A D Jameson

http://adjameson.com

A D Jameson is the author of three books: the story collection Amazing Adult Fantasy (Mutable Sound, 2011), the novel Giant Slugs (Lawrence and Gibson, 2011), and the inspirational volume 99 Things to Do When You Have the Time (Compendium, 2013). His fiction's appeared in Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Unstuck, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Birkensnake, PANK, and elsewhere. Since 2011, he's been a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Besides HTMLGiant, he also contributes to Big Other and PressPlay. He's currently writing a book on geek cinema.

Black Thorns in the Black Box is coming to Brooklyn

… being “a touring screening of experimental film and video by eleven contemporary artists whose work resonates with the heavy, dark, and mystic obscurity of Black Metal music.” I caught it in Chicago and thought it pretty awesome; you should go:

When: Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 7:30pm [please note the correction!]
Admission: $5
Location: Spectacle Theater (124 South 3rd Street, Brooklyn, NY)

Artists included: Annie Feldmeier Adams & Locrian (Chicago), Gast Bouschet & Nadine Hilbert (Brussels, Belgium), Una Hamilton Helle (London, England), Devin Horan (Brooklyn), Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (Brooklyn), Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt of Semiconductor (Brighton, England), Chris Kennedy (Toronto, Canada), Marianna Milhorat (Chicago), Jimmy Joe Roche (Baltimore), Shazzula & Cultus Sabbati (Brussels, Belgium), and Michaël Sellam (Paris, France).

About the curator: Amelia Ishmael is an artist whose practice includes critiquing, historicising, teaching, and curating. Her recent projects include the traveling art exhibition “Black Thorns in the White Cube” and the academic journal Helvete. She studied studio art and art history at the Kansas City Art Institute and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has published articles on contemporary art with The WIRE, Art21.com, ArtSlant Chicago, and Art Papers.

Events & Film & Music / Comments Off on Black Thorns in the Black Box is coming to Brooklyn
April 26th, 2012 / 8:01 am

The Mystery of the Mysterious Elephant Bird Xmas Post-Punk Song (Now Solved)

Many years ago (like, way back in the mid-to-late-90s), a friend of mine gave me a tape of a radio program, which included a song I fell head-over-heels in love with. But no one I played it for had heard it before, or knew who the band was, or where it had come from.

For years I’d play it for self-professed music connoisseurs; no one was able to identify it. (I tried contacting the DJ without any luck.) Here’s a digitized copy of my ultra-degraded cassette copy, including a few seconds I accidentally taped over one day:

unknown artist – elephant bird song

Meanwhile, I transcribed the lyrics as best I could, Google-searching occasionally for them, to no avail.

I started writing this post to see if you could help me ID the piece—but now there’s no need. Let 2012 be remembered as the year that Jeremy M. Davies solved the Mystery of the Mysterious Elephant Bird Xmas Post-Punk Song!

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Music / 5 Comments
April 24th, 2012 / 11:52 am
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Reconcile the following two thoughts:

  1. The only market for poetry today is other poets.
  2. There are too many MFA programs, and too many poets.
46

Call for Submissions

This is a call for submissions for the -1st issue of decent-er(r)ed.

ABOUT US, BRIEFLY:

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Mean / 19 Comments
April 9th, 2012 / 8:01 am

Maryanne Amacher and Thurston Moore

That’s nice.

Mo(o)re.

Film & Music / 1 Comment
April 4th, 2012 / 8:01 am

I made a video that critiques the opening three scenes of “Inception”

I’m trying out different ways of doing film criticism. In addition to writing articles, I think it makes sense to record commentaries (like the one I just did for Drive) and make critical videos. (My inspirations here are Mike Stoklasa and Jim Emerson.)

So here’s my own foray into the latter:

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Film / 12 Comments
April 2nd, 2012 / 8:01 am

I recorded a commentary track for “Drive”

Hey, HTMLGiant. I recorded a commentary track for Drive; you can download it here. It’s an mp3, 42 MB, 104 minutes long.

Of course I made it so brilliant that you can just listen to it on its own. But if you watch it with Drive (recommended!), it’s all synced up, so cue it to start when the Universal logo starts.

Related posts:

Next, I’ll record commentary for Inception.

And Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

And The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

And Southland Tales.

Update: I forgot to include a link to Scorpio Rising. Here’s a clip:

And here’s the full film.

Film / 27 Comments
March 28th, 2012 / 8:01 am

The Best Recent Stories: The Results

A little while ago, I asked you all to name “the best story that you’ve read in the past few years.” I deliberately didn’t define “best.” After the jump, I’ve compiled what you said …

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Vicarious MFA / 10 Comments
March 26th, 2012 / 8:01 am

R.I.P. Christine Brooke-Rose

I just heard that Christine Brooke-Rose passed away.

I first came across her work thanks to Brian McHale’s Postmodernist Fiction (1987), where he wrote about her 1975 novel Thru.

At the time, I was deeply into concrete poetry, in particular novelists who used concrete poetry techniques (Kenneth Patchen, B.S. Johnson, Ann Quin). So I was hooked. I picked up the 1986 Christine Brooke-Rose Omnibus, which contains Thru as well as its three “companion” novels: Out (1964), Such (1966), and Between (1968). All of them are decidedly unusual; like Johnson and Quin, Brooke-Rose was heavily inspired by the French New Novel of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, and Nathalie Sarraute. (She translated Robbe-Grillet’s In the Labyrinth.) Like all of those authors, Brooke-Rose was a brilliant maker of contemporary fiction who deserves to be more widely read.

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Author News / 20 Comments
March 22nd, 2012 / 12:40 pm

Looking for Brassneck, Looking for Significance

The Wedding Present

Little by little I’m trying to get at a deep concern I have, some means of responding to what I consider to be a common and pressing situation …

A few years back, I stumbled across the music video for the Wedding Present’s song “Brassneck.” This was that band’s first US hit (well, the version that Steve Albini rerecorded was), and a song I’d always liked well enough, whenever I happened to hear it. (It’s from their second studio album, Bizarro [1989].)

This was my first time seeing the video. I spent a great deal of the late ’80s / early ’90s watching MTV, and YouTube has helped me catch up on what I missed. And what struck me about this one is its dance choreography, which reminded me a great deal of Michael Clark’s work. You’ll recall that I’m a tremendous fan of his, in particular his work in Prospero’s Books and Hail the New Puritan. The more that I watched it, the more I became convinced that Clark had somehow been behind it. And so I emailed the Michael Clark Company, asking them whether I was right.

A Company representative graciously wrote me back:

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Film & Music / 8 Comments
March 19th, 2012 / 8:01 am