snakes and fire and smoke... all quite possibly deadly... and mentally imbalance prisoners as extras who may harm you... and we can only pay you a few dollars a day... and we have no insurance..." (the person agreed! because they thought it would be good to 'try new things in life'!) or (posing as detectives) "Would you help us rob a bank... with guns... for real... but to help us research a case?" (the first few said no but one eventually said '...well, okay!')
    Recording hundreds of hours of on-the-street hi-jinks... Coyle and Sharpe were at one point doing three hours of material, five days a week for station KGO in SF. These two guys were so totally ahead of their time... that they even seemed to almost get it backwards by pushing the envelope much further than the people who copied them years later, like Candid Camera, The David Letterman Show, etc... Truth be told though, there was a mocking, sinister, high-concept philosophical edge to what Coyle and Sharpe did that Candid Camera and Letterman would never go near. In one hilarious, jaw-dropping bit, C&S convince a middle aged man to go with them to a phone booth and make a call for them - when the man begins making what is obviously a ransom note call, he begins to politely inquire exactly what he is calling about; "Now ...what ...what exactly kind of call is this? Okay... no okay I don't mean to be rude, I know I agreed to do it - I was just asking. Okay... do you want me to start from the beginning again? Okay... Mr. and Mrs. Johnson... we have your son... please deposit ten thousand dollars in unmarked bills at..."
    I may have the wording wrong on those quotes... I only remember hearing the bits played on WFMU.org a few years or so ago... where I first heard of them.
    It's fascinating to listen to the victims react to C&S's pranks... and to listen to how quick and clever C&S were in the midst of what were obviously mostly improvised bits. They were able to get away with what they did because of the climate of the time. There was no real alternative culture... and people on the street were accommodating to their conceptual assaults simply because there was nothing like it that had ever been around at that point for them to suspect it of being similar to. Coyle and Sharpe were true renegades - in the true Dada/Surrealist spirit.
    There is a slowly accumulating appreciation of Coyle and Sharpe that is constantly growing (their work has been available on CD for years) ...and this will be helped along by the opening of this web site (CoyleandSharpe.com).
    The site was built with sublime simplicity by Mal Sharpe's daughter Jennifer Sharpe, an artist in her own right... I have been a quietly obsessive fan of Jennifer's brilliantly unique and highly recognized web site SharpeWorld.com, for years - and have been lucky enough to correspond with her via email a couple of times (bookmark her site - trust me, you'll be back)
    So go on over to CoyleandSharpe.com, and listen to some MP3s, browse around and read some articles about them (for a great career overview, I highly recommend this one by Kenneth Goldsmith), look at the pics, maybe even order a CD!
    Check it out. Fill your life full of sunshine and intrigue!
 
 
 

8. Camille Paglia's (semi)-return to Salon.com
    Interviewed by David Talbot about her opinions on the looming war with Iraq (and more)... reading it seemed like old times... like coming home to a raucous family. I remember when I used to feverishly check Salon.com for Camille's bi-weekly column... and when Camille unceremoniously left some time in 1999 amidst Salon's growing financial troubles - I felt like I had lost a friend. I've seriously considered subscribing to Interview magazine (in which she has a monthly column) just to read a regular dose of her.
    The Salon interview is a great read.
    Click here for the Salon.com interview link (you will be forced to watch a very brief flash ad to obtain a free one day pass to their pay site - a weird strategy to try and boost subscriptions to the ailing Salon).
    The entire article is also reprinted here (Thanks Bill W!)
    Or click here for the lively FreeRepublic.com political discussion site - with reader's comments following the article.
    I know one of Camille's favorite films is Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" (a film she wrote a very talked-about book on) - so I Tipper Hedron-ed her face into the classic shot (above). Doesn't she look knowingly at peace amongst all the carefully orchestrated chaos?
 
 
 

9. My new essay: "I Suffered Stendhal Syndrome At Universal Studios Hollywood!"  - which will debut on NPR (very short version) and here on my web site (very long version) very soon...
    I think it rivals my "Cyber Crush/Crutch" article - and much like it, is BASED ON A TRUE STORY. Coming soon...
 
 

10. Nothing*
    *Just like the first seven minutes of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" - which is a blank screen with some classical music playing (to set mood)
...I am ending my "Top Ten" with "nothing" - for dramatic effect.
 

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 2/3/03:

1. The spooky state of Texas and the United States as it stands in February, 2003
    Hey look at this photo I found of a Laurie Anderson concert!! Oh wait no, it's just The President.
    I have been kind of bored-edly struck, in a zombie-like way, at the general ennui surrounding the recent Columbia space shuttle disaster and the death of it's crew. It's a true tragedy, but I just find it incredibly ... surreal... the whole energy surrounding the whole event. Did you feel like you were just going through the (e)motions while watching the non-stop news coverage of the crash on TV the morning of February 1st? Is it because of September 11th that all national tragedies post seem like re-hashed story lines?
    Is this something that happens with age? As you get older... big events like this have less and less impact on your psyche? Are American citizens that are really old... were they all shitting their pants after the Hindenburg disaster and talking about it for months afterwards all "...oh the humanity..." and all crying in their sleep at the state of America and shit.... then... over lots of time and life...  decades later, when they heard the news about JFK being assassinated - their first thought was something like "I wonder if Thousand Island dressing would be good on a hamburger?" and they have NO IDEA where they were the moment they heard the news. By the time Sept. 11th rolled around they were like "Can you wipe my bottom please?" Does this just happen naturally? Do you become MORE and MORE desensitized as time marches forward in your life span? OR - have the events of Sept. 11th set a trendy standard in national tragedies that are going to take something like The Rapture to beat? To wake people up?
    Isn't it weird how Osama Bin Laden haunted the space shuttle crash this week? How all the news channels kept reporting that there was no evidence of it being a terrorist attack before they even really told you what happened? And then how Osama Bin Laden issued that creepy statement about this being God's retribution against America? Like he KNOWS that he still haunts our subconscious (he's dead right)?
    So I guess I'm in love once again with the already Heaven-like state of Texas. I love the idea of all the locals combing the endless, sun-drenched fields looking for anything that resembles wreckage from outer space... kids finding charred bones of one of the Columbia crew (or thinking they have) and poking it with a stick and then going to school the next day and bragging to everyone that they "saw a dead body in the creek"... people walking around the local Target wearing pieces of wreckage around their neck with a piece of string as a memorial jewelry or something like that... only to freak out later in an emergency room when they find out the wreckage is toxic and then being relieved when they discover it was just a piece of an old car brake pad. People must have a whole new attitude about road kill they see on the side of the road right now... examining it in a peculiar way. The desire to be on the news will intertwine with TALL TALES into a really romantic, sunset and bar-b-que-drenched world of creepy make believe. Kind of like downtown Manhattan weeks after Sept. 11th. Texas is so romantic. I love creepy Texas.
    So my contribution to the whole thing is to make this weird little collage above from pictures I found on the internet (above). It's like I'm like that dorky art class nerd in high school who made a collage out of pictures of a classmate who comitted suicide - snapshots from parties and maybe from the yearbook -  with tin foil hearts and friendship bracelets attached to it with safety pins with beads on them. I put the whole thing on my locker and am all "I thought this would really bring everyone together y'all..." with this really forlorn look on my face. Here ya'fucking go.
 
 

2. This computer generated piece of art
        In contrast to the the weird downer discussed in entry #1, it is refreshing to live in a world that spontaneously generates images like the one pictured directly above. Did a human make this? I found it on Goregasm.com with no name attached. Maybe a computer generated it of it's own will? You know I could see computers all over the world doing that on the day that they take over the human race... you know... putting lurid pictures on kid's computers and sending graphics like this one to church web sites.
    Isn't it sick and stupid? Why?
    Don't they look like Sims?
    I don't think a human made this... that super computer from "War Games" did.
    Is the fact that this randomly appeared on a website a sign of the coming overtaking by computers where they make humans their slaves?
 
 

3. Sharing my Dario Argento film collection with Jim
    Black gloved killers, serpentine plots, Dramamine camera movements, child-like(?) direction, dream logic, predators galore, local bums who know something that others don't - or witness something others might have liked to see, protagonists who end up being the sole witness of violent murders and become helplessly ensnared in a string of murders and the ongoing investigation, midgets, smashed teeth, shiny, big blades against red velvet, close-ups of throbbing brains, pulsating - relentlessly loud and howling soundtracks, childhood sing-song poems that play while people get decapitated with "noose-a-matics", people who saw something that "wasn't quite right" during a murder but can't remember "exactly" what (until the end!), murders that are always committed by "maniacs" or "madmen", parting red curtains, transsexual Italian actresses playing female parts with no fanfare, strange - disembodied dubbing, buildings with endless hidden layers and passageways, rain, lizards eating butterflies, cats being drowned in bags and then regenerating and taking revenge on the wrong character, machines that can take a photograph from the retina of a corpse that reveals the last thing the victim saw before being murdered, "luminous emptiness", weird rock music scores that seem inappropriate, guys that get shot in one eye and then try to still do whatever they are doing, sound-analysis machines that can't decode bird calls by birds with glass feathers, ballet academies that are actually witch covens that are actually modern and violent interpretations of Grimm's fairy tale logic (that was pretty violent in the first place), raging storms, uncertain allies, blind men attacked by their own seeing eye dogs in "Triumph of the Will"-esque town squares, psychodelic physical and mental breakdowns to beautiful art (which killers use to their advantage), boys raised as girls who grow up to be killers, lizards with pins in them, heads with maggots that scientifically reveal when the victim was killed, daughters of famous actors who have a psychic affinity with insects, ballet shoes for 50 marks, skipping Verdi records, elaborately lit elaborate set pieces that are in actuality elaborate skeleton structures for elaborately complex and intertwined story lines that are just elaborate excuses for elaborately stylish scenes that are filmed with a knock-out elaborate punch, ominous modern airports, jarring close-ups, cryptic legends written by mad architects about houses built for Three Mothers, killers who place rows of needles under people's eyelids to force them to keep their eyes open and watch them kill other people, fingers getting chopped off on moving trains, the embryonic beginning of Asia Argento's career, mis-interpreted children's poems that lead to killers killing people with musical instruments, toys that aren't really toys that are really dwarves that are really killers that are really animatronic dummies operated by tramps as decoys, perfect representations of "cosmic art", keys dropped in puddles of buildings that actually turn out to be vast underwater ballrooms, NYC Central Park vendors who run to save you when you are being eaten by rats in a pond - then suprisingly stab you to death, men trapped in lit entrances of art galleries like glass cages and watch helplessly as mentally imbalanced wives of gallery owners get stabbed (or do they?), dolls that can float, victims that write clues in steamy mirrors, gross plexiglass necklaces that have flies imbedded in them, guys who make weird paintings of murders and also eat cats, monkeys with switchblade knives (who use them), coffin trade shows, insomnia, killers' bullets that go right through peepholes - through heads - and explode telephones which were the other victims' sole means of escape, worship of opera, faulty memory, dogs chasing girls through lit parks and into killer's fantastic homes, plots set "a few years into the future", pervert line-ups that accidentally include transsexuals, Edward Hopper painting set pieces, animals, animals, animals, murder, murder, murder, screams, screams, screams and rain, rain, rain.
    It's enthusiastic to find someone who's actually slightly more than casually interested in Argento's films. Not that Jim has become a huge fan overnight... or even a casual fan. But he did ask to see two in a row in one night! Ahhhhhhh! We are running out of Argento films to watch and are starting to delve into other Italian horror and giallo territoty like Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Michele Soavi. But Argento's work is the d-r-e-a-m-i-e-s-t...

Want to help me convert all my Dario Argento VHS tapes to DVD? Cick here to find out how!
 
 

5. This email I got from Bryan
   Thanks for caring Bryan. Bryan of ChaosInAustin.com recently responded to last week's entry about me painting my apartment and calling my ex boyfriend (him) in the middle of the night while high as Hell on paint fumes:

From: Bryan Ockert <bryan@chaosinaustin.com>
To: Logan5@ix.netcom.com <Logan5@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Dear Ms. Hartman
Date: Sat, Jan 25, 2003, 10:31 AM

Dear Mary Hartman:

As an ex-boyfriend of yours, I feel that I can broach you on a delicate matter.

A group of us have got together, and decided that you might in fact have a problem. We would love to meet with you, via cam, for the very first Cyber Cam Intervention!

Perhaps Intervention is a strong word, but we want you to know that your friends are here for you, and that we support you in all things, regardless of how many times you blackout and wake-up in a pool of your own vomit and ping pong white paint.

We just know you can break this paint fume addiction with love, cyber hugs, and rainbow Unicorn stickers. (They're on the way!)

And if not, we will just Clonaid ya, and make a better one that is a less gassy. That jar of nail clippings will finally come in handy.

Please reconnect your camera at 8pm on Monday the 32nd for the Intervention.

We will all be there....waiting for you.

Bryan

PS. You were high?!?! hahahahahahahahahahaha. The funniest part...is..I didn't even notice! hahahahahahahahahahaz ~snifffffffffffffffff~

PS. Love you...ur the best.

 

4. This email I got from a guy named JimLA concerning last week's "Top Ten" entry regarding me painting my apartment and calling my ex boyfriend in the middle of the night while high as Hell on paint fumes:
    Concerning last week's "Top Ten" story about painting my apartment. I get a lot of emails... but this one just kind of hit me at the right time and struck me as profound at that particular moment.  It contains a brilliant story about Brigid Berlin (whom Jim and I are huge fans of) calling her parents as performance art. An interesting image to ponder:
 

From: Jim LA <Xxxxx@xxx.xxx.xxxxxx> Add to Address Book
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 23:39:47 -0800
To: "Allen, Mark" <logan5@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Pathologically grateful? What is that?

Remember Brigid Berlin?Ý From the Andy Wharhol days?Ý Chelsea Girls?Ý She kinda worked in his studio answering phones and stuff.Ý Stinking rich Connecticut WASP parents, her mother trashed he constantly, made her miserable ....blah blah.

Well, before anyone was calling it "performance art" she rents this theater, puts a love seat (she weighed like 450lbs) and a table with a phone on the stage.Ý The phone is hooked into the house sound system so the audience can hear who's on the other end of the call.Ý Brigid comes out, sits down and calls her mother (who has no idea anyone is listening) and her mother starts in on her.Ý 75 people sat there, mouths agape listening to this horrible woman trash her own daughter's sense of self worth for like an hour and a half.Ý People who were there called it brilliant.

Cause Art is about context.

There's this crazy 70 year old woman in my neighborhood who wears these awful paisley circa 1970's bell bottomed pants suits with platform shoes and a beehive hairdo.Ý She painted her nothing special two bedroom Spanish stucco tract home entirely in black years ago.Ý But, she's just crazy.

When you sit in your shiny white apartment and relate your humiliations to friends, its just your life.Ý When you rent a hall and charge 40 bucks a head, its art.

If you could guarantee you could shit glitter on a canvas, maybe you could get 60 bucks a head.....

I expect two comp tickets.
 

JimLA

 

9. Being interviewed this week by a full camera, light and sound crew on a crowded NYC subway car
   Have you ever farted on a crowded elevator car? You know that dynamic? The way people react to you? If you fart loudly in a crowded elevator... and it smells... there are two types of people that you will deal with: those who act as if nothing has happened - these are called givers, and those who openly react and react loudly... all "Eeewww!" - these people are called takers. And you at that moment that you farted in the elevator and caused this canon by which people's character could be so easily gagued are like... well, you're like God. A farting God. It's like a sociological experiment.
    This week I experienced a similar dynamic when I was being interviewed by the people at World of Wonder about "objectum sexuality" as exemplified by my cyber relationship with Bryan. No I DID NOT fart on the subway while they were interviewing me - that was an analogy.
    I thought they were going to interview me in my apartment surrounded by my technology, and so did they... until the last minute when they decided to start the day interviewing me in all these different locations in Manhattan and shooting B-role at every NYC landmark they could think of. I felt like Marlo Thomas at the beginning of "That Girl"! Pretty soon we ended up on the uptown 6 train... completely crowded with people starting to get off work.
    Now... you see a lot of things on NYC subways... but I must say I've never seen someone being interviewed with a full camera crew while the train rumbles and speeds along. It was a funny moment I will never forget... ever. Half the people (the givers) looked down at their books or whatever while it was happening like nothing out of the ordinary was going on - kind of like Woody Allen in that scene in "Bananas" when that old woman is getting robbed on the subway right next to him, and some of the people, even though they were looking at magazines - had really strained looks on their faces like Thelma Ritter in almost all of  "The Incident". The other half of the people (the takers) gawked and stared and listened to every word I (the farting God) said and wondered who I was like those people I mentioned before (that's the givers) secretly wanted to do.  The whole time I'm like "Oh blah...blah...blah what I have to say is so important... OBVIOUSLY." Lots of people... mostly Asian... ducked out of the camera's view for some reason, maybe they didn't have green cards - I don't know. I even ran into Domenic while the whole thing was happening!
    I snapped these two photos (above) while it was all happening... but they certainly don't capture the moment... as the people who had all gotten out of range of the camera suddenly ducked out of the range of my digital camera's flash.  Here - are - a - few  other pictures I took during the day, when I could breath.
    The crew and producer were all very cool and professional about the whole thing - like it was just a day's work, and the camera man told me later he tried to keep as many people off camera as possible because "people get weird about being filmed". It was quite a spectacle. I'll never forget the moment... you know in the movies when people die and they have that high-speed montage of all the memorable moments of the person's life flash before their eyes? This will be on my last-moments-before-death-list. Maybe I should spend some time figuring out why such an obviously shallow and ego-centric moment is a highlight... but what I might uncover sounds like it might be too frightful to water.
    Speaking of Domenic...
 

8. Domenic dropped by unexpectedly again
   Is Domenic dropping by occasionally and unexpectedly every six months or so because he is in cahoots with some local thieves and he is "casing" my apartment and habits? Am I too paranoid? Can you be too paranoid? Actually I wish Domenic would drop by MORE... like the upstairs neighbor on "The Bob Newhart Show".
    He also wanted to know what the hell was happening on the subway the other day.
    Well for all you Domenic fans... you will be thrilled to know that Domenic is on the way to becoming a teacher! Yep! A high school teacher! He's about to finish all the schooling and will move down south to become one.
    He's also going to go on a road trip soon with a friend - inspired by my recent jaunt around the entire USA (he's smart to take a friend - I did it alone).
    Domenic was full of wild stories... as he always is. I won't relay them here as I don't think they are the kind of thing he wants discussed... or discovered by the cops. Actually if I wrote about the night Domenic recently had here in Gotham... it would make a shocking-ly bananas story. But I'm nice. And I don't want Domenic arrested... again! It's hard to picture Domenic as a high school teacher. Really hard.
    So anyway I snapped these two pictures of him (above). Isn't he adorable?
 
 
 

6. Bill Murray
    I have this weird affinity for Bill Murray movies. Especially "Groundhog Day" and "What About Bob?" - these are two of my favorites. I find these two films to both be very underrated by Hollywood-haters. But mainly I think it's my weird sexual fixation with Bill Murray's comic characterizations that I think is to blame. God he's sexy. At least his characterizations are. Remember that father figure thing he did for the misfit kid in "Meatballs" (or was it 'Meatballs II'?). Oh baby... take me into your arms.
    I saw Bill Murray once in a dramatic role... I liked it... it wasn't bad at all, but I'll be honest and say it was something I tried to forget. Something wasn't right about it... like I was seeing some twisted warp in time in space from a "bad" alternate dimension. Like what if Vampira's role in "Plan 9 From Outer Space" had been played by oh... saaaaay... Grace Kelly.
    I mean... Bill's role in "Groundhog Day" was basically a dramatic role. There is just something about Bill Murray's personality in the characters he does when he is doing comedy that really turns me on... and all those early SNL clips are like seeing God to me. Can someone's personality... a fake personality... be a sexual turn on? And make a not-sexy actor have gobs of oozing sex appeal? I guess when Bill Murray acts all silly in front of the camera and does his thing, I get all "procreation-ally vibe-y" in the same way girls' nipples get hard and they wanna finger themselves when they see Brad Pitt's butt cleavage in "Fight Club" or guys pop a boner and wanna finger the girl next to them when they see Pamela Anderson gagging on Tommy Lee's giant cock in that stolen honeymoon bootleg videotape.
 
 

7. The latest issue of VICE magazine - the "Special" issue
    Vice magazine does it again. This issue... almost every section of it... is dedicated to or about or written by retarded people, people with CP, etc... even the fashion spread! Now when Vice magazine explores one of these subjects... they always just kind of brush the surface of it in the most obnoxiously honest way possible, and with a leave-you-speechless supreme indifference... with an occasional rare dip down into deep exploration. But 99% of it is all surface shock value. But just like nobody cares that Dario Argento's films are all "style over substance" because the style is so brilliant... nobody cares that the text inside Vice is basically just a bunch of random words because everything else they do has such apocalyptically testículos gigantes. If you don't live in a city where you can pick up this free uber-hip magazine... you can see all about it at www.viceland.com.
 

10. My recent Inspector Clouseau-like trip to The Wonder Bar where my glasses fogged up and I couldn't see a goddamn thing and started bumping into things and knocking over drinks and all the dancing gay kids laughed at me and called me an old man and all I wanted to do in the first place was to get in and out really fast and get copies of Next and HX magazine
    Okay this was really embarrassing. It's so embarrassing that I decided to draw a picture of it (above) instead of tell it... you know the way they make little kids who were molested draw pictures of how they feel in therapy?
    Okay. The other night... which happened to be a weekend night... I was riding my bike through the East Village, when suddenly I realized I needed copies of Next and HX magazine (those freebie gay rags they have in every city). As I was right at Avenue A and 6th street - I thought I would just lock my bike on the nearest parking sign post and walk into the fabulous Wonder Bar... where free copies of Next and HX would be awaiting my arrival in little racks a mere few yards from the front entrance. A piece of cake! In and out in 10 seconds flat! Right?
    Did I mention, by the way, that I hadn't bathed in like two days? And that it looked like I hadn't shaved in two WEEKS? And that I had on ripped-up sweat pants (navy blue) with even more ripped-up old sneakers on (gray - not the color, just filthy) that stank worse than my under arms? And I was wearing an old yellow T-shirt with an even older, thick denim shirt over that that smelled like paint thinner AND a cruddy, stretched-out gray turtleneck sweater that I found in my laundry room AND over that the most ugly black felt P-coat you could possibly imagine AND a disgusting knit hat with holes in it that had been soaking up two weeks worth of hair grease? AND on top of all that - I had on my GLASSES.
    Now... in case you don't know... I'm pretty blind without my glasses or contacts on. I mean REALLY blind. Now... did I also mention that it was VERY cold out that night... and windy. And that I had been riding my bike at high speeds all the way from midtown? With the f-r-e-e-z-i-n-g wind blowing against my thick glasses the whole way... chilling their plastic temperature down to ice cold? Do you know what this means is going to happen the second you walk into a crowded, sweaty, hot bar full of beautiful, primped and bathed young people who are all laughing and talking and dancing and smoking and drinking? That's right - your glasses will SERIOUSLY fog up and NO AMOUNT of wiping them off with your crusty, B.O.-ridden turtle neck sweater will make the fog go away. Did I mention how blind I am without my glasses on? I did? Okay.
    So I locked my bike up and whizzed past the cell-phone-talking throngs of beautiful people hanging out outside the entrance (there's no doorman - it's just a bar, but that should have been my first clue that the place was beyond mobbed). I noticed my reflection in the glass doors as I tried to swing one open... YEEAARRGGHH!!! Take a bath and shave and comb your hair why don't you Mark? You literally look like a homeless freak! Okay, okay... no biggie... I'll just slip in and out like a ninja and hope no one sees me.
    The second I walked in and the door shut behind me - FWOOOSH! - my glasses basically became like one of those frosted glass shower doors, and I realized that no amount of wiping them off would take care of the problem. I also realized that taking them off was NOT an option... as that meant I would just be twice as blind. I should have just turned around and walked out... but by the time I realized all this information I was already halfway in the place trying to dodge all the blurry shapes around me and fumbling my hands over people's breasts and into their drinks and stepping on people's feet as I fumbled for the free magazine rack - which was the whole reason I had entered this hip joint in the first place. Some people go out to cool places to see and be seen. I go to get free magazines. The music was REALLY loud... but not loud enough to drown out the occasional "Ow!" and "Jerk!" I heard as I knocked over yet another drink or grabbed someone's ass thinking it was a hand rail. I even heard the words "Homeless guy in here!" and "old man" that I THINK were being directed at me. I guess I did look pretty scruffy. And I stank. Popular gay bars in trendy neighborhoods on a weekend night are not meant for people in my state... especially people in my state who think they can slip in and out really fast but then, once entering, find themselves BLIND and bring as much attention to themselves as possible by pushing and bumping into every thing and everyone in the joint.
    I felt so old... and klutzy. People were all dancing to house music and looking like models and twirling around like they were in a Levi's TV ad and I'm all "I'm blind! Where's the free magazines! I smell!" God - I remember when I used to rule at places like that... actually at that particular place - since it's been there since the early 90's. I actually thought to myself at one point "I need to remember to buy prunes tomorrow."
    When I finally Hellen Keller-ed my way across the crowd and physically and aroma-ly offended about 60 people I FOUND the magazine rack. I reached for the mags... having to stoop down... and my smelly, hairy head landed right in the arm of some skinny fag who was dancing against the wall - knocking his drink a little (my glasses were still foggy). I could see from the flickering candle light that he wasn't very happy about it. Oops... I'd better get my blind ass outta here before I run into the DJ and cause the record to skip.
    It was about the time that I was lurching towards the exit in true Elephant Man style that I felt something wet against my coat... a drink had fallen against my back. A LOT of drink had fallen against my back. Whether I knocked it out of someone's hand and onto my coat... or whether it was thrown is unclear. I swear I heard someone's voice say "Jerk!" Maybe... maybe not. I don't know... I was in my own world. My own, blind, smelly, homeless freak world. They should make a game show out of that... walk into a crowded bar and retrieve something from the back of it... blindfolded... and dressed and smelling like someone who lives under a bridge. Trust me... it's hard! The prize could be dignity.
    When I got outside... finally... I unlocked my bike and also noticed that I could see again. The cold air had caused my glasses to un-fog up. I could see clearly now. I wonder what all those people in there thought of me? I took a deep breath... it was over. The whole thing had actually occurred in less than a minute. I had my magazines... I guess that was the point. Whew. As I climbed on my bike and started riding home... I noticed that there was more wet drink on the back of my coat than I had originally anticipated. I think it was a singapore sling. I don't even know what's in that drink... but it smells kind of nice. I picked up speed and rode home in the cold night air... the back wheel of my bike flinging the drops of singapore sling that were dripping down off of the back of my coat... flinging them high up and over my head and in front of me...  guiding me home like shooting stars...

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 1/20/03:
*WARNING: This was typed under the influence of highly toxic paint fumes
**NOTE: This phone call actually occurred

1: Painting my apartment

    Now comrades, with a chunky mixture of under-overexaggerated-humbleness and enormously and heroically subdued self-satisfaction, I am going to relay to you the story of how I made my surroundings more beautiful while also pondering the paths not taken in my life - and then ended that personal journey by calling my ex-boyfriend in the middle of the night while high as Hell on toxic paint fumes and rambling like a retarded muppet.

    Life is about choices.

    Did you know that there are hundreds of shades of white that you can choose from to paint the walls of your apartment in? When I picked out my paint I decided I wanted the most blinding white I could find. My color choice was "Ping Pong White". They should call it "Glaucoma-Inducing, Will-Make-You-See-Like-Helen-Keller White" because when the sun shines through the many windows in my apartment, it now looks like George Lucas' "THX-1138" or maybe that white, glowing Mike TeeVee room in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory".

    BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: mimicking the movies. I remember my friend Gregory once painted his entire apartment white and he disappeared into a "white void" for several days. He literally disappeared and Sammy and I didn't hear from him for days. He had systematically painted away every hint of shadow in his living space... covered up every place light could be absorbed into... the reverse of a black hole. Carl Sagan would have been stupefied and passed out from sheer shock. Talk about anal. Gregory called me a few days after he had disappeared into the white void that he created inside his apartment. His voice sounded real echo-y on the phone. He was actually calling me from the void! Then someone (thankfully) tracked some scuff marks on his newly painted floor and he magically appeared again. Sometimes doing a really good job at something can be dangerous... you can get swallowed up by a force that defies all we know about the laws of time and space. I remember thinking this during my very recent painting job on my apartment... when I started to count the molecules between the window sill and the actual glass... you know... using masking tape to make sure I got the line of new paint just right... getting all the details squared away perfectly. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: getting all the details right and leaving no loose ends.

    Wait... where was I? Oh yea... painting my apartment. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: staying on track. Picking a path and sticking to it all the way to the end. If a job is worth doing it's worth doing right.

    You know that text on the paint can that says "Warning: Use only in a WELL VENTILATED area only. Inhaling paint fumes can be dangerous to your health."? Well... Winters in New York city can be really rough, and we are having a record bitter cold Winter this year. So my idea of well ventilated was to crack one window. Just a crack. Speaking of crack... I think I now know what it's like to smoke it. Just leaving one window cracked and setting up a system of fans in your apartment to blow all the fumes around creates an interesting ventilation situation that allows your lungs to envelop and absorb toxic fumes very quickly and then efficiently absorb them into your blood stream and deliver them to your brain. Why take pills? Wow... I like that phrase; "ventilation situation" That could be a cool band name. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: coming up with great band names for bands you never form.

    I've always wanted to be a "breatharian". Just for the thrill of it. Do you know what a "breatharian" is? It's someone who doesn't need to eat food or take in fluids and believes that they can get everything they need to sustain themselves by the light, air and energy around them. I looked a breatharian web site and discovered that long-term breatharians, through a life-time of disciplined breatharianism, claim to have the ability to perform "bi-locationism" (or the ability to be in two places at once), materialize and dematerialize at will, fly through the air, maintain their body temperature while sitting in the snow, increasing and decrease their heartbeat at will, and so on. And do you know what? They are right! I could do all these things in a mere few hours of performing sealed-apartment-windows-painting breatharianism. Pretty soon painting your apartment hardly seems like work at all! That's thanks to my new-found breatharian techniques.

    BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: making work fun. And learning cool new stuff. And traveling to other dimensions. Who ever thought that a tedious back-breaking chore like painting your apartment could feel like spinning strands of glistening heavy metal in heavenly, sun-drenched clouds with nude cherubs or floating in a spaceship to the moon with talking panda bears made of glitter while gravity goes all nonsense? I think I saw Gregory's ghost in the white void... somewhere... or maybe his ghost was the white void itself and the real him was the doorway to that void which was actually the exit that let down my throat and into the universe that lives inside all of us... which is interconnected... by THE WHITE VOID! YES! You know Gregory was right to find that white void and take a journey AND I was correct to get so anal about the line between the window pane and the glass that I got out my microscope and started actually dividing by molecules. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: finding the connections in things and seeing how everything is interconnected. I guess the most anal people in the world are the ones who count the molecules. Does that make nanotechnologists the most anal people of all? They want to control the laws of molecules... which are the laws of time and space itself. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: finding out who's the most anal. You know who's pretty anal? My ex-cyber boyfriend Bryan.

    Okay I was drinking Diet Coke the whole time and I think I had a cheeseburger at one point. So I cheated. Breatharians are such phonies. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: finding and exposing phonies! I guess all paint-huffers are really breatharians at heart. I guess I'm not a breatharian after all... just a paint huffer with big dreams. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: having dreams.

    You know how they say you should never look directly at the flame of a blow torch without one of those very heavy goggle mask things? That's what the walls of my apartment are like now. Or starting to look like, since I haven't finished painting. Oh by the way... I took the wall down. It's so bright in here now I'll have to wear a welding mask just to make coffee in the morning in my brand new pristine apartment. Yep...  God it looks fucking great. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: looking good. Because if you look good... you FEEL good!

    Inhaling paint fumes for 12 straight hours while you're painting your apartment sure makes you feel good. It's actually highly productive too... you become so addicted to to the experience that you can't stop. I was just going to do some touch-ups... but due to my fume-induced speed-y euphoria I decided to paint EVERY WALL and EVERY CORNER and EVERY INCH OF CEILING... TWO COATS! Now I'm doing that whole molecule counting thing on all the edges that I discussed above. If you can turn hard work and a strong discipline into something as addictive as crack or heroin then it's win-win! BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: making pain your friend and ruling the world.

    It all started last Monday when the super finally delivered the paint I had ordered (they offered to paint it for free but I kind-of didn't like the idea so I said I would do it myself if they provided all the supplies). I begrudgingly began the chore with all widows in my apartment wide open. But "B-R-R-R-R-R!" So I decided it might be a good idea to paint while wearing a coat, gloves and a hat. But since I don't have any of those things that I don't want speckled with paint... so I decided that those warnings on those paint cans were pretty much just for show anyway (just like those warnings for nausea and heart failure on those TV ads for herpes medicine are) and I shut my windows... cranked up the heater... set up the fans... and got to work a painting the walls! Pretty soon I noticed that I had an amazing attention to detail... and a kind of euphoric sense, as well as increased energy. Not necessarily the kind of energy you get from good nutrition and being well rested... but the kind of "rush"-y, superficial, high-octane energy you get from over the counter diet medication. I noticed that my intent to do a very good job increased as did my intent to pierce the ether and uncover what the meaning of "what the meaning of" was. I've experimented with most recreational drugs... mostly in high school, college and then later in my warped, wild days of New York nightlife in the 1990's... so let's just say that I'm not a user... but I have the experience to make comparisons and highly educated guesses. I would say that an extreme paint fume high lies somewhere between mushrooms and speed. You feel hollow-ly energetic and focused, but also giddily delightful in noticing your surroundings - which can border on slight hallucination-y. Make sense? It did to me at the time. Of course all drugs make sense at the time you're doing them. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: making sense.

    Looking back on the experience... I realize that my experience gave me a little mini-vacation from my normal state of being... which allowed me to escape my usual mental system of checks and balances and allowed me to view my life from a totally FRESH and NEW perspective. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: getting perspective. As the paint fumes took their toll and I began to learn all sorts of new things about my body and my mind.. I began to think about my life.

    I've thought of writing a book called "A Guide To Uncomfortable Living" or "How To Live 100 Lies". I mean... where am I going with all this? My life I mean, not this rant. What is it all adding up to? I run my own massage therapy business... and I make enough to get by... but barely enough. Why am I not some super-sucessful freak like some of the trust-fund weirdoes I know in New York? Did you know that Jim and I are literally a hair's breath away from deciding to move to California? It's true. I mean what does New York have to offer me right now except frozen dog shit on the sidewalks?

    Do you know Jim has this friend that is just a few years older than us that makes paintings of panda bears painted out of glitter that he sells for $20,000 a piece and he sells A LOT of them? He sells so many of them that his accountant recently contacted his gallery and told him to stop selling so many because if he made any more money his taxes would go through the roof? Do you know this guy then took all his glitter-painted-panda-bear money and bought an old victorian style house on the top of some hill in upstate New York somewhere and decided it would be fun to paint every inch of the outside of it completely black... you know... as "art". It caused such a commotion in the town that cars literally line up for miles at the bottom of the hill to get a good look at it and take pictures and it was actually featured on the front page of The New York Times Style section a few months ago? Now they guy is going to sell the house as sculpture to some Japanese art collector... sell it as "art". FOR A MILLION DOLLARS! A M-I-L-L-I-O-N D-O-L-L-A-R-S! Did you know that this guy and his boyfriend's original apartment is just down the street from me? He's so rich now that he still keeps the old apartment! Just to have it! Maybe he'd let me paint it for him so I can get high off the fumes... it's all I have left. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: realizing what you have left and grabbing it.

    I mean this guy is already a successful painter and he decides to shift some of his funds around by buying a house upstate and then paints the whole thing black for fun and it becomes such a mind-blowing oddity that it ends up in The New York Times and he sells it for A MILLION DOLLARS! Meanwhile Jim and I are counting our pennies to buy one bottle of Guinness beer to share... for our dinner. God... I mean how do I get in on this random merry-go-round of luck? I'm so talented that recordings of my farts should be on the Billboard Top 40 but here I am not even able to afford to be able to get my computer out of the shop... again. I always tell Jim that I am so talented and full of money making potential that I wish some well-respected visionary would just contact me and say "I can see that you are full of ideas and are obviously lacking in funds to get these ideas off the ground... here's a check for $100,000. Thank you for your time." Jim usually responds by telling me to answer my cell phone because it's someone calling to schedule a massage session. God are my hands getting muscle-y from massaging so much. And for what? To pay all my bills and then be broke? Where's my painted-black victorian style house just for the Hell of it in The New York Times worth a million dollars? Hmmmmm?

    Actually, did you know I may write about the guy who makes glitter panda paintings and black victorian house sculptures for my first writing gig for Artforum magazine? Yep! A well-respected visionary from The New York Times, who likes my web site, recently contacted me and set up that gig for me. Did you know that I am so pathologically grateful to this well-respected visionary for doing this for me that I could shit glitter onto a canvas in the shape of a mammal? In fact, I'm so grateful to this guy that when he offered to take me to said magazine's Christmas party... I ended up getting the flu and having to cancel the day before! Isn't that nice of me? All the Eve Harringtons of the world and maybe even a few Phoebes were at that party networking their asses off and I'm at home with the flu in my newly-painted and paid for apartment being nursed back to health by a loved one (Jim) who cares deeply about me. I'm such a fucking loser. My first piece for Artforum should be in one of their Spring issues. I haven't even talked to the panda painting black million dollar house guy yet. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: writing about the other people who are doing the things you will never do.

    Speaking of people, actually Jim and I are trying to be more social. First, we cracked our inner Unabomber by crashing a going-away party (which was filled with real live people) for Jim's longtime friend and ex-Fagbash member Paul (aka: DJ Snax), who's moving to Berlin. It was fun. I've known Paul a long time too actually. I actually did pretty good talking to real live people. I was looking at some red haired guy who I thought was just another young, scrawny East Village type... and later I learned it was Jim Foetus. Which makes sense since Paul is now in his band. Oops, sorry I just dropped something. At one point I kind of flew into a mini panic when Jim left my side and went to get some vodka. I was in a swivel chair and when he walked away I literally started to turn and face the computer monitor in the room (which was turned off). BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT:  embracing automatic responses. But instead of talking to a blank computer monitor though, I got to meet Jim's other longtime friend Amy. Amy works at a lesbian-centric sex toy shop and is full of stories about the weirdoes that come in there sometimes. Within the first ten minutes of meeting her she shared a story about her "ass"-plorer adventures with her girlfriend and her fear of enemas even though she considers herself an "ass"-plorer (Jim, Paul and I were all 'huh?') and the time the super in her building talked his way into her apartment and proceeded to teach her how exactly to make crack (it turns out the process is very similar to making rock candy) which they then smoked and she got so freaked out that she gave him a nice guitar just to get him to leave. Amy is hilarious and wonderful. Amy is the kind of girl you want to introduce to mom. I mean for real... just to screw with them. She seems to know everyone in New York and is one of those people that seems plugged into every scene within a 50 mile radius. The following night she took Jim and I to some new electro-centric party in Brooklyn thrown by that guy Spencer Product. World (in)famous photographer Ryan McGinley was the DJ. Oops sorry I just dropped something again. It was fun. Since Amy knows everyone in the world she dashed off to mingle like the world was about to end and... do you know what Jim and I, the ones who are trying to be more social, did? First we counted out pennies so we could afford a bottle of Guinness beer to split. Then we sat in the corner away from the massive room filled with beautiful people who were all mingling like the world was on fire and we drank and French kissed. You know what looks funny? Jim and I in a corner of a dark room full of socializing people... sharing one beer and French kissing and not talking to anyone. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: spending time alone with loved ones.

    Did you know that a bunch of people from World of Wonder are coming all the way from Los Angeles to my apartment this Monday to interview me about my whole "objectum-sexuality" thing I had going on with my computer during my cyber relationship with my ex-boyfriend Bryan? I guess they are interested in the whole thing about not having to interact with real people and falling in love with your computer because it's the only thing you have "real" relationships with people through. You know... that's the whole thing I am trying to overcome with Jim. Anyways... I'm happy to crawl back into that cubby hole of non-reality to be on TV! BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: doing and saying anything just to be on television. Even digital cable. They are coming this Monday. Yep. It's for some digital cable show they produce, called "Paul Allen's Tech TV". I don't even have my real computer because I can't afford to get it out of the shop (again) so I have to make due with Jim's laptop and my cam... which I don't even know if it will work or not yet. That's gonna make me look like a real computer whiz during the interview. Maybe it will make me look like a genius for creating such a web site and everything with such small equipment. If I can get the cam working I'll turn it on and broadcast from my bed while they interview me. I hope it looks like Good Morning Fucking America in here. Maybe the lights will heat up the apartment. God we're having a cold winter.

    My next piece for NPR is literally sitting on the conveyor belt waiting to air during the Academy Award hype time. It's called "I Suffered Stendhal Syndrome At Universal Studios Hollywood!". As soon as it does air... the long version will go up on my site... just like this one did. Did you know that so many people keep changing positions at the position at NRP's "All Things Considered" that spotted me in the first place that I am very scared of getting "lost" by each new person?

    Why does every blessing I get have to come with a curse attached? Maybe everyone has curses attached to their blessings... maybe it's just that I blab about them too much... even to myself.

    I'm the type to let it all out... too much even. I mean, some people I know keep their asses so clean I swear they must wipe with Bounce anti-static cling dryer sheets.

    I'm the one that, when something embarrassing happens to me - no matter how pathologically humiliating - I immediately get right on the horn and tell everyone I know about it. Even then I usually exaggerate it to sound MORE hysterical. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: being a good storyteller. Over time I think I've built up a tolerance so I have to create more and more elaborate embarrassing life moments that get closer and closer to that "scary edge". No wonder I spend so much time hanging out at the twilight of the mind... or pretending to. Or pretending to pretend to.

    Of course I think all my flubs are hi-fucking-lareous (I wonder if anyone else does?) ...I think all my life's traumatic, slapstick mistakes should be hung in gold rococo frames and exhibited in the Louvre forever. They're art. Hard core art. Maybe I'm just compensating (overcompensating?) for all the parts of my life that I perceive (or feel that others perceive) as boring... the most unspeakable life mistake ever.

    So while the paint fumes were in full effect and I was literally floating like an X-men with a paint roller in hand thinking about all the things I just discussed above... and kind of getting hallucinagenically depressed about the state of my life... I decided to do the only logical thing: call my ex-boyfriend, Bryan, on the telephone!**

    BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: calling your ex-boyfriend on the telephone in the middle of the night while zonked out of your mind on massive amounts of paint fumes. Especially if you haven't spoken to him in about 8 months and are feeling vulnerable and self-conscious. Life can be so beautiful. He is my ex-boyfriend in a mostly cyber-relationship kind of way. Still... he is my ex, before Jim I suppose.

    You know that thing you do sometimes when you are dialing someone's phone number and then the phone is ringing on your end and you are waiting for them or their machine to pick up? You know how you can sometimes run through little rehearsals in your head about how the beginning of the phone conversation is going to go? You picture what the person on the other end is going to say and you kind of mini-rehearse what your responses will be? It usually all gets blown to Hell when the other person picks up. But if you're speeding out of your mind like a paint huffer then then the line that separates what's going on in your head and what's happening outside of it starts to get all scribbly.

    "Hello Mark Allen." Bryan said as he picked up the phone. Apparently he was doing some late-night shopping at Wallgreen's in Austin, Texas (his place of residence - Austin, not Wallgreen's itself).

    What happened next was kind of embarrassing. But I blame the paint fumes and the paint fumes only. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: placing blame on things that can't defend themselves... like paint fumes. You know that little rehearsal conversation I had in my head? The kind you are not supposed to speak out loud? Well I just kind of... ran down the list of possible conversation openers that I had collected in my head in the few moments it had taken me to dial the phone. Instead of just picking from one... I decided to just run down my list of responses to things that Bryan might ask me in the opening moments of our conversation. Keep in mind that Bryan has only said "Hello Mark Allen." at this point... and nothing else. And I am running down this list of polite things to say complete with overly polite vocal inflections... while Bryan is silent. So the conversation started like this:
 

Bryan: "Hello Mark Allen."

Mark: "Hi!" (friendly, loud tone),

Mark: "How are you!?" (completely different tone - loud again, and overly chirpily inquisitive - slightly feminine)

Mark: "Uh-huh! I'm fine!" (completely different tone - friendly serious, politely resigned - keep in mind that Bryan hasn't even asked me how I'm doing)

Mark: "Well I just decided to call y-y-y-o-o-o-u-u-u..." (completely different tone - still chirp-y but toned down a bit more)

Mark: "Oh... you know... the same old thing I guess... just kind of... living..." (completely different tone - a bit more serious but still mock-chirpy - becoming more aware of the fact that I have just blurted out about five responses to questions that my ex-boyfriend whom I decided to call in the middle of the night after not speaking for months while also completely high on paint fumes has not even asked me and how embarrassing a disaster this it is quickly turning into)

Bryan: "?" (stupefied silence)

    (more below...)

    I'll spare you the rest of the gruesome details. Trust me... watching an autopsy film would be more enjoyable. I proceeded to rattle off everything I could think of in my life that was classifiable as an accomplishment in my eyes, to Bryan... to which he responded with polite friendliness. I then compared to latest "Lord of the Rings" film to The History Channel, talked at length about $20,000 glitter panda paintings and $1,000,000 painted-black victorian-style houses in The New York Times, used the phrases "Luxor Hotel" and "sphincter" in the same sentence without laughing, talked a lot about how broke I was, and hinted about how rich I thought he probably was. I think the "low"light of the apocalyptic, high-as-a-kite phone call came when I actually blurted out... very loudly... "BRYAN, I DIDN'T CALL YOU TO TALK ABOUT MY NEW BOYFRIEND JIM!" for no reason.

    I didn't even bother to mention to Bryan that I was painting my apartment while I was talking to him. All the time I was doing my Mary Hartman impersonation for him... in the background all you heard was the "p-p-p-f-f-f-t-t-t-t! p-p-p-f-f-f-t-t-t-t! p-p-p-f-f-f-t-t-t-t!" of the paint roller rolling sticky paint against the wall and me huffing and puffing out of breath between embarrassing sentences because I kept climbing up and down and up and down the ladder because I was painting the ceiling at the time... in a frenzied drug rush. Plus I probably sounded even MORE breathy since I had the phone tucked under my ear as I needed both hands to paint with. He probably thought I was masturbating while on crack while talking to him. Though I must say, Bryan was very polite during the whole audio puppet show. Bryan's a nice guy.

    After I did my impersonation of Anna Nicole Smith/Sybil/Mary Hartman/Inspector Clouseau for a baffled Bryan I hung up the phone... threw up into my paint tray. Continued to paint anyway... then... somehow... lost consciousness.

    Life is about choices.

 

 
 

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 12/29/02:

=  ?
1: The weird white goo inside the pores on my nose that I can squeeze out
    What is that stuff? Boy does that white goo stuff that I can squeeze out of the pores on my nose freak me the fuck out. What is it? They look like itty bitty embryos saying "Doooon't kiiiillll meee!" every time I command them to appear with my two forefingers. Is this where they get Ramin noodles from? Does anyone know what they are?
 
 

2: The Christmas Snowstorm hurricane
    I spent a very warm and kooky and romantic Christmas with Jim in the Catskills. Like the rest of America, we were hit in the very early AM on Christmas with an "I am the Iceman and I cometh" blizzard. Since Jim and I were too poor to give each other presents (I was going to sell my hair so I could afford to buy him a gold chain for his watch, and he was going to sell his watch to buy me a golden comb for my hair) - we spent the morning walking out into the raging, great white expanse of "screaming quietness" - the best phrase I can think of to describe a snowstorm of that magnitude. I kept expecting Jack Nicolson to start chasing us with an ax. The inevitable "Wow... what if this was all cocaine!" was uttered at least once. I probably lost 5 pounds in tears alone (not faggy cry tears but searing wind tears). It was intense. We even saw a line of snow-covered deer splashing one by one accross a freezing stream! It was beautiful! It looked like a Coors Lite ad!
    When we got back to Jim's place we were so covered in snow that we looked like two giant walking egg white omlettes.
    Here - are - a - bunch - of - pictures I took that day and night.
 

3: Cross country skiing in the Catskill mountains

    *WHEEEE-hahahahahaha! *cough*cough*hack* hahahahaheeheehoho* WHEEEEEE!!!
    Okay... another goddamn thing I can check off that mutherfucking goddamn list of "The Things I Did In My Life". Hoo-fucking-ray! It was really interesting and I had a good time. I had always heard that cross country skiing was a lot harder and different than downhill skiing for obvious reasons. I had always assumed that the cool part of it was looking at the snow-covered landscape all around you as you zoomed along. I found this hard to do though because I kept having to look down at my ski's to make sure they didn't stray too far off the straight and narrow. But one benefit that DID deliver was the exercise. Afterwards I felt like I had been doing yoga for a week. The only all-body workout that I can think of that is that strenuous is swimming.
    We went along this old "rail trail" that cuts through the mountain landscape - so it wasn't completely uncharted territory. We were surrounded by a line of trees on both sides for some of the way... but a lot of times the trees broke and it was an expanse of crystalline wow.
    STYLE WISE: Jim and I were using ugly, poor-people, cheap-o ski's and boots (I rented mine) - the low-end of the suburban outdoor set (both our boots looked like they were left over from Olivia Newton John's leftovers  'Let's Get Physical' video), but they worked (and to be honest everyone else we saw on the trail had the same equipment).
    It was wild... whoosh-ing, roboticaly robust and exhausting. It was fun and hearty... and afterwards I felt mentally and physically drained but oddly refreshed and inspired... kind of like I had just been in a horribly violent car wreck or been viciously gang raped.
    It was a blast!
   Here - are - some - pictures I took along the way.
 
 

4: Huey Long
    I, like a lot of people of my generation, only remember Huey Long from various characitures referring to him in really old Warner Brothers' Bugs Bunny cartoons.  I just caught Ken Burns' film on Huey Long on PBS. What a hilarious character! Whoa! What an outrageous powerhouse goof ball! Yet another reason I love Southerners... Huey Long was everything that makes extreme Southern characters what they are and more. He rose to power in the state of Louisiana by sheer lung power and showmanship, all the while championing the rights of the working poor (this was just before the depression hit - which when it did only catapulted him further into mega-popularity) and he lied, cheated and stole (even had people kidnapped) to make sure he got his way as he fought for the underdog and rose to political power. His whole thing was the whole "share the wealth" thing... about taxing the rich 10% and redistributing the wealth around to the country's poor. This theory was, of course, full of loopholes, but to depression era America, his dramatic, full-lung-power, bring-the-house-down speeches in which he would cruelly mock the country's rich and famous by name sure sounded like gold spun from angels in heaven. He would stay up for days at a time (apparently on glasses of milk and handfuls of chocolates - and a little drinkie'poo or twelve) traveling around the country, making speech after speech to throngs that would gather to hear the man whom everybody was talking about speak. People would come from miles around either in support or to mock. As Huey shouted down the heavens, those in the front of the crowd would yell along "Give it to'em Huey!" while those in back shouted "Go to Hell!" ...all the while Huey's voice drowning out them all. It was kind of like a Courtney Love concert in the 1990's!
    He eventually rose to a Senate seat and, in truth - he really WAS fighting for the working poor throughout his completely wild political career (in his own erratic, wild, quasi hypocritical way)... it's just that the ego that drove him kept getting in his way and causing him to make bold blunders, which he never apologized for. In the end... his ego got the best of him and the good ole' reliable public-witch-hunt-gossip phenomenon (a phenomenon that Huey used to his advantage about a million times) took it's course and Huey Long was assassinated in 1935 by the 29-year-old son of a judge who was loosing his position thanks to Huey power mongering. Huey even predicted that he would be assassinated, and walked around with armed guards at all times... but it wasn't enough.
    Huey was trying to become President... and if he had, many claim that it might have been the first time a dictatorship established itself in the United States. He was loved and hated all through his career - but in the end many people in the country wanted him dead because of his escalating abuse of power and disregard for those that questioned his more-and-more desperate tactics. And it's probably this turn by Huey's public that would have prevented him from rising to President of the United States if he had escaped assassination. He was a near mythological example of the whole GOOD/EVIL duality thing.
    I've always loved outrageous Southerners like this, and loved the way it makes Northerners mad at the way I love them... or at least I like to pretend this is the case. Brainy, practical, preppie Northerners have no idea how to handle Southern hurricanes like Huey Long... and I always think it's kind of funny to watch them squirm, dour faced and silent, in the face of them. Many of Huey's opponents in Washington literally had no idea how to tame him and watched in imp-ish horror as he rose to greater and greater power (In the end though they got their way when Huey self-destructed). Of course... a LOT has changed since then. The tactics used by Huey to gain support have been warmed over so many times they are used today by the lamest corporations to sell the most boring products to consumers on the lowest end of the consumer scale. It's almost hard to imagine a time when Huey Long was cutting edge.
    It's a wild ride, full of hilarious Southern characters... and I recommend trying to check out Ken Burns' film on PBS if you get the chance (I'm sure they'll re-run it - they ALWAYS do). Or go punch "Huey Long" into Google.com to find out more about him.
 

5: The way the band Lightning Bolt begins a show
   Lightning Bolt hail from Providence, R.I.'s art/music scene - and are connected to this Fort Thunder art commune thing, which may be in Brooklyn, I'm not sure... it's confusing. Anyhows, the two members of Lightening Bolt, Brian Gibson (heavily effected electric bass guitar) and Brian Chippendale (drum kit, macramé'd head stockings, and contact microphones taped to his throat), use only said drums and bass... along with a *MOUNTAIN* of amps. They refuse to play on the stage at any venue, instead... they set up their massive outfit somewhere near the back of the venue... on the floor, and the crowd forms a circle around them when they begin playing. But the way they begin their shows is what's key. Even if they are opening for a band... they always play last on the set. As the lead band of the night is reaching the beginning of it's second encore... Lightning Bolt begin setting up their equipment near the back of the crowd, unbeknownst to most. As soon as the lead band has reached the last few notes of their last song, and before they can say "Goodnight!" or "Thanks you've been great!" - Lightning Bolt *R*I*P* into the opening power chords of one of their adrenaline anthems. Mini-chaos ensues. The lead band kinds of... stops playing (although most times they know it's going to occur - apparently sometimes they don't), the crowd all turns around to see what the explosion was, everyone's confused, and Lightning Bolt have begun their set - a set which very quickly accelerates into deafening, mock-violent, strobe-notic and skull-blasting mini riots (make sure you click on that), where the sound *O*B*L*I*T*E*R*A*T*E*S* people's eardrums and central cortexes, people fight like animals to get to the center, and the whole mad mash pulses and sweats and throbs like a pubescent boy's anxious, prone-to-violence boner. People get elbowed, too-loud amps burst ear drums, cymbal stands burst people's eyes... what a blast. There's probably less pushing and shoving at a Cannibal Corpse show held on a Japanese subway car at rush hour.
    Their CDs and vinyl are released on Load Records. As you may have guessed, they are a much more interesting live act than a digitally recorded one... something the band themselves will admit. Click here for an mp3 "Dracula Mountain" from their new album Wonderful Rainbow.
    I was lucky enough to catch these guys a few years ago at NYC's now defunct venue The Cooler. I don't even remember who the headlining act was (says a lot) but I DO remember when Lightning Bolt started their set... I remember I just backed up from the white core hole of blinding sound that burst from the back just as the headlining act started their second encore... everything was confused. The lead band I'm sure too were like "Huh?" as the whole crowd pounced on the back area like wildebeests on a lamb and everybody started flailing around like rag dolls in the dark to sound so loud you couldn't even hear it (if you can imagine that). It was really trippy and I remember all the people who worked at The Cooler were all stopping and holding onto stuff like "...ouch" I remember thinking the sound was so loud that it was WRONG. I actually felt really old... but I have to say the way they began their set really fucked with my map... and I liked it and never forgot it.

6: This photo of Brigitte Boisselier
    YAA! YAA! MMMM! POTATOES FOR YOU GOOD YAA!? YOU WANT BUY POTATOES YAA!? YAA?! KNISHES FOR YOU I MAKE-A YOU GOOD PRICE MMM!  MMM BEEF OR PORK OR ZA STRUDEL YA?! YA GOOOD PRICES ON YA LEATHER SKIRTS AN COATS AT MAH SISTERZ STORE AT ORCHARD STREET YA! YPU WANNA BUY AN YA PICKLE POTATOES YA?!

7: Dermot Mulroney's elaborately constructed fake receding hair-line mullet job in the film "About Schmidt"
    Yee-gads! Wow! I'm... uh... speechless. I don't think I've been so impressed with this elaborate a hair construction ...ever! I don't think this has anything to do with the mid-90's "mullet craze" as much as it has to do with admiring an actor I have always loved and thought to be very handsome agreeing to appear like this in an entire film. Talk about guts. Suddenly my respect for Mr. Mulroney... already at stalker-levels... has reached stellar-ly spastic proportions. I haven't even seen the film yet, but as soon as I saw promotional stills for the film - featuring Dermot's apocolyptically asymmetrical mullet, fake receding hair-line (done with spine-chilling accuracy) and perfectly and horribly uneven Scottish mustache-thingie - I got more excited about a movie than when I was eight years old and first saw the trailer for "Star Wars". I'm so psyched to see "About Schmidt" to see Dermot's hair that I couldn't give two silver shits about the rest of the film.
    Thanks to everyone who sent in pics.
 
 
 

8: Furie4Jesus.com
    One of the weirdest, most indescribable web sites I've ever seen. It's so inexplicably strange it's almost BORING.
 
 

9: This flyer I found on the subway 5 years ago
   I found this flyer in the subway about five years ago. Here is the front, and here is the back. I remember when I found it they were laying all over the seats of the whole car. It's been up on my wall for years... but I thought I would take it down and share it with you. I love shit like this.
 
 

10: The film "Copycat" (1995, director: Jon Amiel)
    I'm addicted to this film.
    Sigourney Weaver plays psychologist and author Dr. Helen Hudson, "the world's expert on serial killers". While giving a lecture on said killers at a local university, she thinks she sees the grinning face of Daryll Lee Cullem (a supposedly-in-prison serial killer who's in prison because Dr. Hudson's expert testimony at his trial help put him there) in the crowd silently taunting her. She blinks... and he's gone... and she chalks it up to a fear-based hallucination. After the lecture her bodyguards escort her for a trip to the ladies room... when the guards make sure the coast is clear... Dr. Hudson is left alone. Perhaps she should have trusted that fear-based hallucination after all. What commences in that bathroom leaves one bodyguard dead and makes Helen the near-victim of the unspeakable fate of the victims of serial killers that she has spent her entire career researching and theorizing on.
    Daryll Lee Cullem ends up back in prison... and Dr. Hudson ends up so emotionally scarred from the experience that she turns into a "pill-popping, juice head, agoraphobic asshole" (as Holly Hunter chirp-ily refers to her in the film after meeting her for the first time). Dr. Hudson is now a sever agoraphobic... whiling away her hours in a fantastically huge and mind-blowing-ly amazing apartment in San Francisco with a gay roommate Andy... connected to the internet and cable... popping pill after pill and downing drink after drink... useless to the world and herself - so scared of the outside world that she has to reach out the front door with a broom handle to get the morning paper.
    When a new serial killer starts off-ing women in San Francisco, Dr. Hudson begins calling drunken tips to the local police to try and help them solve the case. She calls anonymously so many times in fact that the cops trace the call. When they find out it's the world-renowned serial killer expert Dr. Hudson who's been leaving the weird tips... they pay her a visit and ask her to help them catch the killer. The rocky relationship between the brilliant but highly unstable Dr. Hudson and the two lead detectives (Holly Hunter and Dermot Mulroney) results in some Sigourney having some of the funniest lines since Bette Davis' drunken rampage in that famous party scene in "All About Eve".
    With Dr. Hudson's help they realize this new killer is copycat-ing murders by famous serial killers like Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz , Bianchi and Buono and Jeffrey Dhamer... down to the most obsessive details. He has a VERY big plan... and that that plan now involves Dr. Hudson. They try helplessly to guess the killer's moves... but he outsmarts them time after time with surprise after surprise, elaborate kill after elaborate kill... (he's obviously studied up on Dr. Hudson's books) leading up to what they all know will be a grizzly conclusion.
    I won't spoil the rest of the movie for you... but I will tell you that the plot stays complex all the way through. Not only does the film feature many of my favorite actors - Sigourney Weaver, Holly Hunter, Dermot Mulroney, William McNamara, Harry Connick Jr. - and  Diane Amos (The black lady from the Pine Sol commercial) but all the performers in the film do a bang-up job molding complex, 3-D believability around their characters... you care about them all and hence what happens to them. The film is also filled with all sorts of other odd sub-characters that were obviously given a lot of thought to. The plot is filled with loop-holes, of course, like any Hollywood film with money-making at it's root... but remains enjoyably intricate and interesting... and often very inventive. The direction, editing, sound, cinematography and sets (Dr. Hudson's apartment is great) are superb. And some of Sigourney's lines are hi-LAR-ee-us.
    The film also has a highly unique and queer, dark, sleek, technical look - not in a TV "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" way... but in an unsettling way... where smooth, dimly-lit hallways in modern campus buildings lead to claustrophobic encounters - and quiet, hyper-modern public rest rooms are backdrops used to tease your most unspeakable, nightmarish fears. And the camera, characters and story often linger on weird choices of technology - things like high-speed internet chess games, web browsers with video tape back-ups, mini-vacuum cleaners used to vacuum up live ants, strange automatic window blinds with remote controls, annoying jimmied car alarms, strange hand-held motion detectors, out-dated video cameras with post-it notes all over them, computer photo-editing programs used to make snuff videos and sperm banks where smiling murderers work like bees.
    The film also, by default, drops all kinds of interesting facts and information about serial killers, as the Dr. Hudson character's expertise on the subject spills all over the plot (including lots of theories about what makes serial killers tick - a knowledge Dr. Hudson uses to try and turn the tables on the killer at one point of capture, and which amazingly scrambles his mental map - temporarily).
    The only reason I'm putting this here is because I think you can judge how good a film is by how many times you've watched it (yes I know that's debatable). I, for some reason that I cannot remember, own a video copy of this film... and have watched it probably 20 times... over and over... more than I've watched "Fight Club" (but not as much as 'Rear Window' - a film you could interestingly compare and contrast this one to). I've literally come in from a night out and popped this tape in and fell asleep while it's playing. So if you're looking for a very interesting Hollywood thriller, that pays off with repeated viewings... check it out. You'll enjoy it.
    *SPOILERS*>>>> Jim liked this film a lot when I showed it to him, and thought Sigourney's character was a riot. If you've seen it, you know the scene where the three-sheets to the wind and whacked out on goof balls Dr. Hudson gets her black dress out of her closet and lays it on the bed, then goes and takes a shower, and when she stumbles back to the bed her RED dress (it's the one she wore during the horrible bathroom attack! GASP!) is laying on the bed in place of the black one? It's an eerie moment that she chalks up to drunkenness (but later is proven wrong). Jim and I thought it would have been funny if her gay roommate Andy suddenly walked out of the shadows wearing the black dress and was like "Hi honey I wanted to borrow this black dress tonight to go to the fag bar so I just took it and laid out your red one instead because I didn't want to bother you in the shower. Do you mind?" ALSO: Do you know Jim had a friend that worked on a film with Sigourney Weaver and even though he liked Sigourney a lot and said she was great he had a lot of time on his hands and too much time to think and so he started calling everyone in the cast the sickest name he could think of (in his head - I think) and his name for Sigourney Weaver was "Sick Horny Beaver"? It's true!

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 12/23/02

1: Stealing Baby Jesus from nativity scenes becoming so commonplace that it might be a good idea to work it into even the most conservative of holiday family acceptance and make it a holiday tradition that is eventually co-opted by commerce and consumerism and makes America stronger
    Let's face reality. These stories we hear every single year about some kids stealing the Baby Jesus statue from some local church or mall's nativity scene and how horrified and outraged the locals are are starting to loose their composure and how it's a reflection of "the world we live in today" and how "sad" it is that such "evil" people would do this and they just "can't understand how someone could be so mean" and how they "hope no kids see it" (the ones who did it in the first place) so their "Christmas spirit isn't crushed". It's because they happen so much that the local's interviewed on the news stories about the inevitably vandalized nativity scenes in every single town in America are starting to seem a little robotic in their concern. The story usually starts out or ends with the commentator saying; "These thieves have stolen Jesus - but not this community's holiday spirit." It has become a story so predictable every year on every local news channel that I think even it's starting to become filler for the networks. During Christmas news time the local news programming guys are all:

   Mr. News Programming Guy: "Okay run the woman stabbed in her apartment... then the President scandal... then the possible MTA strike... okay then... hmmmm... how about the Kwanza thing... um... we have some room to fill... and filler stories we can run? How about some stories about vandals stealing a baby Jesus from a church's local nativity scene. How many of THOSE storiesdo we have this this week Mr. News Programming Guy's Assistant?"
   News Programming Guy's Assistant: "347... oh wait no, another one just came in... 8... 348!"
    Mr. News Programming Guy: "Well pick one at random and run it! If there's time."

    Hey I have an idea! Make it a tradition! Like trick-or-treating on Halloween or watching football on Thanksgiving! Let's face it - Christianity can use all the help it can get as far as it's popularity with today's youth goes. Why not turn it into a wacky game of hide-and-seek the savior? Companies could market all kinds of sell-able products... like "Christmas Steal The Baby Jesus Nativity" kits for your lawn. Neighbors and friends could buy the kits and steal each other's as a holiday tradition - like exchanging gifts. Instead of cards people could exchange Christmas Baby Jesus ransom notes.. It could be fun! Companies would make money... kids would feel all "bad" and cool... parents would have something to do that is different... and everyone would be learning more and more about JESUS!
    Why not make it an official tradition?
    I mean... Americans... in a lot of ways, are such pansy wimps when it comes to fighting for their God. Muslim kids are practicing blowing up people for their God... and Christmas? Forget about it... they don't have the time! They're too busy plotting to make video of assassinated American journalists to help bring down Christmas-Baby-Jesus-nativity-scene-loving-cuddling-America. No wonder Muslims are on a firm track to obliterating us. Muslim youth's LOVE religion. They're all "Where does this wire go on the bomb?" while they haven't even slept for days and don't even complain - while our kids are like "I wanna play Nintendo Game Cube and then take ecstasy!" while they drive around in air-conditioned Lexus's.
    This is a way to get kids of today "excited" about Christianity - lets face it, that's what the Bush administration wants! And it will turn Christmas into a war zone (for training) where kids FIGHT FOR GOD. Let's make America PROUD again!
    Steal a Christmas nativity scene from your town today and show and help kick Bin Ladin's ass!!!
 

2: Matt Bell's new bleach job
    It looks totally great. You can read about Matt here (#24). Here is Matt as a brunette. So adorable. So, so, so adorable. I hope Jim doesn't read this.
 

3: Various solo guitar work CDs by Thurston Moore and friends
    Lots of people tell me that Thurston Moore's solo work is trite - or that there are other artist doing much more interesting work. I don't care.
    These are some of my favorite recordings of all time and they are so great because they sound like nothing else and you hear something different every time you listen to them. It's like that cliché from your childhood where you were like "Wow what would it be like if you took LSD and walked into a modern art museum and all the abstract paintings like Klee and Mondrian and stuff... you could HEAR them instead of SEE them!?!? Ooooohhhhh!" - these recordings are that. Totally abstract - guitars are treated like drums and drums are played with Road Runner hand puppets instead of sticks. Bang. Clang. RaoOOOhhHWeeeWeee-et-et-et! Chime, chime, chime... gwah gwAH GWah! SSSsssssssnnnnnnnnnnn... everything is improv and most pieces hit the near-one-hour mark. Sounds range from spine-chilling beauty to teeth-shattering smash. I recommend "Piece For Jetson Dolma" as a starting place.
   "Piece for Jetson Dolma" - Thurston Moore, Tom Surgal and William Winant
    "Pillow Wand" - Thurston Moore and Nels Cline
   "Lost to the City/Noise to Nowhere" - Thurston Moore, Tom Surgal and William Winant
   "Klangfarbenmelodie, and the Colorist Strikes Primitive" - Thurston Moore and Tom Surgal
   "In-Store, Metasweet" - Thurston Moore and Nels Cline
    Check some of these out and soon all the noise and chatter of living in NYC will start to sound like it's following some kind of order to you.

4: Huge, wild, brightly-colored, inflatable, inhabitable architecture/sculpture
    Check it out here. These guys live in Europe and make these brightly colored inhabitable sculptures that inflate... why? Because it's so great. Walking into these things probably makes people want to quit their jobs and move out into the middle of a field and live in a house they build themselves out of aluminum cans - all with oval rooms and stuff... and grow vegetables in a garden... and spend their whole day creating ambient music.
    If these things had been around Europe in the late 70's you just KNOW Dario Argento would have filmed one of those brightly colored horror scenes from "Suspiria" where that girl keeps running around getting stabbed in the heart by that witch and the pounding music is all "Wwwhhhheeeeooooo - wwwoooouuuu - hhhhowowowowoweeeee - aaahhhhoooohhheeeee!!!"  It would have made sense.

5: These two articles in old Vice magazines that I read recently
    Vice magazine's "Guide to Gold Digging" (by Celeste Arnold) and their article "Creative Publicity" (by Bruce Benderson - who has quite a career going on). Both the facts in these short but meaty articles scream louder than those pre-recorded celebrity "Buckle your seat belt" ads that blare out of broken speakers inside taxis when you get in them at 8AM hung over and your head pounding and your ears bleed.
 

6: Guillaum's chewing-gum-mint-colored Diesel sneakers he left behind after he moved out
    He left a few things here to pick up when he returns in January (to live somewhere else) and these two identical Muppets for your feet were one of the items. When he first bought them he walked in with them and asked what I thought and I was all lying through a sick smile like "Yeeeeeaaaa... real unusual! You can wear them with green!" and I think he wore them like once. Now they're here... they're my size. I can't stop secretly wearing them - with green pants and my green coat. There's something about wearing all one bright color that makes you feel like some fantastical pederast child murderer with an amazing castle of torture and mad experiments way up on a hill somewhere - like that  Child Catcher character played by Robert Helpmann in the original "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" movie who drove that fake Free Candy!" truck around the village that was really a trap with a cage inside... and he was all riding around going "I smeeeellll children!" That's how I feel when I wear all one color. Like that guy.
 

7: My Sims dream home
    I'm not even past the starting point in my Sims computer game (I'm still living through Bob and Betty Newbie). I play the game on again and off again - but always keep Bob and Betty around. I had them slave away like dogs to earn enough dough to build this dream house. Now they live in it and can swim indoors and watch a giant TV and sit on modern furniture in the olive green carpeted library or go sleep in their minimal bedroom or go outside and look at trees and be all "Ooooohhhhmmmm...". There are no walls in the place (except minimal/broken-up ones separating the bedroom and bathroom) and the walls in the house are made totally of glass so it's like they are outside while they are inside (here is what it looks like with the walls up). Even the bathroom! And the stairs lead up to a flat, concrete roof with no furniture that they can just sit up on and watch the sun set.
    I guess this is my dream home. I built it without even thinking.... from scratch. I have other people with weird lives in the neighborhood. Ms. Goth lost her husband in an oven fire and now his ghost walks around her house all "Whoooo-oooohhhoooohhh! You kiiilllleeeed meeeee!! Ooooohhhh!" and Jim and I wanted to see how far we could push a character by not letting them sleep or eat and making them go to the bathroom on the floor - this resulted in the Goth daughter getting shipped off to military school and out of the game. So Ms. Goth is all post-nervous breakdown and is kind of weird and just paints in her attic and for some reason works for the mob (?). But she likes to visit Bob and Betty in my dream home and swim in their pool and drink from their bar. She gets along with Bob and Betty well. I also have the Pleasant family - total dud nerds but I'm gonna see how far I can push them.
    All this from what is now an out-dated version of the game.
 

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Mark Allen's Top Ten for 12/16/02

1: The Walter Keane doll that that is trying to kill me or drive me crazy
    Help.
    There comes a point when you realize that some of your out-of-control friends really need help, whether it be drugs or alcohol or domestic abuse. Then there also comes a point where you realize that the inanimate objects in your life really need help. Especially if they are plotting to kill you behind your friends' backs and being very, very clever about it.
   Last week, Jim was paying a visit to his friend Paul (aka: DJ Snax), and since Paul was about to move to Berlin, he was getting rid of some stuff... and one of the things he gave away was this old Walter Keane-styled doll that Jim had always loved. You know... the big eyes and a tear and everything. Apparently this thing has quite a history with Jim's old clan. I guess that history must have involved Ouija boards and trips to the Amazon jungle and mysterious disappearances because now the doll is trying to either kill me or drive me insane or convince everyone around me that I am insane by playing clever tricks on me to where it looks like I am joking that this doll is trying to kill me when actually it is trying to kill me. It only moves when no one else is looking. It's very sinister and smart. LOOK WHAT I FOUND IT DOING TO MY MORNING COFFEE (ABOVE)!!! This is not a trick photo!!! Someone please believe me!!! Of course Guillaume things I just posed the doll like this and snapped a picture... like that famous fake Loch Ness monster one.
    Meanwhile while I look like Mrs. Kravitz from "Bewitched" and no one believes me... this stupid doll has been getting into all, kinds, of, horrible, weird, creepy, scary, copyright-infringing, trouble.
    And I know the whole Karen Black in "Trilogy of Terror" thing with the killer voodoo doll has been played out... and you know what? The doll is using THAT to it's advantage! All my friends are like "...a doll trying to kill you? You mean like 'Trilogy of Terror'? Oh that's so ten years ago... oh and it's a Walter Keane doll? Mmmmhmmm... oh that's REAL cool!" The doll KNOWS how to work my trendy friends and their fad-fried art-school minds!!! IT KNOWS!!! PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!! I AM UP AGAINST AN EMEMY I CANNOT OUTSMART!!!
    Oh God... what's that clinking sound? I think I hear something very small and big-eyed fiddling with the pilot light in the oven.... she got into my tools again!!! Gotta go...
 

2: The NEW WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE PEDESTRIAN WALKWAY is officially open!!! >>>>>>>>>> scroll right to see full panorama (taken from Manhattan side) >>>>>>>>>>
    Just in time for the possible transit worker's strike - the new Williamsburg Bridge pedestrian walkway is now open for Hasidic Jewish families and roaming bands of purse-snatching thugs alike. My pathological obsession about this project, as documented before in my "Top Ten" has finally been satiated. It's as wide as three full cartwheels AND there are NO STAIRS all the way from the Manhattan side to the other end in Brooklyn...easy sailing all the way. It's also bright red and very high-tech looking... kind of like an i-Mac. And the views of New York? Right off of a cheesy postcard those chinks sell in Times Square. As I wrote here on 9/2/02:
    They have been working on this walkway... no the whole BRIDGE, for like 1,000,000,002 years now. It was starting to get pretty dreary and endless. But about 6 months ago a glimmer of *wow* - a long, bright red cage appeared out of nowhere at both far ends of the bridge. It kept... growing. What is it you say Mr. Crane Operator (back in April)? A fantastic walkway you say? So high up? so brightly colored? It's a fantastic, Jacques Tati-esque, almost futuristic-looking walkway in blazing bright red - and which puts walkers, bike riders and joggers (me) about 70 feet higher than any of the cars or anything (and with a fantastic view) inside a super-wide, cage like thing with no roof... and I learned today that it splits into two parts while in the center part of the bridge. It's getting closer and closer and closer to getting completed. The view from every inch of this thing must be inspirational to say the least... and any trip across it must be... transcendent. A bit cold in the winter? WHO CARES! This is New York City! Even the people in wheelchairs will have the wind whipping through their hair and a beaming smile on their faces! Ohhhhh I can't wait! I want to cut the ribbon!!! Open! Open! Open! Open! Open! Open! Open! Open! Open! OPEN!!!!!!!!!! OPEN!!!!
    Well it's open now. And the walk across it? Beautiful, inspirational... it's as transcendent as knocking out your most hated enemy's teeth!
 
 

3: The mysterious  resilience of the homeless shack on stilts under the Williamsburg Bridge in my neighborhood
    Okay before I tell you about the shack... I should tell you that the work being done on the Williamsburg Bridge (about a ten year job) has left in it's wake a literal junkyard (especially under it). The area stretching from where the bridge begins to where the water starts (on both the Manhattan and Brooklyn sides) has been a constipated heap of work equipment, cinderblocks, construction company trailers, chain link fences, giant tractors and other flotsam and jetsam of building work. All this clutter has been an eyesore for so long you forgot it was even there. Then - recently - everything under the bridge suddenly vanished. Now this endless stretch of junk served many purposes. One of which is that it has been a small haven for the homeless... who set up a kind of "Mortville" (see: John Water's film Desperate Living) under various parts of the bridge.
    One of the little shanty town shacks appeared about four years ago (above). It is an RV unit that was precariously propped up on top of a bunch of rocks and cinder blocks and poles, and was leaning against the outer wall of one of the construction crew trailers that was right up against a chain link fence. That was until *whoooosh!* they cleared everything out from under the bridge in one giant swoop - you can see for miles now! The construction stuff and junk AND homeless stuff was all carted away... everyone found a new place to go...
    But this ONE little tower shack thingie is STILL standing. And it's BEEN standing for months now - even though everything else "homeless" has been cleared away.
    It has a crappy pad lock on the door. To get into it, the homeless people have to literally climb up into it. They have wires running into it they probably stole from a lamp post from somewhere on the bridge for power (I can see a TV running inside it sometimes). I was always fascinated with it. I mean... what do they have in there? A bar (the homeless that hang out on my corner by the liquor store drink a lot)? A sauna? A spa? A tennis court? A Betty Ford clinic? WHO DO THEY FUCKING KNOW THAT THEY CAN SET UP THE WORLDS MOST OBVIOUS SQUAT AND GET AWAY WITH IT RIGHT NEXT TO A POLICE STATION!? The whole precarious structure is RIGHT NEXT to a police station. Whoever is occupying the inside... they are a genius... especially with rents the way they are in my neighborhood.
    Did you ever see that movie "The Big Bus"? I imagine the inside like that.
    My imagination runs wild as I imagine it as some sort of heaven from the rough and tumble world of hanging out on the cold streets, collecting cans, scamming cheap liquor and begging for change. There used to be one guy in particular who seemed to use it every night. He always was in a wheelchair... you know the kind used just for show... and I would always see the wheelchair parked outside the RV unit's high door at night when he was in there asleep. Now a lot of the homeless guys and gals on my block use it at night. There's one tooth-less lady who sits in a lawn chair outside the liquor store and she always has different ratty wigs on every day. I've seen her go in and out of the shack... I bet she stores her wigs in there! It's like a fucking tramp MALL!!!
    And all the other shacks and structures around it got swept up with the construction cleaning crew. So what gives? Who do these homeless people know to get such grand treatment? Now that everything around it is gone it's just standing there like a tower of... something. What gives?  I wanna move in! I'll keep you posted.
 
 

mouth model: Jim
4: Suburban Gumbo
    I originally thought this dish was called "Southern Gumbo" - a dish who's very simple yet amazing recipe has been passed down for ages from generations of Texans, Louisianians and Alabamians... although when I told a client about it he quickly said "Sounds like Suburban Gumbo to me". Turns out any secrets that were passed down from generation to generation must have been handed down from the express check out lane of the local Piggly Wiggly. Well whatever it is, it's really, really, really good. My mom used to make this all the time (when she was too busy to cook a full dinner) as a quickie meal when I was growing up, it was always hearty and totally delicious and I highly recommend it. It will last in the refrigerator for a long time - and it's great for the winter. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
    - as much ground beef as you want
    - about 8 or 10 small red potatoes
    - two garlic cloves
    - one tablespoon of olive oil
    - one can of Italian style cooked tomatoes, or regular stewed canned cooked tomatoes (do NOT use fresh tomatoes - trust me)
    - one packages of frozen okra (or fresh if you want)
    - one can of kidney beans
    - one can of black eyed peas
    - one package of frozen collared greens (or fresh if you want)
    - one package of frozen corn (or fresh if you want)
    - one package of frozen succotash (that's peas, lima beans, corn and carrots mixed together - in most regions of the southern US)
    - various spices like salt, pepper, bay leaf, oregano, onion powder, and whatever ... anything else you want or like
    - cornbread (to serve with it) ... made from a mix in muffin tins or a pan, however you prefer - with butter

To prepare:
    Cook the ground beef first in a pan and spice it if you like. Make sure it's all the way done.
    Wash the potatoes and slice them into large chunks. Boil them until they are done and drain them.
    Peel the cloves of garlic and slice or crush them if you like.
    Defrost the frozen ingredients slightly in the microwave.
    Then get a VERY, VERY LARGE pot and throw the cooked beef (along with the grease - as much as you think your arteries can handle) and all the other ingredients in the pot. Include the juices that come in the cans with the ingredients. It's hard to get the frozen ingredients to melt at first (see photo) so like I said you may want to thaw them in the microwave beforehand. But basically you are now just cooking everything down. You should bring it to a full boil and then turn it down to simmer right away. Be sure and stir it occasionally while simmering - when cooking a very large stew there is a chance that the ingredients on the bottom can burn if it just sits on the heat too long without moving around - and that will affect the taste.
    Put whatever spices in it you like - and you WILL need to spice it otherwise it will taste REALLY bland (hey why do you think it's called 'suburban' gumbo?). BUT: be sure and taste it as you go along so you don't overdo it and ruin it. If you just start pouring spices in it without tasting it you can over-do it and it will taste awful. It's done when it tastes right... however, this is one of those recipes that tastes MUCH, MUCH better the next day. Something about all those things sitting in the pot together in the refrigerator overnight. So you may even want to make it the day before. It will last for days.
    Cook the cornbread separately and serve it piping hot with butter.
    I recommend eating this gumbo with cornbread. When Jim and I made it this week we made it with garlic bread and it was good, but there was something missing. Hot, buttered cornbread seems to compliment it perfectly.
 
 

5. Dr. Rihab Taha, aka: "Dr. Death", "Dr. Germ"
    According to a recent NY Daily News article, Dr. Rihab Taha  (pictured above, far right), who is Saddam Hussein's biological weapons chief, is "...a middle-aged mom, a cultured woman with a British accent and doctorate who married well, to a general" who is "...widely described as shy and unassuming," and has "spent most of the last two decades spinning a web of horrors: bugs that make eyes bleed, bacteria that peels skin off the body, viruses that cause fever and pox and lingering, agonizing death." Described as "brilliant", this woman is called by some "The most dangerous woman alive." Besides being a genius - she also has a penchant for big, dramatic scenes. Back in 1991, when she told UN inspectors that only a tiny number of biological weapons had been produced in Iraq during the Gulf War, and that all had been destroyed... they didn't believe her and pressured her for more information. She then  "...frequently turned to theatrics, bursting into tears, and storming out of rooms," inspectors reported. Similarly stormy meetings involving her have been reported at UNSCOM meetings in New York. Yow.
 
 

6: The anti-McDonald's protest flyer(s) I picked up in the Catskill Mountains while visiting Jim
    I found these flyers at a vegan restaurant in the Catskills that Jim and I ate a lot at (the place sometimes mysteriously smelled like farts). Here is the flyer about the protest. Here is the flyer that went along with it explaining the groups reasons for protesting. I just kind of like the look of the flyers more than anything else - they have a simple and effective design. I suppose my youthful days of intense AIDS activism and protesting in the streets and getting arrested a zillion times and having a terrorist record in Virginia in the mid-90's (for having a smoke bomb in my bag while arrested outside some drug company protest) has left me... somewhat... shallow ...to the causes of the world. I look back on my days of Queer Nation-ism and ACT UP-ism as about 5% just and about 95% bullshit. Call it wisdom from experience. So I tend to look at public protests as a kind of backdrop where more interesting things might happen... kind of like Michelangelo Antonioni in his 1966 film Blowup!
    Jim absolutely refuses to eat at McDonalds... not for any political reasons... but because he has recently read Eric Schlosser's sensationalistic new book "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal" - a book that has left many friends of mine trembling in traumatic fear at the mere thought of an American fast food joint's name. Now THAT'S effective activism!
 
 

7: The Dolcett Archives
   I particularly like placing this entry directly below the above one because it's the perfect compliment. Dolcett is an elusive cartoonist (when you see his work you will know why) who creates delightful comic strips that center around asphyxiation, execution by gunfire, electrocution, decapitation, and other "exotic" tortures - all of willing women by men. But his particular specialty seems to be cartoons with plots centering around "gynophagia" (the act of eating the flesh of women) - especially after being impaled on a long spit and roasted on an open fire. Sound absolutely horrific and the product of a psychopathic mind? Yes... maybe. But wait until you see the comics. The comics inside The Dolcett Archives are like a cross between Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and Bazooka Bubble Gum Comics.
    Dolcett's obvious sense of humor, even surrounding the most unspeakable subjects ...and his craft (although slightly cruder - you could easily compare his work to the brilliant Tom Of Finland) is obvious once you get past your own mental block of what you think you are seeing and what it means. You've gotta see these cartoons to believe them... they really are mind bending. Now watch out... these are pretty disturbing... maybe. If you don't have a very strong stomach I'd skip it. The subject matter should be nauseating and gut wretching. But what's so weird is that they are all 70's style paneled comic strips... which makes them less disturbing... almost whimsical. It's hard to put into words why I think these comics are so interesting, and I'm slightly hesitant to tell people that I do. I think truly great art works are ones that make you think in ways you never have before. These cartoons make me think that.
    Now... if you'll excuse me, the phone rang... it appears that my number just came up so I guess I'd better call my loved ones and say good-bye and then I've gotta report down to Hill's Fine Meat Market... gosh I wish cannibalism hadn't been legalized 20 years ago, *sigh* ...oh well... *ulp!*
 
 

8: ELIZABETH (LIZ, LISA) BRADY CABOT WINSLOW - A PRODIGY IN MANY FIELDS!
    This woman has led the most fantastic, romantic and excitingly dangerously glamorous life I have EVER hear told. I Why sum it up here when "Liz" does such a good job of explaining it herself! This woman has had such a mind-blowingly exciting and intrigue-filled life because she does not make excuses and does not miss chances in life... and as we all know: "If 'if's' and 'but's' were clusters of nuts, we'd all have a bowl of granola!"
    note: according to Liz/Lisa, she has now taken her site off the web due to "...THE TERRIBLE AND DANGEROUS BEHAVIOR AND REACTION OF THE PUBLIC". So here is the Google cache.
 
 

9: Brian Eno's early ambient recordings
    "Ambient #1: Music For Airports" by Brian Eno
    "Ambient #2: The Plateaux of Mirror" by Brian Eno and Harold Budd
    "Ambient #3: Day of Radiance" by Laraaji and Brian Eno
    "Ambient #4: On Land" by Brian Eno
    "Fourth World Volume 1: Possible Musics" by Jon Hassell and Brian Eno
    "Discreet Music" by Brian Eno
    "Thursday Afternoon" by Brian Eno
    These seven are some of the most amazing recordings ever made. If you've never heard them, I highly recommend them. Why are they so special? I can't really put it into words. They make my world better. They are pretty.
 
 

10: Jim and mine's walk through a freshly snow-covered, crystaline, whispering Central Park at dusk on Friday
    There's a line in the Edward Norton film "Keeping the Faith" spoken by said actor's character as he strolls through Central Park with an ex girfriend... it goes something like "It's times like this that make you realize that people who don't live in New York City are ...in a sense... kidding." Yow - what a snob line. Nevertheless you can't ignore that nagging feeling in the back of your mind that it's sometimes true.
    After a long and bee-you-ti-ful and often hi-LAR-ee-ous stroll through the whisper-quiet and great Metropolitan Museum of Art... Jim and I had timed it perfectly where we hit the park (which had been covered the night before in several inches of snow and ice) right at dusk... as all the lights were slowly coming on. It was pretty fantastic I must say, like walking around on Pluto. Frozen ponds (see behind us), black spindly trees against blinding white, white, white, lights coming on like fireflies making glowing yellow rings on the ground, a weird thing going on with your ears - like muffled sound. The only thing I think I could compare it to - in it's general heart-warming beautiful eeriness... is a stroll through the park at night.
    After walking all the way - in awe - to the southwest corner... we ended the stroll at a Japanese noodle house and ate with chop sticks from huge, gleaming, piping hot bowls of noodle soup with giant chunks of seafood in it - the steam from the huge bowl causing the snot to run out of our noses and down our smiling faces.
 

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 12/9/02
Special NYC Transit Workers Strike Threat 2002 Edition!
In light of the threat of a massive transit workers strike here in New York City (which may go into effect by the end of this week if things can't get ironed out between the workers, unions and City Hall) which will mean the shutting down of all public transportation (hey, it happened in 1980). This week I am offering my "Top Ten Contingency Plan Alternate Modes of Transportation Around New York City":

1: Wheelchair
    These things are getting so advanced that even people with healthy legs want them. NOW'S YOUR CHANCE!

2: Rickshaw
    No explanation necessary. They actually have these things, in a "tourist-y" version, around Times Square now. Could work for the car pool rule with enough people and a driver who uses steroids. Wear a straw hat and sandals and tape your eyes back to make it more fun. Life is about having fun, especially in New York.
 
 

3: Wheelchair/People Mover AND Rickshaw! All in one!
    For only $699.00,  SportAide will sell you a "Rickshaw Rehab Exerciser". If you pile at least three other people on this thing you can cross any of the Manhattan bridges and tunnels with ease (due to the four people per car rule). The commuters in the Lincoln Tunnel will let you cut in front of you out of sheer SHOCK! They'll be all slowing down and staring ahead like "What the FUCK?!" as you and your friends glide to work... blowing people's minds. You'll RULE!

Builds the muscle strength needed to make the best use of a wheelchair.  The Rickshaw duplicates the exact arm and shoulder motions needed for easy propulsion, transfer and pressure relief. Strengthen specific arm and shoulder muscles by facing forward or backward while seated in the wheelchair; and pumping the weighted oars. Easy to customize for an individual program; use equal weight on both sides or less on a weaker side. Uses standard disc weights (not included) for  convenience and economy.  Oars pivot independently or together. Short zig-zag oars and compact design use surprisingly  little floor space. Built tough for years of service, even in a heavy-use institutional setting. Fits all manual wheelchairs. All steel construction. Adjustable oar grip height. Weight capacity per oar: 0 - 100 lbs. Overall length: 50 in.   Outside width: 34 in

4: The Circuit from the movie "Logan's run"
    According to the 1977 film "Logan's Run", which portrays a futuristic society where people go "on the circuit" to swing (okay that's not ALL the film is about) - this contraption can just *zap!* transport you to a horny person's living room. Everyone has a "receptor" in their home (with a remote) and they can just turn it on and "flip" through the channels until they find someone they like. If you place yourself "on the circuit" it means you are horny and looking for action. You can't really see who you're getting until they come in clearly on your receptor (Logan 'accidentally' zapped in a guy - upper right - then kept flipping through). Wow so I guess when you're zooming all around inside the circuit waiting for someone to "zap" you into your living room and decide whether they want you or not - your molecules are just all mooshed and swirling around all together with all the other people in there... eewwww.
    Fags in NYC already use AOL chat and M4M4sex like the circuit anyway.
    So, my idea:  instead of using this amazing device to get futuristic AIDS and futuristic herpes, why not use it to get to work!?
 

5: Segway
    Just look at the radiant smile on this Luddite broad's face as she glides to work using the mere power of momentum and gravity. Plus look how great it makes your ass look!
        When this zany contraption (designed by Dean Kamen) first debuted in 2000 amid a flurry of overblown hype, it pretty much bombed with the public like MGM's "The Wizard of Oz" did in 1939 - and we all know what eventually happened with THAT product! Well I must say, before this "revolutionary" device was released to a salivating tech-nerd public... stories and drawings were "leaked" to the public (like that it was going to be called 'Ginger' or 'It' instead of 'Segway'). You can see the original "sci-fi utopia retro" look of "Ginger" here... circa 2000.
    Bryan (of ChaosInAustin.com) would agree with me that the imagined idea of "It" (helped along with all the hype) was a tad more exciting... but form must follow function... I guess. Check out some of the old archived hype about "It" and "Ginger" saved over at TheSmokingGun.com by clicking here.
    By the way... you can get a special price on a Segway now when you buy stuff at Amazon.com, and have it shiped right to your door. Seriously.
 
 

6: Solo-Trek (Exoskeleton Flying Vehicle)
    Remember all those kooky contraptions you would see in Starlog and Amazing Science Fiction magazines that were so totally kick-ass and you couldn't wait to get to the year 2000 because it was gonna be so mind-blowing that you quaked with anticipation every time you thought about it? Well, welcome to 2002 bub! But hey, the people at Solo-Trek are carrying that faith in a movie sci-fi world to the bitter end. This thing really works.
 

7: Levitation
    If Linda Blair can do it  - SO CAN YOU!  GET TO WORK DAMMIT!
 

8: Astral Projection!
   Cons:
     - When you get to work you'll just be this half-image ghost thing and your co-workers will be so blown away by the fact that they can pass their hands through you and stuff... and also when you drink coffee it will just blob right through your ghost-y body and spill onto the floor. This may lead your boss to fire your astral-projecting ass for being too much of a "distraction".
     - Hey, when you have the ability to fly all around the universe and solve the mysteries of time and space and go have tea with Nefertiti and and shit like that... who wants to go sit in a stuffy Citibank cubicle from 9-5 and enter data in a computer when they can go back in time and watch the big bang? Talk about a priority re-evaluation! You might get fired for never showing up for work.
   Pros:
    - You get to do the thing that every human being who has ever worked has dreamed of every morning of their lives since the beginning of time: YOU GET TO GO TO WORK WITHOUT EVER GETTING OUT OF BED.
 

9. Vast, entire-city-spanning, mind-blowingly immense and complexly and boggling-ly interconnected MOVING SIDEWALKS!!!!!!
    Spaceship cars!!!
    People-mover vacuum tubes!!!
    Yes! Finally! MOVING SIDEWALKS!!!! Jetsons floating cars!!! People-mover tubes!!! Robot dogs that can fly!!! The answer to all our dreams. For a romantic and nostalgic look at what Manhattan could look like with all these things, watch this RealAudio clip.
    I think the idea of The Jetsons-style floating cars is a good idea... and so practical and realistic. Did you ever notice how everyone on "The Jetson's" was white and perfect and you never saw poor people or anything going wrong with the society? I heard that the reason all their cars floated in the air and all their buildings were way up on stilts was because there was some kind of massive class struggle war or maybe a nuclear war and below... on the ground... were the losers from that class or race war or nuclear blast... all fighting each other for scraps of food and eating each other amongst disease and pestilence in a rotting, putrid landscape. While The Jetsons' world people were all "La-tee-da" in their perfect floating, stilt-house world, all pushing a button for dinner and stuff. And if anyone from the perfect white world ever fell down there? Like if Elroy fell down on his way to Space Elementary School one morning? Forget about it... no one would even try to rescue him... he would be torn apart and eaten by the horrible diseased post-apocalyptic mutants. That's what was REALLY going on on that show. That's right! RACISM!!!
    Or maybe you could have those people moving tubes like in the FOX TV show "Futurama". Although if you live in New york City and have ever been trapped in a subway car with un unbelievably rancid smelling homeless person (or a cab with a rather rank Indian driver) - just imagine what those TUBES smell like after just ONE person hasn't bathed or let's a fart rip.
    Of course this has always seemed to me to be the obvious conclusion to this kind of thinking.
 

10: Float On Air
    If you're as old as *ahem* I am... and you read comic books religiously... you probably remember seeing this thing advertised in comic books in the late 1970's. Were you as fascinated with it back then as I was? The ad was right next to things like "X-Ray Spec Glasses!" and "Life Size Glowing Human Skeleton only $1.99!" so it's authenticity was always suspect... even at a very young age. According to the ad you could send $3.95 for "plans and photos" for a hover craft that would "float on air" and that would "run on an ordinary vacuum cleaner motor!"
    Float on air around your house or school!
    Lifts 200lbs!
    Amazing!
    It really works!
    "Did it? Could it? Would it? No way!" me and my friends would anxiously debate over the latest issue of Plop! or X-Men or Richie Rich, images of us zooming to school on one of these things and hovering around our back yards dancing in our heads. Was it worth blowing half our weekly allowance on just the plans?
    I never found out... but I wish I had.
    If anyone ever DID get the plans to this thing, or built one, please email me and tell me everything...

 

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 12/2/02
note: I have been very busy this week... so not only is this entry three days late... but I am wimping out by doing only links to web sites on this entry - no pictures or stories. Click on each title to be taken to the page.
 

1: The Dark Truth About the "Dark Tunnels of McMartin"
    Very extensive report on the hideous McMartin Day Care center scandals of the 1980's - (one of) the (many) witch trials of the 20th century.
 
 

2: The infamous "Li'l Markie" album
    Check it out. It's old, it's real, it was made by Christians, and it's from Hell. Swing to the jammin' grooves of "Diary of an Unborn Child". It's got a good beat and you can dance to it.
 
 

3: Several very interesting Real Audio sound links - particularly "Dirty Talk!!"
    This page contains a small handful of interesting RA sound links that the creator of the page seems to have found around the web. First of note is "Story of An Alcoholic Father" yet another track from the infamous Li'l Markie album (above).
    But the real reason I wanted to share this page was for "Dirty Talk!!"  This appears to be from an amateur cassette tape letter made from a woman to her out-of-town husband or lover that she recorded for him some time in the 1960's. The woman is unknown and she probably has no idea this thing has been passed around since then. The spoken letter starts out all housewife-y and "Joanne down the street had her operation and is okay and the Martins two houses down are going to Miami this year"-kind-of-thing... then... slowly... it gets hi-LAR-ee-us! Then it inexplicably gets very touching.
 
 

4: Information on Christian Halloween "Hell Houses"
    You know you can buy a make-your-own-"Hell House" kit for only $599.00?
 

5: Golin Levin
    Golin Levin is a genius... he may be the first person I write about for Artforum magazine.
 
 

6: Kenny G's archived 11/27/02 show on WFMU.org
    Click on the "listen to this show" mp3 or RealAudio link at the top of the page for the 11/27/02 show. This is part one of the audio clips only from a lecture Kenneth Goldsmith had given at NYU the day before. The subject of the lecture was "The History of Sound Art 1900 - 2002." Great listening. Of particular note are Henri Chopin's "The Body is a Sound Factory" (title tells all), La Monte Young's "Poem for Tables Chairs and Benches" (maybe that should be 'Poem BY Tables Chairs and Benches') and this show ends with Alvin Lucier's totally amazing "I Am Sitting In A Room" - which you HAVE to hear (if you stream the RealAudio version you can drag the arrow and fast forward to the end). Weirdly, I have been listening to Kenny G on WFMU for years and this was, by far, the most structured and coherent show he has ever done.
 
 

7: Ubuweb
    Stroll around here awhile... you'll be glad you did. Click the scrolling menu at  the bottom of the page.
 

8: The Band Name Exchange
    Fun.
 
 

9. Airplane Homes
    Watch out for terrorists!
 
 

10: A Day in the Life of My Mouth
    Pin hole camera practicality.

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 11/25/02:

1: Seeing a wrinkled, wet-ish, grime-covered hardcore porno magazine hanging all alone on the railing of the Williamsburg Bridge
    This week I was coming back from one of my many trips to buy wild rice sesame sticks in Brooklyn, when I noticed this extremely weathered porno magazine hanging on the railing... it's withering pages blowing and gently turning over in the breeze... the setting winter sun casting shadows on it's luridly colored pages. Sometimes the pages would flip in the wind and show phone sex ads... then they would flip again to color photos of full-on, orgy penetration and scrunched-up faces. The kind of photographs you would KILL for when you were a pre-pubescent teen.
    If you're a guy and you grew up in the 70's or 80's... at some time in your life you came across the BREATHLESS, NERVE-EXPLODING THRILL of possible access to a PORNO MAGAZINE. If your dad didn't collect them and you could sneak a peak when he wasn't around... then you probably did what I and my friends did; found one, or somehow got a hold of one... and buried it out in the woods or laid it under some plywood by a vacant road. And you and your friends could go get it and take it home one by one... terrified to death that your parents might catch you as you snuck it under your jacket up to your room and then poured over every detail of the photos inside... with your heart in your throat. REALLY smart kids would rip out the pages and sell them to other 6th and 7th graders at school for a hefty profit. Pre-puberty boys would pay up to ten dollars for wrinkled, post-rained-on, covered in mud pages of a Penthouse ...twice that for Hustler!
    I stopped and kind of looked at it... it really took me back. The pages of this one were wet and dirty and wrinkled just like the ones I used to fiendishly treasure back in my early youth. But you could still see plenty of pink. I'm sure this will be snatched up at the speed of light by the next 11-13 year old male who walks by. I wonder where he'll hide it?
    What am I thinking? Times have changed a lot. A whole lot. Especially with the internet... and this being New York City to begin with. No kid today could probably give two craps about this withered, triple-X rag that's just sitting here for the taking. Times sure have changed.
    As I walked away from the undulating magazine and continued up the bridge... reminiscing times and eras gone by, I noticed two figures walking about thirty yards behind me. It was two Hasidic Jewish boys... probably 11 and 13... in traditional black and white clothes, those little black hats and long earlocks (Hasidic Jews travel the Williamsburg bridge constantly). They were alone and sauntering up the bridge slowly... probably trying to get home before dark. I kept walking and tried to watch them as inconspicuously as possible. And... like a lightening bolt... one of the boys reached out and grabbed the magazine like a frog's mouth catches a fly... right as they walked past it. He stuffed it under his traditional black coat and they took off like rockets... charging past me up the bridge towards Manhattan. Both with the look of sheer terror and thrill adrenaline on their red faces.
    I guess some things never change.
 

2: Discovering the Mountain Music Of Kentucky 2 CD set at Jim's house
    On my recent "refuge" to Jim's lone cabin in the Catskills... let's just say I had a lot of time to kill. With Jim not there it meant I finally had the opportunity to rummage through all his things and get as much background dirt on him as possible. While rummaging through kiddie porn, home made bombs, terrorist manifestos, rifles, Operation Rescue pamphlets with directions to abortion doctor's homes drawn on the back, video taped confessions of his plans to "assassinate the Dark Lord of 2008", a shrine to Osama Bin Laden, and diaries filled with vindictive rants about Ted Koppell - I also had time to go through his massive collection of old time-y bluegrass and mountain music CDs. Wow! What a find! CDs full of old recordings of guys singing on a front porch with dogs howling (in accompaniment) ballads performed with spoons and barrels... "Hollerin' Contest!" CDs... a zillion versions of "Muleskinner's Blues"... it was like an aural inbred gold mine.
    I've never heard such passionate and raw music in my life! This one in particular "Mountain Music of Kentucky", is superb. It's a two CD set that is filled with some of the most intense and minimal songs I've ever heard in my life. It has a "murder ballad" that Jim has played and sung to me before on his guitar, sung on this CD by Bill Cornett. Here are the lyrics:

                        Oh Polly, Pretty Polly come go along with me.
                        Polly, Pretty Polly come go along with me.
                        Before we get married some pleasure to see.

                        So he led her over mountains and valleys so deep.
                        Yonder over mountains and valleys so deep.
                        And after a while Pretty Polly did weep.

                        Saying "William, sweet William I'm wary of your ways.
                        William, sweet William I'm wary of your ways.
                        I'm worried that your gonna lead this poor girl astray."

                        "Oh Polly, Pretty Polly your guessing about right.
                        Polly, Pretty Polly your guessing about right.
                        You see I dug the best part of your grave in the night."

                        Then he led her a little further and what did she spy?
                        Just a little further and what did she spy
                        But a new dug grave with a spade lying by.

                        Then she lay down before him pleading for her life.
                        Lay down before him pleading for her life.
                        Saying "let me stay single, I can't be your wife."

                        "Oh Polly, Pretty Polly that never can be.
                        Polly, Pretty Polly that never can be.
                        Your bad reputation's been trouble to me."

                        Then he opened up her bosom as white as any snow.
                        Opened up her bosom as white as any snow.
                        Stabbed her right through the heart, how the blood it did flow.

                        Then he threw the dirt around her and left in the dawn.
                        Threw the dirt around her and left in the dawn.
                        Leaving no-one but the little brown sparrows to mourn.

                        He went down to the jailhouse and what did he say.
                        He went down to the jailhouse and what did he say.
                        I killed Pretty Polly and tried to get away.

                        Oh gentlemen and ladies, I bid you farewell.
                        Oh gentlemen and ladies, I bid you farewell.
                        For killing Pretty Polly my soul will go to hell.

...spooky stuff! Turns out there are a million variations of this murder ballad throughout history. You should hear Bill Cornett croon it out with a banjo! There is also another version of "Pretty Polly" on this CD performed by Lee Sexton. There is also this amazing song performed by Mr. and Mrs. Sams (pictured on the cover) called "The Wagoner's Lad" - it's beautiful! They also have some old baptist church recordings of congregations kind of "singing" famous hymns with no musical accompaniment... the pastor yells out what the next verse is and everyone in unison (sort of) sings it... with little regard for the notes the hymn was actually written for. There's a haunting recording of "Amazing Grace" done like this that's mind blowing. There's a lot of stuff on this CD that really chills your spine. It's so visceral and real... and done with like NO resources except raw need and want. It's like songs recorded with a 1930's tinker tot microphone that still manage to howl to the heavens. Wow. I recommend this CD - it's very strange and interesting and beautiful. I've never really heard music like this.
 
 

3: The whole Michael Jackson holding the baby dangerously out the hotel window in Berlin thing
    It's funniest because you know it wasn't a planned publicity stunt. Hilarious. Like most Michael Jackson "scandals" - there are so many layers of weirdness happening simultaneously, that the event as a whole almost hypnotizes you into thinking everything's okay. I think the many years of pain-killer abuse has left Michael Jackson lost forever from true reality in mile-thick clouds of fairy dust. You know while he was barely holding his kid precariously over this fourth floor balcony in front of a screeching crowd he was thinking something like "Wheeee! Heeheeheehee! butterflies are bee-you-ti-ful!!! Wheeeee!!!"
    A quote from a BBC article on the odd scandal; "The singer's close friend, psychic Uri Geller, condemned Jackson's actions but did not believe he was capable of harming a child. But he had suspected the baby was a FAKE, saying he was 'too protective' of his children to do something like this." A fake rubber baby? Hu-u-u-u-u-h? Oh god... see THIS is the kind of jaw dropping spectacle that I think viewers would have had to look forward to every week if VH1 hadn't pulled out of their plans for the reality show on David Guest and Liza Minelli (due to reported maniacal difficulty from Guest). God knows everything we're missing. Or Satan.
 

4: "The Miss World Pageant" finally gaining some fucking respect in the global arena
    This week 175 people died in bloody riots in Nigeria after a newspaper article hinted that Islam's founding prophet would approve of "The Miss World Pageant", which was scheduled to be held there. In light of women and children being pulled from their homes and slaughtered in the street and people having tires filled with gasoline thrown around their necks and lit and bands of Muslim youths blinded by religion-rage combing the city smashing homes, cars and skulls... the pageant was quickly moved to London. Many of the contestants had to literally flee the city in fear for their lives due to the raging bloodbath (via the beauty queen underground railroad no doubt). Looks like the winner this year will be able to talk about something besides what boat show she'll be cutting the ribbon at next. IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME!!! ALL HAIL MISS WORLD!!! QUEEN OF ALL THE WORLD!!! And speaking of...
 
 

5: Madonna cracking up while curtsy-ing Queen Elizabeth in London at a movie premiere
    This week Madonna was photographed cracking up (???) while curtsy-ing Britain's Queen Elizabeth II at the movie premiere for the new James Bond film at Royal Albert Hall in London. I think this is a great photo.
 

6: Finding this very, very old photo of Fred, Kate and Cindy from The B-52's snapped at some wack-o party in Athens, GA in 1977... way before they even were really a band
    It's really them. Look at them! Look at Fred! I wonder if they were drunk. I wonder if they knew...
 

7: The fact that Jim is coming home this Friday after being on tour for over a month
    Bliss.
 

8: Getting a message on my answering machine from Jack Bankowsky from Artforum magazine this week
    ...which is a magazine I worshiped in high school and college. Wow. Some people say a web site can be the world's greatest resume... maybe they're right.
 
 

9. Being interviewed by filmmaker Ron Pajack about my cyber-relationship with Bryan Ockert
    This week documentary filmmaker Ron Pajack came to my apartment and interviewed me about my past cyber relationship with Bryan Ockert. He's doing a film that is mostly about Bryan. It was interesting because it was the first time someone sat down and calmly probed my brain about the whole experience and just let me talk for two whole hours about the whole thing. I really started to go off on tangents and kind of explore the whole thing... from the past... The thing I had with Bryan was only about a year ago (a little over a year?) but it seems like a zillion years ago. It's like I had forgotten the entire thing. It was kind of this weird, sterile, alien-like experience. There was just the still quiet camera there looking at me with it's big, shiny black eye, and Ron hidden behind bright lights... his disembodied voice probing me for information about a guy I used to date electronically through cameras and computers only (mostly) a year ago. It was like DOUBLE DOUBLE non-non-reality. The whole thing was like I was being interviewed via transmission from Earth... while I floated out from reality's orbit in a satellite. I felt like a Stepford Wife or a Fem-bot. I felt like Bruce Dern in "Silent Running" when the government radios his space ship and tells him to jettison the greenhouse domes and then he goes nuts and kills all the other humans on board and then that weird, waddling robot becomes his only friend because it's the only thing that "understands" him. Um...
    Ron may go to Las Vegas in January and film Bryan and I together at this award thing (The Cybersocket Awards) that we're both gonna be at (and that I am, ahem... happen to be nominated for). Capturing us together all "post-everything" and now just friends and "prologue". Bryan and I are still friends but we hardly ever speak anymore. I don't know what Bryan has planned... but maybe we can both show up at the award ceremony live via "cam" on monitors only... both so removed from reality that we refuse to appear anywhere in the flesh (kind of like Brian O'Blivion in 'Videodrome'). Sitting at our tables on computer monitors with little bow ties and cummerbunds wrapped around them. Peering out of our monitors from 2,000 miles away... looking at everyone all around us all nervously. Then Ron can film that.
 
 

10: Nice Ass
    Yo... nice ass.

 

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 11/18/02

1: The face of Satan appropriately appearing on Gourmet Magazine's Thanksgiving issue
    I AM YOUR DARK LORD!!! COMMENCE WITH OILY THREE BEAN SALADS!!! DRY YAMS WITH MARSHMALLOW TOPPING FROM A JAR THAT IS BURNT!!! TERRIBLE STRING BEANS WITH THOSE NAUSEATING ALMOND SLIVER THINGS!!! PICKLED PEACHES COVERED IN CLOVES!!! PICKLED OLIVES!!! PICKLED EGGS!!! PICKLED EVERYTHING!!! MACARONI SALAD WITH LITTLE PIECES OF PICKLE IN IT!!! WITHERED BLACK OLIVES!!! TINY BITTER PICKLES!!! SPAM FLOATING IN AMBER COLORED ASPIC!!! GIBLET GRAVY!!! DRY ROLLS WITH MARGARINE!!! CRANBERRY JELLY IN THE SHAPE OF AN ALUMINUM CAN!!! SALMONELLA STUFFING WITH TOO MUCH SALT!!! DEVILED EGGS SUFFOCATING IN PAPRIKA!!! NAPKIN RINGS!!! CORIANDER PELLETS ALL OVER EVERYTHING!!! THAT HORRIBLE SALAD WITH TANGERINE SLICES AND PINEAPPLE AND COCONUT AND MARSHMALLOWS!!! JELL-O!!! PROCESSED PUMPKIN PIE!!!
    ...AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF... MY HEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!! EAT MY FACE!!! I AM SATAN!!!! EAT MY EVIL EYELIDS AND STEAMING LIPS!!! I WANT MY FACE MEAT FERMENTING INSIDE YOUR BOWELS!!! EAT IT!!! EAT IT!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! WELCOME TO HELL!!!!

2: The ongoing re-release of the entire out-of-print French BYG/Actuel catalogue on CD and vinyl
    Holy shit. First I started with the Jazzactual 3 CD box set... and have listened to it non-stop ever since. Now because of the popularity of the set, the entire lost catalogue of the early releases is being re-released ...title by title... in a rather sporadic and unfocused, yet massive effort. The BYG/Actual label, and it's 1960's-70's recordings from avant/free jazz fringe artists were products of passion at the time of their release, now they are an often talked about (and fought over) commodity. They are fantastic recordings. I recommend the box set first, then possibly Sonny Sharrock's "Monkey-Pockie-Boo", Alan Silva and the Celestial Communication Orchestra's "Alan Silva and the Celestial Communication Orchestra",  Musica Electronica Viva's "Sound Pool", Don Cherry's "'Mu' First Part/'Mu' Second Part", Anthony Braxton's "Anthony Braxton" or "This Time" and Dave Burrell's "Echo". All are excellent. Many can be found at ForcedExposure.com or Midheaven.com, or at your local obscure jazz record store if you live in a big city. I really like the Actuel recordings because most of them seem to employ the recording technique of mic-ing the studio in a way so as to record the entire room... reverberations and all (many early jazz recordings were done this way - some with just one mic) so the albums open up and have lots of "psychic space" to them - at any volume. I find recordings done in this way to be simultaneously exhilarating and soothing.
 
 

3: Try replacing the last word of every song title on an album with "Penis"
    I don't care how moronic and testosterone you think it sounds. Try it and I promise you'll crack up. Try replacing the last word of every song title on an album with "Penis". If a song title has only one word, just add "Penis" after it. Try it with your favorite (or least favorite) albums! Here are a few examples:

        Celine Dion - All The Way...A Decade of Song

        1. Power of Penis
        2. If You Asked Me Penis
        3. Beauty And The Penis
        4. Because You Loved Penis
        5. It's All Coming Back To Me Penis
        6. Love Can Move Penis
        7. To Love You Penis
        8. My Heart Will Go Penis
        9. I'm Your Penis
        10. That's The Way It Penis
        11. If Walls Could Penis
        12. The First Penis
        13. All The Penis
        14. Then You Look At Penis
        15. I Want You To Need Penis
        16. Live Penis

        The Beatles - Abbey Road

        1. Come Penis
        2. Something Penis
        3. Maxwell's Silver Penis
        4. Oh! Penis
        5. Octopus's Penis
        6. I Want You (She's So Penis)
        7. Here Comes the Penis
        8. Because Penis
        9. You Never Give Me Your Penis
        10. Sun Penis
        11. Mean Mr. Penis
        12. Polythene Penis
        13. She Came in Through the Bathroom Penis
        14. Golden Penis
        15. Carry That Penis
        16. End Penis
        17. Her Penis
 

        Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet

        1. Contract On The World Love Penis
        2. Brothers Gonna Work It Penis
        3. 911 Is A Penis
        4. Incident At Penis
        5. Welcome To The Penis
        6. Meet The G That Killed Penis
        7. Pollywanacraka Penis
        8. Anti-Nigger Penis
        9. Burn Hollywood Penis
        10. Power To The Penis
        11. Who Stole The Penis
        12. Fear Of A Black Penis
        13. Revolutionary Penis
        14. Can't Do Nuttin' For Ya Penis
        15. Reggie Penis
        16. Leave This Off Your Fuckin' Penis
        17. B Side Wins Penis
        18. War At Penis
        19. Final Count Of The Collision Between Us And The Penis
        20. Fight The Penis

        DEVO - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO!

        1. Uncontrollable Penis
        2. (I Can't Get No) Penis
        3. Praying Penis
        4. Space Penis
        5. Mongoloid Penis
        6. Jocko Penis
        7. Too Much Penis
        8. Gut Feeling/Slap Your Penis
        9. Come Back Penis
        10. Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Penis)
        11. Shrivel Penis

        Bikini Kill - The Singles

        1. New Penis
        2. Rebel Penis
        3. Demirep Penis
        4. In Accordance to Natural Penis
        5. Strawberry Penis
        6. Anti-Pleasure Penis
        7. Rah! Rah! Penis
        8. I Like Penis
        9. I Hate Penis
 
 

4: Goregasm.com "Where bones meet boners!" (thanks Gregory!)
    Okay I'll admit it. I'm hooked. How can you NOT be?!  The usual suspect, Gregory, got me addicted... now I'm literally starting my mornings with coffee, the news, and crime photographs of mummified crack head midgets slumped dead over gas station toilets, decapitated Chinese dissidents, frighteningly deformed and horribly diseased rectums photographed in lurid Technicolor, autopsies on parade, lynchings, hilarious white trash amateur porn bloopers, death, even funnier amateur S&M video bloopers, deformity, gut busting (literally) junkie transsexual prostitute arrest mug shots, and boob-jobs gone horribly, horribly wrong (or right, depending on how you look at it). That and LOTS and LOTS of close up photos of vaginas. Who could ever stop?
   Goregasm.com is basically a modified message board where anyone can easily upload photographs, gif animations, sound or video clips (up to five a day per person) and then anyone can comment on them. Anyone can join, and they must have zillions of active participants because if you don't look at it for one day you'll come back and there will be new page after new page of hundreds and hundreds of pictures. It's like the world's toilet, where anyone can log on and flush the most unthinkable things in the world... up for all to see. Some of the autopsy and murder victim photos are a little hard for me to take... but I must admit they are viscerally interesting.  And the endless photos of naked porn girls gets a little tedious (the one area in which the site's participants seem to instantly loose their sense of humor). Gregory assures me there is a small but growing homo contingent on Goregasm.com that is slowly growing, with much resistance.
    I find it a little hard to write about Goregasm.com without feeling foolish... I mean... "mindless-ness" is at it's very core. It's the pure adrenaline rush of how "shocking" or "I can't believe this actually occurs" or "I've never seen that before" something can be. It's the very cheap but still life-affirming thrill of looking at something that you know goes way beyond the "something you shouldn't see" category. You aren't going to LEARN anything about anatomy from looking at color photos of fallen bodies exploded on sidewalks, or double fisting video clips... at least I don't think you will. I guess it depends what kind of "learning" you are talking about. Goregasm.com is the last notch on whatever meter society uses to gauge how much of a sense of humor someone has... until the next thing comes along.
 
 

5: Merzbow playing at Tonic in NYC on December 7th, 2002
    Beyond wow. The Tonic web site bills it as "...a rare US performance from the most prolific and masterful noise artist in Japan" and I think that about sums it up. Not only is Merzbow (aka: Masima Akita) one of my favorite artists in the world, but Tonic is quite literally around the corner from my house. Now that I think about it, judging by the volume level of most Merzbow shows, I could probably stay at home and still hear every crunch, rumble, zither and gurgle (and even then still have to wear earplugs). I'm going to be so "there" in the time and place that I might just cause a black hole (which is what a lot of Akita's music sounds like anyway).

6: Reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest again
    There's nothing like reading a really good book a second or third time... uncovering more and more layers (layers with foot notes and foot notes of foot notes no less!). Since my computer recently broke down I've been forced to (gasp!) read again, and having chosen this work, I am now being forced to re-live it's tediously constructed chaos. I was lucky enough to get a first edition, hardback copy of this book when it first came out due to a glowing pre-release review in The New York Times which caused me to buy it on a whim, having never heard of David Foster Wallace. As you can see from the photo my might-be-worth-something copy is now dog-eared, wrinkled, dust jacket-less, falling apart and coffee stained (complete with Grampa-from-'The-Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre' rubber Halloween mask as a bookmark ...don't ask). I think one possible sign of a really good novel is the realization that a cinematic adaptation of it's story would be impossible... not just inappropriate in a "wouldn't be able to capture the essence of" way... but quite literally impossible in this case. Funny, since the main plot string (one of millions) in the book is that of a troubled, obscure film director who inadvertently produces and directs a film so perfect in every entertainment-fulfilling way that anyone who watches it, even for a second, becomes so addicted to watching it over and over and over that they can do nothing but watch it over and over and over... and eventually die doing so. There are entire web sites ...and entire courses at universities... dedicated to this endless (literally) Mobius strip of a novel and it's serpentine array of oddly silly characters and coincidences ...and many arguments have raged as to whether it is unclassifiable genius or just clever, fluffy garbage. I recommend this book.
 
 

7: The cover of Vice magazine this month
    Clever. ...it fooled me. (www.viceland.com)
 
 

8. Suits Warehouse Outlet, 100 Rivington Street, New York, NY
    You ever buy a piece of clothing really cheap? Like a pair of khaki pants or maybe a jogging suit? Then you wear it all the time for years and years and it never rips or falls apart or fades? And you think back over all the expensive, trendy clothes you have purchased in your life that have fallen apart after being worn once or twice and you think... "How come they weren't made like this cheap $5 hooded sweatshirt I bought ten years ago and have worn every winter since then almost every day and still looks great?" The answer? QUALITY!!! And quality is what you'll find, my friend, at Suits Warehouse Outlet at 100 Rivington Street  (corner of Ludlow) in New York City. I have lived downtown for ten years now, and I swear that 75% of my wardrobe has been purchased at this fine establishment (the other 25% has been found in the trash). Inside this store they have a lot of formal wear and basic casual wear... but it's the racks OUTSIDE the store where you score. T-shirts 10 for $5 that last forever, pocketed long shorts with zippered legs for $10 that withstand a million climbs in the Adirondacks, sweats in every size, shape and color imaginable, great cheap coats. I'm not being sarcastic... this place RULES! I have bought so many items there I should have my picture inside. I love this store. It's brilliant. In fact... I'm going to go check out their latest shipment later this week.  I'll bring $40 and buy an entire new wardrobe that will outlive me... I swear it!
    According to the Beastie Boys' "Paul's Boutique" album cover (a panoramic shot of the intersection of Rivington and Ludlow makes up the gatefold cover) this is what Suits Warehouse Outlet used to look like in 1988. It used to be called Brother's Fashions (did you know I actually had to dig out and blurry-ly photograph my old copy of the album myself - can you believe it's not on the internet anywhere? Some nerd hasn't scanned it and put it somewhere? Isn't the internet truly disappointing sometimes?)
    Suits Warehouse Outlet is a great store that I highly recommend (especially the racks outside). Quality and satisfaction guaranteed always.

9: Happy doo doo due to eating brown rice and steamed kale every day
    I was staying at Jim's pad this last week in the Catskill Mountains, and due to the whole all-natural and hippie-fied nature of the town... almost every grocery store is all natural and organic and vegetarian and stuff like that. So while there... I started buying whole grain this and soy that and organic whole wheat this and flour-less that. Not because I'm a health food freak... but just because it was there. I got into the habit of eating brown rice with steamed kale (with garlic cloves roasted myself in olive oil). I got to eating it a lot. I mean a WHOLE LOT. Why? It tastes great... it's cheap... it's good for you. Sometimes I would pour hot salsa (all natural of course - the only kind they had!) over the whole thing and eat it with (all natural organic) tortilla chips. You know a town is hippie when the leading brand of tortilla chips has a Grateful Dead bear on the package. Well, combined with granola every morning with soy milk and all natural peanut butter on whole grain bread sandwiches for lunch and organic super-charged coffee with all natural organic honey from free range bees... let's just say I started to ...notice something downstairs. Something... WONDERFUL!
    You know sometimes I've been around hippie types or hardcore vegetarians or animal rights freaks and I have noticed that sometimes they talk a lot about their stool quality. I always thought they just watched "South Park" too much but NOW I see the light! My GOD I haven't felt this great doo doo-wise since I was a teenager! Big, thick, solid, light, hearty, healthy stools that slide right out of my ass like an Amtrak train shooting out of Grand Central... always on time and never with any delays! I feel fantastic! I never felt so... much like a tube! I barely need toilet paper anymore my shit is so fucking pure! Food goes in and wonderful, hearty turds come right out! It's amazing how the quality of your shit can improve the quality of your life.
    Since I got back from the Catskills, I've been a regular at my local whole foods supplier (just a block or two away). I'm cooking up brown rice in big pots and steaming kale by the bushel and roasting garlic by the pan-full. Salsa and organic chips are literally flowing out of my pantry.  I've been jogging longer, sleeping better, smiling more and am almost never groggy. My skin is fucking radiant as Hell! And my bathroom? It's a glowing, warm room of infinite white light... that contains a beckoning throne that calls to me to sit on it with a warm smile... like a good friend I'm always happy to see. It's like when I'm in there, goddesses' arms massage my back and the stereo is always playing the aria from Delibes's "Lakme" ...and when I take a shit now, even though it takes a mere matter of seconds... it feels like getting a blow job from God while softly laying back on a bed of angel's hair.
 
 

10: Jim's story about his childhood cat "Toby"
    I guess I should let Jim tell his own stories... but I can't resist because this one is so great.
    See, Jim grew up in the North, where it's cold. He also had a cat named Toby at some point in his life. Now as you all know... cats get run over sometimes. And sometimes when pets get run over, parents like to "hide" the "gruesome" evidence before breaking the news to the kids. As you can probably guess... at some point, Jim's cat Toby was hit by a car in front of his house and squashed flat. In the dead of Winter. The cold, cold ...freezing cold of Great Northern Winter.
    Now I guess Toby had been "missing" for a few days before Jim's mom or even Jim himself realized he had been squashed flat right on the road in front of their house. So lots and lots of heavy car tires got to run over Toby again and again and again. Whenever Jim's mom or Jim looked out the front yard and yelled "Toby!" ...they saw nothing but the yard and the flat road ahead of them! How were they to know that Toby was now as FLAT as the road itself and therefore invisible from their perspective, unless they were to go outside and stand in the middle of the road and look down (which they weren't likely to do since it was so cold and they liked to stay indoors)?
    Now... after a few days passed... Jim and his parents decided Toby had just "run away" ...as pets sometimes do. Jim was very sad, as were the rest of the family. And that's that. Right? Wrong.
    Jim's mom, somehow, made the fateful discovery of the squashed VERY flat and frozen VERY solid Toby on the road in front of their house on a sunny but very, very cold day. She was sad but also concerned that Jim, being such a young child, might discover Toby's hideous, 2-D remains and freak out. So she set about "disposing" of the evidence, respectfully of course. She waited until Jim wasn't at home... and went outside to retrieve the cat's flat body and bury it somewhere out in the back yard. But when she tried to lift the pancake-like Toby from the road she discovered that the numerous steam-rollings from days worth of cars and very cold temperatures had squashed Toby so flat that he had practically BECOME the road at this point. So Jim's mom went inside to fetch her spatula... and also some utensils like a knife and fork, and a can of WD-40... just in case she needed it. When she got back to Toby's paper flat, hard "body"... she commenced spatula-ing and prying it up off the road with all her might. Squirting a bit of DW-40 here... a little bit there.
    Now... it just happened to be a very WINDY day in addition to being VERY, VERY cold. A very strong Winter wind was howling it's coldness all over the area... and especially whipping down the long stretch of open road in front of Jim's house. So when Jim's mom pried the spatula under Toby at just the right angle, and put a little DW-40 in just the right place, and scraped and scraped and scraped at just the right strength... Toby's body finally *popped* free from it's flat, concrete prison in one giant *rip* and jumped right up in the air like a flap jack and was instantly picked up by the strong Winter wind that was whipping down the open road and went sailing off towards town like a kite.
    Sometimes Toby sailed like a flowing paper plate caught in an updraft... and sometimes Toby flopped onto his side and spun like a macabre wheel... and then sometimes Toby would get airborne again and, still spinning, would take on the properties of a terror Frisbee in mid-flight. All the while heading at great speeds down the road into town... carried by the howling wind... with Jim's mother running behind in her Winter coat, boots, hat and gloves... spatula in one hand, utensils and can of DW-40 in the other... running like mad to keep up ...yelling "Toby! Toby!" the entire time. What else could she do but call it's name? The same name she had called it when it had been alive. When she wanted it to come inside or had just opened a can of cat food or something. She knew that Toby's spirit was in cat heaven... but now that it's 2-dimensional, squashed flat by cars for days and frozen solid by freezing temperatures earthly body was sailing at 30 miles an hour down the road in front of their house, carried by the howling, freezing Winter winds... what choice did she have but to call "Toby! Toby come back!" as she ran and ran? What would you have done?
    Well... Jim's mom DID eventually catch up with Toby before he got too far... and, after a good rest, she then dug a small grave in the back yard to bury his flat body in. Now digging a hole for a very wide and very flat pancake of a cat is quite difficult when you think about it. You either need to dig a very shallow but very wide grave, or a very slim and long and deep one, both of which would require a lot of work. Jim's mom's solution? She simply dug a typical size grave for a cat... and folded Toby as many times as she needed to fit him into his final resting place.
    Amen.
    Jim didn't hear the story until many, many years later. And every time he thinks of Toby... he knows that somewhere... up in the great North, is Toby. Resting peacefully in a quiet grave... squashed 1/4 inch thick and folded four times.
    The end.

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 10/7/02:

1: Going to visit Jim in upstate New York over the weekend
    It was my first time to visit Jim in the *wow* Catskill Mountains. What a lifestyle! The town he lives in reminds me a lot of Durango, Colorado except with old hippies that have families and young squatter punk kids. Jim refers to it as very "crunchy" (as in 'granola'). It's fucking blissfull-y beautiful and fantastic is what it is. It was dingle kumquats and dingle pumpkins galore as we hiked and visited apple orchards and hiked and played with cats and hiked and ate hippie food and hiked and watched "What's Up Doc", "War of the Worlds", "Showgirls", "Picnic At Hanging Rock" and a documentary about haunted places in New York and hiked and snuggled and hiked and slept like babies in all the quiet-ness and hiked and went thrift store shopping (Jim scored a kick-ass 10 speed bike for $30) and hiked and rode our bikes at top speed through the "rail trail" (a 12 mile totally straight line that cuts straight through fantastic NY upstate breathtaking terrain) and hiked and ate wild berries and hiked and ate the bugs off each other's fur and hiked and rode white horses through fantastic sunset landscapes nude and hiked and killed deer with our bare hands and ate them and hiked and turned into gorillas and hiked and banged the bones on rocks and howled at the moon and hiked and saw a black rectangle on the side of a mountain and hiked and heard a spastic choir sound coming out of the black rectangle and hiked and took a colorful trip through space and got really stinky. It was only three days but it seemed like a story 1,000,000,000 years in the making.

2: My birthday cake to Jim
    Isn't it economical? For someone who bakes cakes for a living I think he was impressed... at least I don't think he'll ever forget it. I call it a "pile" cake. I was going for a kind of Frank Lloyd Wright kinda thing. It only cost about $5! The tin foil letters spell out "Happy Birthday Jim" all the way around the structure... just like the Guggenheim Museum!
 
 

3: Hayao Miyazaki's new animated film "Spirited Away"
    Jim and I went to see Hayao Miyazaki's much talked about new animated film Spirited Away on Wednesday night at the GREAT new Sunshine movie theater on Houston Street (it was kind of surreal because they were having some sort of premier for the new Jerry Sienfeld film Comedian at the same time in the theater, so when we bought our tickets and walked in it was all velvet ropes and flashing cameras and E! TV cameras and Colin Quinn getting interviewed ...and we were all '...huh?')
    It was a national sensation when it was released in Japan in 2001 (Japanese title: Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi) and you can see why... it's well done. I highly recommend the film. It's 100% entertaining from beginning to end, and the visuals, characters and scenes are genuinely dazzling, inventive and highly unpredictable. The film has a few cheese ball moments (it's quietly being presented by Disney in the US markets) but these are easy to wince through due to the amazingly unique surreal-ness of the rest of the picture... as well as it's finely tuned Aesop's Fable-ish life-experience-lesson code crossed with Freudian symbolism and general rampant "dream logic" that all taps into your subconscious and starts to creep you out and inspire you at the same time therefore emotionally flat-lining you. A very interesting and fun film! Well worth $10.
 

4: News of a "long lost" Royal Trux album that's "weirder" than their double album Twin Infinitives
    What's that you say? The now defunct Royal Trux, one of the most mind-bending and kick ass husband and wife music duos ever to exist between the mid-80's and 2000 has a "lost" album being released by their label, Drag City? It's from 1988 you say? Huh? It was the album given to the label right before they recorded Twin Infinitives? And it was deemed "too weird" to be released and so Royal Trux recorded Twin Infinitives instead - one of the most complexly fucked up and trippy double albums you could ever sunburn your mind with - and the label released THAT instead? Let me get this straight... an album "weirder" than Twin Infinitives was locked away in the vault all this time? "Too weird" compared to Twin Infinitives? Ooookaaaayyyyyy... calm down Mark.... when's it coming out? Soon? Okay... uh-huh... it's called Hand Of Glory you say? Mmmmhmmmm... It comes out real soon?
    The point between 1988's Luminous Dolphin / Cut You Lose tracks on The End of Music compilation all the way through to 1994's Mercury / Shockwave Rider 7" on Drag City was their "golden early period" worshiped by purists (their twisted/reverent flaunting of 'classic rock' styles after that only made them more strange and interesting). However, there was one infinite spot of white light on that "golden period" time line - and it was the Twin Infinitives double album... and indescribable talisman of everything transcendent and other dimensional. It's one of the most amazing records ever pressed to vinyl and later zapped to compact disc. The news that an album that was deemed too weird compared to that album, and shelved, and is now being un-earthed for salivating fans - either stinks of exploitative, shameless marketing to salivating nerds like me - or is an honest mini revelation. Either way I'm gonna be just like the Kathy Bated character in "Misery" - slapping my $12.99 on the counter at Other Music on the day it's released, smiling all bi-polar and schizophrenic - like - I - have - Neil - and - Jennifer - secretly - locked - away -in  - my - snow - bound - cabin and saying "Gimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie!" that album. And if I don't love it - a hobblin' I will go!!!! Wheeeeee! Misery's aliiiiiiveeeee! Wheeeeee!
 

5: Steve Kim - the man who fired a 357 revolver into the air at the U. N. last Friday while passing out fliers
   *Pow! Pow!* "Hello everybody!" *Ka-bang! Pow! Ricochet... scrashhh! Pow!* "I've got some fliers about..." *Bang! Ka-pow!* *Scream - ahhhh run for it!* "...about human rights violations and the plight of the North Korean people!" *Bang! Bang!*  *Crash - run for it!* "Fliers everyone!" *Pow!* "If you'd like one please take one to learn more information!" *Pow! Pow! aaaahhhhh! Look out!* "Take a flier please and if you'd like to..." *Pow!* "...talk about it some more I can let you know some more information about..." *Pow!* "...the plight of the North Korean people!" *Bang! Bang!* "Let's all just communicate okay!?" *Pow! Bang! Ahhhh get down!* *Pow!*
 

6: Scoring a vinyl copy of "John Denver's Greatest Hits Volume 2" in a weird, spooky thrift store in the Catskill Mountains for one dollar
    Yay! Why this and all the events surrounding it is one of the top ten things that happened to me this week is a mystery to all but me.
 

7: The serial killer random shooting mystery going on around Washington/Maryland right now
    Scary... weird... tragic... awful... creepy... astrological... dramatic... fascinating. I have started to think of people I know or have known in my life that may have gone over the edge. As Daria Nicolodi said in Dario Argento's 1982 film Tenebre; "I can't do this! Going through your address book looking for crazy people! It's crazy!" Do you find you're going through you past... card catalogue flipping through name after name after persona after gut feeling? Taking stock? Projecting?
 

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8. Noticing the generational humor gap through the films "What's Up Doc?" and "Showgirls"
    Jim and I recently watched Peter Bogdonovich's 1972 screwball comedy masterpiece What's Up, Doc?on the same night that we watched Paul Verhoeven's 1995 "bad masterpiece" Showgirls.  If you haven't seen What's Up, Doc?... I highly recommend it (the same for Showgirls). What was so interesting is that during What's Up, Doc? we were laughing constantly... instinctively... and non-stop. We didn't even have to think about it... it was like Pavlov's dog... we just laughed and laughed... like in a trance (the repeated scenes of the jewel thief tripping and assaulting a green-gowned Mabel Albertson through the hotel hallways and elevators is one of the funniest ongoing scenes ever captured on film). While watching What's Up, Doc? we were in a trance... lost in the film... unaware of our surroundings. Our laughter was hearty and full bodied... it felt healthy and REAL. When we were watching Showgirls - which for all marketing purposes is being remembered as a "comedy" even though the masterful Verhoeven probably(?) didn't intend it that way - we were laughing too... but in a way that felt strained. We were highly aware of each other, our surroundings, our value systems and pop culture history in general as we watched the film. When we laughed it felt forced... like we felt we had to laugh as soon as something happened in the film that we signified as "needing to be mocked" or "delighting in mocking". Our laughter felt strained... forced... a bit unhealthy and kind of UN-REAL. But we were laughing just as hard. We laughed as much during each film... but it was interesting the way our minds, eyes and bodies were working as machines during each film to make us laugh. There's something about the generation gap that I can't quite put my finger on - but is there nonetheless.
 

9: Recording my latest two pieces for NPR on Wednesday
    Fresh off the train from the Catskills (where I rehearsed my two monologues over and over and over oblivious and out loud in a dramatic fashion much to the stares of other passengers) and with minutes to spare, and covered with twigs, leaves, centipedes and feces... I raced through Grand Central Station and  walked into the NPR offices in midtown. I plopped down in the studio chair with my notes in front of me all wrinkly and covered in bear tracks and hemp... and let'er rip.... I don't know if it was three days of mountain air or what, but the recording went very well... the engineer and producer (communicating with me through my headphones via telephone from Washington) were both laughing so hard through my second one they could barely tell me what to do. The first one I recorded should air Halloween day... since it has a Halloween theme (if it does, this will be my first one to air). The recording just went very, very well and I was very happy about it.
 

10: This photo
    I ain't sayin' a word...
 

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 9/30/02:

1: The "I Am Satan Incarnate" T-shirt guy in my senior World History II class in college
    Memories...
    This is not a story about someone I know well, and the picture above is one put together from stuff I found on the web.
    This is a story about someone I simply observed for a period of time and never forgot.  I have no idea what this person's name is or where he is today. The story doesn't have any moral or lesson... and there are no ironic twists or tearful, life affirming conclusions.
    It's just a fucking story.
    It's the story of The I Am Satan Incarnate T-shirt Guy.
    It was my second semester, senior year at University of North Texas. Like a lot of seniors, I had let a few required courses slip by and was now having to begrudgingly cram them into my senior year. It was my World History II class that I showed up for three times a week... trying to act interested but generally bored out of my mind (I was really trying to graduate and get the fuck to NYC).
    The "I Am Satan Incarnate" t-shirt guy was the only one who saved me. This kid... who I think was a freshman ...was really a glutton for punishment or just starved for attention or just really, really brilliant with an overdeveloped sense for the absurd. Come to think of it I think that this kid may have been one of those high school students who was bumped ahead to college because he was so bright. But he held the characteristics of being too bright. Too bright to be normal in any way. What was he doing in my college class? Where did he come from? Why did he wear an "I Am Satan Incarnate" t-shirt every single day? A home made one? Why was he always laughing? What was his story? Where is he now? If I had to guess I'd say he's probably in some Bill Gates-type situation. Or maybe he ended up like the child game show prodigy kid all grown up in the movie "Magnolia".
    Now of course I don't have a photo of this kid... so I just recreated the shirt and found a guy's picture on the internet who looked like him to try and give you an idea (above). Let me see if I can describe this fear-less solo warrior to you;

    1. Greasy golden brown hair that had about three cowlicks and seemed simultaneously unkempt and combed at the same time. With a horrible cut that seemed to be just kind of chopped off in certain areas once it reached a certain point, with absolute zero regard for "style".

    2. Maroon colored Member's Only jacket worn every day (even in the heat). I'm sure he had been wearing it every day since high school. Keep in mind this was in 1990 and was waaaaaaaay long before it was "cool" to wear them again.

    3. Giant tortoise shell framed glasses - like your mom might have worn.

    4. Gangly arms. Gangly everything... walked VERY fast everywhere. Sometimes talked to himself while walking... always smiling and sometimes raising one arm up with a pointed finger as if to say "Eureka!" ...maybe he was solving complex physics problems out loud while walking. Doing this while he walked alone was probably much more interesting to him than social conversation.

    5. All-wrong jeans. You know what I mean... tight and loose in all the wrong places... highwater.

    6. Carried his stack of huge textbooks right by his hip... so he walked slanted and like a girl.

    7. A giant watch.

    8. A huge backpack - like camping size. This is in addition to the huge stack of books always held tight to one hip by his right gangly arm.

    9. A perpetual look of superior satisfaction on his face... always smiling... always looking like he was on the verge of cracking up.

    10. A black T-shirt with custom made iron-on red letters (the kind you can get custom made at a sports uniform store to say anything you want, or buy the letters and put them on yourself) that spelled out the words "I AM SATAN INCARNATE".
    Now before you say "Yawn..." or "Who cares" let me explain the context. The University of North Texas is a big art and music school... what I was there for. But is also a big business school. The required classes, like World History, were full of business students... and generally what you would consider "normal" people. This being the south too... there were A LOT of Christians. Devout, polite ones. plus this was 1990 numerically... but, knowing parts of Texas for what they really are - in a lot of ways, this might has well have been the 1950's.
    If this had been high school he would have been teased relentlessly. But this wasn't high school.. it was college... there were 40 year old students in our class. So in place of teasing was calm, mature, rational discussion... which of course messed with everything ten times as hard. He wore the shirt EVERY day and had quite a few discussions with people with strained looks on their faces as they t-r-i-e-e-e-d to politely understand his philosophy and t-r-i-e-e-e-d to explain how Jesus died on the cross to save mankind from his sins. Have you ever seen a bubbly, Christian sorority girl with poofed-out bleached hair and lots of make up try to have a rational conversation with a gangly, smart ass kid wearing an "I AM SATAN INCARNATE" t-shirt  and try to maintain her polite and optimistic, smiling persona during the whole conversation and walk away from the discussion feeling that she may have touched this kid's mind a little bit... only to be greeted the following day in the class with the kid defiantly wearing the SAME t-shirt AGAIN... then again and again and again and again? Every day? And smile proudly while he does it? I have seen it. It's ugly.
    By mid semester the blond girl wasn't as cheer-y and her fraternity guy friends... well they just didn't get involved in the first place. Her demeanor went from bubbly to flat in a matter of weeks because of The I Am Satan Incarnate T-shirt Guy. She would get this stone cold look on her face every time The I Am Satan Incarnate T-shirt Guy  would walk into the class wearing THAT shirt and quietly sit behind her. She would pretend to ignore him but it was obvious she couldn't.  I think she finally drew the conclusion that to extend energy in any way towards The I Am Satan Incarnate T-shirt Guy would only encourage him and give him more power (and also help Satan conquer the world). So it was probably best to not play with fire and just ignore him. This is kind of hard when he sits right behind you and you are the one who called him on his behavior in the first place and he STILL does what you asked him not to do every day every day every day every day RIGHT behind you. I think he kind of broke her (and others) in a way.
    One day before class I saw the professor go over to The I Am Satan Incarnate T-shirt Guy and talk with him about something. What it was they talked about I don't know. But if it was something about him please not wearing the shirt to class anymore because it was distracting to the learning process it must not have convinced him... because he kept wearing the shirt.
    Maybe he lost a bet or dare with some of his computer club pals. Like they were all sitting around drinking Yoo-Hoo and one of them was like "Hey... the last person to calculate the square root of a million in has to wear an 'I AM SATAN INCARNATE' on campus every day for a whole semester" contest or something and they were all like "Fuck yea bring it ON baby!" And he lost.
    What was so interesting is that I was too far away from where this kid sat to ever hear any of the conversations or exchanges or comments he ignited. I was too caught up in hating having-to-be in the class and wanting to just graduate to care. I just filled in all the dialogue as best I could from afar. We all have things we regret in life. If I had to list ten things in my life that I regret... not ever striking up a conversation with The I Am Satan Incarnate T-shirt Guy would be on that list. Now I wish I had stopped to smell the roses. I never met The I Am Satan Incarnate T-shirt Guy, I never even spoke to him... but looking back I wish I had. He's a friend I wish I had gotten to know. I often wonder what happened to the The I Am Satan Incarnate T-shirt Guy.
    Where ARE you The I Am Satan Incarnate T-shirt Guy? Whatever happened to you!? You were amazing.
 

2: "Muki's Kitchen" website (thanks Gregory!)
    Click here for Muki'sKitchen.com. I love freaky, twisted "sex" web sites created by prolific basement weirdoes that my friends email me day after day, week after week... Hey, if American's can't email each other weird sex sites from the internet all day everyday while bored at their comfy jobs, then the terrorists will win people! Which MEANS that emailing these twisted websites to each other is as American as apple pie! Of course these sites usually revolve around some ...odd... bar of the sexuality spectrum that has been hidden under a rock all this time (until the invent of the internet). Hey I'm not talking no porn crap here - obvious shit like girls with dogs or poop or whatever. I'm talking REALLY funny sex sites that BOTHER you subconsciously... maybe, a little bit. You want to laugh or get real scared or just click "exit" and you usually just end up perusing the whole thing in disbelief... with a slight headache. These parody-proof sites seem truly surreal... rather than "hot" or sexy or "funny" or even gross.
    This one, "Muki's Kitchen", is like a weird triple mixture of the Marquis de Sade, Martha Stewart and Paul Bartell's "Eating Raoul". So even though this one is pretty explicit... in the hall of fame of freaky/weird/scary/funny/surreal sex websites (that is currently occupied by RealDoll.com, MaskOn.com and The Inflatable Galleries, FuckingMachines.com and ButtMachineBoys.com) goes Muki'sKitchen.com.(check out some of their links too - no not sausage links silly... internet links! Haha-hee-hee-ho-ho!) If you're reading this at work where people can see your monitor DO NOT OPEN.
 

3:  Domenic came by
    Domenic dropped by to do a voice over for this... uh, thing I'm working on. It was really nice to see him again. He is one of the most interesting people I have ever met... he should write a book about his life... or a pamphlet or brochure or something.
 

4: The Smiths album covers
    Were you a teenager in the 80's? Did you hang out in gay indie record stores?
    My huge record collection was hidden in the closet while Domenic lived with me... but before Guillaume moved in I moved my old turntable and entire vinyl collection out into the living room. It's fun to go through all my old records again when I have time... rediscovering everything from whatever time period in my life I bought the albums.
    I won't bore you or alienate you with the old "album covers were so much better than CD covers because they were big and the art on them made a real difference blah blah blah" argument. But I WILL say that I discovered that waaaaaay back in the 80's I think I probably bought EVERY 12" single and album that The Smiths ever put out. This is an interesting discovery for me... I mean, I honestly don't remember even liking the band THAT much. I think I was attracted to the design of the covers. Do you remember them? They were incredible! The actual design on some of them was kind of clunky... but what they sometimes lacked in lay-out they more than made up for in consistency of vision. They looked like they were designed immediately ...and fast - but they still look strong and have a big impact. They were beautiful! I mean... just LOOK at them! You almost... and just almost can't even tell what time period they are from.
    Apparently... believe it or not... it was the lead singer Morrisey himself who conceived every cover's design and chose what obscure British soap opera actor or hard-to-pinpoint celebrity's picture to include. These covers ...lined up all side by side... should be shown to art school students as examples of good design. Why? Because taken as a whole they look incredible. And most importantly... they perfectly covey, with very simple semiotics, the mood and aesthetic of the music you will find inside the packages.
 

5: The phrase "Like tossing a banana down a hallway"
    I'll let you figure out in what context it came up.
 

6:  Jim
    Look at him! Just look at him... I mean ...wow! LOOOOOOK at him! LOOK! LOOK! LOOK! *WOW*!!!!!!! Jim had a great story from his recent mini tour about these two 50 year old women who were identical twins and were each 5 feet tall and all the Pinetops hung out with them in a basement in Virginia after a gig and the twins danced these weird jigs together and made fruit moonshine and served it in jars and someone else there's specialty was making squirrel pies... that's LITERALLY squirrel pies! Out of squirrel meat! ...that's just one night. Sometimes I want to run away with Jim forever away from everything. Jim gets it.

Jim is the only person I know to send me love emails like this one:

 
 

7: The fact that Kenny G is returning his weekly show to WFMU.org
    Get some bandages for your brain... first it was "Unpopular Music" then "Anal Magic" and now it's "Nothing Special". WFMU used to describe his show in their schedule as "Three hours of records skipping, CD's glitching, and people screaming" and that's only scratching the surface. The greatest force to ever truly assault a radio listening audience... landscape chef, renounced speckling expert and published staring contest cheater (and also author of one of the greatest books ever written; 'Fidget') - the bumblingly apocalyptic Kenny G ...returns from his Summer sabbatical starting October 7th with the suspensfuly-titled "Nothing Special",  Wednesday nights from 8-11PM on WFMU.org. You know where I'll be. That's right ...naked by the radio... just like that sexy drug girl in the Pink Floyd song. Or was that the telephone?
    Speaking of sitting naked by the telephone. I wish I had a "not" Top Ten list because I would mention that it appears that one of WFMU's other unchallengable forces, Pseu Braun, is NOT returning to their Fall schedule. Pseu apparently has lots going on in her life now... and still fills in for the odd slot now and again but... *sigh*... it would be so nice to cuddle up to her hilarity once a week. Maybe in the Spring.
 

8: The fact that you can type "arrested" or "drug charges" or "pedophile" in the biographies search engine at IMBD.com
    Go to the best movie information website there is: The Internet Movie Database (IMBD.com). See in the left hand column where it says "Search the database for"? Click on the scroll down clickable thing (that says "All' right now) and choose "Bios". Then type in any sordid word or phrase you can think of ...say, "shot by stalker" or "addicted to pain killers" or  "arrested for having sex with a transsexual prostitute" and let the FUN begin! What's neat is that any celebrity who's bio includes the phrase "arrested for having sex with a transsexual prostitute" may be used as a description of an actual scandal involving that person or it could be used to describe a character in a film they were in or worked on - fantasy and reality become blurred. The world of celebrities in a nutshell... and why we love them.
 

9:  The film "Let's Scare Jessica To Death"
    Jim and I rented the 1971 John D. Hancock horror film "Let's Scare Jessica To Death" last week. He had never seen it. I had... the first time was when I was about 6 years old and it was a sunny suburban day in Plano, Texas and it just happened to be on the TV as the "Saturday Afternoon Movie" or something and maybe my mom was in another part of the house and I just sat there and watched the whole thing and practically hid under the couch because it freaked me out so bad. It still does... it's a genuine sphincter-clincher that I don't recommend watching late at night alone when you're alone and depressed. Yikes it's creepy.
    Jim and I both share a fondness for movies that portray someone's gradual descent into scary insanity. The lead actress in "Jessica" - Zohra Lampert (above) - does an amazing job of translating that state here. And this film as a whole does a bang-up job of totally creeping you the fuck out.
 

10: Imagining that I could create a fantastic, unbelievable machine that was a glowing, hovering ball of white light that held the answers to all the questions ever posed in the universe and sucked in all evil and spit out all that was good and solved all problems and that maybe I could make lots of them and sell this machine on my website for $1,000,000,000 each and people could pay through PayPal and I'd just ship them off and live happily forever in a truly swanky lifestyle... surrounded by beauty because I saved mankind and became rich while doing it
    Wouldn't that be great?

Top Ten for 9/23/02:

1: My crazy neighbor interrupting the Bunny Brains concert on the roof of the building next to me on Saturday night and having his whole rant processed through their vocal modulator/loop/sampler and worked into the band's set
    (scroll right to see more of picture >>>>>>>>>>)

    There is this collective of noise/trash/weirdo artists called Freenoise.org or something like that that have events all over the USA. One of the Freenoise people is very cool and he lives in the building next to me. Sometimes... he/they have art performance shows or bands play on his roof... right next door to me and literally right outside my window. The shows, which feature many acts, run the spectrum from the pretentious - to the stupid... and occasionally to the surprisingly brilliant. They always do it on a weekend night, and they always finish up before midnight. The shows happen about once every two or three months. The volume of these shows is no louder than a car blasting music from the street... or a kid carrying a jam box blasting hip hop. Lots of people show up... it is always a good casual time, it's FREE to go... and very, very interesting performers show up and things happen. To say that the sounds being emitted from the roof during these shows is very odd and often jarring and annoying is an understatement. There is never anything obscene or curse words or anything like that... just very, very odd and often grating NOISE.
    No one ever complains... it's no louder than an outdoor restaurant on your street. The most that happens is maybe that some people that live in the 40 story project building directly across the street yell "Turn off that white shit!!!" every once in a while... or maybe yell "Boooo!" after some guy has performed with plastic hoses attached to contact microphones and yelled into a megaphone and then lit himself on fire. No one complains because on weekends my street is like a strip in Amsterdam or maybe the main strip in New Orleans or something. It adds to the color of the neighborhood and if people yell "Shut up!" it's in a festive way.
    Except for ONE man.
    Freenoise stopped having their monthly shows on the roof next door about a year ago because of ONE GUY who I think may have gone all the way to City Hall to get these events shut down or something. He lives in my building on one of the lower floors. He's middle aged and a little weird. I think his window to his apartment is facing the courtyard behind our building so the sound from the next door roof probably bounces into his window (although the same roof is literally RIGHT ACROSS from my living room window and it really isn't that loud). Apparently he is a struggling musician himself (my friend Mike used to live next door to him and would hear him trying to record his demo tapes). this guy has a very outwardly friendly and humorous demeanor - say... compared to "Mork and Mindy" era Robin Williams. He's a nice guy! Super friendly! With lots of personality! Until it comes to young white kids plugging fax machines into amplifiers and dressing up in costumes made out of barrels and screaming abstract beat poetry through screeching toy megaphones on the roof of the building next to the one he lives in.

    I have been at these Freenoise rooftop shows before where this guy would literally show up stomping onto the roof and unplug the guitar player's instruments and cause a big scene and fights would break out and then he would wait for the cops to show up (whom he had called) and then would wait outside the front entrance and mentally recorded the faces of everyone who was in attendance and yell "I will do this again next time!" He would literally show up at the climax of every show and be the grand finale of police enforced destruction.
    I have heard from friends in the neighborhood all kinds of weird stuff about this character... but it's all hearsay and he's an easy target for rumor so I'm not gonna write it here. I WILL say that this guy is very nice and cool - super friendly even. But something about trashy pretentious noise music and loud fringe theater puts this guy ON THE EDGE and into FULL RAGE MODE. In New York City! I'm gonna stay out of the free speech argument and difference in taste and blah blah blah... although I will say that it is very obvious that his anger has less to do with noise levels than with the type of noise that is being made. None of the zillions of other people in the neighborhood seem to mind it too much.
    Sometimes the cops would show up after he called them...roll their eyes.. but it was very rare that they made the performers stop (I think they once told everyone to go home because it was after midnight). I think the guy has slowly started to loose the respect of the cops though... you would think that would be a good thing but NO. Now he is a one man army with a mission. well whatever he did must have worked (or maybe the organizers just stopped having the shows there for another reason) because there hasn't been a rooftop show next to me in a whole year. UNTIL this Saturday night that is...
    So I'm on the roof next door and I'm watching Bunny Brains perform. And... just like clockwork this guy shows up at about 11:30 in full hormone maniac rage overdrive. He'd had a whole year to hibernate! He stands in front of Bunny Brains and gets on his knees and mockingly begs the lead "singer" to stop. What was so funny is that the annoyed neighbor is such a regular at these shows that when he walked up to the roof and started yelling everyone raised their beers in the air and cheered "It's the crazy neighbor!" He's a celebrity now. Then after his big entrance he gets in a big argument with the Freenoise guy which lasted through the entire second half of the Bunny Brains' non-stop set. The lead Bunny Brains guy had this amazing vocal modulator/effects thing that could sample lots of voices out of different microphones and play them all over top of each other... kind of like the one the Butthole Surfers used to use.
    So then I start snapping pictures (above) and the complaining neighbor guy is going on this rant and arguing with the people in front and the Bunny Brains who just keep playing and ignoring him guy holds his microphone towards the ranting neighbor and samples everything over and over in loop after loop and the guitarist and bassist and drummer have been playing the whole time and they just keep playing and playing and the neighbor keeps yelling and freaking out and the whole thing sounded like this (at full screeching volume with muti voices happening at once):
    "Sreeeeeee-waaarrrooowweeeee... BASH! BASH! BASH! stop! stop! the police have been called! sreeeee! the pol-l-l-l-l-i-i-i-i-i-c-c-c-c-c-ce... pol pol -polllllll-scweeeet-stop! stop! stop! playing! stop! playing! I re----s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s---speee-e-e-e-ct respect-t-t-t-t- respect your right to your art! ART! ART POLICE! ART! screeeee! Art! Stoo-o-o-o-o-op! but ple-e-e-e-ease come downstairs and see what it's like to respect my right to live in my apartment with your racket! Screeeewah-wah-wah-wah!! Bash! Bash! Respect my right to live in my apapapapapapapa-art-t-t-t-t-tment! Screeeeeee! You are all spoiled white brats! BRATS! BRATS! BRATS! Police! art! Screeewahwahwah! Police have been called! Wahwahwah Your all SICK! Your art is sick! Screeee- freedom of- POLICE have been apartment! Screeeweeeeweeeee!!!! re----s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s---speee-e-e-e-ct respect-t-t-t-t- respect my right to call police!! scree spoiled white brat police have been called!!! STOP RECORDING MENOWWW- w-w-w-wah wha wah hahahaha! My ci-i-i-i-ivil rights!!! BASH! BASH copywrirteinfringe- fringe-f ringe- apart-ment! Wah Wha!Wha wah wah! Citizens' ar-r-r-r-r-reswwwooooeeeooop-esT!!! you are all sick ART!!! POLICE APARTMENT!!!! POLICE APARTMENT ART!!!  Idiots art police stop respect!!!! Sreeeewwwahahahahaha weeee ...ooooop!"
    It was quite an aural moment - I hope the Bunny Brains recorded it and put it on their next album. The whole argument sound song or whatever you want to call it went on for like ten minutes until the guy stomped away downstairs with his hands over his ears... with the Bunny Brains still playing and playing and his own voice echoing over and over in loops throughout the entire neighborhood. What a performance!
    When I went home right after the show... Guillaume told me that he had been sitting on our fire escape during the party I was at next door and had seen "...some middle aged blond guy trying to wave down cop cars on the street in front of our building like a raving maniac... " who all unceremoniously  just passed him right by. So I told Guillaume the whole story about the most radical performer at the show... the one who blew everyone else away.

2: The answers I gave to the person who runs my fan site "MarkAllenCamFanPage" - who interviewed me on Friday.
    BAHAHAHAHahahahahahahaw! Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw!!! Of course they didn't get the gag and they shut down their site for a few hours but then they thought about it and realized I was kidding - after I did some explaining. But really what did I expect by being so odd and blunt and unpredictable? I would have taken offense too if someone had answered questions I had asked in that fashion. God it felt good to be so "mean" and "honest". It was like shutting the door on every bullshit thing and taking a long cool drink of water in a breeze-y field of wildflowers - through evil. Wouldn't it be great if EVERYONE talked like this in interviews? Here is the interview with my answers:

 
DietDew: Sight & Sound recently did a poll of several respected critics and filmmakers regarding their picks for the top ten best films ever made.  Inexplicably once again "Citizen Kane" topped the list.  Predictably, John Waters had one of the few really outre lists.  If they had polled you, which films would you place in your top ten and why?

Mark: Ugh. Sight and Sound? Is that one of those faggy film rags that black people can't relate to? I heard all the writers for that faggy art trash are dying of AIDS. You would read garbage like that... I bet you shell out the $16.00 cover price for that rag every month like a toothless junkie whore shells out her rancid pussy jones-ing for smack. Let me ask you a question professor Fat-enstein... why the fuck would a grown man with a full time job create a "fan site" about someone else's website? Do you have any thread of a life at all? Are you dead? Do you upload your html to the MarkAllenCam Fan site via the grave? You might as well be dead as far as I'm concerned. I wish you would die... people like you creep me the fuck out. I mean... c'mon... are you retarded? Really... are you? Jim used to work with retarded people a long time ago and can do a real good retard voice. I bet it sounds like you. "Mwah-mwah-I-ya gonna taka-tha' pic-tyoures of Mak Awen onna web-thite uya uya..." I bet that's how you talk.

How did you first become interested in film?  I know that "Times Square" did a number on your adolescent head but did you go on to more 80's trash classics like the "Angel" teenage L.A. hooker series & "Nightmare on Elm Street" or did you get more into artier stuff by the Coen Brothers or, God help us, Merchant-Ivory? Oh, and which was your first Dario Argento film?

Because it's on the television. GOD!!! Who came up with these questions? A seal? Did I mention to you by the way that your website is quite possibly the most poorly designed and amateurish piece of garbage in the history of art? Even going back to the cave painting days? And the things you get WRONG on the page about me could fill a zillion cutting room floors! I bet you live in a trash can... like Oscar the Grouch... I'll bet your personality makes Oscar look like fucking Pollyanna. No seriously... your design skills could be beaten by a dodo bird who was still in the womb. Your imagination is like an ostrich's wings. And your "writing" - that's not writing... that's typing. Do you know what exists outside your four walls? Do you ever go outside? Are you suffering from lack of oxygen? Did you have brain problems at birth? God you are sad. You're like a freakish homunculus germinated outside lawful procreation. Brrrrr... you give me the shudders.

After your experiences trying to make the underground film ("Headcase"), do you have any plans in that venue again?  I saw a documentary on PBS late-night about a social worker in mid-60's Spanish Harlem who brought Super-8 cameras into the community and taught kids how to make movies.  Have you considered buying a cheap b/w video cam and making your own little films?  Also, if Gregory ever makes it in movies/tv, do you have a copy of the footage you shot of him to sell to Inside Edition?

You know what you are? A couple of dilithium crystals short of a warp core. Do you get that?  Oh wait that's right... you're a moron. You know what would be a good career move for you? Your death... that's what. You're like a stupid person's idea of a clever person.  God your MarkAllenCam fan page is pathetic... I mean... the very IDEA of it is weird. Do you ever come up with your own ideas? Can you tie your own shoes? Do you even HAVE shoes? Do you even have legs? I bet you are the kind of person who thinks a new idea entering into their mind is like a violation. You're like a parrot with skin... you just copy other people. Please invent a time machine and go back in it and do us all a favor and eradicate your very existence please.

You did a couple of nude layouts in the early 90's which you now regret doing, and despite the fact that there is a Mark Allen who made gay porn flicks, he isn't you.  Is that name coincidental and were you ever tempted to work in that industry?  Why do those photos embarrass you now, but not some of images you've captured on-cam, like your monkey-boy face, looking grubby/unshaven, with a knife in your back/decapitated, or even the one you had up of Greg "blowing" you a year or so ago? Control issues?  Did those gory images upset your family or did they recognize your work, so to speak?

You know what it's like every time you add new content to your sad MarkAllenCam Fan Page? It's like sitting in a sewer and adding to it. And that doesn't even half describe what it's like to READ it. *shudder*. I saw that photograph of you... it looks like you have the face of a warthog that has been stung by a bee. Oh and by the way... when you make a comb over you aren't supposed to use your ARMPIT hair. No seriously... was that a photo of you or did something get loose from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?

What prompted you to go 24/7 live on cam?  Obviously vanity is not a big concern of yours.  You're very good at making faces and trying out different looks, such as the controversial KKK hood you wore one evening.     How long do you see your self on cam via the internet?  Will you eventually offer streaming live video or is that too invasive?  Have you considered hosting a public access show like Cherry Jubilee?  That would seem to be your true calling.

You know what your true calling is? A clog in a big pipe. Yep... I bet you could be outwitted by a jar of mayonnaise I heard you inspired that slogan "A mind is a terrible thing to waste". You know that should be the slogan on top of your MarkAllenCam Fan Page. Are you paralyzed from the neck up? When you get your whole family together does it make one whole brain? No but seriously you stupid nerd fuck... if you EVER... and I mean EVER so much as even THINK about doing anything that even in the slightest sense resembles stalking of me you will be slapped with a restraining order so fast your children will be born dizzy

So hit the trail mix Sir Feeds-a-Lot, get out of my way, get a life, then drop dead please.

3: Andrea Naschak's (aka April Rayne) performance as Sabra in Joel Hershman's forgotten 1992 film "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me"

    Apparently Andrea has/had a porn acting past (she was even in one of the original 'New Wave Hookers' movies)... and left it all at some undetermined point to make a shot at the big time. During that time she played the hysterically over-the-top, obnoxious, train wreck of an older sister and stripper Sabra in Joel Hershman's forgotten and way underrated 1992 comedy "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me". Almost all the best lines belong to Andrea... and she almost always steals the show in every scene she's in (that's her laying on top of Adrienne Shelly in the middle photo above - like the outfit?) You've never heard anyone spit out the lines "community chest" with such bombastic aplomb. Andrea literally cold cocks every scene she's in - even when she's just painting her toenails and ripping her leg hair off with wax strips and saying the word "pedo-FEEL"" or maybe handcuffing her younger sister inside the bathroom of the trailer home they both live in and then bringing her home a buritto later to appease her. It's a knockout, bullshit-less performance with great comic timing. I haven't even seen the film recently... I was just describing it to someone and suddenly I remembered it all over again. If you haven't seen it I recommend the film... it's very funny. And Andrea's performance is unforgettable.

4: Sam Stern's (of JewishCheerleaders.com) writing about girls in "hate" porn
    Sam Stern's writing about straight porn that seems to intentionally degrade the female porn actresses in the videos - and the writing on the cardboard boxes and web sites that feature these videos, and how he feels about it.

5: The Bath Body and Works Grapefruit Peppermint lotion that Gregory bought me as a surprise gift
    It smells real nice. A surprise gift from a friend. Whadda treat.

6: "America's Funniest Home Videos" on ABC
    The funniest show on television. More brilliant than The Simpsons.

7: Cherry Coke
    I know it's been around before. But it seems to be around a lot more now that Coke has come out with all those flavored Cokes. Like Lemon Diet Coke (awful - tastes like what I imagine Lemon Pledge Furniture Polish would taste - I think they forgot that that acidic tartness reaction in your mouth and on your teeth that you get when you squeeze a real lemon in Coke is part of the taste...  the flavor of lemon alone doesn't cut it) and Vanilla Coke (tried it once... didn't like it). Ice cold Cherry Coke is perrrrrrrrrfect though.

8. The idea of building some super futuristic pod like house from the ground up - out of wacky materials - and doing it in some fantastic wilderness setting in the middle of nowhere (or at least thumbing through a picture book on the subject)
    It's like ying and yang... the mixing of super technology and unknowable nature. Everybody's doing it... or at least making expensive and lavishly designed photo books on the subject. Walk into any artsy/trendoid bookstore in New York City (i.e.; Printed Matter) and you will find a million of these books... and each one will have pictures of a million fantastically unbelievable homes like these in them.

9: Wild rice sesame sticks
    I don't know who the hell makes them. I get them from the back section of this weird grocery store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. You know where they sell all kinds of things in big glass jars with big scoops and a Ukrainian woman helps you with them. I literally show up and buy like $10 worth (at only $2.50 a pound this ends up being quite a bit). Its literally to the point now where I walk into the back of the store and the Ukrainian woman starts walking over to the wild rice sesame sticks jar. Once I bought some dried green apple slices also and this totally confused her for about 30 seconds). They can't be any other kind of sesame sticks... like the normal kind - that stuff is dog food. They can't be "whole wheat" or "soy" or "bar-b-q flavored" sesame sticks - has to be the wild rice ones... the food of The Gods. I'm like some drooling addict. Damn they're fucking fantastic. I had this realization the other day where I realized I had eaten NOTHING except for them and some Dr. Pepper (and my morning coffee) for like... almost an entire day and was like "Uh oh I'd better eat some real food. The freaky thing was that after eating just those all day I felt GREAT.

10: Jim
    ***!

 

Top Ten Things for 9/16/02
1:  Michele "Party Girl" Comstock (as seen on FOX's 'America's Most Wanted' - 9/14/02)
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!! Woo-hoo!!! PAR-teee!!! Some people think life should just be one big soiree. And why should it ever end? God I live for people like this. When your FBI's Most Wanted list (hands down the coolest gossip column to EVER be mentioned in) describes you as known for "wearing heavy eyeliner" and "thin" and "smokes Marlboro 100's" and known to wear "jeans with t-shirts with bar logos on them" and "likes Budweisers and gin and tonics and marijuana and methamphetamines" you know one thing: you are a bitching bad-ass babe. Yet even with all this, the America's Most Wanted mug shots rarely look so hot. They showed some video footage of her on the show... and I swear I was watching a Suzi Quatro video! For 39 this killer looks DAMN good!
    I guarantee you that in high school in the early 80's, Michele drove a Camero (or had a boyfriend that did), wore tight jeans, had the exact same same hairstyle and make up, flipped the bird a lot and loved Ozzy. Apparently these days Michele spends her nights drinking and looking fucking hot as hell at the local suburban watering hole... and her days getting ready to do that (with occasional breaks in the pattern to streak her hair or put on her Pat Benatar eye make-up). I think Michele is the true living grown-up version of the high-school-bad-girl daughter Lulu from John Water's "Polyester".
    Michele is wanted in all 50 states for taking a wrong turn one blurry night and plowing her car into the living room of a suburban home and mowing over a small kid (who later died)... then fleeing the scene to go drink some more (she claims she was trying to find an attorney). Shortly thereafter she skipped town... and was last seen wearing a "shoulder length curly red wig" while ordering Jell-O shots at a Bennigan's no doubt. If you think you have seen Michele... please click here, or call 1-800-CRIME-TV. Or maybe... COULD IT POSSIBLY BE? Maybe entry #2 is her:
 

2:  Norma "Hell On Wheels" Carreiro driving her RV through lower Manhattan on Friday
    "Outta my way you snooty New Yorkers!!! AAARRRGGGHHH!!!" It started on Delancey and Bowery streets on the Lower East side (right by me!), took a Hell-bent, 90mph path across the Willaimsburg Bridge (my jogging route!) and ended in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (after running over a woman on South Fifth Street and Union Avenue - currently in Bellevue in critical condition) after crashing into a pole on Kent Avenue. Cutting like a bar fly through a six pack of Budweiser, and with her fiancé, two daughters, future sister-in-law and poodle Spike inside the RV... Norma used it like a battering ram and just plowed through anything in her way... hitting a total of 13 cars and a zillion other things (and people). With the pedal to the metal, beer in hand, the Dixie Chicks on the tape deck, and brain and eyeballs and ears oblivious to the outside world as frantic cops gave chase ...Norma just fucking *WENT FOR IT*. I bet it was kind of like flying! Norma was just trying to get to Kentucky to see her new granddaughter and had NO TIME for euro-trashy New York attitude! This was family!  "It looked like she was hitting toys," said one of the cops who gave chase. "She was pretty drunk," said Carreiro's 25-year- old future sister-in-law.
    For anyone who's painfully tried to weed their way through constipated and assaultive Manhattan traffic and thought to themselves "Goddamnitt  what if I just floored it and plowed like a tank through all these losers RIGHT NOW!!! Fuck fuck fuck FUCK!!!" but let quiet reason shush the voices in their head... then Norma is our hero. Especially since Norma had a bumper sticker on the back of her RV that read "I DO WHAT THE VOICES IN MY HEAD TELL ME TO". I bet Norma Carreiro and Michele Comstock would get along swell. Or... IS Norma really Michele?
    "Norma" is being held and charged with driving under the influence, reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child.

3: These photos...

  ...of Ramzi Binalshibh (alleged logistics and financial planner of the September 11th, 2001attacks on the United States) being arrested in Pakistan. How fucking hot are these photos?
 

4: The whole September 11th one year anniversary
    Over and over I kept thinking of that old Public Enemy song "911 Is a Joke".
 

5: The four poster board Sunday School collages I found in the dumpster outside a big church on Grand street.
    A shiny ribbon blowing out of a trash heap in the night wind caught my eye while I was walking to Rite Aid this week... like a hand beckoning me. Aren't they great? Jim really got a kick out of them. I would love to put them on my wall but they are too big. So here they are (modeled by Guillaume): 1, 2, 3 and 4. I really like #2.
 

6: FuckingMachines.com and ButtMachineBoys.com websites (thanks Gregory!)
    Click here for FuckingMachines.com and here for ButtMachineBoys.com. I love freaky, twisted sex web sites created by prolific basement weirdos that my friends email me day after day, week after week... Hey, if American's can't email each other weird sex sites from the internet all day everyday while bored at their comfy jobs, then the terrorists will win people! Which MEANS that emailing these twisted websites to each other is as American as apple pie! Of course these sites usually revolve around some ...odd... bar of the sexuality spectrum that has been hidden under a rock all this time (until the invent of the internet). Hey I'm not talking no porn crap here - obvious shit like girls with dogs or poop or whatever. I'm talking REALLY funny sex sites that BOTHER you subconsciously... maybe, a little bit. You want to laugh or get real scared or just click "exit" and you usually just end up perusing the whole thing in disbelief... with a slight headache. These parody-proof sites seem truly surreal... rather than "hot" or sexy or "funny" or even gross. This one is like a weird triple mixture of the Marquis de Sade, R2-D2 and Paul Bartell's "Eating Raoul". So even though this one is pretty explicit... in the hall of fame of freaky/weird/scary/funny/surreal sex websites (that is currently occupied by RealDoll.com, MaskOn.com and The Inflatable Galleries) goes: FuckingMachines.com and ButtMachineBoys.com. If you're reading this at work where people can see your monitor DO NOT OPEN.
 

7.The fact that Neil Hamburger has a new religious based comedy record coming out this month
    Holy comedy! The new Jimmy Fallon comedy LP better watch out! It's got some STIFF competition... yes it's Neil "That's My L-i-i-i-i-ife!" Hamburger's return to GLORY! Hal-lay-lew-ya!
    In case you've been living on Mars in a cave with your hands over your ears and a blindfold for the last decade... I will tell you that Neil Hamburger is the GOD of stand-up comedy, the man who answered the time-less question "Where's the Beef?" by merely existing, the living testament to observational humor swank... an brave punch-line warrior who has made drunken heckling never sound so painfully sweet, an entertainer who has tackled one-man shows at Pizza Huts in Hollywood (Arizona), XXX-rated comedy, comedy rap, a failed TV special pilot, prank phone call genius, being left for dead in Malaysia, tear jerking soliloquies to Princess Diana, Richard Nixon spoken word tributes, conceptual humor, and now... RELIGIOUS COMEDY!
    According to a recent interview with the San Francisco Bay Guardian; "It contains a lot of religious-based humor," Hamburger said of the album, speaking from a phone booth outside a Long John Silver's restaurant in Billings, Mt. "The motivation is that I was told to do that by my management, to try and cash in on some of the trends going around."
    Neil's new soon-to-be-classic comedy masterpiece, "Laugh Out Lord", will be released sometime in September... on Drag City records. Next time you find yourself helpless with laughter... let Neil reach a hand down to you brother! Get ready to laugh... it's the SECOND COMING... of comedy!  I think I see the...   LAUGH! PASS THE COLLECTION PLATE!!!
 

8: The funny level of communication I have with Gregory
    We can whip each other into this criminally insane back-and-forth humor thing. We keep trying to out-do each other and it ends up going higher and higher. We laugh so hard we're crying. The ideas we come up with and the things we say could be in movies or novels... they're that twisted and funny. It's always spontaneous... and can never be re-created. We have tried to re-create it (like on my radio show) but it just doesn't happen. So I guess it's just something he and I will be able to share together forever... and that's the only place it will ever exist. I think communicating by making each other laugh is a pretty high plateau of communication.
 

9: Jim and mine's Sunday night talk about post religion, post-decadence, post-hippie karma worship and the people who practice it
    Were we complaining? Admiring? I think we were laughing... at ex-hippie parents who meditate and think ghosts can only be seen by those who aren't enlightened and think re-incarnation is like this pyramid thing... and people who follow the "laws" of "karma" too literally and end up worshiping The Oprah Winfrey Show and relating plane crash deaths to sin and bunny rabbit births and eventually turning into cold hearted serial killers. Hi-LAR-ee-us!!!
 

10: Seeing Jim in the candle light in my bedroom Wednesday night
    ***!
 
 

Top Ten for 9/9/02:

1: The two "medleys" sung by the 20 runner-ups in the final episode of FOX TV's "American Idol" *
    Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!! Oh my God somebody telephone Monry Python... television is rarely this brilliant. It was priceless... I sat on the edge of my seat... mouth gaping... eyes as big as basketballs... laughing so hard I couldn't breath... just waiting for the next missed cue... the next girl trying too hard to act sultry while not being able to even be heard by her microphone (during her solo!)... the next horrific mis-match of voices on a chorus... the next half-hearted "Who-hoo!" ... the next melody barked like a seal... the next male solo that sounded like air being let out of a balloon... the next failed attempt at fake savvy filler media speak turned into awkward sourness... the next queen trying to act like he was into girls... the next interviewed finalist who answered questions by over-complimenting everything around them into oblivion... the next bad segway... the next hairstyle that probably looked great in the dressing room but didn't work at all on a someone actually moving (or singing) on stage as it's shellacked tendrils smacked the performer repeatedly in their own face... the next shot of Kelly's parents who literally looked like they walked out of a John Waters film... the next EVERYTHING!!! MORE! MORE! MORE! I wanted MORE of it ALL!!! Lets just say that all the individual voices of the runner-ups didn't exactly... uh, MIX well together all on stage at once. And it was all presented with the "$$$" and show-y pomp and importance of a Presidential inauguration. We were watching cultural history being made! And seeing the result of an intensive nation-wide search for THE BEST ...the *BEST* VOCALISTS IN ALL OF AMERICA!!! ALL ON ONE STAGE!!! All singing one glorious song! Did someone inform NASA? Did we ever think we would live to see the day?
    I really hope an audio tape of these two medleys ends up on Irwin Chusid and Michelle Boulé's "Incorrect Music" show on WFMU.org. It's where it belongs... under the spotlight of hilarious infamy.
    This was like your worst half-time show nightmare (or fantasy) come to fruition times 3,000,000,000. And they did it TWICE!!!   I've always said that people are funniest when they don't realize they are being funny... and I think it was Charlie Chaplin who said the key to great comedy is a character who thinks they are getting away with something, even though it's obvious that they are not.
    I only saw the first episode of "American Idol" - and this one... so I missed everything in-between. Does anyone agree with me that that Tomika girl (the black girl who mouthed off to the English judge on the first episode and called him an ass) should have stormed the stage during one of the medleys on the last show and taken over one of the microphones and just fucking went for it on live TV to get the ultimate revenge - punching out anyone that came for her without missing a note? She would have brought the house down! Now THAT would have been brilliant!
    Oh now don't get me wrong... I'm no scrooge. I can definitely speak from experience when I say it takes true guts to put yourself up there in the spotlight for everyone to judge... and if you've never done it before you have NO IDEA how complex and difficult and gay and vomit-y it is. There were obviously some talented efforts up there, and some great looking personas (two of the black girls who were runners ups seemed to blow Kelly out of the water vocally, stage persona-wise and looks-wise - what exactly happened during the voting?)  Look for the winner Kelly singing the "American Idol National Anthem" (that's the standard national anthem with the 'American Idol' logo stamped all over it) at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D. C. on live FOX television September 11th (not a joke - check your listings).
    And that Justin character... and don't fool yourself he is indeed a fucking CHARACTER. Here's my math problem (A + B x C = E) to explain his personality: he seems like a bastard child that was the result of a gang rape of Kathy Lee Gifford (where he gets his in-front-of camera manner) by Richard Simmons (where he gets his secret personality and hair), Carrot Top (where he gets his hair again and his less-secret  but more toned-down personality that will make him great in wacko physical comedy sketches) and drag-less Ru Paul (his facial expressions).
    The American Idol show was the kind of show that people pretend to love to hate but really love to love and will defend sporadically (usually if they are in the presence of someone they disapprovingly perceive as a cynic) with phrases like "Hey... it's only television!" It's true - it WAS just television! It was GREAT just television ...and it was fucking comedy dynamite.
    * Wow, you know I typed this the day after the show, all laughing maniacally and cracking up like I was so brilliant.. and now posting up to my website nearly a week later it seems like such OLD news and I'm like "Yawn?"

2: The dinner I had at Old Devil Moon restaurant on East 12th Street on Thursday night
    Gargantuan plate of amazing, thickly sliced sweet brisket with hearty, steaming, collard greens and heaping mashed potatoes with steaming, rich gravy... with a giant, bottom-less glass of iced tea - and followed by over-grown fresh blueberry cobbler pie with freezing home-made vanilla ice cream. The entire meal was %100 on every possible level.

3: The phrase "parody-proof"
    The kind of philosophy power-house phrase that's bound-less boundaries and meaningless meanings could be debated for a an infinity... and that's definition-less definition means the same different things to different people and different same things to the same people. Think about it... I haven't. See entry # 1.

4: The sex Jim and I had Thursday night
    Subtly mind-blowing. We got down like the freaky niggers.

5: Manhattan this time of year
    Perfect.

6. The public park between Chrystie and Forsyth streets, below Houston street... all the way down to Rivington street
    Hahahahahahaha!!! Did you see that!?!?!? Fuck downtown fringe theater... this is 1,000,000 times better and it isn't funded by some trust fund mess either. This place is like the most amazing non-stop show in NYC... or at least one of them. And it's FREE! Although there's a slight chance you may end up paying with your life ...or maybe your soul - but that would require you going there A LOT and actually hanging out with the performers and acclimating their non-jetset lifestyle... but hey, CARPE DIEM! You can show up here at any hour... and I do mean ANY hour with some popcorn and soda and one of those giant Nestle candy bars (and maybe some crystal meth and a light bulb to smoke it out of) and just sit back on a bench (make sure it's not some razor-carrying zombie's marked 'territory') and watch the non-stop drama that is the human condition at the edge of what ever you consider normal, non-desperate, non-teeth grinding, non-selling-access-to-your-genitals-for-pennies existence to be. If you thought the hospital emergency room on a Friday or Saturday night was exciting... get ready to be blown away. I've got to bring my camera to this place. Recommended.

7: The incidental music performance art that occurred on Broome street between Ridge and Pitt streets on Tuesday afternoon
    It was a great day. The bright sun was shining, the breeze was bristling through the trees, playing children could be heard in the distance and the birds were singing in the background. I was walking east on Broome... on my way home... full of inner peace for some reason. I saw a used acoustic guitar propped up against these rows of bright blue garbage barrels. Some merry minstrel had thrown out their guitar! Why thank you kind brother! As I got closer to embrace it's magic... I saw why... it was cheap to begin with... beat up, and missing half it's strings. I stopped and picked up the hollow framed wood guitar and strummed the few out-of-tune strings left on it. I could still make a few pluck-y, beautiful minimal notes and chords out of what was left of it. Considering the setting, background noises and general still-ness of the area... it sounded like bliss.  I realized I could place the head of the guitar against one of the barrels when I plucked a string and this would cause the pretty sound to "resonate" prettily. Like a really gay Brian Eno vs. John Fahey record (if there ever was such a thing). I just stood there, next to the dumpsters and plucked away... very slowly. It sounded immediate and fresh... beautiful... like time was stopping and stuff like that...  there was no one around... the roar of NYC seemed to fade out into that weird perfect nothingness that is sort of what I imagine heroin is like... I was definitely having a "moment". It was like weird private heaven in the middle of a public area... I was one step away from getting naked and kissing bunnies. I considered taking the garbage instrument home just for providing me with such a gay time... but like a true hippie I decided to leave it for whoever else might discover it for me. After plucking and strumming for about four minutes... I placed the instrument back exactly as I had found it... and walked away thinking of angels and puppies. When I was about ten feet away from the guitar I heard two voices behind me. I turned around and saw two young black guys in trendy Delancey Street clothing walking towards the guitar. "Hey look at this!" one said as he ran towards the guitar... picked it up... and without missing a beat, raised it over his head and *SMASHED* it down onto the pavement. This caused it to splinter into some large chunks... save for the body, which his friend jumped onto with both feet and caused it to smash like a wedding cake. Then they just walked away like ...bored.  I just started laughing my head off. The incident from the moment I picked up the guitar and was like "la-la-la-la-la-la-I'm-a-flower" to the moment the guys were done smashing where it was like "SMASH - sckqur-o-o-o-o-ghue-b-z-z-z-zt-frewwww-w-w-w-w-tinkle-twang-SCKRONCHE-poink..." it was probably about 5 minutes tops (and the gap of time between when I placed the guitar down and the guys picked it up couldn't have been more than 8 seconds). The whole incident should have been recorded - it was blissfully hilarious.

8: Guillaume's sexy French accent
    On Saturday evening he pronounced the phrase "Why would Susan Sarandon want to save the gorillas?" and it was like suddenly all the walls and floors of the apartment melted away and we were transported back to 1,000,000,000 B.C. in some desert-y landscape and the sky was orange and were were both laying there like there looking just like upright-standing, half-developed monkey fetuses and I spooged in my pants. It was a primal, teleport-ative, collective unconscious, wormhole-to-the-beginning-of-evolution, survival-of-the-fittest, robotic procreation sexual response to a really hot accent. Wow.

9: Reading the "Experience" stories on The Vaults of Erowid web site (Erowid.org)
    Somebody on my message board posted a like to this site when I was talking about Diphenhydramine Hydrochloride. What's so great about this amazingly extensive database of drugs you can take to alter your body and mind - everything you could ever want to know about each one - is the "experiences" section of each drug's page. People can write in any and every kind of experience (as best they can remember) from each drug... from the inter-dimensionaly transcendent to the unimaginably nightmarish... from bliss to death and back again and everything in between. These stories are pretty great reading. This site is for seriously hard core drug experimenters... like the brain surgeons or rocket scientists of tripping your brains out. If you look at this list of psychoactive drugs and say that you know what they all are and say something like "I did that... it's WILD" on all of them you are a fucking wimp liar and probably also say stuff like "I like pushing people's buttons" and crap like that.

10: The fact that I drink my coffee black with no sugar
    Guillaume and Jim are all grandma-like and stuffy by the coffee maker in the morning... needing spoons and diddling with sticky sugar containers and milk and crap... pouring, tasting, fixing, re-pouring, clinkity-clink-clink stirring with a metal spoon and getting it just right... spilling shit all over the place and needing a napkin or a doily or whatever because the soy milk came out of the box all spill-y and their cup is now gonna make a smelly ring wherever they place it. Talk about bad feng shui - it's like starting your morning mentally constipated... whereas I'm all like "Excuse me!" and I pour my coffee into a big cup 1-2-3 and am like *zooooom* outtathere. Guillaume and Jim are like "What was that?" all standing there holding a dripping spoon in mid-air.
    I'm like an invisible-sword ninja ghost in the morning at the coffee maker - I'm practically dipping down from the ceiling on bunjee cords and pouring my coffee! God I'm so great.
    You should see me on airplanes! The flight attendant is all "Would you like these little gay packets of sugar and milk thingies to crowd up your overcrowded tray some more sir?" and I'm like "No thanks" as I take my first sip and everyone in the plane is sitting up and turning around in their seats to get a look at me and are like "Who IS that guy?!"
 

Top Ten for 9/2/02:

1: Jim
    All hail Jim, "The God of  making me feel like everything is going to be OK". I really like Jim a lot. He's like a glowing, white hot conduit of happiness and endless hope for the future beaming down from the heavens - widening my perspective, bukake-ing spooge of hope onto my face, holding out a hand (with a novelty buzzer attached)... like a fantastic, soul-centering dream come to life. He's like a burly, gorgeous, Matthew McConaughey-looking, banjo playing yodeler in a bluegrass band who bakes erotic cakes on the side and is really smart and has an evil, sarcastic sense of humor... oh wait he REALLY IS that. He's like my separated siamese twin come back to me. He's like a sleep-over party with your best friend when you were both 10 years old except we're a lot older. All hail The Wonder Twins; "Form of... an ice jet!", "Form of... a cougar! Wrrrooooaaaarrr! Raour! Raour!!" *crash!* ...see only Jim will get that. Jim is the only person in the universe who knows about my plans for the "Ultimate Disguise".

2: The new Willaimsburg Bridge walkway
    In NYC. They have been working on this walkway... no the whole BRIDGE, for like 1,000,000,002 years now. It was starting to get pretty dreary and endless. But about 6 months ago a glimmer of *wow* - a long, bright red cage appeared out of nowhere at both far ends of the bridge. It kept... growing. What is it you say Mr. Crane Operator (back in April)? A fantastic walkway you say? So high up? so brightly colored? It's a fantastic, Jacques Tati-esque, almost futuristic-looking walkway in blazing bright red - and which puts walkers, bike riders and joggers (me) about 70 feet higher than any of the cars or anything (and with a fantastic view) inside a super-wide, cage like thing with no roof... and I learned today that it splits into two parts while in the center part of the bridge. It's getting closer and closer and closer to getting completed. The view from every inch of this thing must be inspirational to say the least... and any trip across it must be... transcendent. A bit cold in the winter? WHO CARES! This is New York City! Even the people in wheelchairs will have the wind whipping through their hair and a beaming smile on their faces! Ohhhhh I can't wait! I want to cut the ribbon!!! Open! Open! Open! Open! Open! Open! Open! Open! Open! OPEN!!!!!!!!!! OPEN!!!!

3: Sammy's stories
    On the telephone... sometimes at 3:30AM. I have never laughed so hard in my life and struck my forehead with my palm in amazement at the bizarre complexity of the universe and it's inhabitants - so much. I will NEVER get tired of freaks... and this guy is like... an entire universe of them in one person's body. His wild stories are like SOS transmissions from control central - and the funny ones make me laugh so hard I think I'm going to cry (plus these ones off-set the truly scary ones in which I'm shocked by Sammy's behavior; 'Sammy... uh... do you really think it was a good idea to...' - but trust me these are much fewer). Talk about a conversation piece! If this guy ever gets organized and writes a book it will be either a best seller or banned forever.

4: Stopping taking Diphenhydramine Hydrochloride every night
    An over the counter sleeping aid (basically it's generic Tylenol PM without the Acetaminophen). I had a very frank discussion with a doctor who said that people have no idea how much this stuff affects them cognitively during the day... and millions of americans take it every night so they can sleep and then walk around for 85% of the next day with partial lobotomies... talk about a daydream nation. She said it would be better for you, better for your BRAIN, to take a valium at night to get to sleep. That kind of thing, even though it's a controlled substance - will clear right out of your system quickly and leave your brain intact. I did a little research and indeed this is true. Yow. Now when I see those Tylenol PM commercials on TV with the woman jogging through the forest in the morning saying "I LOVE my Tylenol PM!" it creeps me out. I stopped taking it (slowly) and now I'm off it completely. I don't sleep quite as well (hey NYC is a non-stop carnival in Hell!) but I definitely feel more alert in the daytime. And you know what? I can really feel a difference. What the fuck was I thinking? Oh yea... I couldn't.

5: Guillaume moving in
    It's working out pretty good! He's funny and VERY VERY VERY talkative. He's added life to the apartment. French music, French cooking, non-stop questions about what jokes mean on television, a fridge, probably a new paint job on the walls (white), a new DSL internet connection, non-stop internet cruising, zero mental baggage, a thirst for life and a world-wide life experience level (read: smart, funny, relaxed and 99.9% issue-less). We're like Inspector Clouseau and Cato.

6a: Wreckers of Civilization The Story of Coum Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle
            - by Simon Ford
6b: Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs
            - by Brendan Mullen, Don Bolles, Adam Parfrey, Brenden Mullen
    I'm reading both of these books bit by bit while standing in a Brooklyn bookstore. Every time I go in I read a little more of each one (God I wish I was rich). I'm too scared to try and leave a bookmark in one. They are both neat mixes of fascinating facts, inspirational stories and eyebrow-raising, dishy gossip. Reading them together "illegally" while a trendy sales clerk looks on suspiciously makes me have to switch back and forth between each one at a moment's notice (I'm thinking of going into the store next time in my 'ultimate disguise'). Both books are really interesting. And this experience, me having to read it this way, in turn, mixes up what is written in the two books into this weird cross-referenced omelete. Weird, fun reading.

7: "Barf" brand all-purpose detergent
    Bought for me by my friend Larry while in Romania and abroad (and FedEx'd to me as a creepy anthrax-y surprise since the box of soap had somehow opened inside the FedEx package, spilling white powdered 'Barf' all over the floor when I opened it). Made in Iran - Barf brand detergent is another one of those wacky ironic-language-difference products that make westerners roar with laughter (trust me though, these kinds of 'mistakes' travel across BOTH sides of the language barrier). I have my box of Barf brand detergent now sitting cozily on my shelf where everyone can see it. It makes me feel so warm and centered. According to Larry, Barf Detergent is sold all over Central Asia and Eastern Europe, except for Romania, where they've changed the name because too many people understand English there now.  The directions on the label are priceless:
    5. To obtain best results soak very dirty clothes in a solution of Barf for a few minutes and proceed normally.
    6. WARNING:  Don't wash hands, face, body and food materials in Barf. Keep Barf out of the reach of children.
    Larry says that the Romanian word for "carp"  is "crap," and you can also buy the fish tinned, in little cans that say "canned crap." But he forgot to get any of that.

8: Email correspondence with my grandmother
    Sounds cory but it's true! The oldest living member of my immediate family, and the brightest and most fun to be around (even if it's only email). I was given a polite nudge by an uncle to write her more often and so, honestly, I did it mostly out of duty than anything else (lets all be honest here). What a surprise! What a woman! Wow! She's my new best cyber friend... she hilarious!!! I literally wake up in the morning in anticipation of what she's gonna write next.

9: Strictly for fun websites that have kept me casually obsessed
    The WARHOL STARS TIMELINE on WarholStars.org - I usually roll my eyes whenever another wrinkly, faded friend of Andy Warhol pops up to cash in on nothing... but I have to admit I'm always maniacally interested in what they have to say (Jim and I were recently blown away by 'Pie In the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story' documentary film, and have been quoting it ever since - plus I recently dug out my copy of Mary Waronov's bizarre autobiography 'Swimming Underground' to turn Jim on to it). Why the obsessive compulsive-ness? Guilty pleasures? No, just my own internal conflicts. The TIMELINE on WarholStars.org is amazing reading - who knew?
   ShowAndTellMusic.com - obsessively thorough web site by a person who obsessively collects interesting old records from thrift stores. Each cover (1,000's of them) gets it's own page and many of the pages have mp3s. Totally fascinating.
   JockoHomo.com - I started looking at this guy's page casually about a year ago. I thought it was just another blog... but suddenly I find myself more and more obsessed with this guy and the way he thinks. He's like some unreal fantasy character that's too perfect for waking consciousness. But indeed he's real!

10: Friends Forever
    I was originally turned on to these guys by Pseu Braun (who held a clandestine screening of a fascinating documentary film about them at Two Boots on Avenue A  waaaaay long before the Sundance Channel picked it up). I recommend checking out ...uh, whatever it is that Friends Forever do... it's pretty inspiring and weirdly righteous. I want to kick myself for missing their performance here in NYC last week (which was literally three blocks from my apartment - on the sidewalk across from 'The Children's Magical Garden'). Here's the Friends Forever official website.

11: *bonus!* The back of my new haircut by Gregory
    There's a *bonus* 11th entry since this is the first week I'm doing this. I asked Gregory to do something... uh, interesting... to the back of my hair. It's very ill and even my close friends classify it as "wrong". It's kind of disturbing. I've been kidding with Gregory that I should show up where he works barefoot and filthy wearing only a hospital gown (with by ass showing) and Kool-Aid stains on the front and a zombie stare and maybe some poo smeared on me somewhere... just to see people's reaction. My haircut would go with this outfit PER-FECT-LY. When Guillaume saw my haircut he said three words; "electric shock therapy" I don't know if he means I look like an ECT recipient or that he thinks I might NEED some because of doing this to my hair obviously of my own free will. It looks very "Sybil". Gregory says it's very "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". I think I look like the victim of a "girl gang" fight - you know where girls from one gang cut another girl's hair to get revenge on her or whatever... except in the fight and struggle while they pin her down they only are able to cut erratic chunks of it off. Hey... It's all open to interpretation by friends, loved ones and psychologists! I took a bunch of pictures of it "fresh" and will share them when I gather the inner strength to do so.
 

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