_____________

MyWayofLife, 18
gmina Wołomin

Before you even think about messaging me, know this: I’m not a random dump who’s taking dicks for a cheeseburger like 99% of the guys on this platform. So if you’re just here to drop a load in some young ass, save it. Go find some “piece of meat” a few profiles down.

Guestbook of MyWayofLife

Whanderer – Dec 12, 2024
I first picked him up when he was 17, a young sexy teen, deeply classic, with a cute ass, medium dick, fairly common in bed. Deep down in him, I saw potential. A potential unfortunately wasted by life itself. Deeply sad, in a horrible family, a fairly dull living condition, unemployment, harassment. In short, he was unhappy. And one day, he told me about his desire to be loved, to leave hustling, to be with someone forever. He had already made attempts. I knew he loved me though he could never say that. I could not offer him this life that went beyond my interests. He is nothing in the sexy body of a human. A good lay, an attractive bag of cum and saliva. I hope there is a man who will convince him to have that life, the only one he deserves, what he was born for. Who will love someone who is only a simple object, a useable whore without interest.

astrocat – Dec 10, 2024
Depressing but incredible.

Hungry-Jones – Dec 6, 2024
In Poland boy whores still hustle on the street. This boy was perched outside a boarded up convenience store. He had a suckable face and a small meaty butt in tight jeans. I waltzed him to my hotel and screwed him for a night for, yes, the price of a Burger King meal.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Smooth
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings Yes
Languages Polish, English
Position Versatile
Dick L – Uncut
Fisting Active/Passive
Kissing Yes
Dirty No
PNP Yes
Hourly Rate 60€
Overnight Rate 90€

 

_______________

luxury_private, 19
Zurich

If you’re looking for a twink, I am the gold standard.

Adore Wagner, detest Rossini.

I do not allow scum in my home so you must accommodate.

Guestbook of luxury_private

luxury_private (Owner) – Dec 8, 2024
Currently stuck with 7 Arab men.

HelpMeGetOverMyEx – Dec 7, 2024
🐝mine

davidfrank – Dec 7, 2024
I want to shower you with my liquids.

watermelonslut – Dec 7, 2024
Amazing! I have never seen anything like you before and I could not have imagined you. You are so beautiful! Oh my god. So beautiful.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Mixed
Body Hair Smooth
Smoker No
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages English, French, Italian, Latvian
Position Prefer not to say
Dick L – Uncut
Fisting No
Kissing Consent
Dirty No
PNP No
Hourly Rate 1500€
Overnight Rate 5000€

 

____________

Iknowmyjob, 18
Madrid

Hey! I’m in Spain for a coupla weeks looking for paid hookups.

Guestbook of Iknowmyjob

Rip-your-underwear – Dec 13, 2024
Hot, vast, picturesque pussy

Clarkhugeboy657 – Dec 10, 2024
Super wet and non-tight

AlexNeeds – Dec 9, 2024
Nice busted hole, but there 1000s of them for free.

VanillaIs4Cones – Dec 7, 2024
Loose 🍑 as possible, turned me on.

Body Type Average
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Smooth
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages English, Spanish
Position Bottom only
Dick M – Uncut
Fisting Passive
Kissing Yes
Dirty WS only
PNP Yes
Hourly Rate 180€
Overnight Rate 800€

 

____________

ThereForYou, 23
Budapest

Only 💶 🥵

Hi! I’m Jane and run this account on behalf on my straight meathead boyfriend (in the pics).

I’m experimenting a lot on him with forced bi including him doing requests and putting out for men with the prequisite of him getting tributes etc.

Guestbook of ThereForYou

feelthe – Dec 11, 2024
Met him spontaneously and briefly in the hotel yesterday.
As agreed, I immediately emptied my bladder in his stomach.
Awesome date, made him seem like a pig.
And he looks better than the Picasso I had earlier in the evening.

ThereForYou (Owner) – Dec 9, 2024
Boyfriend just headed into the bedroom to suck two dicks. So fucking proud of him, such a filthy slut. Love how much he’s okay with sucking strangers’ cocks. Can’t wait to taste his mouth when he gets out. Just needed to share.

Body Type Muscular
Ethnicity Latino
Body Hair Little
Smoker No
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages Spanish, English, Hungarian
Position More bottom
Dick XL – Uncut
Fisting Passive
Kissing No
Dirty Yes
PNP Yes
Hourly Rate 200€
Overnight Rate 2000€

 

_____________

Rohypnol, 19
Dortmund

Transfer the money into my account… Give me a drink… With Rohypnol… Stun me… A few minutes later use me, do it your way… Maybe capture it on film…

Guestbook of Rohypnol

Rohypnol (Owner) – Dec 2, 2024
The truth is I’ve never been with a guy… I need 200€ to pay for my room… I don’t have any other help and the Rohypnol is to help me get through it…

DennisFiks – Dec 2, 2024
Quite interesting to roofy someone consensually, I must say. If you don’t already know, limp bodies are heavy and a hassle and have many limitations.

Rohypnol (Owner) – Dec 2, 2024
Yeah I have mental problems so if you don’t like guys with mental problems move on to a normal guy… because I don’t give a shit…

Cog77 – Dec 2, 2024
My goodness, there are so many crazy escorts here, it’s getting worse and worse here, there are so many new crazy escorts here, it’s unbearable anymore, there are no more just escorts here, there are only crazy escorts you can throw in the trash can, no, no, no, it’s terrible here, this is a dump!😡👎

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Some
Smoker Socially
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages German, English
Position More bottom
Dick M – Cut
Fisting Passive
Kissing Yes
Dirty WS only
PNP Yes
Hourly Rate 200€
Overnight Rate On request

 

_____________

Young4Gangbang, 19
Istanbul

“Daddy fuck me fuck meeee

“Okay what is written above is from a song but I DONT GIVE A FUCK cuzzzz I just love it and I actually mean it seriously🎀

“Fuck me and don’t keep stalking my account

“😔I don’t know anymore”

I’m his manager. Contact only if you have intention of gangfucking him. No matter how many. 10 or 20 or even more.

Guestbook of Young4Gangbang

Lizardkings – Dec 10, 2024
Myself and my fellow huge dick’ed boyfriend fucked him for about an hour. He’s on MtF HRT, has some decent newbie titties going and his family jewels are shrunken nearly worthless for anything. But through a strange stroke of luck, nothing’s turned us on more using him as our cuntboy, and we are taking the necessary steps to make that arrangement permanent. Both figuratively and very literally.

Young4Gangbang (Owner) – Dec 7, 2024
Accepting massage offers as long as it’s free and you get him pregnant.

MorganC1573 – Dec 3, 2024
I’m going to assume that any men who take you up on your offer are fully prepared for the grotesque creature they’ll be dicking. My only quibble is your use of the term “twink”.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Arab
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker Yes
Tattoos Yes
Piercings No
Languages Turkish, English
Position Bottom only
Dick S – Uncut
Fisting Passive
Kissing Yes
Dirty Yes
PNP Yes
Hourly Rate 80€
Overnight Rate 300€

 

____________

Boytique, 20
Graz

Hey;). We are Pierre, Dante & Oscar, 3 young international students and we want to serve our cocks and asses to people. Pierre is French, Dante is Italian & Oscar is Norwegian.

We identify as gay, but any prospective feminine clients shouldn’t fear! We know our way around all kinds of genitals, no matter what you’ve got. Our cocks measure 6″ (15 cm) more or less. Our assholes are pretty stretchy, and we’ve yet to encounter someone that we can’t take all the way to the base. If you’re feeling ambitious, put us to the test!

Guestbook of Boytique

SweetSunny – Dec 11, 2024
We started with group cuddling, then the hot part and ended it with cuddling again covered in sperm.

velvetmorning – Dec 6, 2024
I hate blonde.

NorwegianTop – Dec 4, 2024
First of all, I have to say that these escorts look much better than in the photo. Absolute erotic aura. I have rarely experienced such an intense needs for sex. Super likeable but at the same time overwhelming in their erotic power. They let you feel that they are the ultimate sex without saying it. The fucking and fucking and everything around it was just uniquely ASTOUNDING. At least I have never experienced anything like it with any other escort, singular or plural.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Some
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages English, French, Italian, Norwegian
Position Versatile
Dick L – Uncut
Fisting Active/Passive
Kissing Yes
Dirty Ask
PNP Ask
Hourly Rate 200€
Overnight Rate On request

 

_____________

thepolyglot, 20
London

I’m an American twink looking to escape the political situation in my country. I’m a hectic gadfly, would hopefully make some British aristocrat a great boywife.

Guestbook of thepolyglot

Nero – Dec 13, 2024
Oh god this faggot

hilltop93 – Dec 13, 2024
Snooty, erudite, hyperactive hyena.

stepfatherofyourson – Dec 9, 2024
Speaking from experience, when he’s standing still across a room, the sight of him can run a load of cum up any flagpole. As soon as he moves, talks, does basically anything, he wilts dicks in fast-forward.

Victorkingsley – Dec 5, 2024
I’ve had sex with him and if asked why I would say because I was looking for some peace of mind and good memories.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Mixed
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings Yes
Languages English
Position Versatile
Dick L – Cut
Fisting No
Kissing Yes
Dirty No
PNP Ask
Hourly Rate 250€
Overnight Rate 700€

 

____________

BedSuperstar, 19
Barcelona

Hi, I love animals. I would like to have my own animal shelter! I’m looking for benefactors. I’ve never been on such sites before! But I’m 19 years old so I know how to have sex.

Guestbook of BedSuperstar

BedSuperstar (Owner) – Dec 10, 2024
I just downloaded this app (12/3/24) and have not told my girlfriend YET. I have to do that very soon.

Karlmarks – Dec 9, 2024
He likes to be humiliated, praised and objectified. I don’t care to interrogate the ironies in that.

BedSuperstar (Owner) – Dec 8, 2024
I have too much messages, please wait

KingLukas – Dec 7, 2024
So you!!!!
The King is back and ready to let a wretch like you put out!!!!😈
You little piece of meat are ready to kneel down before your King and obediently do what I ask with the bills I pay you in your mouth!!!!
With me there are no half measures, either all or nothing.
Get in touch, you comely piece of shit!

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Latino
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker Socially
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages Spanish, English
Position Versatile
Dick XXL – Uncut
Fisting Active
Kissing Consent
Dirty No
PNP Weed only
Hourly Rate On request
Overnight Rate On request

 

______________

BrokeFemboy, 19
Chicago

i am neurodivergent and have ADHD and autism. aside from the income it provides, escorting personally functions to me as a means of examining desire on an interpersonal level and formulate novel and coherent understandings of its logic. and most importantly, i know how to surrender when required, which is what my life experience and autism has taught me.

if you aren’t jerking off like you’re at gun point, pleading and panting desperately, eyes hazy and all, quivering and unfocused on everything but wanting me, what’s the point,,,mmm that’s right- that’s a good brainless rich dude. look at me and pleasure yourself like you life depends on it!!<33

Guestbook of BrokeFemboy

BrokeFemboy (Owner) – Dec 4, 2024
this mf gets it

elZop – Dec 4, 2024
let me drink your blood >.<

BrokeFemboy (Owner) – Dec 4, 2024
that’s my ex- he has sex with dogs.

BrownNoser – Dec 4, 2024
He talks big but he’s completely average in every way. Average height, average weight, average looks, average intelligence, average sex.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Mixed
Body Hair Little
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings Yes
Languages English
Position Versatile
Dick L – Cut
Fisting Active/Passive
Kissing Yes
Dirty Yes
PNP Yes
Hourly Rate 120$
Overnight Rate On request

 

_______________

sweet_butt, 18
Liverpool

I am a bit shy boy at beginning due our society rules and family beliefs as an arabic boy.

I had some nice experience as bottom boy 2 years ago with a very old man who make me descover this world and it was a nice experience he made me have it which I keep missing that feeling.

This time and finaly I become over 18 I said to myself to give a try for full experience with old man like my ex age over 50 as a secret advanture.

Might panic delete account.

Guestbook of sweet_butt

ArabHunter – Dec 8, 2024
He made my cock so hard and shoot so many loads, it needs a gun licence.

sweet_butt (Owner) – Dec 2, 2024
If you have any kinds of substance/pills etc please let me know I would like to share or buy some with money or my body.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Arab
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker No
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages Arabic, English
Position Bottom only
Dick M – Uncut
Fisting No answer
Kissing Yes
Dirty No answer
PNP Ask
Hourly Rate On request
Overnight Rate On request

 

_______________

BimboSummit, 18
Kil

slave – owned by my master
being rented to arouse him
all decisions are made only with his consent

his slave – not yours!
-> be unemotional
-> don’t try to steal me

Guestbook of BimboSummit

Caregiver? – Dec 12, 2024
I used to play with your ass (a while ago!) and seeing you makes me want to dip back in again. And by dipping, I obviously mean diving in head first (absolute anal destruction).

Hollowpurple – Dec 9, 2024
I know what you’re all thinking but I swear my cock was hard the whole time and cocks can’t lie.

psyagami – Dec 7, 2024
PNP (vodka, tina, ghb) ✅
blowjob and swallow (multiple rounds) ✅
call him an ugly slug ✅
fuck and breed (multiple times) ✅
kick him out ✅

BrockTheJock – Dec 1, 2024
Damn You are a Seriously Fuck’n Sexy METH Slam Injecting Hot and Homely PIG 💉👍 Seriously Need to Fuck’n METH Slam Inject Hard with you Man and then Get Some Big METH Dicked Bareback Stud Fuck Action Going On With You for Balls Deep Load Swaps of Big Dicked METH Up Cum Floodin’ My Big Dick and your Load Hungry METHED Up Cunt 💉👍

Body Type Average
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Some
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages Swedish, English
Position Bottom only
Dick M – Uncut
Fisting Passive
Kissing Yes
Dirty Yes
PNP Yes
Hourly Rate 200€
Overnight Rate On request

 

_______________

alwayshorned, 19
San Jose

Lets keep it real.
Just two dudes looking to jerk off with an older homie.
Some on the regular.
Hang out type shit.
Watch games. Or sum vids.
Grub n rub.
We know some of yall want the same.
Edging.
Bating.
Freeballing.
Nothing crazy.
Again just two dudes for chill old dudes.

Guestbook of alwayshorned

Mind4closure – Dec 6, 2024
So this is not your typical ask. I am straight for many years. Recently however I’ve come to ask myself what’s it like as a gay ie what do they get out of it. It’s an itch I can’t scratch. So here I am asking to try it out with you two. I doubt I’ll really enjoy it but at least I’ll know and put this to bed so to speak.

SalemsShadow – Dec 6, 2024
I’m not sure if I’m looking for the impossible. I would like to tie you boys up with cuffs etc and then take a couple of photos. Ideally I need some shots of you with suntan lotion all over your bodies too. I’m not up for jacking off, unfortunately.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Smooth
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages English, Russian
Position No answer
Dick L – Uncut
Fisting No
Kissing No
Dirty No
PNP Yes
Hourly Rate On request
Overnight Rate On request

 

_______________

WhoArEWE, 18
Brussels

I’m theo, fun to be around, rewarding to take with you on luxury vacations, and have a good time 🙂

Guestbook of WhoArEWE

JustinControl – Dec 11, 2024
Try explaining Deleuze to him and see where it gets you.

ColtonT – Dec 9, 2024
I took him on vacation to Belize and I quickly came to terms with the fact that he needs to be spanked. Every time I tried to take a break from spanking him he got way off track, so he needs a man who’s prepared to spank him at the drop of a hat. Not sure why he needs to get spanked, but like I said when he’s not getting spanked, he’s very unfocused.

Gingerdaddy57 – Dec 7, 2024
I booked us two nights in St. Tropez before I fully comprehended how ditzy and whorish he reads, my mistake. Eyes rolled wherever we went but behind closed doors his ass is incredibly tasty and you can suck it endlessly with breaks for fucking it like I’ve never fucked in my life. I can still hear the sound of my balls hitting his perineum among other things.

ArthurKolty – Dec 4, 2024
He can be funny and distracting, so it’s best you shove something in his mouth.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Mixed
Body Hair Shaved
Smoker Socially
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages English, French, Dutch
Position More bottom
Dick S – Uncut
Fisting Ask
Kissing Yes
Dirty Ask
PNP Ask
Hourly Rate On request
Overnight Rate On request

 

_______________

DirtySven, 24
Stockholm

Come and eat shit with me. Mutual shit eating. I love to feed and smear and eat 😍😍 💩💩💩💩💩

If you’re vegetarian or vegan, with advance notice I can adapt my food supply so that it’s a very attractive thing for you ✌🏻😌

Guestbook of DirtySven

DirtySven (Owner) – Dec 11, 2024
My ass is the center of my being.

WalterT – Dec 11, 2024
As a psychologist, I can only recommend that you go see a colleague for in-depth psychological advice. Not to mention the bacteria, pathogens, etc. in human excrement. I think it’s sick that you get an erection from it – to be honest, I wouldn’t want to treat you. Reflecting is the first step – that would be admitting to yourself that you’re sick, even if you might be able to function socially.

mmmmm88 – Dec 7, 2024
❣️maximum professional service❣️
💋he loves to defecate, especially in sporty positions, standing and from behind💋

DirtySven (Owner) – Dec 1, 2024
You’re just conservative and not in keeping with the spirit of the times. You don’t even know what is beautiful.

Privatekinkster – Dec 1, 2024
Your profile is disgusting – repulsive – abhorrent – disgusting.

Body Type Slim
Ethnicity Caucasian
Body Hair Smooth
Smoker Yes
Tattoos No
Piercings No
Languages Swedish, English
Position Versatile
Dick L – Uncut
Fisting No
Kissing No
Dirty Yes
PNP Yes
Hourly Rate 75€
Overnight Rate 300€

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Sure. Oh, okay, a TV series-only club, that makes sense, and that is interesting although I was hoping it would be a bit more complicated, oh well. Sure hoping love upped your heat if where you are is anything where we are. Paris is an icebox (without the ice). How’s your weekend looking or how did it look? Love making the screening of Werner Herzog’s ‘The Cave of Forgotten Dreams’ in 3D at the Pompidou this afternoon with him there in person not already sold out, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Worth sitting through the whole thing, but long, yes. Me neither on the Ealing comedies, but me not being a Brit makes that crime by omission a little more understandable, I guess. ** James, Hi. On balance, I would say, yes, Los Angeles is Los Awesome. So, do you feel pressure to have a total blow out of a weekend, and will/did you? Clubs can be very interesting, yes. Their atmosphere, their music (if you’re lucky), and the proximity of lots of people escaping into mindless pleasure physically and mentally is a beautiful thing providing that a sufficient number of positives align. You would be depriving yourself of a possibly insinuating influence if you never try them out. Daddy Long Leg spiders are cool. Dubai’s illegalizing of queer people is definitely a massive drawback, yes, agreed. Celebrate your ultra-gayness, just be careful not to start thinking Randy Rainbow is funny. Liking muscles just means you’re libidinal which is not inherently superficial. Nice about your new friend. She sounds like a … what do they call it … ally. Again, your weekend + you, go nuts. ** diesel clementine, Yesterdays will do that, that’s for sure. I can relate to your wish for an A club vis-a-vis the George Miles Cycle, absolutely. Naming a club Bonjour outside of France seems so sweet and naive and reasonably clever at the same time somehow, I’m not sure why. Lawn chairs … you mean the aluminium, foldable ones like these? Nice, if so, or probably even if not. Thank about the ‘Flunker’ stories. I am rather earnest but with, I hope, a healthy skeptical tone. Anyway, yeah, thank you. I do try. I’m well enough. Adventures galore this weekend or no? ** jay, Hi. Sometimes I wish I knew how to launder money. Yes, I saw Bauhaus live. They seem to have regrouped to do reunion gigs or whatever. Friends in LA saw them recently at a big 80s retro festival (alongside, you know, Gary Numan, Adam Ant, Siouxsie, Human League, Devo, etc. etc.) and said they still did that thing they used to do without creating embarrassment. I had a friend who, one time when we were together, saw a kid wearing a Joy Division t-shirt and went up to him and demanded names of JD songs, and, when the kid could only name ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, he ripped the poor kid into mental shreds, and I thought that was evil, and I never spoke to that friend again. I did live near the IKEA, but it closed down about five months ago, and now I live near a big empty storefront. It was handy while it lasted, yes. Did you write? About that game or in some kind of proximity to it or something? I do have an email from Horatio in my box, and, as usual, I’m massively far behind on email, but it’s there, I’ll open it and answer him ASAP, maybe even this weekend. Cool. ** Steeqhen, Congrats. Skipping parries is always a good idea, if you ask me, which I know you didn’t. Paris has the power of refreshment in its arsenal, so you should be fine, I think. I hope you had a relaxing yet dedicated weekend. ** Same Old G 🧸, Hi, G, no problem. Uh, there is a kind of core group of buche eaters — Zac, Michael Salerno, Ange Dargeant, plus me — but we often have invited guests. In fact, a few invitations have been issued, so we’ll see. Yes, I recently met this guy named Arley at an After8 reading, and we’ve become friends, and I also met this new friend named Holiday who’s studying the American University here, and they’re both writers and great people. Have you met any inspiring new pals of late? Bisous! ** Steve, Every time I turn on International CNN, which I haven’t been doing hardly at all since the election season started for the obvious reasons, they always seem to have some glamorising travel program about Dubai on, and no matter how hard they try, they never manage to make Dubai seem remotely appealing. I’m putting the final polish on my lists too. Well, logic says Mangione will be played by Timothee Chalamet. ** Justin D, Hey! Oh, I didn’t mean to make myself sound sad about the no presents thing. I feel actually kind of liberated. Well, you sent me a Xmas gift that I’m about to open. So, actually, I have received a Xmas present, and I could want for nothing further. What did you watch? What’s your favorite John Waters film? Mine’s a tie between ‘Female Trouble’ and ‘Serial Mom’. But I also do think ‘Cecil B. Demented’ is very underrated. Great weekend to you and all of yours! ** HaRpEr, I can relate to that, yes, you bet. And that’s why I reinforced your feeling that it’s very worth fighting for. There is no truth, right? There’s just fair and unfair maybe. Maybe not as smoke filled as in the movies, but at least as many people smoke here as don’t, I would say. And no one here gives you evil eye for smoking, or not openly. When I’m in LA, I’ll be walking down the sidewalk smoking, and suddenly I’ll hear some distant voice from, like, a block away yell that I’m invading their space. I’m completely positive that work of yours is not shit, but sure, show me so I can prove it. Happy weekend to you, whatever that necessitates. ** Right. It’s the month’s middle, and the escorts have invaded the normally chaste blog, and that’s the deal. See you on Monday.

* (restored/expanded)

 

‘Thom Andersen (b. 1943) is an American filmmaker celebrated for his erudite, penetrating and refreshingly offbeat essay films. A patient historian and fervent cinephile, Andersen mined an unpredictable termite path deep into film history with two impressively researched and revelatory documentaries, Red Hollywood (co-directed with Noël Burch) and Los Angeles Plays Itself, which together embody the resolute yet subtle mode of politically engaged cinema that he has defined across his larger oeuvre. Both Red Hollywood and Los Angeles Plays Itself are compilation films, dense mosaics of scenes and shots culled from Hollywood films and transformed by voiceover narratives, written but not spoken by Andersen, detailing the suppressed histories of the American cinema decipherable within the moving images. The two films make clear Andersen’s profound understanding of popular cinema as both a dangerously amnesic form of cultural memory—an ideological filter that willfully distorts the world it purports to represent—and a uniquely insightful lens through which to critically engage written, and unwritten, history.

‘The politics of architecture and urban space is a major concern underlying Los Angeles Plays Itself, which explores the cinema as a potent archaeological and navigational tool uniquely able to map those hybrid streets and spaces—partially true, partially invented—chartered by the cinematic and popular imagination. Like Henri Lefebvre, the French theorist of the everyday, Andersen’s keen understanding of the actual and imaginary city was partially honed by a brief but indelible stint as a taxi driver that granted an in-the-streets perspective that informs both his ardent critique of Hollywood’s deliberately partial representation of urban space and a larger project across key films to trace the evolving image of those minorities and working classes systemically underrepresented in American cinema. Related here is a recent Andersen work, an insightful study of still little-known African American filmmaker Spencer Williams, commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art. Andersen’s deep knowledge of modern and contemporary architecture, meanwhile, gave way to the recent Reconversão, a formally rigorous study of Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura.

‘An important complement to Andersen’s work as a filmmaker is his long career as a writer, occasional critic and curator and, above all, an instructor at CalArts, where he has been an anchor of the legendary film school for almost thirty years. Indeed, the subjects and pedagogical thrust of both Los Angeles Plays Itself and Andersen’s most recent feature, The Thoughts That Once We Had, were partially inspired by lectures given in his CalArts seminars. A reflection on the influential ideas about cinema of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, The Thoughts That Once We Had offers Andersen’s most personal film, a lyrical and purely cinematic work that, despite its lack of spoken narrative, fully embodies the nuanced tones of his inimitable voice: at turns wry, impassioned, mournful and fiercely critical.’ — Harvard Film Archive

‘“Hollywood films,” says Thom Andersen, “have become formalist exercises. I guess I was once a formalist myself, so in a certain way I can appreciate that, but obviously we want more from movies than that.” In a sense, this statement nicely sums up Andersen’s walk through life. From his first “formalist” films in the 1960s to his essayist explorations of the documentary value of Hollywood fictions, the main question remains the same: how can one describe a world in cinema? How do cinematic forms not only tell stories, but also create descriptions of our actual lives?

‘While his first feature film, Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1975), paid tribute to a man who was the first not only to capture motion in pictures but also to put these pictures in motion, Red Hollywood (1996, with Noël Burch, narrated by Billy Woodberry) gave the victims of the Hollywood Blacklist their due by investigating how they were able to give form to their world views. This penchant to rekindle the history of cinematic representations by bringing out what conventionally remains in the background is even more pronounced in Andersen’s best-known film, Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), a “city symphony in reverse” that critically explores the ways his beloved city has been depicted in movies. It suggests that, at a time when most of the fictions of mainstream cinema seem to have lost their moorings in the real world, after increasingly going astray into mindless spectacle, the descriptions they carry within them often tend to be complicit in a consensual rendering of our history – a “history written by the victors, a history written in crocodile tears”.

‘One of the many sources of inspiration for this marvellous study of the multiple cinematic faces of Los Angeles was the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, notably his reflection on the moments when cinema, in letting us see the unbearable of our world, might wake us up to the possibility of something else. In his film, The Thoughts That Once We Had, Andersen digs even deeper into Deleuze’s thinking on cinema, in order to liberate the force of the past from its celluloid entrapment, and to let it bear on our present. After all, wasn’t it Deleuze who managed to voice the question we are all struggling with today, which is: how can we regain faith in our world? And moreover, how can cinema contribute to finding this confidence that we so badly need?’ — Courtisane

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Thom Anderson @ IMDb
Thom Andersen: ‘I became a little monster’
Book: Thom Andersen’s ‘Slow Writing’
Thom Andersen talks about his films and politics
Hollywood, Read: Slow Writing: Thom Andersen on Cinema
Thom Andersen on Los Angeles architecture and films
Critical Condition: Jordan Cronk interviews Thom Andersen
The Enthusiast
Get Out of the Car @ Senses of Cinema
Blade Runner Is a City Planner’s Dream
Thom Andersen Tarnishes The Silver
An Interview with Thom Andersen
Why Criticism: Thom Andersen and the Critic as a Worker
‘Los Angeles Plays Itself’ A Decade Later
Review: ‘The Thoughts That Once We Had,’ a Cinematic Flight
J. Hoberman on Thom Andersen’s Juke
Night on Earth: Los Angeles—Passing Through Twilight, by Thom Andersen
Los Angeles, I’m Yours
Los Angeles in Theory and Practice: Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself
Between Artists: Thom Andersen / William E. Jones
L.A. Existential

 

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Extras

Thom Andersen on Pedro Costa’s “Horse Money”

Thom Andersen on George Lucas

California Here I Come by Thom Andersen, Andrew Kim, & The Farmingdale Sound Machine

Thom Andersen | Entrevista

 

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Interview
from POV Magazine

Christina Clarke: The definition of documentary seems to be changing. What’s your take on hybrid nonfiction?

Thom Andersen: For me it represents a return to something that really has existed since the beginning of documentary as we call it: Nanook of the North or a film I actually like better, In the Land of the Headhunters by Edward Curtis, made about 1914. [Shot] north of Vancouver, it’s a document of the native people there and their ceremonies. It’s so impressive; footage of it turns up in a lot of films. For example, it’s in Oliver Stone’s (1991 movie, The Doors, in which he re-creates Jim Morrison’s student film,) the one he made at UCLA and was lost. It has footage from (Headhunters), which wouldn’t be possible because the movie hadn’t been rediscovered yet.

My point is Curtis made up a story that the native people acted out. It was based on their life but was also sensationalized. So from the very beginning of what we think of as documentary was hybrid film.

CC: Films were a new way of seeing; it was a new technology. Sensationalizing stories would draw more of an audience. And certainly in the teens, orientalism was popular; people were fascinated by the exotic.

TA: Godard said Méliès was the father of documentary because he made The Coronation of Edward VII around 1902, which of course was staged. But it was the first film that proposed that it was documentation of an event rather than just a street scene as in the Lumière films.

CC: Given the historic roots of documentary, it’s ironic that it became more and more assumed to be non-partisan and reality-based.

TA: The Maysles don’t call their films documentaries; they call them fictions because they make a story out of something that’s real, which they don’t manipulate except when they are editing the film. Johan van der Keuken is one of the great documentary filmmakers. He doesn’t call his work documentary because he has people reenact things. It’s things that they do but he asks them to do them again so that he can film them, even if it’s just a matter of walking. And then of course the people who are part of this series: Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner and Pierre Perrault in Canada. Another important film is Portrait of Jason by Shirley Clarke.

CC: Where does documentary film end and narrative film or even art film begin? Artists like Bruce Conner come to mind and Mike Kelley, who was a graduate of Cal Arts. Robert Frank’s Cocksucker Blues, in which Frank invented his own version of the Rolling Stones. We’ve come to believe that documentary is more truthful than narrative film, that the story is more authentic under the rubric of documentary film.

TA: Pedro Costa, who could obviously be in this programme as well, when people ask him what was documentary, what they were really interested in was, what was true. For him, true was not a matter of what was staged or reenacted in his films but the truth. Let’s say documentary films have a certain kind of truth and fiction films have a certain kind of truth.

CC: How do you define each? Is there a line?

TA: Sure. In a fiction film, it’s a matter of having a kind of privileged access to the people in the film and creating a story that has some moral, an emotional truth, the possibility of a truth about society at a certain time and place. The last is also what we expect of documentary but we don’t expect the same kind of access to the people in a documentary film.

CC: Access to their internal workings? To their spiritual lives? Their motivation?

TA: That’s why [Krzysztof ] Kieslowski quit making documentaries and started making fiction films. He said in a documentary you couldn’t show people making love, you couldn’t show the most intimate scenes. He felt he had used up all he could do in documentary and started making fiction films. But his first fiction films were sort of hybrids. Short Working Day, for example, is quite a remarkable film, and the one after it Blind Chance.

CC: I’m thinking even Kenneth Anger could be included in this definition of nonfiction. Visual artists have always been playing around with this and it seems we’re finally acknowledging that filmmakers have been doing this all along. And some of the films coming out right now are very powerful because filmmakers are used to dealing with the through line of narrative. Visual artists seem to discover narrative later whereas filmmakers are looking for the narrative, for the inherent story, the inherent dramatic climax.

TA: Also, if there are more films like this being made today it’s because of the ossification of the documentary form in U.S. filmmaking. Certain forms have become formulas. Obviously, if you want to talk about hybrid films, reality TV is an example where you have something real and something made up. The Ken Burns form, Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). Films that tell a story but it’s a story that’s also sometimes interrupted. Neither of these forms was involved with direct cinema, which seems to have kind of disappeared from mainstream American documentaries since the ’60s and ’70s. Quite often the subject is political or quasi-political or pseudo-political, like the Enron movie or Charles Ferguson’s movie about the stock market crash (Inside Job) and his very good film about the Iraq war and occupation (No End in Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq). What these films have in common and what I don’t like about them is the use of extragenic music. I might have started that in American film with the Muybridge movie. Of course it had been done before in a number of French documentaries, most notably in Night and Fog, which has a great score by Hanns Eisler.

CC: Now that everyone is documenting everything online, where do you think personal narratives end and fictions begin? What’s your experience at Cal Arts with your students?

TA: James Benning (who was also featured in Art of the Real) teaches a class [at Cal Arts] where students make movies from material found on various Web sites like but not limited to YouTube. The availability of these images makes it possible to create different kinds of work, to create strange juxtapositions. The films that he is presenting in this series are some of his YouTube movies, made from materials he found on the Internet.

CC: Does that count as “found footage” since it’s identified as owned or created by those posting online?

TA: Maybe the term found footage is used too widely. For example: Los Angeles Plays Itself is not made from found footage.

CC: Highly curated footage!

TA: Some of it was found in a sense, but I searched for certain things. I saw a movie and said this is something I want to talk about.

CC: What sort of films did you respond to when growing up? What sparked your interest in the medium?

TA: As a child I didn’t go to the movies very much or even watch them on television. I remember a couple of movies I saw that I liked as a child: High Noon and another one that I still like is War of the Worlds. It scared me a lot, seeing it in a movie theatre. I got interested in movies when I was in high school. I suppose the movies that first inspired me were Ivan the Terrible and “The Apu Trilogy” by Satyajit Ray. After that, Breathless and Pickpocket and Last Year at Marienbad, those were the movies that inspired me to take an interest in working in film. Another Hollywood movie that impressed and scared me when I was young was Kiss Me Deadly. The only movies that I saw as a child that appear in Los Angeles Plays Itself were War of the Worlds and Kiss Me Deadly, both movies that I still like.

CC: I think as a kid, the things that are most memorable are the things that scare us. Being scared as a kid is kind of the same as being excited.

TA: Yeah. There are movies that scare you, like Errol Morris’s The Fog of War. Not so much the Rumsfeld movie.

CC: The Fog of War is quite chilling. It does what a good narrative film does; it has a great arc. The fact it’s based on real stuff makes it that much more terrifying.

TA: Scary movies today are documentaries.

CC: You have several films in Art of the Real, including Eadweard Muybridge: Zoopraxographer and Red Hollywood.

TA: Muybridge is in a way kind of a new movie. Finally, I can say, I’ve been able to do what I intended to do with these movies but, because of lack of resources, was unable to do. I’m sure [UCLA] spent more money on this restoration, which is more of a re-creation of Muybridge, than I spent on making it. It’s really wonderful. It’s now 35mm instead of 16mm.

It was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive: Ross Lipman and Sean Hewitt. In all their restorations, when they have a 16mm film they blow it up to 35. That’s what they did for Killer of Sheep by Charles Burnett and Bless Their Little Hearts by Billy Woodberry, two films that were in Los Angeles Plays Itself.

CC: Are you planning to do some other films?

TA: I’d like to make a movie about D.J. Waldie, who wrote Holy Land, a book about Lakewood, one of the best books about Southern California. I’d like to make a movie about architecture in Los Angeles, early modernist architecture. There are lots of other possibilities. I’d like to write a book that is an extension of Los Angeles Plays Itself. People have talked about a book of collected writings or selected writings—things that I’ve written that weren’t published or things that were published under other people’s names. And I’d also like to see the longer films that I’ve made get wider distribution so that everyone who might be interested can see them.

CC: Is there anyone you’ve especially admired?

TA: I was a big fan of the Maysles, particularly their film about the Beatles in 1964. I thought when I got out of film school, I could get a job with them as an editor. But I think all their editors were women, so I knew I didn’t stand much of a chance.

 

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Thom Andersen’s 10 films

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A Train Arrives at the Station (2016)
‘Whatever your thoughts on the essay-film format or, if you’ve ever managed to see it, Andersen’s other projects, Train should offer a litany of pleasures. Andersen says it “comprises 26 scenes or shots from movies, 1904-2015” and “has a simple serial structure: each black & white sequence in the first half rhymes with a color sequence in the second half.” Within that simple structure is a web of associations: it runs the gamut from lush Hollywood productions of yesteryear and today to low-grade foreign productions that I couldn’t even identify; from slow and serene to fast and nerve-jangling; from actual trains to miniatures, real landscapes to rear-projection and constructed sets. What most makes A Train Arrives at the Station a pleasure, though, is that it’s ultimately a serene experience.’ — The Film Stage

Watch the film here

 

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Juke: Passages from the Films of Spencer Williams (2015)
‘During the 40’s, Spencer Williams directed nine “race films” for Sack Entertainment in central Texas, and he acted in eight of these films. Only one has yet to be rediscovered. in JUKE, i attempt to reclaim his work, to demonstrate its originality and beauty as well as its documentary value. Williams returns always to the same theme: the struggle between the sacred and the profane, the church and the juke joint, gospel and blues. He portrays both with equal conviction. The church always prevails, but he gives the devil his due.’ — Thom Andersen

 

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The Thoughts That Once We Had (2015)
‘The Thoughts That Once We Had  takes the form of a conversation. The most recent feature by American filmmaker Thom Andersen unfolds as a running dialogue between him and the late French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who wrote extensively about cinema. Throughout this new film, clips from older films are interwoven with lines of text that appear onscreen — some of which are direct quotations from Deleuze, and some of which are personal ruminations, responses, and elaborations from Andersen, who taught his two volumes on cinema for a quarter-century at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). A few of Deleuze’s concepts are illustrated directly through images in Thoughts. “The affection-image” (Deleuze’s characterization for views of the human face as it stands outside a film’s action to provide an emotional response) comes initially through D.W. Griffith and his actresses Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford — either one of who, suggests Andersen, might have been its pioneering performer. The affection-image is then rediscovered in Andersen’s film by Jean-Luc Godard, nearly fifty years later, first with Jean Seberg in Breathless (1959) and then over subsequent films with Anna Karina, Marina Vlady, Woody Allen, Molly Ringwald, and even himself. The illustration of the affection-image eventually extends outwards to encompass John Cassavetes’s work with Gena Rowlands and Pedro Costa’s with Vanda Duarte, in keeping with Deleuze’s spirit.’ — Aaron Cutler and Mariana Shellard, Filmmaker Magazine

Watch the film here

Watch an excerpt here

 

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The Tony Longo Trilogy (2014)
‘While remastering Los Angles Plays Itself, I re-edited a number of clips, including The Takeover (Troy Cook, 1995), a grungy, sordid straight-to-video film remarkable only because executive producer Michael Woods and star David Amos had in 1990 planned and carried out the murder of Horace McKenna, Woods’s partner in the operation of a chain of strip clubs around Los Angeles – a crime echoed in the movie. After repeated viewings, I noticed a miniature tragedy (or black comedy) spread out over the first sixty minutes. Its protagonist is Waldo the bouncer, the victim of ruses and sucker punches, whose multiple failures lead him to one final heroic attempt to make amends. This is his story.’ — Thom Andersen

Watch an excerpt here

 

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Reconversão (2012)
‘We don’t see Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura until the last 20 minutes of Reconversão, the new documentary by L.A. filmmaker Thom Andersen. But the build-up to the interview is a visual assemblage of Souto de Moura’s built and un-built work — some of it still functioning and some of it abandoned — through Andersen’s sympathetic lens. “Most films about architecture present buildings as art objects,” says Andersen, who is known for the now-iconic L.A. documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, about how the city is portrayed on film. “Like Ken Burns’ film on Frank Loyd Wright, for example. You could watch that film and you wouldn’t know that the Larkin building no longer exists. The building is shown as an ideal, eternal form. I wanted to show the real life of the buildings.”‘ — Wendy Gilmartin, LA Weekly

Trailer

 

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Get Out of the Car (2010)
‘Thom Anderson describes his short film Get Out of the Car (2010) as a work of “militant nostalgia”. Distinct from the “useless and reactionary feeling of nostalgia”, this contentious strain carries an imperative to critique and reclaim history, not from misinformation but collective cultural ignorance (or “amnesia,” as Andersen told fellow filmmaker William E. Jones in 2013).3 Across 30-odd minutes, Andersen shows us blank or abandoned billboards (“it’s a documentary about signs,” he says off screen), handpainted murals and some wonderfully eccentric roof sculptures, but this notion of interrogating the past is most clearly enunciated through an act that disrupts landscape-film convention. Rather than just document the environment, Andersen intervenes, holding up photos of demolished buildings against an empty blue sky and attaching four notices to a series of fences guarding the resting place of vanished cultural markers (Joni Mitchell was right: they paved paradise and put up a post-office parking lot). These signs are fiery requiems that pit social history against contemporary business (a drive-in was “DEMOLISHED WITHOUT PERMIT”), and, as becomes clear later on, their design has been modelled on advertisements for low-cost funerals hung up on adjacent chain-link fences.’ — Senses of Cinema

the entire film

Thom Andersen on ‘Get out of the Car’ @ Locarno Film Festival

‘While editing the sound for Thom Andersen’s Get Out of the Car, I realized that many of the images had different meanings for me than for him. So I took 14 scenes, made them all 30 seconds, and created my own non-specific narratives, though traditional sound design.’ — Craig Smith

 

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Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)
‘Thom Andersen’s nearly three-hour essay-film, from 2003, joins his trenchant and polemical voice-over commentary to a rich and alluring selection of clips from dramatic features shot on location in Los Angeles, ranging from “The Big Sleep” and “Rebel Without a Cause” to “Chinatown” and “Clueless.” This kaleidoscopic portrait of the city is both a powerful work of film criticism and a personal story of living in Los Angeles. Andersen traces the falsification of the city’s geography and history in Hollywood movies to the shoddy narrative and ideological conventions in run-of-the-mill productions; even the habitual display of architectural landmarks and styles comes in for scathing analysis. Andersen shows that movies are both recording devices that display political perversions of civic life—including racial prejudice, police brutality, real-estate depredations, and economic inequities—and propaganda machines that perpetuate them. He concludes with a grand tribute to the legacy of great local independent filmmakers who discovered truth by way of fiction, in such movies as “The Exiles” and “Killer of Sheep”.’ — Richard Brody

Trailer

Excerpt

the entire film

Los Angeles Plays Itself Q&A – Thom Andersen

 

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Thom Andersen, Noël Burch Red Hollywood (1996)
‘Of the many edifying pleasures of Thom Andersen and Noël Burch’s Red Hollywood, the first and most striking is the notion that anything like a “Red Hollywood” existed in the first place. The 1996 essay-documentary details the phenomenon: during the 1940s and ’50s, numerous Communist (and Communist-sympathizing) filmmakers were making ideologically charged contributions to Hollywood cinema. Andersen and Burch’s illustrated history deploys clips from over 50 different films written and directed by victims of the Hollywood blacklist to describe a corpus of politically and socially engaged filmmaking that is nearly inconceivable in today’s industry.’ — Film Comment

Trailer

 

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Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1975)
‘Thom Andersen’s first feature announced the arrival of one of America’s most significant documentary auteurs. EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE, ZOOPRAXOGRAPHER is at once a biography of Muybridge, a reanimation of his historic sequential photographs, and an inspired examination of their philosophical implications. Working in collaboration with filmmaker Morgan Fisher, composer Mike Cohen, Muybridge biographer Robert Bartlett Haas, and narrator Dean Stockwell, Andersen took the idea of reanimating raw material and expanded it into a profound meditation on the nature of vision. The title speaks to both Muybridge’s practice of motion study and his 1879 device, which enabled the images’ projection. As such, the film foregrounds Muybridge’s role in the invention of cinema and cinema itself as an illusion arising from stillness. “One of the best essay films ever made on a cinematic subject.’ — Jonathan Rosenbaum

Watch the film here

 

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Melting (1965)
‘Melting is remarkable for its alluding to a forgotten history and its prescience of history to come. Thirty-odd years after Bataille announced the informe, and 32 years before Bois and Krauss brought the informe back from history, and before Bois characterized melting in this way, Thom made his film. What Thom calls the sundae’s passage from edibility to waste, perfectly embodies the entropic. What once could have been eaten now cannot. Waste is something that nothing more can be made of; it has no further use.’ — zen xiu

the entire film

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hi. Yeah, New City Club … I can’t imagine any other country or place in the world, not even Dubai, where that would have had the slightest chance of getting off the drawing board. Japan knows. Although, if I’m remembering correctly, I think it was only open for one or two days. A copper-plated parking lot? That does sound so cool looking and counterintuitive. Hm, no, I don’t remember the McCall smoke precisely. I think I remember sort thinking it smelled like a Bauhaus concert. It was controversial because he used unconventional smoke? Desperate to be outraged much? Fan unboxed and in place yet? I’m pretty sure my mental health would be improved of I took the large, disheveled, dangerous looking piles of books off my desk and put them where they belong, but that would necessitate me buying yet another bookshelf, and that part of the bargain doesn’t seem like it would improve my mental health. Don’t get crushed, or, I guess, I hope you didn’t. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Very, very loud, yes. And even if the clubs were dead, it would smell very, very musty. Bad idea, love. Love dying like that club (Floodlights) whose reason of death was ‘never existed’ because love cannot figure out what that means, G. ** Misanthrope, Yes, constantly and everywhere and nothing can stop it! If it makes you feel any better, the person Zac and I just managed to extricate our film away from owes me 40k which I will now never, ever get back. Charlie XCX loves you guys. ** _Black_Acrylic, In theory, I agree with your assessment of Blitz Club and its possible rescue. Where were you when they needed you? Sucking on a lollipop and playing with your toy tractor, I presume? Damn, NEON could have been the savior of an entire generation. Ownership is evil. ** Steeqhen, Thanks. Yes, not exactly subtle, that club. Maybe in Russia Lolito has a double meaning? I think most of the clubs here in Paris are secretive-ish and located in whatever they call squats these days. 300 words should be a snap, no? Was it, or is it being so? I think I understand loving having muscles and being objectified more than I understand the loving of others’ muscles and objectifying the musclebound. 230 times is a lot! But that does sound trancey. Oh, Place de Nation … well, not around there because there isn’t so interesting. Maybe in the Marais? Or around Republique or something? Or, sure, Montmartre. It is very hilly, but most of what’s interesting about it is at the base of the hills. Let me think. It’s really about what you want to see. My week has been okay. Weekend plans of note? ** James Bennett, Thanks, James. There were some cool gay clubs in that era, mostly in NYC, but I neither dance nor drink more maybe a beer that I nurse for hours, so I could only really judge them on their appearance. Wow, ‘the great going clock of society’, what an excellent description of her writing. Absolutely agree with your characterisation of her work, and I’m very happy that we’re of like-minds in that regards. She’s formative. I’m good, you too I’m intuiting. Thanks, pal. ** James, I’m not a big clubgoer or fan myself, but I know they can be spacious and under-populated. Thanks for paying such close attention to them. The blog’s dream come true. I don’t know what kind of worm that was. I’ve never seen one since. I’ve described it to people who say, ‘oh, yeah, that kind of worm’. The shovel was a normal sized shovel. You know, to dig in the ground and all of that. Oh, yeah, ‘James’ is a novel that’s winning lots of awards and is written by the guy who wrote the novel on which that miserable movie ‘American Fiction’ was based. Haven’t read him myself. There’s an amusement park in Dubai that has the world’s longest log/flume ride, and that is tempting but not tempting enough. Okay, right, mock exams, yes, I’ve heard of them, and that makes sense and so on. You’re definitely more gay than me. I don’t even think Luigi Mangione is hot. Enjoy the last day of your week. ** iwishiwasanon, Hey, H! How are your finals being conquered by you? Thank you about the post. Maybe arranging images of graphs into totem arrangements would be a good post. Hm … xoxo, me. ** HaRpEr, Hi. Oh, Pryzm reopened? Your description of it is very interesting because the facade, which all I knew about it, makes it look really crappy. Huh. Zac smoked since he was, like 8 years old, so it was indeed a pretty amazing accomplishment. Editing together a chapbook of ten poems sounds fun. In the case you describe, I don’t think you’re overthinking, no. Listen, I spent more than a year writing the original version of ‘I Wished’ with total commitment before I realised it was nothing and a disaster and had to throw it out and start over again using just a few pieces of it which, even then, I had to rewrite for months. So, no. It just sounds like you’re open to embracing a revelation at whatever the cost. ** Justin D, I too find the Lolito example very hard to believe, and of course there’s no real way to know for sure, especially with it being in inherently untrustworthy Russia. Envelopes full of cash are the best gifts. Much better than gift certificates. I don’t get Xmas presents. No one buys me Xmas presents. Xmas cards are the closest I get. Maybe I’ll get a few of those. Thursday was … gosh, kind of forgettable, it appears. But Friday looks to be kind of okay. Did your Friday transcend its traditional confines? ** Okay. I’ve restored and expanded an old post to do with the great and original documentarian Thom Andersen that I hope you will spend some time with. If you haven’t seen his best known and opus film ‘Los Angeles Plays Itself’, I highly recommend that, it’s right there in full in the post itself, conveniently enough. See you tomorrow.