Josh Winter, 2005

Josh used to play bass with my boyfriend and me. Now he plays keyboards in Waterlaso. I took this photo in an apartment building on Hollywood Bl that was once owned by Peter Falk. While Steven and I were living there, we spotted Ron Jeremy in the building several times. He didn't live there, but at least one time, he was clearly there filming a porn movie. He was in the lobby coercing some poor woman who kept saying 'I don't want to do that with that guy here'.

 

San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)
sung by Scott McKenzie / written by Michelle Phillips
single, 1967

The Killing Jar [original album version]
by Siouxsie + the Banshees
on Peepshow, 1988

naturally, you can right- or ctrl-click to save.

 

So, as much as I enjoy the idea of keeping an invented person's blog in my link list, we all know the JT LeRoy thing is way played out, and sadly, 'his' truly insane blog hasn't been updated in forever. Time to scratch it from my sidebar, but I definitely encourage everyone to read that thing while it's still online. Choice quote: 'dude, you DO not even compete with this ape.' Ref to? Peter Jackson's King Kong movie. 'I saw King Kong and it just hammered me.' Aw.

So yeah, today I added Ollie's blog/journal to the sidebar as the link Commonpeople. I met Ollie on Livejournal and happened to notice his blog because he had especially pretty drawings of Morrissey and Egon Schiele as his avatars. Far and away, he's got one of the best blogs on the web. He lives in London and writes about things like the Hampton Court maze, the current performance of John Cage's Longplayer, and one memory for each country he's lived in. He also writes a lot about theatre, TV, film, and his boyfriend Kevin. Fantastic shit. Check him out.

Incidentally, since I've never introduced the other fine kids in my sidebar, this is probably a good time to do it. Ship Erect [livejournal rss feed shiperect] is my boyfriend Steven's blog. Epicly Later'd is Patrick O'Dell's photo journal, one of the prettiest sites on the web. I met Patrick at a Morrissey concert in Oklahoma, and we both live in New York City. And Dennis Cooper's belongs to the esteemed American writer of the same name. He and I grew up in the same part of L.A., at different times. We've never met in person. He lives in Paris.

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edit: whoa, not five minutes after i changed the link list, i came across this AP story ['Writer behind JT LeRoy comes clean']. weird. synchronous.

 

Raymond Radiguet:
'All great poets have written by seventeen. The greatest are the ones who manage to make us forget it.'

 

Nick Snider, photographed by?

 

The most fascinating thing maybe about Matthew Barney is this tremendous feedback from people who've actually known him that he could be doing something 'even better' if he had any 'real competition'. My god. Like what?

Somebody needs to engage him. He was originally in wrestling, a competitive sport. Please, bring on the Art Fight.

wanted for immediate viewing: Matthew Barney's med school personal statement.

 

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This came today

When I purchased it online, I didn't get to see the cover art. Whoa. I'm hoping for something along the lines of Transformer by Victor Bockris. This looks awesome.

Plus it came with two notes inside

 

You Are Repeatedly Stating The Obvious

 

Well She Did

 

In the first place, I'm writing this without the magazines at hand. I'm in a room where musical instruments are scattered upside-down, empty glass bottles crowd every surface, and a busted trampoline faces me directly: my view. Not exactly how I planned it but at least Storz+Bickel are present.

I encountered this girl in the apparently final print issue [2001] of Propaganda Magazine, an enterprise of Fred H Berger, a dude whose cultural role I have never quite gleaned. He takes photographs [which are pretty good]; reviews minor music releases. For a time, I guess, he was behind a print magazine called Propaganda. I always find that the most unexpected people know Propaganda Magazine, so if you know it, you know it. If not;

Early issues were goth-oriented and 2 steps above Xerox. As years passed, it grew into a reasonably glossy... 'scene magazine'? 'Fictional photoessay' magazine? Basically, these really hot, androgynous boys and girls would pose for clearly made-up Life Magazine-type photojournalism pieces. Or would you call the pieces porn? The narratives were similar. The pictures were generally sexual, but didn't have nudity.

For example, in the photographs below, The Girl, dyed blonde in black leather looking like a boy, is acting the part of 'Dmitri', a Russian street hustler. Dmitri's words are briefly quoted; he mentions his girlfriend 'Zosia' [the other girl below]. He actually says 'I'm not a faggot' with reference to his invented profession, and this gets a block quote. Seriously... at whom was this magazine aimed?

So yeah: The Girl. I don't know her name. My feelings for her are singular... unlike, unlike, unlike...

One time I tried to explain it by saying I didn't know whether I wanted to fuck her or to be her. It wasn't a flippant expression; it was an honest attempt to reduce the conflict, to aim it at a 'central tension', chill the situation out. I asked other people, who is it for you? You can't decide whether you'd prefer to be or fuck who? And I mean really, like if you actually gave it a lot of thought?

I got gorgeous answers: Egon Schiele, Kim Gordon, Morrissey. But I realized that my friends played the game differently. To the names that attracted them, enormous lives and myths were attached. No one proferred an anonymous photo and said, That One. Instead, they felt a pull, more or less, between Fucking That and Having That Career / Having Made That Art.

It's true that with the girl in the photos, I don't know if I'd rather fuck her or be her. I know that I'd say yes to either and both. The former, of course, is unremarkable: you can all see that she's boyishly cute, self-aware, and involved in some kind of weird art project. But as for being her, I don't know what her daily life is like now, or what it was ever like; I don't know where she lives; I fundamentally don't know what she does. Further, if I were to be her, it wouldn't be so that it was me in these photos in Propaganda Magazine. It's not that I wish I had been the one to make that art- art that's totally unobjectionable and quite sexy at turns, but not the sort that makes me jealous.

I guess I see: The Surface of The Girl. If she walked toward me, in a mirror or on the street, and said, Do You Want To Switch?... and she would become me and I'd become her and we'd walk away, each into a new life formerly belonging to the other... I Would Say Yes. No doubt, I would probably try to fuck her too. So basically this makes her... a point of entry? I see the other side already.

Some people want themselves. Some people want you. Some people want boys or girls coaxed halfway into existence; some people want light; and some people want the whip. Me;

I want Two I want Twice

2 more photographs

 

 

 

Sexual jealousy at the state of the art

Want

 

I sold my body.
I sold my soul.
I'd do it again.

 

Robert Mapplethorpe, shot by Andy Warhol, 1983 [left]
self-portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1975 [right]

both Polaroid
Robert's vanilla
Warhol's a Polacolor ER print

 

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A: 'The reality is that television is slipping'; the entire article is basically in the title. At the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
B: In a military operation, 2 Canadian hostages make it out of Iraq after being held captive for 4 months.
C: 'Which is the myth?', a fascinating article about myths, public speaking, word choice, golf courses, and ballparks. In the Navasota Examiner.
D: 'Experts say Bible is out, Smoove is in', like something from The Onion but not as funny. At The Maneater.
E: Google: 'D is for Devilish'. New York Newsday - Sep 13 2005. Google's link dead.
F: Google: 'Jury is in'. Alberta Daily Herald Tribune - May 12 2006. Google's link dead.

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A: 'Shake your clothing and slap your shoes', an advice column about brown recluse spiders, 'dollar weed', and termites.
B: Google: 'Your town. Your Neighbors. Your Newspaper.' Provo Daily Herald. Google's link dead.
C: 'The Art of Noise Reduction: Noise Sucks (the quality from your projects)', a fairly pro article. At creativemac.com.
D: 'Out of your league, out of your mind', an article about the 2005 NBA draft. At the Washington Times.
E: 'Find your shopping heaven on your holiday', a daft article about 'how to shop' in several European cities and in New York. At the Telegraph.
F: 'Newspaper in Education, Your Perfect Classroom Partner', an article in Oregon USA's Daily Astorian, in which the newspaper tries to sell the reader on using the paper in schools.

 

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A: American 15-year-olds are worse at math, generally speaking, than their first-world peers.
B: Overall math scores improve on an American standardized test, particularly among students in the 4th and 8th grades [~age 10, age 13; respectively].
C: Google: 'Poll Shows Math Most-Hated School Subject'. Google's link now dead; couldn't find another.
D: On the SAT, America's most common university/college entrance exam, math scores reach a 36-year high.
E: Compared to other first-world peers, Americans in the 4th and 8th grades are now doing a little better in math. Results in reading, however, when compared to international peers, are 'mixed'.
F: George W Bush singles out math and science as 'economic tools'.

 

from Ship Erect:

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A: Morrissey says during a Dublin concert that George W Bush should have died, rather than Ronald Reagan.
B: In the middle of a successful reunion tour, Duran Duran, in their original lineup, play a set for vh1.
C: Duran Duran play Live 8.
D: Buzz for Morrissey's 2006 album, Ringleader of the Tormentors, begins.
E: Michael Stipe and Bright Eyes headline Bring Em Home Now, an anti-war festival at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom.
F: Morrissey's Ringleader of the Tormentors is released.

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points to Steven from Ship Erect for introducing me to Google Trends, which generates line graphs to represent various search terms' popularity, from 2004 to present. you can enter any combination of terms you want. i was hooked immediately. granted, that Google Earth stuff is pretty fun, but this is the shit!

as you can see, Google also gives contextual markers [the letters], but since they're represented by headlines on the actual Google Trends page, they're often baffling. not to say that's bad of course! we all love The Baffling. on Google, the markers for the graph above say things like 'A: Morrissey sparks Net furore' or 'C: Duran Duran bring back Save a Prayer' [accurate, i guess, but Duran Duran had been playing Save a Prayer a whole bunch around that time; it was nothing new at Live 8]. also, several of Google's letter-marker-explaining linx were dead, so i found new ones for these graph posts. they're too tempting not to make.

just like RJR-Nabisco, one day Google will have an addiction for everybody. not that i was looking for one, per se; oh who am i fucking kidding and so on.

why does the vertical axis lack any markings? i do not know.

 

2003
Kodak disposable

 

++ [collect all 5]

 

Wishing

 

Not Half As Portable As You Evidently Think

 

I Don't See Why Not

 

my favorite bi songs in no order

2+2=5 by Radiohead
Fretless by R.E.M.
Rebel Rebel by David Bowie
John, I'm Only Dancing by David Bowie
If You Love a Woman by Dirty Pretty Things
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye by Soft Cell
Driving Your Girlfriend Home by Morrissey
Handsome Devil by The Smiths
Waiting for the Sirens' Call by New Order
Some Kinda Love by The Velvet Underground
Satellite of Love by Lou Reed
There's No Other Way by Blur
We Are the Pigs by Suede
Brass in Pocket by The Pretenders
Ever Fallen In Love? by The Buzzcocks
The Escape Artist by Ludus
(You're the) Devil in Disguise by Elvis
Monkey Gone to Heaven by The Pixies
The Teenager Who Won't Sleep with Me by Waterlaso

 

my favorite straight songs in no order

Driver 8 by R.E.M.
Ceremony by New Order
Do You Remember the First Time? by Pulp
Babies by Pulp
The Boy with the Arab Strap by Belle+Sebastian
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues by Bob Dylan
Frederick by Patti Smith
It's Her Factory by Gang of Four
Mr Brightside by The Killers
Mute Witness by Morrissey
Pregnant for the Last Time by Morrissey
Exit Music (for a Film) by Radiohead
Beat on the Brat by The Ramones
Pinball Wizard by The Who
The Killing Jar by Siouxsie + the Banshees
What She Said by The Smiths
Ecstasy by Lou Reed
Daddy's Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car by U2
France by Carl Barât [Dirty Pretty Things; The Libertines]

et tu?

 

all other entries are in the directory. some questions are answered at return the ring.