Dick in a box
With the new iPhone’s video chat, a second built-in camera faces the user, whose image is shown in the interface as a kind of tiny self-portrait. Of the many narratives instilled in their recent advertising campaign, a women tells her husband that she’s expecting (expectation being Apple’s entire marketing ethos). We the consumer become the husband, experiencing a half-life of their fantasy. In the ad, a perfect hand holds the phone — a model’s, though we accept it as the husband’s, faithful of the narrative.
Shipley, Gary J. Theoretical Animals. (2010)
Was I able to understand this book? – No.
Did I think it was an enriching reading experience? – Yes, absolutely. It’s beautiful. I want to roll around in it. I want to swing from its branches.
— from David F. Hoenigman’s review in 3AM Magazine
Available now from BlazeVox
go upstairs gallimaufry 5
5. There is a new Hobart. It be quench, yo.
17. Seventeen Andy Warhol audio files (thanks, test)
33. Fascinating:
There’s crazy, avant-garde, weird, experimental novels going back almost to the very beginning.
7. The Independent asks: Is popular fiction getting more literary, wiser, good?
122. From flash to novel: Tarah Masih reviews Sherrie Flick.
The Word Made Flesh Mobilizes on Multiple Fronts
Just about one year to the day (7/24/09) from when the idea was launched from this very blog, The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide is an imminent reality. The book–a full-color photo-anthology co-edited by Eva Talmadge and yours truly–will hit stores in October. You’ll be hearing plenty more about it then (we hope), but in the meantime I wanted to let folks know that we now have a website up and running at tattoolit.com. The site–which is primarily a tumblr–updates daily with re-blogs of literary tattoos from around the web that we find, literary quotations that seem like they might be worth writing on your body forever, and in the future will also have some previews/excerpts from the book itself, a book trailer, and whatever else we think of. You can also follow TattooLit on Twitter (the Twitterfeed streams to the website, but please don’t let this stop you from following it). Also^2, there’s the Facebook page. Also^3, even though the book is finished, we’d be glad to post a picture of your literary tattoo on any and all of the above-mentioned, so if you have one or are getting one, please feel free & encouraged to send them our way.
Trash Humpers: “Make it make it don’t fake it”
Watched Trash Humpers last night. Had little to no expectations of how it’d feel. The previews online make it look like it could be a big mess in the badmess way rather than the glorious mess of Harmony Korine’s first two films, Gummo and Julien Donkey Boy, both of which I hugely love. If Mister Lonely felt less prismatic in that way for me in full, it remains unquestionably still engorged with images I will never forget (the black kid riding the pig around? the Uncle Sam spinning basketballs and cackling!), which seems to be Korine’s greatest talent, and one too many forget: putting shit on screen no one else ever would in ways no one else ever would.
Trash Humpers seems to take Korine’s ghetto by way of backyard by way of incidental by way of watch-it-rattle aesthetic to the furthest extent thus far. Made in the light of wanting not to have to play the “make a budget for this movie” game by milking and meeting others’ eyes, Korine turned instead to ghetto-film roots of weird bedrooms, alleyways, parking lots, apartments, the rooms of some invention.
First off, the going rumor that Korine claimed to have edited the film by dubbing between two VCRs is apparently true. Literally scenes transition by showing the crackle and verbiage a VCR displays when switching from Play to Rewind and even some tracking adjustment. The scenes between play mostly like the cream takes of a bunch of huffers wandering around looking for new ways to get off. The central crew here is three people, friends of Korine’s, including his wife, done up in bad old-person make up masks and weird clothes. Korine films and appears various times himself from behind the camera looking like Jim Jones made of plastic. True to the name of the film, they spend a lot of time humping trash. They put their groin on the bin and bang at it in weird silence, as the film has no score, or sometimes while the man behind the camera squawks weird sounds of hack-giggling or sings small lines or screeching Get it Get it, which at first might seem annoying, eekish, but as the film goes on becomes a hobbling refrain.
It is Friday: Go Right Ahead
Damn the men with careful smiles
My head is a jug
Alcoholic philanthropy is still philanthropy
OK I got drunk and forgot I was giving a party
Killed 9 bottles
She got drunk and turned on me like a fish-wife
Summer is not a season, it’s an occupation
Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile
Drink is a rebellion
I’m just happy to be here
Go ahead, talk out your hat
Mussed again, your hair
Agile tongue, thickened