in montreal, hope i'm not homeless tomorrow

japanese work wear is fashionable  more

Orwell named names to British intelligence--comapring this to Animal Farm, Alexander Cockburn complicates the implicaitons.

The Modern ARt Podcast has a great ability to work through small details and get a larger understanding of the artist in question--this interview with Robert Adams, talks about his move from Colorado to Oregon, the problems of depicting landscapes, the history of photography in America, and how an accidental kind of politics/enviromentalism became nessecary to discuss, to submit to. direct link

Gay Parades were banned in Moscow for 100 years

vintage polaroids.  (i guess all polaroids are vintage now)

tumblr of vintage AV  movies.


De Palma might be repeating himself--but i'll be there first day.

a story about one autistic kid who wanders off in west virginia, and the search and rescue that accompines it, the story branches off in two ways--a discussion of what it means for neuro-diverse people wandering off, and the problems with search and rescue teams lead by large memebers of the community. Beautifully written and well constructed article, must read. one of the women who was mentioned in the story, Nadia bloom, was lost for a couple of weeks, and spent the time taking pictures. Link goes to some of her images.

Did the Koch Brothers buy the VP nom for 100m? And speaking of Romney, one of his close contacnts in Miamai previously trafficked cocaine.

Billy Cunningham on Anna Piaggi

N=1 on Brutalism

Scientists have found a way to make neo-lithic seeds to rebloom, in Siberia. 32 000 years old. also, 2500 year old siberian tattoos

i want this Pasedena hosue Or this Greek Revival House in NOLa



Vogue Themed Bar Mitzah, complete with dancing

i wonder, if this speech by Obama, which is awesome and argues forcefully against Akin;s view of Rape, is not only a bit obvious, but uses women as pawns in the larger argument in a political contest--that women working through women's issues, in public, would hold more power.

Pinkash Abbey Ecclestical Incense

Anatomical Macroons

More Fat Pony! Kate Beaton FTW

I am worried about Randy Travis


Saddest Songs Ever including this one, which is just bleak:


(which contains two lines that destroy me: "there is a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes/jesus died for nothing i suppose"


Marketing Pamphlets of The Computer History Musuem

first person document about getting an abortion before roe v wade

I keep thinking that (and this is true of all QT films) that Inglorius Basterds is a manifesto about Cinema--but it seems to be, the ntirate, and the burning, and the destroying of the theater via film; in fact when Shoshanna says: "I am going to burn down the Cinema, on Nazi night, and I am not going to do it alone"--what Tarintino says, is that Cinema has the potential to destroy the real--that the act of respresentation is an act of ahistorical political "realness" that uses its own form to deconstruct power. Which is also what is said, in the inclusion of the clip that looks like Refiensthal, or Aldo Raine saying that killing Nazis was their version of going to the movies.

Punk-Prayer "Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away"

(choir)

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away
Рut Putin away, put Putin away

(end chorus) ...
Black robe, golden epaulettes
All parishioners crawl to bow
The phantom of liberty is in heaven
Gay-pride sent to Siberia in chains

The head of the KGB, their chief saint,
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order not to offend His Holiness
Women must give birth and love

Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!
Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!

(Chorus)

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist
Become a feminist, become a feminist

(end chorus)

The Church’s praise of rotten dictators
The cross-bearer procession of black limousines
A teacher-preacher will meet you at school
Go to class - bring him money!

Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin
Bitch, better believe in God instead
The belt of the Virgin can’t replace mass-meetings
Mary, Mother of God, is with us in protest!

(Chorus)

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away
Рut Putin away, put Putin away

pats dday at woodlot--hen of wood mushrooms, ox tounge, various sides including fingerling potato salad, a beaujolis rose, bishops bar.

the interesthing thing was when we sidelined into a discussion of porn.

there is a place somewhere near st clair east--let's call it bayview village, east york, that if you stand on it, there is a sheer drop, down to mud creek. standing there, with suburban style fifties houses behind you, trees in the midground, and highrises in the background, if you get really lucky, let's say midnight or so, you can see a train rushing by.

and if you are really really lucky, walking towards st clair, across the bridge, closest to st clair and yonge, you get to hear traffic and the creek make the same kind of rushing sound.

(sometimes, like underneath old mill, you can hear cars and water and subway trains work like an accidental steve reich, but that's a fruit machine on triple cherries)


and if you are the luckiest person in the world, luckier than the fruit machine and the triple cherries, you get to hear all those noises in the middle of a three hour ramble with yr best friend.

new history of gospel's queer subtext.

joe brainaird, poet and artist has been getting some major love lately, including but not limited to a Library of America volume, and this fulm.

i want this map

indestructable  usb key--dropable from 100m, emergable in water.

i have read alot about the Pussy Riot situation in Russia--and i have been thinking alot about it. i have four thoughts. the link goes to an article about the connections b/w putin's government and the orthodox church--pussy riot's protest intended to show these similarties, and so ironically, it might be a wedge for religious freedom in russia. 2) i think more and more the aesthetics of protest work when one subject or one idea is being broadcast--narrowness of focus seems to increase the efficacy. 3. i think the madonna/patti smith/bjork is earnest, but i think they might not knwo exactly what is going on, and re:madonna, is v. much using the pussy riot people as a way of reentrenching her radicalism. 4. i do worry about these eloquent women and their rship to the state, and wonder if they are about to move to the west.



backyard pvc railroad.

red shanked douc is my new favourite monkey

wikipedia list of lists

will romney doubling down on ultra right wingers  (i.e the ad in the link about obama's war on religion and chosing ryan) really win him the election?

john lahr on  cole porter, talks about him as clever enough to surrive, and becomes an example of the problems of pleasure and leaisure as subversion.

vital story on the shrinking of the family farm, and small towns in the american midwest, touching on ideas ranging from giving the land back to the bison, organic farming as a bulwark against industralism, those industrial farmers requiring less and less manpower, and the stauch conserativeness that refuses to see disaster. must read.



more on african american  voter supression

on why much of the discusison of disability and the olympics can be dismissed as "inspiration porn"

Best objects on the edges of the frames in Sofia Coppala's Somewhere

1. half deflated mylar balloons 
2. a box of proepcia tablets 
3. grey haired man, eating, in a defeated way
4. closing gate of a house off sunset
5. still life of beer bottle, pear, orange in marmount
6. lists of gallery notices taped to mirror 
7. the two valets at the four season
8. alien mask
9. special fx artist wearing a grey t shirt w robots on it
10. ruscha print, still half wrapped from shipping 
11. still life of obliesks and marble balls in milan
12. two women in short gold dresses on italian television 
13. two yellow boats just outside of big e sporting goods, 
14. helicopter
15. grey white wall 
16. all those palm trees

• May 1964: Mark Maples, a 15-year-old Long Beach, CA, resident, was killed when he tried to stand up on the Matterhorn Bobsleds. Maples (or his companion) foolishly unbuckled his seatbeat and attempted to stand up as their bobsled neared the peak of the mountain. Maples lost his balance and was thrown from the sled to the track below, fracturing his skull and ribs and causing internal injuries. He died three days later.
• June 1966: Thomas Guy Cleveland, a 19-year-old Northridge, CA, resident, was killed when he attempted to sneak into Disneyland along the Monorail track. Cleveland scaled the park's sixteen-foot high outer fence on a Grad Nite and climbed onto the Monorail track, intending to jump or climb down once inside the park. Cleveland ignored a security guard's shouted warnings of an approaching Monorail train and failed to leap clear of the track. He finally climbed down onto a fiberglass canopy beneath the track, but the clearance wasn't enough -- the oncoming train struck and killed him, dragging his body 30 to 40 feet down the track.
• August 1967: Ricky Lee Yama, a 17-year-old Hawthorne, CA, resident, was killed when he disregarded safety instructions and exited his People Mover car as the ride was passing through a tunnel. Yama slipped as he was jumping from car to car and was crushed to death beneath the wheels of oncoming cars.
• June 1973: Bogden Delaurot, an 18-year-old Brooklyn resident, drowned trying to swim across the Rivers of America. Delaurot and his 10-year-old brother managed to stay on Tom Sawyer Island past its dusk closing time by climbing the fence separating the island from the burning settlers' cabin. When they decided to leave the island a few hours later, they chose to swim across the river rather than call attention to their rule-breaking by appealing to cast members for help. Because the younger brother did not know how to swim, Delaurot tried to carry him on his back as he swam to shore. Bogden Delaurot went down about halfway across the river. The younger boy remained afloat by dogpaddling until a ride operator hauled him aboard a boat, but Bogden was nowhere to be found. His body was not located by searchers until the next morning.
• 7 June 1980: Gerardo Gonzales, a recent San Diego high school graduate, was killed on the People Mover in an accident much like the one that had befallen Ricky Lee Yama thirteen years earlier. Gonzales, in the early morning hours of a Grad Nite celebration, was climbing from car to car as the People Mover entered the SuperSpeed Tunnel adjacent to the former America Singsbuilding. Gonzales stumbled and fell onto the track, where an oncoming train of cars crushed him beneath its wheels and dragged his body a few hundred feet before being stopped by a ride operator.
• 4 June 1983: Philip Straughan, an 18-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, resident, also drowned in the Rivers of America in yet another Grad Nite incident. Straughan and a friend -- celebrating both their graduations and Straughan's eighteenth birthday -- had been drinking quite heavily that evening. They sneaked into a "Cast Members Only" area along the river and untied an inflatable rubber maintenance motorboat, deciding to take it for a joyride around the river. Unable to adequately control the boat, they struck a rock near Tom Sawyer Island, and Straughan was thrown into the water. His friend travelled back to shore to seek help, but Straughan drowned long before his body was finally located an hour later.
• 3 January 1984: Dolly Regene Young, a 48-year-old Fremont, CA, resident, was killed on the Matterhorn in an incident remarkably similar to the first Disneyland guest death nearly twenty years earlier. About two-thirds of the way down the mountain Young was thrown from her seat into the path of an oncoming bobsled, her head and chest becoming pinned beneath its wheels. An examination of Young's sled revealed that her seatbelt was not fastened at the time of the accident, but because she was riding alone in the rear car of a sled no one could determine whether or not she had deliberately unfastened her belt.
• 24 December 1998: In a tragic Christmas Eve accident, one Disneyland cast member and two guests were injured (one fatally) when a rope used to secure the sailing ship Columbia as it docked on the Rivers of America tore loose the metal cleat to which it was attached. The cleat sailed through air and struck the heads of two guests who were waiting to board the ship, Luan Phi Dawson, 33, of Duvall, Washington, and his wife, Lieu Thuy Vuong, 43. Dawson was declared brain dead two days later and died when his life support system was disconnected.
  This accident resulted in the first guest death in Disneyland's history that was not attributable to any negligence on the part of the guest (it was the result of a combination of insufficiently rigorous ride maintenance and an insufficiently experienced supervisor's assuming an attraction operator's role) and prompted a movement for greater government oversight of theme park operations and safety procedures.
• 5 September 2003: A 22-year-old man, Marcelo Torres of Gardena, California, died, and several other guests were injured, when a locomotive separated from its train along a tunnel section of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Torres bled to death after suffering blunt force trauma of the chest.

forgot to post my atlantic debut.

here

finding it hard to work, anxiety severe, like a knot in my chest, taut, snaring.

I can do the standard liberal version of this passage, in my sleep, and I am sure that you have heard the gospel interpeted this way, in class or in yr reading, or on the pulpit. It is the one that talks about how through the inspiration of Christ,  people who thought they had only enough for themselves, learned that they had enough to share with their neighbours—that the magnaminous nature of this miracle comes from a willingness to engender community.

I can also talk about more traditional views of this passage—ones that are slightly more alien—ones that talk about how the feeding of the five thousand, becomes a larger metaphor for God’s realtionship to humanity. In this metaphor, that Christ took so little and created so much, means that through our belief in Him, will result in blessings—not only the small blessings of a return to the original, of barely being satited, but of excess.

Both of  these messages fit seamlessly into the idea of the passage as one of Eucharistic power. That to have Eucharist requires the gathering of a community—that the Lord’s supper is one of like minded people, working for a common good—and a common good related to being feed, and feeding each other. It is also about the constantly renewing commitment to the Lord—the excess nature of love, that She has for us, the knowledge that we will be provided and protected because we eat together.

I have been thinking about the passage, about the gospel—and these two readings came to me in the first few hours, but settling on them seemed unsatisfying. They need to be said, and the two working together and not in opposition was the beginning of a wider understanding, but there was one passage that I stumbled on, and that I kept returning to.

It is a passage in the middle of the Gospel. So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve basket (John 6:13). This whole gospel passage is filled with places of ambiguity, of portent and sign, but these passages—this seems to have something to tell us. I was talking to Maggie about this passage, and going through what I was thinking, and she said that it was Trinity, so they were a bit more patient about the intellectual, and allowed the preacher to be a bit more abstract.  So this sermon will be a bit about taking a dog out for a walk—but I am going to try to make it as practical as I can towards the end, though I am not sure there will be moral exhortations.

The gathering of the fragments is one of the problems of our age—we live in an age that is good at sorting out what the edges mean, where the fabrics tear, where the gaps are, what is absent, and what has never been filled. This is called deconstruction—it is good and useful work, it is moral work, and if we can add a small social justice edge, it is work that allows us to know how to feed each other—to analyze who has not been feed, and how best to do the feeding.

In this sense, we are kind of doing the work of Derrida, and that name, you know—you kind of don’t need to read him, to know that we are working through the project that he elucidated, even as Christians, and Derrida, got closest to defining the term: “But is what we call deconsturction, not above all a taking into account of f orces of dissaaction, dislocation, unbinding forces, in a world of difference and heterogenity…” And that has been the project—if we can be narracissitic, if we can think that, these people in this room, are the usual set of people, which is obviously not true—but this has been a project—a way of noting the forces, and the power of the forces, this taking into account, and perhaps not working past that, perhaps only thinking about the fragment.

If we keep deconstructing,  if we keep thinking of readings of scripture that foreground the fragmented, allow for the fragmented to remain, think about holes, tears, collapses, do we refuse to actually think about what the implications are when we gather up the fragments,

The fragment here, is the fracturing of bread, the fracturing of the bread, becomes the fracturing of the body of Christ—and so this fracture to fragment, this fragment of bodily desire, that leads with hope to the restoring, to the unbroken bones and complete spirit of the crucified Lord, but there are details in this passage—fragments that we could gather like the 12 disciples.

We should notice that Christ does not gather the fragments. Christ worked with the twelve, and with others around him. There are many miracles and more prosiac spaces where he eats with his neighbours, and there are rarely details about who gathers and who cleans—there is the assumption that the tussle of give and take, the dishes get done and the fragments get picked up, the detail does not need to be spoken, but here, in this space he sends the disciples to do his work, to find the food, and to collect the food after he has taught. He sets Himself apart. In this sense, he is telling the disciples that the gathering up the fragments is gathering up the body.

I mentioned  that before—this is foreshadowing, and the foreshadowing rests on one of the centeral tensions of the church. The fragments are not restored to wholeness. You know, there is more then the disciples could hope for—five little barley loaves—the loaves of the poor, rough loaves, cheap loaves, made of the chaff of substandard grain, and a few small fishes—and what results from that is overflowing baskets, but it is not overflowing baskets filled with better bread, or more luxiorious fishes, it is not even baskets filled with whole loaves and whole fishes—there is enough to feed here, but they are still fragments.

In this sense—when we are called to gather the fragments as a community of God, we are not called to restore the fragments here. In a few minutes here, Maggie will fracture a piece of whole bread, in order to feed us, and in this fragmentation and feedng, she gathers us together. The broken, the falling apart, the difference, dislocation, and hetergenity, bind themselves into a miracle of communal action.

For the Anglican communion—a communion that rests on as much about what they are not, as much as what they are—who were founded on not being communal, and not being Roman, and not being Calvinist, of the fragments of refusal and working of a solution which honours otherness and fragmentation, but a fragmentation that has been gathered, has a form and an order. We are a church that is whole in our fragmentation, because of our fragmentation—our baskets are overflowing because we gather the fragmentation together as a whole, so that the act of gathering, is marked by this delightful, cosmic irony. There is a magnaminty of the humble, an excess that can only be found via the gathering, but an excess that becomes the symbol of a Christian figure, the texture of that irony, the gestural nature of those desires for wholeness returned as a kind of fragmentation, returns itself to the message of the divine—it is the same irony of the beaatuides, where the first will be last, and the last will be first, to name a smaller example. 

The question then, becomes—how do we gather with respect, how do we respect fragmentation without the fear of schism, how do we note which gaps or tensions need to be repaired, and which can be left as an intergral part of who we are—and how do we convince ourselves of the magnamity of a restored Gospel.

I think these questions can be answered with much caution, with a humility, and with a belief in the centrality of the idea of gathering, as both a noun and a verb. We have to recognize the fragmentation, and the collection—and we have to be wary of the desire to restore into wholeness, for that restoration is the work of God, we cannot create one body, but we gather, in this room, a dozen bodies, and attempt to work, through our own fragmentaiton, to a muddled middle ground, that muddling—the small, localized, and intimate work of daily gathering, will be enough for t he magnamity of the divine to bless us. 

took a walk with the palm trees as the daylight fell
Sangria in a canteen
Talking to myself
This tattoo on my left hand
Is turning purple-ish blue
Daydreams of the romance
Daydreams of you
My pretty woman in a ballgown
I'm Richard Gere in a tux
Getting married in a courthouse
Writing vows in a rush
Making out before the judge
With my teenage wife
Got a wedding band done
That I just might die with

It's an American wedding
They don't mean too much
But we were so in love
We had an American wedding
Now what's mine is yours
That's American law

M-r-s dot Kennedy
She signed her name in pen
In a fancy fancy cursive
Then turned her term papers in
A thesis on Islamic virgin brides and arranged marriage
Hijabs and polygamist husbands
Those poor un-American girls
Afterschool she ran to me
Jumped in my 5.0
This is the home of the brave, 
Land of the free
But your parents still didn't know
She said "I've had a hell of a summer
So baby
Don't take this hard
But maybe we should get an annulment
Before this goes way too far"
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/f/frank_ocean/american_wedding.html ]
It's just an American wedding
They don't mean too much
They don't last enough
We had an American wedding
Now what's mine is yours
American divorce

Well, you can have my Mustang
That's all I've got in my name
But Jesus Christ, don't break my heart
This wedding ring won't ever wipe off
But if you stay
Girl if you stay
You'll probably leave later anyway
It's love made in the U.S.A.

Don't let em front you
To saying you can't move without em
Fuck em I tell em this ain't new
We been some hustlers since it began dude
Ain't gon' be trippin over some bitch ass dude
They so vain I tell em this ain't you
You kick it sensitive but this ain't true
These niggas can't do nothing that I can't do
That she can't do
That he can't do
That you can't do
That we can't do
Man I had a dream and then that shit came true
And nigga if I did it I think you can too
These niggas can't do nothing that I can't do
That she can't do
That he can't do
That you can't do
That we can't do
Man I had a dream and then that shit came true
These niggas can't do nothing that I can't do
That she can't do
That he can't do
That you can't do

BILL: I know this is a ridiculous question before I ask, but you by any chance haven't kept up with your swordplay?


BUDD: Hell, I pawned that years ago.



BILL: You pawned a Hattori Hanzo sword?



BUDD: Yep.



BILL: It was priceless.



BUDD: Not in El Paso it ain't. In El Pso I got me 250 Dollars for it.

email to spencer about church with david:

i hung out with meghan, david robinson, and the kids today--heard a sermon and had brunch. it was uniquely pleasent. though, as from my txt this morning, the understanding of the praise and worship music was less so (though we did encounter a lovely version of what a friend we have in jesus, a song that continues to move me, despite my better instincts)




the sermon was great, though the whole thing gave me a few questions---



there does not seem to be much of a structure, i don't know when the music ends, the passing of the peace seems to be to early, there is no real congreational singing, there was no narrative pull that allowed for the sermon to the be apex, and the sermon should have been the apex because there was no lord's supper--i fundamentally don't understand how you can have a sunday service without having the eucharist, and much of the songs were about the strength of god, and you know, i am convinced that god knows her own strength, i never understood the obsession with praise hymns, or with the idea of a god that is better then other gods, that is bigger--one of the (few?) appeals of xianity for me is the idea that god is weak, that is he is an empty vessell, that his body is broken for us, and the idea that he was only cruicifed/humilated in order to make him stronger i find isolating and kind of off putting.



it was interesting (and i am not sure if you know this) david r's church is thinking about merging with another church, and david r's other church is evangelical but non-demonational, and the baptist church does not seem to have strong ties to it's history--and this is the interesting/confusing thing for me; the liberal anglicans are often criticized for being too wishy-washy, too ambigious, and too willing to jettison it's history or tradition for the convience of its politics or its aesthetics, but isn't that fundamentally what non demontional evangelicals do, and you know it becomes a porridge of realtional aesthetics unrelated to its roots, creeds, or historical texts--David is a brilliant exegete, and the sermon was much more sophisticated then most, but perhaps even the Bible?



(also, side note, for all my supposed moral ambguity, mock shock, and via negativa/refusal to engage with the church--when i sing what i a friend i have in jesus, or when david talks about being part of the adopted family of god, or when i spend time in evangelical circles, fundamentally i feel made alive and beloved in the name of a lord--you know the old joke, where an evangelical christian is bugging the child of a secular jew, that he is not saved, and he is going to hell, and eventually the secular jew goes to his father, and asks about what they believe, and the father says we worship YHWH, who doesn't exist. i've always head that close to my heart, but you know sitting in the back of an evangelical worship house, i think to myself, what the implications would be, if the answer was, I worship Jesus, who does exist?)



I am tired and thirsty, so this is prime time to solidly evangelize me.

200 pages of McCain's Oppo on Romney, the tax stuff starts at 46

Chris Molanphy's epic discussion of recent trends in R and B, including Usher and Lionel Richie, transitions to a discussion of  a history of the charts, and then the problems of qualifcation.

These 13 photos of Qunicerna's in NY, aside form having a delightful eye on colour, remind me of the ddiscussion of class and liturgical sameness found in Susan Orlean's essay in Saturday Night.

Small essay and digital infrared photo of Rberg's Erased de Kooning.

http://www.wovenonline.com Gorgeous Vintage Rugs.


Obama's Attack Ad on Romney mostly centers on policy, but it's angry.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.38/pdf Tough first person article on being paralyzed
and the ethical implications of personalised health care.

32 photos of Detroit from 1982.

Cedar Rapids Brokerage CEO  commits a 200m fraud. The Libor scandal, in Europe, the US and Canada, i don't understand, but might result in trillions lost. Also, Sheldon Aldeson gambling magnate and Vegas Impersio, who promised Romney 100s of millions, is tightly connected to the Chinese mob.

Melinda Gates commitment to birth control, despite of her Catholic education, is one of the more interesting theological stories of the last few years.


Kenny Omega wrestles a 9 year old in Japan, mostly worth watching for the elegance of the coregraphy.

One of the recent  trends in working new buildings into older contexts, is a kind of camaflaouge
instead of something starker. The small, all glass, extensions on the edge of 19th century rustic cottages in Belgium, like a Mies tumour, makes interesting comments about the  formal nature of transparency--about what glass and steel mean, in a historical context.

50+photos of Rhodesian Military Vehicles.

NY cops manipulate crime stats.

Lakota immersion daycare starts

This story about Spiro Agnew's son is not even code, but the first ppgh is a masterful example of the smear and the wink.

Sharon Stone Last Week in Paris.

Jim Prentice, now working for CIBC, has some interesting things to say about enviromental protection, the Haida Gawaii, resource economies, and Stephen Harper:

To begin, however, the constitutional obligation to consult with first nations is not a corporate obligation. It is the federal government's responsibility.
Second, the obligation to define an ocean management regime for terminals and shipping on the west coast is not a corporate responsibility. It is the federal government's responsibility.
Finally, these issues cannot be resolved by regulatory fiat—they require negotiation. The real risk is not regulatory rejection but regulatory approval, undermined by subsequent legal challenges and the absence of 'social licence' to operate.

New Yorker on the history of including the word Fuck, in their magazine.

Lana Polansky writes about the implications of diluting what censorship means, just a really brilliant article.

PRI, who won the election in Mexico, last week  gave out thousands of gift cards, in order to buy votes. Gift Cards because they were only valid for two days after the election.

This was the best thing i have read on Frank Ocean.

Mural, Sundre Alberta.


One of the best things  about this long ranging, well constructed interview with Bechtle, is how sweet and genial is--he talks about a lot of things, about Johns, the light in Maine, the changing geography of SF, how he is painting Toyotas and Suburus now because that's what there is. Includes a discussion of a recent drawing of a wrapped car, and the narrative hinted at but not spoken.

The economist on the disasters of Harpers.


On the racism of Rangers and Celtics,  and the implicaitons of a multi-cultural scotland.

hot july day, and reading whitman in an ice cold bath, in the late afternoon, between social calls, came from lunch, and going out for dinner.

is there anything nicer?

There is a scene in Magic Mike, the Soderbergh male stripper opus, where a new dancer named the Kid performs his first real dance—after an emergency amateur one, and some training by both a older brother figure and a semi-skeezy Matthew McConaughey. The dance is to Big and Rich's "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy." That song began a trend of straight boys stealing from Rock and Hip-Hop to construct a kind of peacocking masculinity. That a straight man directed a cowboy scene between two men, about straight men teaching each other about male eroticism, but not homosexuality, using this soundtrack seemed to an interesting bookend to a recent trend in country music. That the movie is mostly about the economic and social context of Tampa reflects another layer to this trend. Between the release of "Save A Horse..." and Magic Mike, there have been a number of songs by young male country artists that talk about pleasure, masculinity, and the psychogeography of the semi-rural South, including but not limited to Justin Moore's "Back that Thing Up" and "Back Woods,"  Kip Moore's "Something about A Truck," Luke Bryan's "Country Girl (Shake It For Me)," Jason Aldean's "Hicktown," and Brantley Gilbert's "Kick it in the Sticks." There is an emergence of a new kind of country masculinity—aggressive, proud, less courtly, and more about their own pleasure, and their own sexuality. In the context of homosocial tensions, and within the context of Soderbergh's film—this new kind of country masculinity seems to indicate that what is viewed as traditional masculinity is unstable, and perhaps unable to be grounded. I want to write about this instability, and also a little bit about how fuckable all these boys are.


Pitch I just submitted to the Atlantic. 

 me:  http://www.theboombox.com/2012/07/03/frank-ocean-gay/

thots?

 Alexander:  written about it on tumblr/ilm/etc already

i wish the headlines everywhere were less focused on the fact that he's gay

and more on....

the substance?

it's not a standard coming out

it's not PR

 me:  well r and b constructed around masculine/masculine narratives is actually really quite new

and that's interesting

 Alexander:  it's just an honest and open statement of self-discovery

oh, well yes

i just meant

have you read his letter?

oh

you're jsut reading the gossip

http://frankocean.tumblr.com/post/26473798723

he posted on his tumblr a letter that is/was supposed to be the thank yous in the liner notes of his new album

and it's like

just intensely beautiful

and while i understand why a lot of the story is OMG hip hop + queer --> what will the impact be on his career prospects etc.

or charitably, 'it doesn't matter if he's gay, the music is good'

when it's just a radical moment of honesty.

and frankly

hip hop needs more of those

thats whats interesting

 Alexander:  well, gay people need more of those

even compare this to anderson's a few days ago

which was all "this is who i am and i value my privacy but it's important to be out."

 me:  fuck anderson, you know, the public private access bubble

 Alexander:  it all feels so managed

just the most recent example

whoever

anderson, quinto, nph, whatever

i like them all

but

NPH aside maybe

it's all very "ok. i have commented. let us move on."

 me:  there are no texts

the coming out isnt the beginning of a construction of self

it's the end o

and so it continues the idea of censoring

of closing off

 Sent at 2:57 AM on Wednesday

 Alexander:  mm

 me:  mm?

 Alexander:  mulling over your statement

i'm not sure if i can have clear thoughts about it yet

i'm still re-reading individual sentences

" 4 summers ago, I met somebody. I was 19 years old. He was too. We spent that summer, and the summer after, together. Everyday almost. And on the days we were together, time would glide. Most of the day I’d see him, and his smile. I’d hear his conversation and his silence … until it was time to sleep. Sleep I would often share with him. By the time I realized I was in love, it was malignant. It was hopeless. There was no escaping, no negotiation with the feeling. No choice. It was my first love, it changed my life"

 me:  its terribly beautiful

but you know, he;s still doing strip club anthems...

 Alexander:  um.

not really?

i mean, i'm sure he might have one or two

but this was the lead single

 Alexander:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F15IjgyHd60

Frank Ocean - Thinking About You [Official Music Video]

 me:  but Pyramids...?

 Alexander:  sure.

but i don't see the issue with that?

i mean. he hasn't said if he's gay or bi. there are three or four songs supposedly about dudes

 me:  does the linear notes work in context of the songs

 Alexander:  and a bunch that are addressed to "you"

one or two songs about women don't de-queer him

 me:  true, and we have to stop thinking of monosexuality

thats the other thing

has there been a construction of male sexual fluidity post 1970s?

 Alexander:  i'm busy basking in the falsetto on thinkin bout you

and just offhand, not to parse lyrics but

2:20 of thinkin bout you

is totally about getting with a guy for the first time

 me:  i need the album

 Alexander:  anyway

it is 3 am

and i should probably try to sleep

 me:  sleep well

can i blog this, btw

 Alexander:  empty bed. not used to it

the conversation?

 me:  yep

 Alexander:  sure

 Sent at 3:06 AM on Wednesday