Mark Allen's Top Ten for March 29th, 2004:
photo of Courtney Love at
Plaid (left) by Eva Chavela - evachavela.com
1. Drug-addled,
hyperactive, mentally unstable, compulsive lying, siezure-ly schizophrenic,
attention-ravenous, uber-fake human face-punching machine and Oscar/Grammy-nominated
sociopathic destructo-bot pummels her way into into New York City like
a plane on 9/11 ...and makes me fall in love with humanity, my life, love,
the city (and her), again!
You know the way a domesticated dog will instinctively take full advantage
of all feeding opportunities and will eat all the food placed in front
of it even if it isn't all that hungry? And will just keep eating enthusiastically
even as it is throwing up the food it has just eaten... and then will eat
the throw up? And won't complain one bit? I'm fascinated with the way Courtney
Love seems to be able to do the same thing with booze, pills and attention.
Those of us living here in New York City on this recent weekend of March
19th seemed to almost be embracing imaginary, bored hands in our collective
yearning for something exciting to occur in our urban maze. City life was
starting to get very dull. Every subway car was filled with what looked
like hired extras playing watered-down versions of formerly kooky city
characters, every predictable cocktail party filled with glorious-smelling
clones who worked in media was just yearning for some scuzzy hippie
to show up and knock over a salad or throw a drink in someone's face. Every
art or theater opening had you cursing that you had forgotten to bring
a flame thrower or loaded gun. Every walk down a pristine, mall-like street
had you praying... begging for another 9/11... another blackout...
anything... anything at all that could combust in our own backyards
and simultaneously ride the rails of local and world media. The lack of
action was almost sending us into "boredom-rage" (I coined that term thank
you very much) as we were constantly on the lookout for something to remind
us that we didn't live in a city who's title "The Most Exciting City in
the World" grows more and more suspicious every year. We needed something
to break up the creeping, political and dollar-fueled monotony that threatens
to swallow our metropolis like that black slime creature from "Godzilla
vs. the Smog Monster."
Well, we got a little something. It was a blindingly enthralling/annoying
blast of rock and roll tantrum razzmatazz, an edge-of-your-kiddie-seat,
rail-jumping, sick/glam, drug/blood/lipstick freakazoid exploitation theater
puppet show... but it was something after all. I know I, personally,
was enthralled. You can tell the impact an event has on the city by the
way it dominates the old local media like newspapers, and the new location-less
media like blogs. Then you can tune into world media and see it kind of
bleeding in here and there.
Courtney "fists'n elbows" Love and her 48-hour prank/stunt-a-thon was hardly
the impact of a world event... but it was a blip... a boost... a drop of
excrement ...oops, I mean... a drop of excitement on our parched
tongues. I know it felt like one on mine. I got so excited reading the
string of stories as they unfolded and getting phone calls from friends
"...who were actually there" ...that I snapped out of the handicapped fog
that had been engulfing me for weeks and actually got inspired to do some
laundry. (New
York Post - The
New York Times - NYDaily
News - Fox
News "Witch Hunt" - naked
photo outside Wendy's - Village
Voice - Stereogum.com
blog entry - strange
tit-sucking/rapping aftershocks... it even effected me!
...and these are hardly a pill bottle full of the stories generated)
Courtney has one apropos line in her often remarkable library of lyrics...
I forget which song it is... but it starts off softly with her crooning
"You've
always wanted to see a cripple dance... pay your money baby, now's your
chance."
Don't get me wrong... I'm a big, big fan of Courtney Love and everything
she creates around her. What's so weird though is that more than a week
has passed since this event (it just took me that long to write about it).
Already I'm really sick and bored of thinking about it.
So let's make the natural segue to:
2. The squeaky
wheel gets the lithium
In the evolutionary world of survival of the fittest of the mentally unstable...
the prolific, productive and most obnoxious paranoid schizophrenics in
our society will end up out-living the quiet, isolated ones. Between the
different characteristics of those with commit-able mental conditions,
it's a madcap war between A) the screamers/tinfoil-wearers/nonsensical-sign-creators
and B) those who hole up in a dark apartment under the refrigerator. It's
a screwball game of "he who adapts best wins" ...or perhaps the phrase
should go "he who creates the most and best insane photocopied flyer and
puts them on the most car windsheilds wins."
Those paranoid schizophrenics who scream their fear-based theories on crowded
sidewalks, create and distribute Xeroxed flyers warning fellow humans of
impending metaphysical doom, or create highly detailed webpages listing
important signs of the Apocolypse ...these are the ones who get noticed.
This attention-starved disposition towards material creativity of their
own inner world acts like a waving flag or blinking neon sign for fellow
non-nut humans. It's a way for the non-reality challenged to spot the schizophrenics
from a distance. A man who has removed all his teeth and eyelashes and
who stands on a street corner in a tinfoil hat distributing flyers and
screaming about the insectoid features of unseen perverted demons on the
FM radio waves... or the woman at the local folk festival who paints her
bald head like the planet earth and slowly bangs a drum made from stretched
condoms and an old coffee can and chants in Inuit songs about menstrual
blood... these outward characteristics are instinctually recognizable
signs for fellow humans that seem to say; "Don't touch!" We understand
them prenatally. These characteristics are akin to a porcupine's quills,
or the swaying poisonous arms of a jellyfish. They may look mesmerizing...
but something deep inside our collective conscious says "beware" or "retreat."
Of course... these characteristics also get these types of mentally balanced
people noticed and perhaps maintained, or cared for. Even if we proceed
with caution... we look... we listen... we take note... and in a lucky
case, if they can be strapped down... we perhaps intervene and get them
on some kind of chemical program to get their brains back to a "balanced"
state, or commit them to an institution to get watched, cared for and perhaps
"cured." Does this mean that these types of schizophrenics who get noticed
stop being schizophrenic? No! It just means they survive and are allowed
to spread their DNA into the human gene pool. They get our attention and,
perhaps if they're lucky, it means they get more and more chances not to
die of starvation while hanging upside down wrapped in copper wire in the
back of a closet in an RV parked in the middle of nowhere because they
were hiding from brain-erasing magnetic waves and were too timid to tell
anyone.
Of course you could make the argument that the quiet, reclusive, keeps-his-craziness-to-himself
schizophrenic survives too. He doesn't let on. His hidden secret allows
him to *GASP!* slip into normal society unnoticed and function with
the rest of us... slowly rotting society from the inside. But of course
that
would never happen now would it?
Someone named Melody over at SomethingAwful.com recently collected a highly-detailed
and photographed documentation of her years-long experience with a very
extroverted schizophrenic woman obsessed with "...the abuse of psychics
on non-psychics." Melody's neighbor, known only as "Tammy," left an endless
series of signs and ephemera outside on her lawn... containing information
that apparently she felt the world needed to see. Then she wrote a long
kind of photocopied book (apparently part one in a series of five) that
was intended for "police and lawyers only" but that anyone could buy for
$100. I couldn't find the original at SomethingAwful.com, but some wonderful
person at Retrocrush.com has
recreated it for the world to see.
See how the chain of survival works? God speed Tammy.
And...
3. One small
step for my mind, one giant leap for all the millions of other minds that
live inside my mind...
Another
schizophrenic fish attempts to walk on land! Save him!
Designer Bill Dugan, over at his site, has documented
another series of outward characteristics of someone in the schizophrenic
DNA strain. Apparently he encountered these signs on a road trip in Oklahoma
in 1992. Just like above, these highly detailed and fascinatingly cryptic
road signs, and their documentation, is akin to the first four limbed creature
attempting to walk upright thousands of years ago.
And speaking of...
4. Roly-poly
bugs and where they come from
I remember, as a small kid growing up in the Jacques Tati-esque suburbs
of Plano, Texas... a large portion of many a spring/summer evening was
spent playing with the literally thousands of insects that would collect
under the massive fluorescent streetlights at every residential street
corner. The circles of light cast onto the hot, white concrete sidewalks
under these light fixtures at suburban dusk were like giant petri dishes
teaming with chthonic, daemonic nature... profoundly contrasted with the
sharp, hard lines of our sanitized urban surroundings.
If you were to look at each streetlight as a "layered" diorama of the natural,
starting from the ground and moving upwards, it would go as follows: the
first layer on the hot, white sparkling concrete (still warm from the day's
sun) were the roly-poly bugs (sometimes called 'potato bugs' or 'pill bugs'),
snails and translucent white centipedes that would bravely venture out
of the rim between where the sidewalk ended and the manicured trimmed edge
of someone's green lawn began, taking chances amongst our shuffling, crushing,
sneaker-ed little feet. The next layer in the circle were the beetles known
as "junebugs"... with their deep maroon, peanut-like shells from which
sticky, softly pointy and clinging legs protruded. These junebugs collected
mostly at the base of the light's metal structure... and even made comical
attempts to "fly" upwards toward the light with their often inept wings.
The next layer was us drooling and screaming kids who came to gawk and
play with the bugs (an analogy I'm not even going to touch). The next layer
was the metal pole of the streetlight itself... thick and echoing when
you hit it... it often had a wagon-train of quiet "daddy longlegs" spiders
walking up and down it. And the final layer, above our heads and directly
below the beaming head of the lamp... were fluttering moths and gnats.
I suppose beyond that layer... in the peripheral circumference... were
also smatterings of fireflies.
It was grand, mesmerizing, un-parental supervised, gross fun. The whole
complicated circus of bug species were there for us as toys... slime trails,
bites, rashes, germs and all. The junebugs' legs and the way they could
stick to you was fascinating (I remember many of the girls in our group
clamped one to each ear and then paraded around like they were earrings)...
and the way the daddy longlegs spiders would quietly dance down the length
of your arm, if you could mentally keep yourself from freaking, was a blast.
I remember playing tiny "bowling" with the itty bitty rolled up roly-polys
(which rolled up into a ball if threatened). It was fun to hold a balled-up
roly-poly in your hands and stay really still and watch it's instinctual
fear subside as it slowly unfurled and then began to apprehensively crawl
around your hand. There was of course the initial fear anyone has of bugs...
but, much like drugs later in high school, the peer pressure of seeing
your friends having so much fun with them... you soon found yourself sitting
there with a big grin on your face as five species of insects festered
all over your skin. Of course the whole thing would inevitably end when
our parents would call us in the house at the onset of deep night... inside
to wash our hands and eat dinner and watch TV and then bed. Considering
that at that age you bathed only every couple of nights... god knows what
germs we were tracking onto our Star Wars bed sheets... ugh.
Well... as per this
recent discussion on the Hinterlands discussion board, it turns
out that even though the roly-poly bugs might have been the most endearing
of the bunch because if their size and vulnerability and general cute-ness...
recent discoveries along the ocean's deep, deep, deepest depths have uncovered
a great ancestor to the roly-poly. These giant isopods live under water
and are crustaceans (just like the roly-polys... which are not necessarily
part of the insect family). Turns out there really is no difference in
these giant isopods and the roly-polys we all played with as kids... just
size (and living environment). These giant ones roll up into a ball as
well... the size of a bowling ball.
Turns out the roly-poly bugs I played with out in the yard before my parents
called me back into the house were just kid roly-polys themselves playing
on land before their huge-mungous parents called them back into
the sea. I'm glad I didn't know all this information back then.
Oh, also...
5. Even worse...
parasitic isopods who eat the tongues of larger fish and then take the
place of the missing tongue
Yep... also in the same isopod family are these little parasites who invade
the mouths of large fish, slowly eat the tongues of the fish... then replace
the missing tongue with their food and nutrient and taste-mooching bodies
for the rest of the fish's life. My head is swimming with so many gossip
analogies I don't even think I have enough time in the world to write them
all down. Here's a link...
oops, I mean, no... here's one.
And another.
Why whaddya know... that leads to...
6. The delicious
homo-centric news slant of DrudgeReport.com
No the above images are not clips from gay porn films or photo re-enactments
of Tom of Finland drawings.
The reason DrudgeReport.com is the loading page on my browser is because
I've never seen a gayer slant on the news ever. Stories about Barbara
Streisand and Cher and Courtney Love just barely take second place next
to important stories about President Bush and world events. And any story
with a strange kind-of gay porn fantasy subtext... gets a photo right next
to the Pope or Saddam or whoever is at the top of the news. I mean, just
like muckraker extraordinaire Matt Drudge himself... I want to know about
world events! But ohhhhh... yes... I want to know about that bizarre transsexual
silicone pumping party in Miami ...and YES I want to know about Prince
William's cheek-y romp in his underwear and... oh YES use that awesome
photo from 10 years-ago of Madonna in Victorian drag for the story about
her suing Warner Music this week!!! Oh God she look FABULOUS!!! No room?
Okay then kick off the story about Bush's speech to the nation...
These three images above, all linked on Drudge's front page, got top billing
for almost 24 hours each. They had to do with this
story (about a 16 year-old Palestinian boy in the West Bank who
had bombs strapped to his strapping young body and was forced by uniformed
police in boots and guns to strip to his underwear and crouch down before
them in submission) and this
story (a college kid was found in his underwear, wrapped in Saran Wrap,
tied to a tree and covered in whipped cream and chocolate sauce as part
of a hazing stunt by his athletically bodied fraternity brothers).
DrudgeReport.com is a wonderful source of scintillation ...oops, I mean
information, I can't start my porning... oops, morning without it. I can't
type straight because my hormones are in such a tizzy from the day's world
events!
7. Alice through
the movie screen - a fake ad for an imaginary product blows me away
KDLab,
a "multidisciplinary studio focusing on design, direction and production"
has produced a fantastic fake advertisement about an imaginary product,
which recently won the Autodesk I-Design award. The fake product, an imagined
"iPod
3" - allows users to inhabit virtual realities based on popular movies.
If you love film... and love to theorize about the imagined spatial projections
and false memories it's images can imprint in our heads... by all means
allow this quicktime movie to load into your browser, turn the volume on...
and click
here and watch this film!!!
Also interested in Stanley Kubrick's films and career? I highly recommend
this fine
collection of great Kubrick resources and links, provided by Coudal
Partners (coudal.com).
8. I watched
"The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" through (over) the head
of Lee Ranaldo
This last weekend I went with a friend to the super pre-fabricated and
always spookily empty United Artists Battery Park Stadium 16 movie theater
(literally across from 'ground zero') to see the much talked-about Charlie
Kaufman/Michel Gondry film "The Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." While we were sitting in the
massive, arena-like and very empty theater on the zillionth floor... waiting
for the film to start... in walked Lee
Ranaldo and some unidentified woman. Amongst the way too many empty
seats... Lee ended up eventually sitting right directly in the seat in
front of me. Despite my illustration above, Lee's head was well below my
sight line. But nevertheless... I got to watch the entire film through
the silhouette of Lee's spiky, salt-and-pepper hair. Being a huge fan of
Sonic
Youth... this was of course a huge treat.
I actually enjoyed the film a lot more than I thought I would. It should
be noted that I enjoyed, but did not love "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation."
I think the New York Times summed my feeling about those films exactly
when it sad (referring to 'Sunshine...'); "You respect the inventiveness
of them, but don't love the films..." or something like that. I found "Eternal
Sunshine..." on the other hand to be a damn fine film. I respected the
inventiveness and also enjoyed the film immensely. The film is subtle and
weirdly mind-blowing... and is all about the value of memories and how
they shape your perception. I found if to be far and above "...Malkovich"
and "Adaptation" and I would recommend the film to anyone. Jim Carrey,
whom I've always found kind of annoying... was almost unnoticeable as his
celebrity self, which I think means he did a great acting job.
Part of the end of the film, which shows two characters deciding to get
romantically involved while audio tapes play in the background of them
being interviewed about when they dated previously (and had the memory
of said relationship erased) in which they venomously spout everything
they grew to hate about the other one, is brilliant (don't worry I didn't
give anything away). The film also has very simple and ingenious dream-like
images which it achieves with very subtle and hardly noticeable CGI graphics.
It was really interesting to watch a film that had so many weird similarities
to a Lee Ranaldo spoken word/noise piece... over the top of Lee Ranaldo
himself. The film dealt with dreamy memories and how we perceive them and
how they shape our reality... a common theme in Lee's work (I'm thinking
of 'Notebook' from his Amarillo Ramp: for Robert Smithson CD, much
of Dirty Windows and the entire Outside My Window The City Is
Never Silent: A Bestiary CD... amongst others). I wonder if Lee liked
the film or not?
Speaking of...
9. Sonic Youth's
forthcoming new album "Sonic Nurse" - out in June, 2004
Out in early June of this year. Produced by Richard Hell (sort of but not
really). Cover by Richard Prince (really - from his recent
paintings
based on 60's pulp romance novels about nurses). According to sources,
the LP is longer and more complex than, but nevertheless a natural extension
of, their previous album "Murray Street." Thurston has said in interviews
that it's a cross between Fleetwood Mac's "Bare Trees," and Black Flag's
"Jealous Again." Track listing is:
1. Pattern Recognition (6:45, voc: Kim)
2. Unmade Bed (3:57, voc: Thurston)
3. The Dripping Dream (8:00, voc: Thurston)
4. Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Creme (5:20, voc: Kim, w/ barely-there backing vocals by Lee)
- title was changed from "Mariah Carey and..." due to copyright infringement
5. Stones (7:10, voc: Thurston)
6. Dude Ranch Nurse (5:57, voc: Kim)
7. New Hampshire (5:17, voc: Thurston)
8. Paper Cup Exit (5:57, voc: Lee)
9. I Love You Golden Blue (7:00, voc: Kim)
10. Peace Attack (6:08, voc: Thurston)
10. I'm re-reading
Chaim Potok's "My Name is Asher Lev"
I'm re-reading Chaim Potok's excellent book "My Name is Asher Lev" ...again!
I found this spanking old copy at a used bookstore in Brooklyn, oddly on
a street that is a repeated setting in the book. I have probably read this
book about eight times now. I think it's spectacular. It has one of the
most beautiful closing paragraphs of any book I know (but you have to read
the entire book to understand it's context).
Recommended.
Mark
Allen's Top Four for March 8th, 2004:
1.
Tonight,
Dear Readers... It's Going To Be All About Not Being All About Me.
You know, lover, according to my web statistics... hits to my website have
been climbing steadily since January.
I was going to write in this week's "Top Ten" all about me, again. I was
going to tell you some things about myself, I was going to not tell
you some things about myself... but then... I looked out my window and
saw a pigeon lovingly commingling with a rat in a sort of inter-species
dance of forbidden love, and I said to myself; "I love my readers" We BELONG
together! I LOVE you. Each and every one of you. So tonight dear readers...
let's put everything aside. I want to know and thank and caress and LOVE
each and every one of you. I don't want any precious microsecond wasted
on ME. I want to know all about YOU as I sit here and type on this HTML
page that doesn't allow you to communicate in any way, shape or form with
me. That's right. Tonight, dear readers... it's going to be all
about not being all about me.
I love you. Each and every one of you who are reading this right now.
Do you know what it is to be loved? Do you? Have you ever felt the warm
glowing touch of someone whom you admire nonjudgementally braising the
back of your neck with their breath as you sit in front of a computer screen?
Have you ever felt the toxic warmth of a CPR dummy's plastic lips that
have been manually warmed in microwave to simulate body-warmth realism?
Have you ever felt the loving vibes of fingertips that have traced down
your boyfriend-who-lives-upstate's phone number and that continually call
him and hang up? I have... and it feels wonderful. And now it's time to
give back. You're the only person in the world who really understands me.
That's right, YOU. YOU who are reading this right now. Whatever your name
is... I'm sure you have a million individual names. A million different
faces. A multiple amount of personalities.
Pull up a pillow. Shhhhhh... hush hush hush. Don't worry. Now fluff up
that pillow. Go ahead... punch it. HARDER! Now... isn't that better? Let's
just sit here in front of the fire on this snowy night and I'll tell you
all about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke. Oh but wait...
no... that's right, I want to hear from YOU. It will show how much I LOVE
each and every one of you. My READERS. My LOVERS. Boy... if Jim ever got
jealous about me writing about other guys (and girls)... well he's gonna
go ballistic tonight. But hush... hush, hush, hush.... put his gorgeous
face and body, winning personality, superior intellect, Hollywood smile
and big punching-your-face fists OUT OF YOUR MIND. Because this is all
about you...
I just don't know where to start. I want to listen to everything. I want
to hear all about you... everything.
You know, in Martin Scorsese's excellent film "The King of Comedy" ...the
Robert Deniro character of Rupert Pupkin (who wants desperately to appear
on 'The Jerry Langford Show' as a stand-up comedian) has a giant black
and white blow-up photograph of the Jerry Langford in-studio audience on
the wall of his Brooklyn basement apartment. He stands in front of it...
his imaginary friends... fans... and rehearses his act. Sometimes I picture
this same exact scenario when I am sitting in front of my computer and
writing on my website. A sea of looking faces, little personality-less
dots growing daily by the web statistics meter. Me talking to them all
as a whole.
In "The King of Comedy", the photo mural on Pupkin's wall has peculiar
characteristics according to how close you are standing to it. Seen from
afar... his fans as a mass audience seem like a friendly, loving bunch,
swooning admirer's filled with LOVE. But... when Scorsese's camera pulls
in close up on an individual in the crowd photo... their grainy, caught-in-mid-guffaw,
photographed face looks kind of... distorted, twisted, monsterous... frightening
even. From a distance the crowd fills Pupkin with pride... but up close...
on the one-on-one basis, as if he were to meet each one on a personal basis,
the fan looks terrifying and scary.
As a group, you look great... up close you look crazy. Isn't love crazy?
I love you.
Context is NOT meaning and meaning is NOT context! No! No! Stop saying
that!!! Oh you can be so cruel... but sometimes you hurt the one you love.
But enough with the analogies and sweet sentiments. I don't want some kind
of fantasy relationship with you, something based on a movie. I want a
REAL relationship with you.
I want my image of you to be big enough to where if I look at your individual
head, I can see your expression clearly. I like looking at your face frozen
in mid-laughter, seizure or orgasm. People look funny that way. It makes
them look silly and I end up feeling superior... which is how I think you
should feel about an audience of people that are paying undivided attention
to you; that they rely on you for their happiness and you
are their superior.
So come on... let me get my video camera out in our imaginary room here
in front of a fire on a snowy night. Let me back up a bit and look through
the camera's viewfinder at you. Ohhhhh... you look great. Let me capture
your face unawares, in mid-stride... when you think I'm not looking. Oh
that's good... make a face like you just stepped on a tack. BRILLIANT!
You look hideous... I feel great. Oh you really DID step on a tack? Oh
I must have accidentally placed those there on purpose two minutes ago
and forgotten about it. I'm sorry. How could I do that to one of my readers?
My fans? Tonight... my LOVER? Just put it out of your hilarious little
head. Go ahead and make another face... no a more embarrassing one. That's
right... that puddle by the potted plant in the corner is electrified.
I'm sorry I must have lied when I told you it wasn't. Oh that's a great
face. Now twitch. You look great on camera and I feel fabulous. Entertain
me...
I don't mean to torture you into entertaining me. Come here. Let me turn
off the camera... let's sit in front of the fire again... in embrace. Let
me rub Neosporin on your burns. I NEED you tonight READERS. I LOVE you!
Each and every one of you! Not just the whole... but the grainy, twisted
and distorted photograph of the individual. You look so good in close-up.
Closer... closer... crawling... closer... ever closer...
Don't let my love for you cast me into a maelstrom of ambivalence that
ultimately thrusts me into a black hole of irrelevance. And in turn, don't
let your love for me cast you into a black hole of irrelevance that ultimately
thrusts you into a maelstrom of ambivalence. Tonight... let's reverse the
roles...
I don't want to spend another night in my apartment, in the dark because
I'm too poor to afford blinds and too proud to put up a sheet or tin foil
over the windows... fumbling around the room, my headphones on, listening
to old Carpenters tapes, gulping down French Pastis 51 (minus the recommended
5 to 1 water alcohol ratio)... crying tears of rage as I crash my outstretch
arms through my computer screen to try and embrace you. So now that you're
really here let me caress your wounds with my bandaged hands.... shhhhh....
shhhhh...
You don't think this is funny? C'mon... laugh at what I write! God knows
I laugh when I read what you write! Oh... oh I'm sorry... that just slipped
out. Put it out of your mind. Just knock it right out of your skull.
I knew you and me would end up in front of the fire like this together...
alone... eventually. It was destiny. Like the way you subconsciously plan
a big dump for later as you are sitting down to a huge meal. I knew it
would come to this.
I feel like getting to know you right here and now is like... like... like
a, oh... I don't know. Like a cornucopia full of the fresh fruit of newness
and experience! I feel like the unseen little cranberry all the way at
the back of that giant cornucopia... the one way, way, way at the back...
smashed up inside that pointy little inside way at the rear, while all
the big, picturesque fruit that is YOU gets to sprawl out the front...
all seen and beautiful. By the time they see me, I'll be a little maroon
raisin... but it's not about me. It's about YOU! You BANANA! You MELON!!!
I get so tense when I think about not being with you. I start to think
I'm going CRAZY! Why if the knots in my back got any knottier I could make
macramé outta them. Why I could even make a little hanging plant
thing outta them and hang a little fern plant inside it's bloody, sinewy,
knotted craftiness... just hanging next to my desk right here as I type...
dripping blood onto the keyboard. You mace me... opps, I mean make
me so happy.
I was thinking of changing the title of my website from MarkAllenCam.com
to "My American Cousin"... but, I don't want to make you wait in the hallway
right outside my balcony seats all night... I want you front and center...
under the spotlight. Right here in front of me. IN LOVE and TOGETHER ...ONE-ON-ONE.
I just can't put into words how I feel about you. Yes YOU. YOU the person
reading this right now! My feelings are ineffable! You've caused me to
have contralateral neglect of my own heart, and that's okay. My anosagnosia
of my own heart has caused constructional apraxia of an adequate ego loop
in my quest to deduce a healthy life plan... which now suffers from crippling
acalculia. The way you gaze into my eyes is giving me optic ataxia!
I think getting to know you will stop me from looking over my shoulder
and having to go to that court building downtown to get so many restraining
orders. The judge tells me that if I show up one more time to get a fake
restraining order against a stalker who doesn't really exist he's gonna
get a restraining order against me! But what does he know. He's not YOU.
Please don't restrain yourself from me as I hold you in front of the fireplace
and listen to you talk about you... everything must be in order. Me giving
and YOU taking. That's it.
Sometimes I tell that angry judge downtown that maybe I'll start walking
around Manhattan wearing a motorcycle helmet. Just in case someone
wants to bash me over the head somewhere on the streets of Manhattan. You
know in the early 90's there was some woman who lived around St. Mark's
Place who always walked around outside with a white motorcycle helmet with
a black opaque face guard over her head. She was quite the talk of the
town, yet in turn she never talked to anyone (how could one hear her?).
No one could figure out who she was or why she wore that helmet 24/7 outside.
Maybe, just maybe... she was me in the future... coming back through time
to give me glimpses of my own tomorrow as I walk around the city protecting
myself from the waves of love I know you all have for me.
Maybe I'll compliment my survival/helmet look with an aluminum baseball
bat. I'm sure one of the Latin kids in my neighborhood will loan me one
of theirs. That way I can walk around New York feeling really confident.
Last year I walked all over New York in my Ultimate
Disguise and no one was the wiser! No one dared approach me!
Maybe I'll gussy-up my helmet and baseball bat look with a Vampire cape
and fake handlebar mustache. I'll put the mustache on the outside of the
face guard. Wouldn't that be cute? Maybe you can wear one too. Imagine
the two of us... sitting in front of the fire... both wearing our motorcycle
helmets, bopping each other gently on the heads with our baseball bats.
The video camera rolling, the electrified puddle of water in the corner,
tacks on the floor. They say true love comes from things you aren't expecting.
Like a black bat flying around in the sunny daytime... or a levitating
taco. It's unexpected!
I like the motorcycle helmet idea here in front of the fire. Lautréamont
says "Wolves and lambs look not on one another with bedroom eyes" and tonight
it couldn't be truer. Let's keep the helmets on.
I feel so impulsive right now. I feel like anything can happen.
Now that it's just you and me in front of the fire. I just want to take
all my clothes off and dance around the room in my helmet... swinging my
baseball bat at you like a pinata... trying to burst open your sweet candy
insides. I really just want to let go with you. I want to have FUN. I want
to LOSE CONTROL. I want the impossible to occur. I want to be BLACK.
My doctor says "No Mark you can't have fun! You need to be in control!"
but you know what I LIKE being in control! Tonight I want to be out of
control! Wouldn't you just love to see me outta my head!? I know I'd love
to see me OUTTA MY HEAD!!! WOULDN'T THAT BE GREAT!!!!?!?!?!? WOULDN'T THAT
BE FABULOUS!?!???!?!?!?
I'm really having fun here tonight with you. Fun is my middle name.
Boy I really worked up a sweat dancing around the room nude in my motorcycle
helmet and swatting the bat all around myself in jittery terror over you.
But you have that effect on me... dead... oops, dear reader. Lover. Let
me sit down in front of the hot fire and cool myself off. A blanket? For
me? From you? Why thanks! And rope too? Why thank you. A blindfold and
mouth gag and Diet Coke with rohypnol ? Oh stop!
You know... we may sit here all night in front of the fire and play little
games and you may tie me up knock me unconscious and transport me to a
shallow grave somewhere buried alive three feet under the ground with a
tiny straw sticking out of the ground that I can breath through while you
are watching me miles away from a live video feed... but let's face the
facts. Can two people EVER TRULY get to know each other? To you...
I'm but a tiny little white dot floating off in the distance of cyberspace.
I'm a minuscule man desperately treading water on the surface of a vast,
vast ocean. An immeasurably gargantuan ocean so many miles wide it STILL
cannot come close to representing that gap that keeps me so far from you
and you so far from me... yet, draws us closer, closer with every passing
second. I'm just treading water here in the most remote area of the Atlantic
ocean. I'm a microscopic blip undulating on a piece of driftwood being
gently rocked by the sea's shapeless surface... for beneath me lies a dark
and mysterious sea... so many miles deep and wide and black and bottomless...
I am a mere dust speck on it's grand, dark, galactic universe. Who knows
what icy peril and nefarious creatures await beneath my freezing feet as
I cling to my driftwood... every moment that I fight to survive, saying
to myself "just a few more seconds... just a few more strokes of
my aching and frozen hands and feet to keep me above the surface... just
one minute more of life..." Every moment that I repeat that to myself,
who knows what slithering, black-eyed creature awaits beneath the surface
to pluck my feet off at whim. My feet are so numb in this frozen ocean...
perhaps it has already happened and I just don't feel it. Is the malicious
creature... it's hideous mouth with it's frieghtening, shredding teeth
several hundred miles beneath my dangling feet? Or a few inches? Do I have
seconds? Minutes? Hours? A lifetime? I put on a chattering grimace
and pray to God that everything will be okay. They say that bearing a hopeful
disposition in a land that has you whipped is a sign that you are praying
to the gods in your own head... the last refuge of a scoundrel. The logistical
dimensions and dark vortices of such a lightness and oxygen-less abyss
like the one below my feet are a mystery to me. The monsters that could
possibly do me terrifying peril, on a mere whim, are navigating within
a cognitive reality that is known instinctively to them only. They hold
all power, as all information is at their disposal. I do not know... I'm
like a desperate beggar with a smile on my face... hoping, despite all
evidence to the contrary, that everything will be okay. YOU are the one
in control. What I don't know about you leaves me making unwise or desperate
decisions.
If you were to draw a picture of how I see it all, it would look something
like this.
Of course... from your perspective... it looks like this.
2. Wallace Langham
on NBC's "The Unauthorized Story of 'Charlie's Angels'"
(9PM est, 3/8/04
- tonight!)
I have learned that when writing about artists or celebrities that you
admire, it's best not to use phrases with words that might incriminate
you later in court when you arrested for stalking. In other words, don't
say things like "When Wallace Langham is going to be on TV tonight, I am
going to be so motionless on my couch as I tune in... I'll look like a
corpse!"
or even worse; "If I had to be somewhere else tonight when Wallace Langham
is going to be on TV tonight, I would remove my eyeballs and tape
them to my TV screen while I'm away so I don't miss on single second!"
Not using murderous and torturous words like this can make all the difference
in you explaining to the jury that you just happened to be jogging in Mr.
Langham's alley and you tripped over his trash cans and got trapped in
them for a few hours and that NO you were not digging through his trash!
So I promise NOT to use words like "corpse" and "remove some eyeballs"
and "spine-severingly brilliant" or even "comedy that will break and enter
into your funny bone!" while talking about Wallace Langham's performance
as agent Jay Bernstein tonight on NBC's TV dramatization of the drama surrounding
the TV show "Charlie's Angels." Heeeeeyyyy.... maybe I should get a job
writing those little movie review quote blurbs for movie posers!
The totally excellent Wallace Langham appears this Monday (3/8/04)
on NBC's snazzy and trashy TV movie "Behind
the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of 'Charlie's Angels'" playing Jay
Bernstein (a legendary/notorious agent and career strategist for many 70's
mega-stars, and the man responsible for turning Farrah Fawcett into
a marketable icon). Langham is actually reprising his Bernstein role, as
he played him last year on the same network's "Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized
Story of 'Three's Company'" (Bernstein also managed Suzanne Sommers).
I think I'm obsessed with Wallace Langham's craft and career
in the same way that people become obsessed with actors like Christopher
Walken, Crispen Glover and Don Knotts. He's a hysterically unique comic
actor with a really surreal screen presence ...when he's on screen you
can't help but notice him because he stands out so much. I wish he was
in more stuff. He's had a long career in some big films and some small
ones (I highly recommend checking out his bizarre performance in 'The Chocolate
War') and mostly he's known for television (his role on the renowned 'Larry
Sanders Show' is of course great). In a film or TV show, if there's a really
odd character in a production, too edgy or creepy... he'll be the one who
takes the part. In the movie "Soul Man" he played a white college kid who
did nothing but tell racist jokes to his friends all day long. Every time
the camera cut to him it was all "Hey everybody, how many blacks does it
take..." and of course he got his ass kicked in the end. On the otherwise
typical sitcom "Veronica's Closet" he played an ingenious character who
was gay and everybody knew it but him, which of course had lots of comic
potential. I tune into "C.S.I." almost every Thursday just to see him in
his odd, small, semi-weekly role as David Hodges, a disliked lab technician
who's always putting his foot in his mouth. It's the most mesmerizing 30
seconds of each episode. Strange, effective, memorable performaces of really
edgy characters seems to be his specialty... intentionally or not.
I get quite a few emails about my embarrassingly obsessive "Wallace
Langham Daydream", from people asking me when I'm going to finish it
(I have the whole thing in my head, I just have to type it out... it gets
really wacky and surreal by the end). Some people email and tell me they
like him as well and wonder why he isn't in more stuff, etc. ...he definitely
has fans. I actually have received two separate emails from people saying
that they though Langham would have been perfect in the role of
Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant's much talked about remake of "Psycho."
I feel kind of bad because I did a Google search for Langham recently and
my "...Langham Daydream" piece pops up as one of the top links. So anyone
who wants to look him up on the web eventually stumbles upon my gonzo ravings
of a madman. Oh well... I hope it somehow gets him more recognition.
I'll be tunnel vision-ly tuned into my rabbit-ear antenna-ed TV this Monday
(March 8th - today!) on NBC at 9pm EST and will probably have a relapse
in my obsession and start going to the video stores and hunting down his
old movies to watch (again). My friends at Kim's Video joked that they
are going to make a Wallace Langham section in the store just for me. Good.
It will be more evidence for the jury in stalking court that NO it wasn't
me and that YES, it could have been another one of his fans that rang his
doorbell in an ill-fitting Girl Scout disguise with a camera hidden in
the wig, trying to sell him cookies and take secret pictures of his foyer.
It very well could have been ANOTHER person in what appears to be a small,
growing Wallace Langham cult following.
3. Bill Morrison's
film "Decasia" (2002)
I remember when I was a kid, I was watching that old kid's TV show "Zoom"
(boy I'm giving away my age here). They had one "arts and crafts" section
of the show where they would always stand there in front of the camera
in their striped shirts and bellbottom jeans and make some wacky art thing
together and then fall all over each other complimenting each other's work.
I remember even as a second grader, sitting there on the living room floor
watching and going "Uhhh..." Anyway, on one show, they came up with this
idea to get blank roles of 8mm film that had been developed so they were
totally clear. They then pulled the film off the spoils and drew all over
the frames with colored felt markers. Just scribbled patters all along
the long spools of plastic. They let them dry, then rolled them back onto
the spools, turned out the lights, and projected the drawn-on film through
a projector. You can imagine the results... scribbling frenzied colored
lines popping and wavering all over the place in a psychedelic strobe pattern.
They all sat there watching each other's drawn-on film going "Ohhhhhh!
Ahhhhhhhhh!" and telling each other how "pretty" each other's was. Then
I think they started complimenting each other in that "yubba dubba frubba"
language I could never get the hang of. It seemed like a good idea for
kids to do, but the end result was terrible! They all looked the same!
No one tried to do anything to their drawn on film that took any creative
effort at all. They just scribbled away. I remember sitting there in my
Batman pajamas, watching the whole derivative spectacle, my mom handing
me Pop Tarts and reminding me I had to get on the school bus for 2nd grade
homeroom in 20 minutes and I scowled and yelled at the TV screen in between
bites of chocolate frosting pastry "Stan Brakhage was doing that 20 years
ago you stupid MORONS!!!"
OK that never really happened.
A friend recently loaned me a DVD copy of Bill Morrison's experimental
film "Decasia" (2002). Morrison compiled
the film from a warehouse of abandoned black and white stock footage discovered
in a high state of decay. Many of the rolls of film had melted, the emulsion
had done strange things, the film had warped, mold had set in, whole sections
were flaked or falling apart. He somehow was able to spool them through
a projector and piece them together enough to show what they look like
now when treated like normal film. He set the whole thing to a *totally
brilliant* score by Michael Gordon (a 55-pieced basel sinfonietta littered
with de-tuned instruments, intentionally off-kilter timing and treated
pianos). Sound boring? I thought so too. That is until... one night when
I couldn't sleep, I looked up on my shelf and saw the DVD case. I had avoided
watching it because I thought it would remind me of that "Zoom" episode
that traumatized me over twenty years ago.
I was surprisingly blown away. Fifteen minutes into the picture, which
I watched with all the lights out, I was propped up in my bed staring into
the screen with my eyes slightly squinted and my mouth open, totally rapt.
In this day and age when computers can do almost anything to film and video,
and kids on a TV show can scribble magic marker onto film and totally rip
off Stan Brakhage, it turns out that nobody can alter film emulsion
in the way that nature can. I can honestly say I've never seen anything
like this. Oh yes, the film (70 minutes long) is far from perfect... parts
of it drag, but these only seem to be padding for the most mind-scrambling
parts. Odd footage of 20's flappers siphon off and bleed onto the edges
of the screen like they're getting sucked into a black hole, footage of
parachuting soldiers dropping slowly in a field is spotted and ripped to
the point where it looks as if they are dropping into a landscape of hundreds
of atomic bombs constantly going off, footage of a man walking through
a field bubbles and wavers like he's underwater, seizure-inducing flashes
of emulsion decay bombard your eyeballs and resemble a Japanese watercolor
landscape eventually giving way to footage of a camera slowly panning across
a Japanese landscape. All set to Gordon's apocalyptic and spellbinding
score... the film is nightmarish, mesmerizing, sensory overloaded, and
may give you seizures (the DVD box actually says 'WARNING: This film is
not recommended for individuals prone to photosensitive seizures').
I highly recommend this picture if you're in the mood to watch what is
a really good interpretation of a waking human fever dream and have your
subconscious pummeled and your neural floodgates gush out all over the
floor. It will confuse that survivalist gland in your mind that makes you
always forget your dreams the next morning so you don't remember their
surreal nature as a real memory and go insane.
It turns out that Brakhage and the Zoom kids can draw and manipulate film
all they want and it remains a interesting oddity. But if you let the naturally
chaotic events of the universe itself alter film emulsion without being
touched by the hands of man... the watched results can change from a conceptual
pose to a totally mind-bending, ineffable, brain-blower. Proving that nature
is the greatest deconstructualist of all. OK I know that argument has as
many holes in it as the film Morrison used. Brakhage worked a lot with
letting film's emulsion decay naturally (and his work is undeniably phenomenal),
and Morrison did edit this "Decasia" stuff together and have it brilliantly
scored, and parts of it are dull. Nevertheless... I recommend "Decasia"
watched with the lights out and the volume turns all the way up. Especially
if you are prone to seizures. I'm sure places like Kim's video in NYC will
have it, check the "experimental" section. It's right next to the "Wallace
Langham" section.
4. "Mark... Sam
Stern's website is down, do you know what he's up to these days?"
Why yes! I do! I also get a lot of emails from people asking me what Sam
Stern is up to, since his brilliant site is down. Well here is the update:
he still lives in California, he is going to grad school for writing and
now working sometimes as a massage therapist, he was doing a mind-seeringly
wacky radio show on campus for a while, he had bleached blond dreadlocks
for a period, he is always looking for a girlfriend, he loves to appear
mysteriously under different pseudonyms and characters in unknown places
from time to time, he produced and recorded his "What Ever Happened To
You?" CD that I told you about here
(#2), he may be working with Ashley Blue on a film documentary about girls
in the porn industry, and he has a lot of other projects he is working
on. And there's even more! Let me just let his email explain it all to
you... how? By showing you his latest email (we correspond from time to
time and the emails are often long and rambling, so in the interest of
space just this latest one from him will suffice):
From: Sam Stern
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 14:01:31 -0800 (PST)
To: Mark Allen
Subject: Re: Hello from MarkI have my next documentary project set. In a nutshell, it's going to be me and ten girls in a hotel room - the last girl to fall asleep is going to win a thousand dollars. I am meeting with applicants now . . . most are agreeing to appear at least partially nude, or in their undies. Is that sexist? Who cares. I am including some ugly people. I have been watching the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, trying to get my exploitation covered. It is a large body of work though. And I am just beginning.
I also am working on a comic book -documentary on the males of the porn industry. It's going to be short - 18 pages or so - and formatted a la a zine. I'm going to call it "Woodsman's Digest, #1" and I think it's going to be neat. It's going to be a hit! I know that much. I 'll send you some stuff as i go . . .Here's a photo of me (above). My blonde dreadlocks are gone. This is from early 03 - but whatever. If I find some newer photos i'll send those along . . . take care.
Sam
go to past "Top Tens"