i’m on another episode of the snow ghost community show, discussing my opinions on art (and everything) in worcester. i’ll cut you to the end, where i say something i think about a lot in a way i’ve never said before: “anything can grow in a garden– who cares?”. also i call everyone with pretentions of being a fine artist in worcester “a chump”. it’ll be great when that bites me in the ass. i’m trying to not look at the camera dead-on, in keeping with my decision to be 3/4 as much as possible.

today i went to the beach, which was great, but i didn’t eat all day and then at 7:30 got really really grouchy. earlier i passed to will and danielle the meme “D.W-P.O.M.F-B.”, a weird mishearing so psychologically damaging i can’t even write it on the internet.

september looks like it may be money month for me, with lots of small scams (aka jobs) for me to run– chiefly silk screening at RISD and the start on the street street fair. there’s more but i don’t want to ruin it. anyway, also bumping this [next] month is a big installation at the new as220 “mercantile block” space in providence. and this is big, like 20 foot ceilings, nigh-unlimited floor space. since it’s a really great opportunity for me, i’m doing that thing i like to do- something i’ve never done and have no skills at and haven’t really thought out supergreat. tentative title “my life 08″. oh, and i got the ask on the virtue of a couple snappy mass emails, nothing else. this is good, but “nothing else”? why not do the unthinkable and just write letters all day? no more nothing! anyway i’m trying to get two weeks off from my troubles to work on the bastard on site, but that may be unfeasible. but it would be fun, and as close to a vacation as i’ll ever get, it seems.

last night it was a little chilly, and get dark earlier than i had expected. today i realized that it was going to get really cold again, and in not a very long time. i’m strategizing for what will surely be, without adequate strategy, a really really rough winter.

here are my current best plans:

and

you know when it’s hot all day and then it rains way hard and it’s awesome but you say well, it’s awesome but i’m happy i’m not out there and then you’re like wait, am i? and then you’re like no? that happened the other day but by the time i had emptied my pockets of everything ruinable (everything except soda money and keys) the rain had really let up to a degree that a mythical regular person would enjoy walking in and stubborn in my resolve i walked a really long way away from my point of departure until it hammered down again and mission accomplished. it was cool, i used to walk late at night a lot, this was like that except it didn’t make me depressed. i walked all the way to the 7 11 near my old house for a suicide soda, which i’m sure helped to elevate the mood, although also someone told me about ionizing properties of falling droplets of water that cause your feelings to better but now that i write it down and look at it, that seems like pretty bogue science. ok, maybe it’s just this, which we all know: there’s a certain flavor of “dumb + confusing + valueless” fun that, when realized, is a fine draught of amiable meaninglessness.

and sspeaking of no-wrong-answerhood, last night’s incisor / tinsel teeth / nadir show was a ripper with lots of fake blood and white clothing and masks and nice dresses. mike’s new pedal pooped out so even though we practiced a hundred times (aka 4 times) the universe conspired once again to sound us like ten eggs in a box in a swamp, WHICH IS FINE. nadir has a 7″ out, which rules, and it’s two different genres if you play it on 45 (as intended) or 33 1/3. tinsel teeth was good although it’s awkward to watch someone’s unpicked wedgie.

sold more t shirts to the comic book store, so even though i’m pretty strapped for cash, i got some awesome comics (utilizing the player’s discount that is “payment in trade”). i got 2 paperbacks of old family circus (”PEACE, MOMMY, PEACE!” (1969) and “WANNA BE SMILED AT?” (1970)), 2 issues of jack kirby’s 2001 comic, and the new fantagraphics book of the comics of lyonel feininger. the family circus books are really good– better design than later ones and the jokes seem less trite maybe, or you maybe you think they’re more “classic” or whatever; the 2001 comics are pretty nuts– a ten issue series filling in the gaps between the apes and the spacemen in batshit kirby style; the feininger stuff is, duh, awesome. i’ll try to do a full review once i digest a little.

one of sheryl-ann’s friends got pnemonia, and i bought her ticket to see MIA tonight. it was $25, which is maybe a lot of money, maybe not, and it was at the palladium. i like MIA- both albums (and the mixtape) totally TOTALLY rule. the production, the lyrics, the delivery, everything. the videos are great, and her style is excellent. she came from a mud hut to international acclaim in 15 years, with a 505, some spray paint. i had a good time at the show, but it was really just a show about the thing, not the thing itself. we’ve talked about this before, this show/party // joining/being dichotomy, and once again, shows are awesome, but this was a big show, there was a power relationship (in that we paid $25 to watch someone on a huge stage), it was pretty mediated. it was fun, and it was great to see a mess of folks in the audience, and you have to go see the band you like when they’re on tour, but it was a lot less personal, a lot less crucial, than just playing the cd at a party or in your room or whatever.

oh, also, i missed most of the opening band and then there was an ipod shuffling for 45 minutes before MIA took the stage, but signaling the start of MIA’s performance was a 5 minute video of kouichi toyama, nihilist candidate for governor of tokyo (pictured above). the lady standing next to me couldn’t see the subtitles, which were on the bottom of the screen (NB: i’m very tall) so i read some of them back to her, which put it in my head the rest of the night. here’s an excerpt (but i recommend watching the whole video):

This nation is horrible. I have no interest whatsoever in political reform or any kind of reform. Nothing will be solved by reforming or changing anything. We are no longer in such an optimistic state! We must abandon this detestable nation. This nation must be destroyed! I do not have a single constructive proposal! The only thing we must do now is “Scrap and Scrap”… Annihilate everything that exists!

this really should have closed the night. oh well!

further reading in re show/party: hakim bey: immediatism. it’s an old essay, and there are some funny anachronisms (like the perceived musical utopia of exchanging tapes of music through the mail at cost), but these all somehow add.

ssorry if this is all tiresome, we just need to work out a new paradigm of party!

yoni played the other night at the go go, and called me out on writing (essentially) that a party is doing and a show is watching. he didn’t really argue with words, he just mentioned that he disagreed, and then the sshow was so good, well i just have to amend (without backing down)– a party is creating, a show is joining. when it’s something worth joining with and you’re in a joining mindframe, a show can be a transcendental experience.

friday night i joined at downhill mansion with lars & mariah, astronaut, rozasia, and dd/mm/yyyy. i didn’t really want to go but my horoscope (!) said i should go “on a trip” and “be charming” so that’s what i did i guess. lars & mariah i really enjoyed as i always do. this time they had an old-timey “rhythmbox” drum machine, of the sort that might be attached to a home organ, but they couldn’t really ever get it right on the beat, but sometimes things would shuffle in and line up in weird ways, and then when they didn’t there was this shaggs vibe, it ruled. astronaut played “dark ambient”, with keyboards on the floor. i thought it was boring, and sometimes i like being bored, but this time i didn’t like it. to be fair 1/3 of their band was absent. rozasia was super awesome, squiggly jammers “just” sloppy enough, with a loud flautist and everyone pushing and shoving and doing the basement dance. they were so awesome that i couldn’t watch the last band who were in my eyes “just a band”. maybe i was wrong but anyway it’s hard to see the rules rewritten and then immediately see the rules again and be like “you again?”.

saturday i joined at the go go with bone zone, terribles, and the aforementioned yoni gordon. yoni played his electric and played ssome hits and won some folks and shared his experience and told a story about seeing a giant person, i loved it. terribles played with their new loud equipment and it ruled. now that jamie has a well-paying job he’s addicted to ebay, and recently bought a new amp, a new bass head for mike, a headset mic for matt carroll, and one of those foot synths that geddy lee uses. it was off the chain, easily the rowdiest show ever at the go go with folks flying everywhere but the density high enough that no one got hurt and somehow no one got thrown through a plate glass window. as dennis would say, gnarly times.

getting the room even more set up but not “there” yet. last night i cut an escape hatch in my ceiling, this afternoon i have to go get the handles i need for the ceiling, and make more shelves.

today during the day i didn’t really do a lot or get a lot done, so when andrea asked everyone at the table this evening what was the best thing that happened i didn’t really have an answer. in retrospect the best thing up to that point was reading this in a book, and copying it into the little notebook i always have:

the white chrysanthemum
even when lifted to the eye
remains immaculate

of course it’s bashõ, quoted in the article “haiku and the democracy of poetry as a popular art”, which is the only part i intend to read of “sources of japanese tradition vol 2″, which doesn’t even have pictures, but looks like it does, which is why i picked it up in the first place. i’m feeling no shame about not making headway on any one of a vast horde of half-started projects. let’s face facts– the best thing to come out of a system based on guilt is the exorcist movie, and the exorcist 3.

i’ve been reading a lot about the musical communication systems of neanderthals. i’ve been listening to tapes at night and then the tape stops and i listen to crickets in the field. i gave myself a haircut but i kept the top long, partly so i’d have more to cut later. there’s been a decent hubbub over renewed interest in the simulation argument, which addresses the theory that our reality is someone else’s computer program; it’s funny in that it doesn’t really “change the game”, but it does introduce a good and interesting argument for a creator, one whose interests are possibly deducible, one whose goals are a sort of entertainment and curiosity, possibly “hands-off”, possibly “cold messin’”, one whose reward criteria (if rewards even exist) is quite possibly interestingness rather than goodness. also “turtles all the way down“– i love shit like that.

in the evening me and sylvan and sarah and penny purtle walked to the seben eleben for sodas and candy bars and ended up hanging out on the curb watching tons of water pour out of a huge hole in the street for a very long time. we were all waiting for the street to buckle and a huge truck to fall in, but this did not happen. when we all really had to go to the bathroom, that’s when we left.

oh, sylvan, i still owe you a dinner. i really want that dinner to be cereal, and not because i’m a cheapskate, although i am a cheapskate.

the new phone books came today, which is really not notable.

when cool breeze was living with his dad and they shot holes in the wall with a revolver so they could run water pipes through to the other room, they stacked phone books next to the wall to catch the bullet.

i don’t know where the idea “to knock someone out painlessly with a phone book” came from, but it’s an idea i use often, often as an offer to a griping person. on two occasions there were actual tries which were neither painless nor successful, once on ML (by me), once on me (by ML), each time during an exquisite and manic personal romantical hell. i guess they were successful in that they added a fine amount of drama and camaraderie, with an avowed “you brought this upon yourself and i’d do the same in a flash” on the part of the bookswinger. i don’t not understand people that don’t understand this, but i can’t say i exactly trust them either.

speaking of trust and casual near-obliteration, there was a party at my house a few days ago and i was certainly (as mike t says) into the night. i rarely drink, and was even against it for a while, so on the occasions when i do drink (always in celebration, always with others) it’s a sacrament. in other words, i do a good job. i was wearing my phone book shirt, which features two duck-headed people having seriously tantric sex while rainbow sprinkles rain down on them, and i realized the connection between the band and drunkenness (and other things), which is abandon. at the party i was saying some wild shit but i stuck to it, didn’t back down, and it worked. similarly, phone book was a chance for me to eschew musical rules, guidelines and safety nets i had always used, and prove (to myself alone) that i could have nothing, keep going, and it’d work out, even if (and actually, because), at times, i looked like an idiot. i’m not saying that everyone should get shitfaced every night, but i do think that periodically facing reckless abandon, in a positive, creative manner, is good for a person’s developement, which is ongoing. that night i had a dream about a 4-color comic book that i knew i would draw in the future, full of complete nonsense, but the sort of nonsense i am not, right now, able to create. the pages clicked by in a rapid-fire slideshow fashion, as if i were a ghost flying through the book while the book was shut.

in a few days jim (phone book drummer) is moving to minneapolis to go to grad school. i’m bummed for me but mostly psyched for him. he’s got a new tape coming out, with a lot of weird beats and fake rapping. to quote: “za za ra za wa za za hand / zabba labba za understand”. jim rules. PHONE BOOK!

continuous somethings have lately been alwaysing in pretty flagrant ways, but i’m rolling with it– today’s little things not entirely lining up means that tomorrow will tell if the new comic will be done on time, which only matters in that i kind of have to print it before i get into the next one or it’ll just keep getting put off.

last night to continue a theme, sitting up until the wee hours with skittles (back in town for a good month), shooting the shit and listening to young “three points” wasserman relay her awesome suburban woes. again, i’m not trying to be rude or say that i’m better at life (i’m not), nor am i trying to (as cha cha once said) logic anyone’s experience out of existence, but it was totally fun. fire makes a sharp spear strong, so i didn’t tell her not to worry, but i did tell her to follow her instinct to learn to play the bass guitar– that’s good strategy for being a gay teenager in suburban florida in the first years of the 21st century, right?

no joke, this is the last panel of today’s “classic peanuts”:

good night!

i honestly spent all night almost writing up a huge thing on the old little archie comics– about how the art is totally different- darker and more detailed, about how the plots are harsher with weird adventure and the romantic angles are even more openly fucked, about how little archie comics use adventure stories to remind you that being a kid is constantly at the excitement level of foiling smugglers and subduing an escaped gorilla. basically, a big up for little archie. it’s sort of a shame to throw a few hours worth of writing away, but ultimately all this essaying was taking me out of the game and not leading me a navigable path to the important conclusion of the night, which is that everyday is still a damn gorilla, everyday is hiding in an oil drum from a mercenary, and the difference between us and most people is that most people are (or pretend to be) archie, and we are little archie– different simultaneous facets of the same jewel; closer-to-the-void versions of retconned milquetoast supplanters.

i actually love huge edits like this, and find them enormously satisfying– the other day i wrote for 4 hours for a new zine and then replaced it all with one word: “hi!”.

saturday there was a big party for the 13th anniversary of the collective house i used to live at. the party was fun with a lot of great folks and dancing and carrying on and spilling drinks on people who are moms and getting your feet really stomped on and discovering really dark bruises on your ribs the next day that you can’t remember what they could possibly be from. dan wars made a mix tape, matt smith rented a car, the curtin brothers were there, it was a good time. of course, in the same breath i should say that there were a number of conspicuous absences, and with less of a connection to migratory crusties and general weirdodom at the house, there was a pronounced lack of “wild cards” as psibs put it. no greasy carharts, no facial tattoos, no forestry names, no one in a circus, stuff like that. come on, go go, shake off that anti-faustian 13 year old fuddy-duddiness and embrace real diversity- up the funners and creative scumbags!

i should add that i like everyone at the house, even the people who have careers (which is almost everyone). also i should say that today mcoe told me that him and ML and gran turismo had a roman candle fight in the woods- that gives me hope. ATTN more weirdos: move to worcester!

drawing above by ML

GT came through with that “trapped in the closet 1 - 12″ dvd tonight, and just our luck sheryl ann dropped by so we got to talk it up a ton before watching it and also see it through her eyes (she had only ever heard part of the first song and nothing else, which i find kind of amazing). if you haven’t seen TIC, you should really seek it out. i’ve expounded on TIC and the “pied piper of R&B” before, but here’s here goes for posterity, in the list item format:

• the format is astounding- a serialized pop operetta- i don’t know why more people don’t seize on this (well, i do- pop artists are rarely storytellers).

• the plot is great- a maddening webwork in which every character and element of the story comes back two or three times in unexpected ways.

• kellz is a truly great artist, with a great imagination and the confidence to make just about anything work (he claims that there will be 30 chapters before it’s all through).

• the performances of every character, telephone, and siren (all by r kelly himself) are perfectly nuanced, even when he’s grandstanding on a drawn-out high note or in a polyrhythmic bickering match.

• the videos are perfectly shot in a way that looks more like a play than a flashy video and evokes noir without looking cheap.

• the characters are likable and all possess an extremely affable “well, it sure is a crazy world” vibe coupled with genuine and fiery passion for life and all that it entails.

but most importantly

• the dialog is famously non-clever, choosing to have people talk in a very realistic way, which is to say, ineloquent. occasionally someone gets in a good line or dig on another character, but mostly it’s the kind of emotional sputtering you say when you’re running so hot you’re about to pass out. all the memorable lines are the ones that seem the stupidest, but they are all things, which, in this position, a person would really say, like “shit, think, shit, think.”.

and

• the motivations of the characters is similarly set in this “freaked out animal” mode. emotions turn on a dime from furious to desolate to laughing togetherness, heated arguments get temporarily derailed by pointless minutia, all real life shit that you’d otherwise never hear in a pop song.

in the commentary (yes, i watched the commentary and the behind the scenes featurette), r kelly talks about how huge his legacy is going to be for this, and i actually believe him. for the format alone, he could be huge. for his writing, he’s bigger than david mamet, bigger than any of those dudes. dudes: “i believe i can fly”. dudes: “ignition (remix)” IN WHICH: our protagonist is drunk and gets called on it, is at a party that is explicitly NOT catered (”food everywhere” is what- bags of tostitos?), and gets kicked out of a hotel lobby, not caring a whit, just living and loving and driving and beeping and doing it again. not a “bad boy” that we love, just a creature on the earth, which we are.

mtv.com reports a new DVD this july, chapters 13 - ?.

god bless robert sylvester kelly.

well, i didn’t get to do anything i had hoped to do- i stayed up all night working on the planetarium and up to the exact minute before we opened on friday. as it is in all endeavors lately, 80% of the things i tried to do for it didn’t pan out. the important part is that on saturday i missed my sister elsa’s graduation from library school.

living so close to a college has desensitized me to graduation, and more than any real accomplishment, the standard “graduation” has come to signify a certain type of coming of age into a world i don’t care about, or the end of a waste of time. at best, it’s the turning of a page in a book so vast that the selection of any page to celebrate seems arbitrary. my sister going to library school is different though- she’s wanted to be a librarian for as long as i can remember and the graduation is, not the culmination of a dream, but a recognition and sanctification of a dream. i really wish i could’ve been there.

to sum up, it’s been raining and i’ve been a complete ghost- no shadow, incapable of grasping objects or saying full words. on the lighter side of things, the planetarium did get finished (to a degree), indian food is still good, and the cat at forbes st can reportedly say “hello”. elsa, i’m very proud of you.

johnny hart, who wrote and drew the comic strip “BC” and wrote “wizard of id”, passed away at his drawing desk a few days ago. i’m sure many of you are wondering why i’m taking time to note this, so here is a brief synopsis of the unstated facts in BC for those familiar with but perhaps unaware of the significance of the finer points.

BC’s constant references to christ as someone who lived and died (and whatever else) make it clear that the strip does not actually take place “BC” (before christ). jokes about modern technology (without ever showing modern technology) coupled with a few weird references to modern events that took place “a long time ago” (read about in “an ancient scrap of newspaper”), point to a period far in the future, possibly after some terrible collapse that turned every building and material object to sand (possibly late tribulation). the population has been decimated and only a few people remain– a handful of more or less interchangeable men and two women. one of the women is conventionally pretty, the other is named “fat broad”. occasionally a visitor arrives from italy. also, one of the men has a pen pal who lives across some uncrossable expanse of water. everyone has a name, but there are so few people the names are barely ever used. despite whatever horror they may have endured, they want for nothing and spend their day in idleness, strolling the hills and playing at having jobs. any one of the men might suddenly and just for a day become a car salesman, psychiatrist, or baseball player. some jobs, like that of baseball coach or guru, are so psychologically ingrained that those holding these jobs never do anything else. should the people ever need advice, they merely consult the rocks of the earth, which issue small index cards on which answers are printed. in addition to the people, there are a few (less that 20) animals (birds, snakes, turtles, anteaters, clams), and an indefinite number of ants. the ants alone have some sort of organized society- they go to school, get married, raise children, etc.. the ants are also the only creatures that die.

looking over the unstated facts i’m kind of amazed at how much crazy shit a person can simply roll with day to day. also it’s amazing to look back at the wizard of id, which stayed funny as BC didn’t, and note that (as comics curmudgeon pointed out) johnny hart wasn’t failing to be funny, he was choosing to be weird for this particular strip. and for that matter it speaks volumes that that the most evangelical comic strip has a more successful counterpart named after the id- the name of all repressed drives to human endeavor.

ok, start up your term papers!