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Orbit, Sky Tower, Auckland
Egon Tårnet, Tyholttårnet, Trondheim, Norway
Confiteria Giratoria, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina
360 Bar and Dining, Sydney Tower, Sydney
Four Winds Revolving Restaurant, Crowne Plaza, Surfers Paradise, Australia
C Restaurant, St Martins Tower, Perth
Donauturm, Vienna
Radon Plaza, Sarajevo
Revolving Mascaron Restaurant, Torre Mirante da Serra, Veranópolis, Brazil
La Ronde, Chateau Lacombe Hotel, Edmonton
Sky 360 Restaurant, Calgary Tower, Calgary
Cloud 9 Revolving Restaurant & Lounge, Vancouver
Prairie 360, Fort Garry Place, Winnipeg
Giratorio, Santiago, Chile
360° Café, Macau Tower, Macau
Epicure on 45, Radisson Hotel Shanghai New World, Shanghai
Restaurante La Fragata Giratorio, World Trade Center, Bogotá
360-The Revolving Restaurant, Cairo Tower, Cairo
Näsinneula tower, Tampere, Finland
Fernmeldeturm, Mannheim, Germany
Fernmeldeturm, Nürnberg
Olympiaturm, Munich
Telecafé, Berliner Fernsehturm, Berlin
OTE Tower, Thessaloniki, Greece
VIEW62 by Paco Roncero, Hopewell Centre, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
THE Sky, Hotel New Otani, Tokyo
Paukščių takas, Vilnius TV Tower, Vilnius, Lithuania
Bintang Restaurant, The Federal Kuala Lumpur
Bellini Restaurante, World Trade Center Mexico City
100 Revolving Restaurant, Quezon City, Philippines
Genex Tower, Belgrade
Le Kuklos, Leysin, Switzerland
Roma Revolving Restaurant, Durban, South Africa
Akemi Restaurant, Golden Jubilee PSPF Towers, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Tiara, Marina Mall, Abu Dhabi
Lakeview Restaurant, Center Parcs Eleven Forest, UK
BonaVista Lounge, Westin Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles
Polaris, Hyatt Regency Atlanta, Atlanta
Sun Dial, Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel, Atlanta
Top of Waikiki, Honolulu
Eagle’s Nest, Hyatt Regency Indianapolis, Indianapolis
JJ Astor, Radisson Hotel Duluth Harborview, Duluth
Top of the World, Stratosphere, Las Vegas
The View, New York Marriott Marquis Times Square, New York City
Spindletop, Hyatt Regency Hotel, Houston
Skydome Lounge, Doubletree Hotel Crystal City, Arlington
SkyCity, Space Needle, Seattle
Hotel El Paseo, Restaurante El Girasol, Maracaibo, Zulia, Venezuela
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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha, colorful. ** Jamie, Hi, Jiggly-boo. Cool. Yeah, Scott Barley is an admirer/comrade of Perconte, so the connection you see is real. It does seem like your upstairs is heavily occupied to me. It’s almost like my upstairs neighbour is having a dance party in another country and my ceiling is magically shaking . Gonna snag that Body/Head today. Oh, strong E. Does that even exist these days? It must. Man, does that sound delicious. Torbjorn’s an amazing artist. The next time someone gives me the opportunity to curate, I’m going to propose a survey show of his work. Did you manage to sufficiently intersect your goofing off with radio play shortening work? Of course I hope so. Nothing against goofing off. My day? Mm, I ran out of Melatonin and metro’ed to the Marais because a store there is the only place in Paris I know that is guaranteed to stock the real deal. Ate an eclair while I was over there. Saw Jodie Foster walking out of a swanky cheese store. I set up an imminent meeting with our film producer to check in about stuff and get coordinates from him re: the proposals we need to write towards getting grants/financing for the new film. I made two blog posts. Stuff like that. Eventful-ish but not exciting. Thursday, yours, … ? May it have been the exact opposite of dust in the wind. Perfect song stuck in my head love, Dennis. ** Steve Erickson, Okey-doke. I’m beginning to hope he doesn’t in fact come to the film screening, ha ha. Or no ha ha? Boy, you’re making me double down on my ‘no more writing journalism’ vow. Bad memories flooding back. Nice about the Godard DVD/BluRay. Speaking of, the new Godard was supposed to have been released here weeks and weeks ago, but there’s no sign of it, and wtf. How was the protest? I hope it was packed and very loud and effective. ** Sypha, Hi. Maybe AI would appreciate Perconte’s work, but it couldn’t make it. Very human work despite immediate signs to the contrary. I have to stop letting hippies’ support for things ward me off those things. Well, some of those things. A few. A couple. ** Corey Heiferman, Me too, re: watching Perconte work, although I might need to be on acid to withstand the many hours it must take him. Does Talmudic thinking posit that all, say, acts of vandalism have the same value? I don’t know what Jewish thinking is, of course, but it sounds good from what you wrote. Does the work choose the person? That’s a huge and interesting question. Believing as I do that confusion is the truth, I’d say it’s a toss up? Thanks for the luck. Well, relatively speaking, and relative to even low budget indie movies that reach any kind of audience, ours is definitely small, budget-wise, and weird generally. If I was to compare it to Jacques Perconte’s work, though, it would be a whole other story. Strange stuff, yes. Have a goodie of a day. ** Statictick, Long story very short, there’s some glitch re: the comments here that is randomly causing all kind of weird problems for some people sometimes and no one seems to know why and there seems to be no fix. Very glad you enjoyed his work and the post. Political territory? Hm, that I don’t think is the case, but what do I know? Nice concert stuff. Is Costello better and back on the road? I don’t want to miss Malkmus on his next trip through here. I did miss Deerhunter recently. Don’t care about Radiohead. Saw Beck once at the ultra-beginning when he was a weird kid playing his songs at underground art openings in LA and once during that phase where he was trying to be like James Brown or whoever. Never got the Liz Phair thing. Nice to be seeing you, pal, and sorry about the disappearing comment mystery thing. ** Okay. What’s today? Oh, right. I brought this post back to life because I’ve always thought it had a wonderful combination of utter absurdity and grade school structuralist interest, and because I’m virtually positive that I am the only person in the world who would (and did) watch all of those videos, and because I like the idea of being proven wrong about that ‘only me’ thing although I have no idea how anyone could prove me wrong convincingly. So for those reasons. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Haha I never watched all those vids, although I did see a couple and can confirm they made me feel chilled. I’ve never eaten in such a restaurant myself but now kind of feel I have by proxy.
Still here in Leeds, and this morning I set up the record player I got my mum for her birthday. It’s sounding great and I played her the Bryan Ferry box set that makes up the rest of her present. His version of A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall is still the best cover of all time as far as I’m concerned.
Kino Lorber is releasing the new Godard film in the US, and I presume it will probably play the Toronto and New York Film Festivals, then going on to open in New York. GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE was surprisingly popular considering its form (not that it made much money, but it played 2 months at the IFC Center).
I saw a Deerhunter show years ago where Bradford spent 10 minutes during the encore talking about his mental health issues and the fact that he was still a virgin. (I have the feeling that if he wanted to end the latter issue, he could’ve done so later that night.) It was one of the most unsettling concert experiences I’ve ever seen.
I’m trying to hire a soundman and P.A. now, but it’s very frustrating when people express enthusiasm either in person or E-mail. Then you offer them the job in E-mail and they don’t respond (and I am paying for the soundman position.)
Hello again. Too many excellent Days lately to comment. I always think some big vacation is going to come up where I’ll catch up on the ones I’ve bookmarked–but I don’t have a job now, so vacations are times away from whatever project I’ve put first. I should plagiarize them a bunch; rifling through stuff to think about for poems always motivates me. (I’m writing a really long poem for the first time in ages and so far it feels good. ) I always put together those Days with whatever themes or concerns I think I detect in your writing-lately, I think, especially a lot about mechanisms. I think if I were the type to write an academic paper (I’m not), it’d be less about some of the stuff I’ve always seen emphasized and more about your feeling out the differences between people and machines ( . . . and corpses, and ghosts, and text . . . ) Admittedly, that’s not something that’s been ignored, exactly. I don’t expect that what people see in your writing matters a huge amount to you, aside from their connecting. Or being inspired by it.
And I would suspect a very deep affinity with Poe.
And did you ever get into Lovecraft at all? Has that come up here much?
After seeing you and the whole exciting deal of seeing THEM again–which was completely fresh and moving, of course–I drove on to Provincetown MA, cause I’d gotten a chance offer to split an apartment really cheap. I loved being there and I worked a lot (mostly on 2 short-term things I’d like to wrap up), but it was a weird visit because from the first day: 1. I had sciatica I couldn’t make go away, and it’s hard to enjoy a beach town if it’s hard to stand, sit, lie down, or walk; 2. My phone just stopped working, so I felt isolated. This would probably be OK for a quiet beach vacation, but this was Ptown where I kinda like to meet people, and half of it was Bear Week, an occasion where I would usually be *very* friendly and friended . . . but quiet time without the annoyances of being constantly harassed by gorgeous men was OK, too. I saw some great drag queens. (I have steroids and a new phone now.)
I’m not going to travel much again soon, I think: There’s a memorial for Kevin Wolff in Chicago August 18, and I’ll probably spend a few days because I’m going to be working with a few people there on plans to preserve and promote Kevin’s work. And I mean to come to NYC for the Lincoln Center programs, which I’m pretty geared up for, natch. But anyway, it’s good for me to stay put here for a while, cause it gets me focused.
I am reading a bunch of stuff at once right now, mostly about either psychology of cinema (a big run of stuff lately), dreaming, imagination, Gaston Bachelard, Petrarch. I’m finally puzzling around in “A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream,” by Elliot R. Wolfson. This is certainly a work of Jewish thought, though I don’t know if it’s the kind Corey H. means. “Talmudic” means to me only: open to alternative and conflicting interpretations at the same moment; tolerant of deliberation and uncertainty; essentially insistent on a discernible chain of reasoning and plausible evidence; pursuing truth without assuming it’ll be grasped, or definitive. Even a whole lot of people with no background in Talmud adopt those principles because they were so influential on “criticism” as such in the West–and they sure are badly missed in American public discourse now. But they can get to be too much, to go overboard, which is the way people sometimes use “Talmudic” pejoratively — as when Freud or whoever constructs an elaborate defense of an unstable proposition. The kind of thing that sometimes makes criticism seem hilaaaarious.
I don’t know how I got started on that. It’s just that it’s been a big thing in my life, and I think what I’m writing about these days is detaching from the assumptions about right and wrong reasoning, causes and effects, that I think keep me too earth-bound, or ordinary or something. Off into uncertainty for me. Anyway, I like to spend a lot of time with the dreams, as you know.
See you in September.
Dude the whole world’s just one big revolving restaurant. A bunch of organisms spinning around in circles eating each other and enjoying the view.
I’m most drawn to the Radon in Sarajevo. It looks and sounds like my favorite kind of creepy and the video is a gem. My eyes popped out a bit when I saw the Tanzania one because my friend works in a similarly named building right down the street.
The only rotating restaurant I’ve been to that comes to mind is the Sun Cruise Hotel in South Korea, which must’ve been featured on this blog at some point, There’s a revolving restaurant there but I’m not finding pictures easily:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGp6Cc3ZNn8
The wait staff at those places must get a sixth sense for where their tables are going to be at any given time.
Got caught in an internet wormhole and stumbled upon Macton Corporation, a railroad turntable manufacturer that moonlights in revolving restaurants:
http://www.macton.com/revolving-restaurants/
Some highlights:
“…A Macton revolving restaurant installed at the Hyatt hotel in San Francisco survived the major 1987 earthquake without damage and continues to perform flawlessly.”
“Maximum rotational speed is not limited by the drive, but is selected for the comfort of the patrons. The drive and controller is also equipped with variable speed so operating speed can be further controlled for local preference – some restaurants prefer to change the speeds at different parts of the day to encourage turnover during peak meal hours, since faster rotation has been shown to shorten the stay of the typical restaurant patron.”
In Jewish tradition as I understand it, religious obligations are divided into two separate components: people’s obligations to each other and people’s obligations to God. When one person wrongs another, he is required to sincerely repent to the person he wronged and to provide fair compensation for the damages. He also must sincerely repent to God for the damage done to God’s creation. It’s impossible for people to understand the significance or consequences of fulfilling or not fulfilling obligations to God.
Right now I’m thinking and writing mostly under the influence of Hebrew poetry and Hannah Arendt. What are you reading now? Do you feel a conscious influence on your writing?
To the extent you’re able to talk about them, what are your films’ business models?
P.P.S. I just saw that there are three concurrent David Wojnarowicz shows going on in New York.
https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/DavidWojnarowicz
Hi Dennis! I’ve eaten in the Dallas one two times when I was a very wee lad. The first time, foggy. The second time, not so much. Glass elevators are fucked up. I don’t remember the food being good though. Probably because I ate off a kids menu?
Thanks for the recommendation. I contacted them and I’m going to work on a ‘cover letter’ for it, which can’t mention the story/characters. I’ll probably take my time on it too, share it with my friend who will be in SF in a week, then go from there. I didn’t realize I’ve had some of their books on my wishlist for a while, like “gag” for example. They also publish epics of over 500 pages, which is nice.
Yeah, Mark is technologically challenged. Apparently, he went to your NY publisher (probably decades) long ago to drop off one of his steven truscott narratives and scared them all, thinking they might call the cops. Lol. He Said that the place was across a funny book store?
I ate at a revolving restaurant in Seattle in 1995. The experience was better than the food.
Here’s my review of photographer/filmmaker Lauren Greenfield’s GENERATION WEALTH: http://gaycitynews.nyc/walking-away/
and NICO, 1988: http://gaycitynews.nyc/nico-nuanced-time/
Hey Dennis,
I didn’t manage to watch all the videos. Sorry. But I did watch a good few of them, some of which became quite abstract and trippy and pretty great, and one of which showed the restaurant not revolving whatsoever. Have you ever eaten in a revolving restaurant? I really like the design of the quite cheesy semi-sci-fi ones that look like exactly what you’d think of when you think of a revolving restaurant. Good post, that’s oddly burrowed its way into my cranium.
How’s tricks? Nice Jodie Foster spot from Wednesday!
Does melatonin really do the trick? My sleep’s awful atm and I’m taking herbal tablets which seem to do heehaw.
The radio play took a backseat to my Writing Gang subs, but was gently grilling on my mental back-burner. The biggest problem is that the original version of the play is intentionally very slow, I don’t want to chop all the breathing space out of it as that stuff makes it what it is, if that make sense. I’m into it whatever.
My old cartoon boss, Jonathan, got back in touch today to tell me he’s now wanting to make a comic book. He didn’t say if he wanted me to work with him on it, just that he’s making one. He’s funny.
As for strong E, I think it very much does still exist. One of my good friends is still in that world and I’m going to make enquiries tomorrow. Although the last time I took strong E I was miserable for about three months afterwards, haha.
How was your Thursday?
May Friday be the opposite of a disaster movie.
Perennial love,
Jamie
Hello, D. I love how you referenced absurdity when discussing revolving restaurants. We have one on top of the Ren Cen, but it’s been years since I’ve been there. It may no longer be revolving. It was elitist, rude, expensive, with very underwhelming eats, and way before the downtown area got built back up, so the view was blah. Absurdity in a very pejorative way.
As far as I know, Costello is fine and recovering. He cancelled some shows in Europe, but I expect him to be here in November. It may not be the 2.5hrs he usually plays. But for fanatics like me, it’s very welcome, as is a new record with The Imposters in October.
I sorta thought Phair might not be your deal. I loved her from the first quivering note, and even when she got slick. She was a great palate cleanser for, and contribution to the music of the early 90s. And I still find her sexy, and I can’t explain how that got into my head.
You’ve mentioned not liking guitars much lately. I’ve played them since I was a child, so they mean a bunch to me. I recently rediscovered The Hold Steady, digging most of the reverence to standard rock and roll, and especially Craig Finn’s lyrics. Much of it evokes a sort of personal damage I can relate to, even if I’m not much like the songs’ characters. Heard of them? If not, I can’t entirely recommend them to you in a no-guitar phase. But they’ve been great listening lately in my reflective, get your shit together stance.
No apologies needed with the weird posting probs. Maybe I’ll become less yakky (right).
Best to you, D. And y’all.
My comment got lost!
Ever been to a revolving restaurant? Best one?
What’s your favourite Winter memory?
This made me think of how tangible Winter is, we have no alternative for Summer – fire I guess? But no, that’s not right. Bush fires sometimes in Summer but only in select places. There is nothing we can play with in Summer except… sweat?
Some places in Polynesia do fire performances which is pretty cool. No “Fire Christmas” no “Fire White” no “Summer Wonderland.” Huh.
My favourite hustlers were the smiling ones. I don’t know if that’s cheerful or sick.
Thank you thank you thank you.
Life is sapping the words out of me, I’m afraid. Hope all is well with you as always with you is well I wish – ?