1 Mar 2013

The Empire Strikes Dutch



From Indiewire:
Michael Parbot, a French journalist who gained unprecedented access to the 'Empire' production, contributed his footage to two documentaries: “SPFX: The Empire Strikes Back,” a behind-the-scenes look at the film's special effects, and a 1980 Dutch TV program showcasing lightsaber rehearsal footage and interviews with the cast.

The first made it onto the trilogy's Blu-ray release in 2011, but the Dutch program has only been seen in near-unwatchable snippets, appearing last in 2012 with 15 minutes available. Finally though, our clearest and most extended (30-minute) look has arrived, and it features fascinating conversations with Irvin Kershner, Mark Hamill, and a bashful Harrison Ford.

George Lucas himself is notably absent, but the doc shows instead the incredible technical work done by both the actors and crew, facing such situations as shooting in Norway's extreme weather to depict Hoth, and also how to wrangle Tauntauns and Wampas as well.

28 Feb 2013

Jose Parla


Jose Parla-Contemplating Storm

So I'm going to this Jose Parla show this Saturday. When I started the blog - it was going to be a combination of my writing, art and music interests, and some other stuff that gave context to what inspires me and the work I (eventually) produce. That format went kind of awry over the years but it's nice to look back over old posts and see things come full circle. Makes me feel like I'm doing something right...

I was about to post the usual 'hey I was SO into this before you guys...' when I saw the date I posted the original piece - exactly five years ago today. Exactly five years. That's satisfying enough that I don't need to make the point about 'being in there first'.

But I was.



Bob again


Cary Grant was once told, "Every time I see you on the screen, I think, 'I wish I was Cary Grant.'" He replied, "That's just what I think!"

I've been repeating that story ever since I first heard it, and it never fails to amuse audiences, all of whom seem to understand it immediately. Everybody groks that Archie Leach, the poor boy from Liverpool who became "Cary Grant" never fully believed in "Cary Grant," since Cary was, after all, his own invention. On the other hand, here's a similar story, which I also like to tell, that produces very mixed reactions, with some people laughing and others looking puzzled or slightly offended.

An art dealer once went to Pablo Picasso and said, "I have a bunch of 'Picasso' canvasses that I was thinking of buying. Would you look them over and tell me which are real and which are forgeries?" Picasso obligingly began sorting the paintings into two piles. Then, as the Great Man added one particular picture to the fake pile, the dealer cried, "Wait a minute, Pablo. That's no forgery. I was visiting you the weekend you painted it." Picasso replied imperturbably, "No matter. I can fake a Picasso as well as any thief in Europe."

Personally, I find this story not only amusing but profoundly disturbing. It has caused me to think, every time I finish a piece of writing, "Is this a real Robert Anton Wilson, or did I just fake a Robert Anton Wilson?" Sometimes, especially with a long novel, I find it impossible to convince myself that I know the answer. After all, as Nietzche said, "there are no facts, only interpretations"...... Continue reading...

TIZER

My old college chum is having a show. If you dig the smell of spray paint you should go.




Tizer ID crew first solo Show will be at Pure Evil Gallery the 7th March 2013.

14 Feb 2013

13 Feb 2013

'Easter'


nigger no invented for color it was MADE FOR THE PLAGUE the word (art) must be redefined-all mutants and the new babes born sans eyebrow and tonsil-outside logic-beyond mathematics poli-tricks baptism and motion sickness-any man who extends beyond the classic for is a nigger-one sans fear and despair-one who rises like rimbaud beating hard gold rythumn outta soft solid shit-tongue light is coiling serpant is steaming spinal avec ray gun hissing scanning copper head w/ white enamel eye wet and shining crown reeling thru gleem vegetation ruby dressing of thy lips puckering whispering pressing high bruised thighs silk route mark prussian vibrating gushing milk pods of de/light translating new languages new and abused rock n roll and lashing from tongue of me nigger 20.10.74 r.e.f.m.

Patti Smith, liner notes for Rock N Roll Nigger. 



3 Feb 2013

Robert Johnson




'...blues falling down like hail, and the day keeps on remindin' me, 
there's a hellhound on my trail'


24 Jan 2013

Brother Ray



I think this is old. Not sure why I only just found it...

18 Jan 2013

Elliot Smith



Circa 1999 or 2000, director Paul Thomas Anderson oversaw a pilot for a musical VH1 variety show that would have starred his frequent musical collaborator Jon Brion. The late singer-songwriter Elliot Smith appeared in the pilot... He's backed by Brion and Brad Mehldau. As IndieWire points out, footage from the pilot has floated around before, but now a YouTube account associated with Anderson has posted the whole thing online.

15 Jan 2013

And then a cigarette.




An experiment in the miniscule
In an attempt to connect with the outside
The outer limits
The twilight zone

Short-lived
In subjective surroundings
Unclassifiable and unofficial
But an experiment nonetheless

Unhindered by outside influence I am without the restraints of the everyday
The rules and boxes and checklists
I am Wells sitting in his imagined time machine
Only smaller

Less pertinent and
Far less acknowledged
As I sit and light up a pointless cigarette
And drink again
Too early too soon never enough

The experiment is thus –
How
Long
Can
You
Simply
Go
On
Never having to change.


6 Jan 2013

first. day. back


First day back to work tomorrow. Yay. After two weeks off. Nothing accomplished. As planned. I'd rather just do this until summer comes...










21 Dec 2012

Last Exit



 http://www.acartoonchristmas.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/bill-and-teds-excellent-adventures-animated-cartoon-fox-cbs-hanna-barbera.jpg

I'll be concentrating on writing (drinking) over Christmas. So I'll be submitting a lot of work for publication in the new year (being tired and lazy and probably hungover). Going to leave the blog for the next couple of weeks, to focus on being productive elsewhere (wearing trampy track-bottoms and eating crap). Have a good break y'all. Be Excellent to one another.

19 Dec 2012

Pabs


http://www.juxtapoz.com/Gallery/image?format=raw&id=47524&type=orig



Newton



Back in the olden days before my knees turned to concrete, I used to meet up with this guy (and some other weird little dude from New Cross who has since decamped to LALA Land) and skate about after buying comics off him. Newton was always a good artist and for some reason it's taken me this long to link him up. So go HERE and check it out.

17 Dec 2012

Old work


You should really be doing something else.


Look at the earth from space
Be kind to the elderly
Cross your fingers not your eyes
Make bruises show in public
Waste no more time or money or hatred or thought
Kiss your mother
Find a father
Have a baby or 5
Leave the country
Learn something
Take a life
(Any but your own.)
Watch the moon rise quietly and laugh out loud at the
Insignificance
Of
It
All.


14 Dec 2012

On the performance of the performing poet.



  
Do these poets and poetesses desire a career on the
Silver screen
Name up in lights
Flowers down at
Feet? It seems that way tonight.

Would they rather they were a singer or rapper
The label ‘poet’ as just a temporary affliction?
The question hangs in the air.

They writhe and shout and contort themselves while lost
In the moment (Or if not the moment then a moment.
Yet still nowhere near Jimi inside the Star Spangled banner)

And exuding confidence, the crowd falls
In line
Laughing
And then the dreaded WHOO
I hate the whoo

Call me a traditionalist
Call me an old
Man
Call me a hater and jealous and better than you
And I am all these things

But some words are meant to be read
Not read
Out
And while there are exceptions to the rule – this
Particular night was saved by SW – they are few

It is for Carl GJ to discern the introvert/extrovert ratio
I am just here to listen
To make it through to the beautiful reflection of the
Cold and dark, in one piece

Back home alone in my small silent corner
To write about them while they
Tour the stages of the
World.


28 Nov 2012

Shinichi Maruyama




Long exposure nude photography. More HERE.

SWXSB




Off to see this dude and some other spoken worders tomorrow night. I'll try to do a small review later in the week if I don't come out of there totally despondant about my lack of effort towards producing anything creative and and worthwhile in life...

14 Nov 2012

Chet Childress art stuff




I really want to go to this show opening, but it falls on the same night as Saul Williams
at Southbank. Classic. Still, if you're around you should go. Looks good.





4 Nov 2012

Small things to keep you awake at night.


I consider the distance between the
Table and sofa
While my heart
As miner’s canary
Takes its last breath

Too far by a matter of inches
Or just right
The voice laughs
It is never just right

I cannot sleep
There was a time
I think
But no more
Everything is tomorrow and yesterday
Everything I knew was coming
Has
And will

I guess that makes me a real smart guy.






25 Oct 2012

Quote of the night

If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.

Alfred Korzybski


23 Oct 2012

AITU







As previously reported - from the Art in the Underbelly Exhibition - here is David Lemm's art coupled with mine. From the forthcoming booklet of the show.


SG_PJ





19 Oct 2012

She walked in between two thoughts;




The glass case over the cookies looked like one huge breast
A disproportionately bulbous nipple-handle atop it
And
When was I going to turn into that crazy old man
That all around me would find wonderfully eccentric?

I heard the click clack that
Always makes your head turn
And there she was for the first time in, well
The devil only knows how many years

But here now
Yet not the same
Someone I knew who’d been once so
Disarming and light of heart and head
Now looked down at her shoes as though the weight of the room
Was
Too much for her to remain in any one spot
For longer than a few seconds

I stood back and watched as opportunities passed
Her
By
As she ignored - or pretended to ignore
The smiles and eye contact
There was no fear to her but rather apathy

Then looking up she caught my eye and in an instant I was lost again
Swimming in what she used to be
What she could have been
(anything anywhere to everyone)

Her head fell back down just as quickly
She stared towards the floor
Shamed by something
A choice she never made
Or one she did
To be removed, distant, steely yet alive

I felt guilty for reminding her of all those things -
Ordered my coffee and left without a word
Who am I to regret the passing of yet another good one

One who decided to throw it all in for no other reason than
The rest of us just aren’t worth the damn trouble.






12 Oct 2012

'Are you lost yet?'




 

Here's the setlist from Radiohead at the O2 on 9th October. I'm not going to review the show because honestly, it would take too long to find the right words. Suffice to say, now REM are gone, these guys are the closest thing we have to Wyld Stallyns. Bloody awful venue though...

Lotus Flower, Airbag, Bloom, The Daily Mail, Myxomatosis, Bodysnatchers, The Gloaming, Separator, Videotape, Nude, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, Reckoner, There There, The National Anthem, Feral, Paranoid Android.

Give Up the Ghost, I Might Be Wrong, Planet Telex, Morning Mr. Magpie, Street Spirit (Fade Out).

Staircase, Everything In Its Right Place, (True Love Waits intro) Idioteque. 









Quote of the day

In the academic world, most of the work that is done is clerical. A lot of the work done by professors is routine.   Noam Chomsky