* (restored)
As a long term side project, I’ve started writing a book called The Ten Thousand. My goal for this project is to write ten thousand picture stories that I’ll share regularly on social media. So far I’ve written more than five hundred stories. I predict that it’ll take me between five and ten years to complete this project. The photographs I use are found wherever I can get them. All of the stories are 140 characters or less.
I chose to write ten thousand stories because “the ten thousand things” is an ancient Buddhist expression which means “everything that exists in this world.” I also figure that if I do something thousands of times, I’ll get really good at it.
In this blog post I’ve picked some of my favorite stories from the book. I like them a lot and I hope you enjoy them too. If you do, please take a moment to follow me on:
(11) Zo draped her house in blankets and played silent air guitar in the living room for weeks like someone screaming on the moon.
(25) Bobby and Loraine jumped off a bridge in 1962. Being a ghost seemed like more fun than being a kid.
(27) Henry Zapo wept continually for this passing unrepeatable world, taking 400 pictures a day, tears blurring the lens.
(36) Molly Vollo owned 400 wigs, one for each day, to hide the naked skull that kept her troubled mind.
(40) When Cecelia Pinn turned 17 she recorded 900 punk songs in a year, gave all the cassettes to Goodwill, and cut her throat.
(55) The Bruja sisters found a decapitated head in the woods who told them of the outer gates where all the fires sing.
(57) Jimbo held his cigarette aloft and watched it burn like a sun, the only bright spot in his galaxy of nothing.
(59) Jeb and Deb were tanning bed freaks. They liked to eat dinner naked, muscle juice dripping from their exhausted golden skin.
(63) Katy Kinkong was the deadliest girl in Houston. Men desperately threw themselves at her like jumpers embracing cement.
(71) Every year, the spirit of the season filled Kenny Christmas so completely that he swelled up three times bigger.
(87) Men’s eyes stuck to her like slime on a slug, but when approached she only burped and said: My heart belongs to Jesus.
(95) Roy Orbison planted his mind behind impenetrable sunglasses, kissed cigarettes all night, and smirked at every singer.
(105) Cherry was the wild unwanted one: slurring, drunk, and screaming, with an ever wounded heart and a trail of bad reviews.
(123) Sissy woke up like something dredged from the deep sea bottom. She snorted a pill and a heavy wave pushed over her, sending her back.
(134) As her husband yakked, she turned her head to stare at the disgusting mutants who filled the convention hall, gulping down air like pigs.
(137) Squid could suck his own dick. He huffed paint and punched himself in the head and howled at night. He died at 23 and that’s how he’ll always be.
(169) As she got older, she slimmed down to bones and wrinkles. That’s what living does to you, not death. Death makes you bloom again.
(178) Once a week she washed her clothes in a public bathroom, whispering ceaseless praises to God for this beautiful, broken, unrelenting world.
(181) Try as they might, no man could make her fall in love. Her heart was like a howling pack of wolves. Nobody was moon enough.
(197) He was friendly enough when the bottle was still half full, but past that he only got meaner. By the last swallow he was Satan.
(199) How does the night speak? With a tongue as quick as a serpent’s and poison under its lips. It says: Soon you will all be with me again.
(218) They don’t have dicks, pussies, lips, eyes, hearts, soft hair. They stick unfeeling bones into empty sockets. Skeleton love.
(234) No More Romance 2017
(246) Give the devil a big wet kiss on the lips.
(248)
after walking every empty street
until the night was done
he washed up at the ocean’s feet
and got drunk with the sun
(256) Jill sat behind her sunglasses, silently dripping. “These bodies are temporary,” she thought. She bit her arm as hard as she could.
(268) The writer loved the idea that some incorporeal form of him could sit in the lap of countless strangers. Intimate for hours, for evenings.
(271) Beyond the edge of the yard was the forest, filled with gaping darkness like an open mouth. He could smell its breath from his bedroom.
stared
down
the
sink’s
dark
hole.
It
was
clogged
with
something
that
smelled
awful.
His
back
hurt.
It’s
going
to
be
a
long
year.
(288) They sang ‘Erotic City’ twice, the only song they’d bothered to learn. Then they peed themselves on stage. That’s what it takes to be great.
(293) They stole her parents’ electronics, sold them on ebay, and bought enough bath salts to trip for months. Get your priorities straight.
(298) ‘Wild In the Streets’ blasted through the boombox, winding through six greasy pill-strung brains. All their hairdos nodded in agreement.
(313) Mark rolled 6 feet of pizza dough and stuck it in his pants. “I GOT THE BIGGEST DICK ALIVE! USA! USA!” So they elected him CEO of Dominoes.
(359) rEbA kIllEd hErsElf bY crUshIng hEr skUll In wIth hEr bArE hAnds. tHe UnIvErsE InsIdE hEr mInd wAs hOrrIblE. sO shE obIitErAtEd It.
(362) Above a snow wasteland, the florescent used car lot sign shone like a nativity angel. It said unto the world: Hark! Money and garbage forever.
(372) Look through the walls. Do you see the distance all around us? It’s the truth under every beautiful dream.
(379) With luck, one day your name might also become a part of the culture. The culture, the same thing that sells Taco Bell “meat.” Congrats.
(396) The best thing about being 100% dreamy is everyone loves your eyes. The worst thing about being 100% dreamy is nobody stays real for long.
(423) Speeding through the summer like a howl in a cave.
(430) The fourth drink told her to relax. The fifth drink muttered jokes in her ear. The sixth drink said nothing matters.
(435) The incomparable joy of occasionally meeting someone else who gets it.
(460) He liked to walk shirtless through the pristinely decorated house his wife had made and spoil its delicacy with cigarette smoke and back hair.
(473) Doing meth is like knowing how happy fires must feel while they burn.
(535) Mid-sob, she had a vision of all the squiggling creatures and chemical hallways inside her tears, each one its own galaxy. It didn’t help.
(561) The trouble with islands is they think they’re the only solid thing around. The beauty of islands is their determination to touch air.
(570)
a stereo
a drink
a cat
and a sunday dinner spread alone.
some people never find lasting satisfaction in these things
because
they’re dumb.
(582)
lEAvE mE AlOnE.
l/e/a/v/e/m/e/a/l/o/n/e.
lleavve mme allonne.
(l)(e)(a)(v)(e) (m)(e) (a)(l)(o)(n)(e).
how many fucking ways can i say it
(589) She snuck out and smoked a joint. It made her feel soft and juicy inside, like a ripe fruit. Now was the time when her brain tasted best.
(597) Thirty human beings in a subway car. Thirty parallel universes bouncing below the city. I don’t understand boredom, but I understand fatigue.
(625) Drink until the glass starts drinking you.
(635) Her entire life Cecilia had been incredibly adept at figuring out when she was being lied to.
(639) We need to have a talk with the children…we just can’t do this every night. Halloween ended eight months ago.
(641) Cowboy boots that make rocks pop and crumble beneath them with every step. Eyes that cut like bullets through all the Devil’s tricks.
(652) And when the aliens arrive, filling the air with magic lasers, they’ll ask: Where’s Elvis? And we’ll reply, so sadly: You’re late.
(669) “Flamingos are phallic, you know,” she said, batting her four pound eyelashes. She would lay in her yard all day and tell it to whoever passed by.
(673) She swam through my mind all summer. Not once did I come up for air.
(683) t(w)r(i)e(n)e(d)s
(691) O to be a sunbeam in the city. O to spend two seconds there and bounce back to space. O to glance off 10,000 uncaring surfaces and disappear.
(693) Fame is like the caged tiger in a travelling circus. Legend is like the thing in the jungle that ate six people and was never seen again.
(704) She was a night diamond. Something sacred. Something that decent people don’t know about.
(707) Cops killed Jesus.
(710) After dark they’d grab their skateboards and move through the city like eels: all teeth, eyes, and slither.
(718) The same dark that falls on West Virginia is the same dark that cradles Saturn. The same dark is in my mouth too, while I hum a quiet song.
(721) No dope, no furniture, no car, no plans, no stability. Times are hard! No job, no family, no credit, no expectations. Maybe not that hard.
(731)
The broken world breaks.
The fresh wound aches.
The tired skin flakes.
God will make what He will make.
We will take what we can take.
(734) I used to think there wasn’t any goodness in the world, but then I started seeing deer in the country. So gentle. People like to shoot them.
(738) One night she drove her bike straight into the waves. I will ride the sea floor forever, she said. I’m sick of all this goddamned Love.
(744) A song spilled from the blackbird’s throat into the air. It was the same song that all birds sing: I am alone, but I am searching.
(751)
“Hello, what can I get ya’ll?”
“I’d like a boyfriend who’s not a stinking piece of shit, please.”
“And for you?”
“Just kill me.”
(763) At dawn the pink light of morning rolled through like everyone’s favorite sweetheart, blowing kisses at every window in town.
(764) The city is my church, like the song says. I don’t know what we believe in, but I know my soul depends on it.
(777) The dream of the unrepentant prodigal. A shadow carrying her far away from home. Her lonely cries filling the air.
(778) Death had been good to Jackson. Now he was neon. For timeless eternity he floated through darkness, admiring himself.
(794) THINGS ART CAN DO: Put your mind into the world. Seduce you with better love. Fill you with vision. Deepen your understanding. Fuck shit up.
A+F+T+E+R+L+I+F+E from Chris Dankland on Vimeo.
thanks for reading !!
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p.s. Hey. ** Bill, Hi. (1st, officially). Strange about the meh Nauman show, but ace at seeing D.L. in a far flung (?) locale. I don’t have that book, I need to get it. I think I’m still upswinging, thank you, sir, ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yeah, seeming gradual improvement apart from my ear. Love’s slacking off. Glad you liked the voracious art. I’m telling you, get yourself a portable vacuum cleaner with a long nozzle and suck those skeeters into the void. It works like almost a charm. Even bathrooms deserve holidays. Love feeding me an ice cream sandwich (it’s hot here), G. ** _Black_Acrylic, I remember that Toto Coelo song. It was a hit, at least on MTV, in the US too. Have you ever in your searches through the distant pop chart past heard Cannibal & The Headhunters? I think this was their only hit. ** Lucas, Hi. Thanks, Lucas. So far so good. I didn’t know that ‘Bones and All’ birthed anything. I thought it sunk like a stone. But I’m Twitter-free. I am detecting some kind of Burroughs mini-revival happening on Facebook, which is yawn. Zine this weekend, or, well, today. Eardrops first. Have a lovely couple of days. ** Corey Heiferman, Hi. Well, I’m hopefully exiting the sickness realm, but best not to jinx that with too much articulation. The film stuff is massively way beyond frustrating, and thank you. Hm, I think when I go to bandcamp, I always have a specific target in mind. I often head over there after reading the latest issue of The Wire and seeking proof of the scribes’ descriptions and opinions, as that seems to be where most of my successful tips originate. Tokyo is stuffed with possibilities. Let me think. Travel-wise, Kyoto is really nice, and Osaka is a short jump from there. There’s the art islands (Naoshima, etc.) which are favorite go-to destination, but I’m not sure you’ll have enough time since Tokyo offers many days of explorables in and of itself. ** Deisel Clementine, Haha, John (Waters) knows everything. I’m not kidding. That was a helluva good comment. That Lispector quote is so ripe it’s positively scary. Thank you, kind one. ** David Ehrenstein, I just linked to that song up above! Great minds of a certain age think alike? I would think the Robert Wilson Foundation has some kind of data archive on people who worked with him if you really want to know? ** Misanthrope, I have a theory that one can rest by rushing around. There’s no scientific basis for that however. Onwards and upwards is the distant hope, yes. Thanks. I looked up Poehemia and the only thing I found was some band that plays Celtic rock music. No thank you. Maybe you mean Poe as in Edgar Allan? Enjoy whatever it is. ** Steve, I am virtually 100% certain that immense stress caused by the film mess is what occasioned my sickness. Uh, I don’t think there was any outage here, as far as I can tell. I haven’t heard or read anything about it, if so. I really want to see the Eno doc, obviously. I saw the Meiwes-adjacent movie ‘Rotenburg’, which was truly dreadful. ** Uday, Maybe Goya was trying to be more commercial? You’re almost post-teens! Congrats. Oh, I’m sure you’ll look back on your teens and think they were a very interesting time, and you’ll be somewhat amazed by what your teenaged self did. What does that mean: ‘the emotional parent’? I’m not as perky as a nipple in Siberia, but what or who is? Maybe what’s her name … Kylie Minogue? Even if I did want to swim in the Seine, which, yes, I certainly do not for the obvious reasons, Paris went into Olympics lockdown on Thursday, and now I can’t even get close enough to the Seine to look at it because it’s in ‘the red zone’. Thanks, though. Have a fine late-teenaged weekend while you still can. ** Justin D, Hi! I just got your email/download this morning. Thank you so infinitely much! I’m going to strap on my headphones and kick back and shut my eyes and hear where you think I should go this weekend. Really, thank you so much! Not much on my docket so far. It’s pretty hot here, and heat is a big damper for me. I still hope to see ‘Twisters’. I have slight hopes that I might finally receive/look at a copy of ‘Flunker’ at extremely long last. Eat some ice cream. What about you and yours? ** Harper, Hi. Lucky you. I still have never seen any Gaudi thing of any shape or size in person. Every time I see a restaurant that says Tapas, I always avoid it. I think maybe because it makes me want to eat Mexican food, and Tapas restaurants do not serve Mexican food tragically. Right, even really good, exciting, cool museums have horrible, disappointing gift shops. So strange. I can’t figure it out. Maybe museum gift shops are franchised or something. I think I do understand what you mean about that ‘erotic’ art, yes. What did you end up bumping into on your free day? I hope things that could qualify as glorious. ** James Bennett, Thanks, James. It was an interesting and abiding pleasure to put together. People who grow up in LA tend to talk very vaguely in rambling, incomplete sentences that are full of uncertainty and hint more than communicate. At least in my romantic assessment. ‘Hollywood Babylon’ is fun. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that most of it is fabricated. Wow, pricey: ‘My Mark’. Boy, do I wish I’d held onto a lot of copies of that. I’d be … well, not rich, but better off. I ended up building a novella around ‘My Mark’ called ‘Safe’, but ‘My Mark’ is the only part that I still think is very good. Thank you, yeah, the film stuff is so horrible at the moment that I don’t even know what’s going to happen other than the film getting finished and out at some point whatever it takes. ** 🌟Gurl, Nice Mario-like star there. Thank you so much about ‘Flunker’, pal. I might even get to finally see a copy this weekend if I’m very lucky. Have a fine, fine weekend. ** Oscar 🌀, Hi. Haha, message received. I think? Yes, I think so. I might have already mentioned this, but in Zac’s and my new film there’s a scene where two characters are about to go to sleep in two tents they’ve set up in the backyard, and one of the characters picks up a flashlight and uses it to send a message in morse code/light through the walls of their tents to the other character, but I don’t think people are going to realise that’s what he’s doing, and I’m borderline sure that no one will decode the message, which is exciting. Did you know there’s a secret cabal in the Hollywood film industry, and one if its tenets is that if anyone tattoos ‘Hi, Oscar’ on any visible part of their body, Steven Spielberg has to cast them as the lead actor in his next movie? Just a little tip for you to think about the next time you’re in Hollywood. Huh, I just checked, and I don’t I have a favorite cannibal entry. Strange. I wonder what that means. Not ‘Eating People’ though, for sure. You can give that extra copy of ‘Flunker’ to your grandma! That would be so thoughtful of you. Nice weekend, my friend. ** Okay. I was looking back through the archives of this place, and I came across the really terrific, in my opinion, post up there put together by the very gifted writer, editor, and more Chris Dankland. I wonder if he’s still working on that project. I’d guess not, but maybe he’ll pop in here and say. Anyway, enjoy it, it’s great, I think. See you on Monday.
Now available in North America 
*
Great stuff Mr. Dankland. Should be read carefully and then re-read even more carefully. Yiu’re probably right about getting that ex-boytoy’s name from the Robert Wilson Archives, but I’m not r sure if I really need to. I remember his body that’swhat counts
I think I’ll look back but I haven’t really done anything much/am not very far along on my intellectual journey yet but that’s ok. Emotional parent I guess is sort of just the traditional responsibilities of a parent outside of the financial ones. I suppose Kylie Minogue is, yeah. I enjoy her music a fair bit to be honest. Not her latest album as much. Are you a fan? Also is the film mess getting better alongside the sickness? What price potatoes?
Wow, really cool stuff, I might ration these out a little. 211 kind of struck (lol) out to me, lightning accidents/incidents/whatever are so fascinating. Just a random person being entirely smitten by a really simple force – maybe it’s similar to what I was saying about spiders eating birds in the jungle, something unconscious doing something hideous to something intelligent.
Not much to report on my end – I’ve mostly been smoking, fixing some techy stuff for my elderly neighbours. I saw the new Nick Cage film which was…? Sort of terrible I think.
Anyway, I hope you’re feeling a little better. I just missed my copy of Flunker arriving, as of a few minutes ago, but I might not have taken it to visit my well-adjusted boyfriend anyway, he isn’t the biggest fan of your stuff.
hi ! just wanted to say thanks for reading the picture stories 🙂
Dennis my copy of Flunker arrived yesterday and when I got home I devoured it voraciously. It felt almost like a shot of whiskey, swift and scouring and delicious, and it left me feeling a kind of wooziness that’s still lingering today. So thank you for that. I loved it.
Very cool post. The deer one kinda got me because I’ve hunted them.
My partner kept the kid today while I had one last day off before med school starts (ha), so I went to a few shops in the French Quarter, including an occult/oddity shop full of preserved animal specimens and statues made with real bones. The Quarter can be hokey and touristy but it has a few charming businesses nonetheless. New Orleans is kind of magical. Definitely recommend visiting if you ever get the chance. How’s your weekend been? Glad to hear you’re starting to feel better.
thank u for reading 🙂
Today and yesterday’s post are fantastic. Obsessed with the pics today and the life of each. Love the writing too. The pizza dough pic has gotta be my fav. Hope you are doing well, Dennis. I’ve convinced my partner to read The Sluts and we are going to read it out loud to each other next week. Very excited.
thank u so much !!
Dennis, congratulations on Flunker, which I just finished. Once again my apologies for my only-intermittent commenting here, I continue to act as a quiet observer. This is a really cool post, and very interesting to think about insofar as tightly restrictive forms operate. Looking forward to Room Temperature.
Stress-related illness sounds very plausible.
I brought my laptop to the Apple Store, and I should be able to pick it up next Tuesday, with a fresh battery, although I’ve been told they need to call me tomorrow. The repair person said “Your computer was manufactured in 2016. That’s vintage!” In the meantime, my spare laptop is working OK.
Rosa von Praunheim’s Meiwes-inspired film is eccentric even by his own standards.
hiiii, saturday is close enough to monday… well monday is when you will read this so even closer. whole week flew by as i was bedridden with a stool problem that forced me to eat a lot of fiber, i’ll spare you the details.
missed few good days, love aki, price, good photos. still a bit too sick to really write a lot about them.
‘‘In-joke’, interesting, in what way?’ — a question about felician rops after i said he became a sort of in joke in my friend group — a frequent scenario is someone new bringing him up. i say sort of becuse i don’t think we have made comment of it, so we are all just going by our own instincts and a good chunk has canned responses, other chunk has honest responses about his work.
writing crawled to halt due to my poopy problems, been watching a lot of hisayasu sato’s movies, they’re really good, surprised he hasn’t gotten a day seeing how well the movies fits here, though i guess they are hard to come by, and articles and gifs by that matter might be even harder.
i think that’s all, unless sunday me adds some things. hopefully his bowels have been cured by then.
sunday me here, just to add to sato, i looked at sato’s wikipedia and realized i had one, only seen a handful of his movies, and two, those were not the norm, and i apparently only watched his hot men on men action movies. the movies in question, are the fetist, hunter’s sense of touch, bondage ecstacy and muscle, all having this great dreamy but yet violating voyeurist qualities to them.
sade is a surprisingly easy read, idk why i think that, and i don’t want to find out why. thank you for the rec on the translation.
A blast from the past. I loved Chris’ Halloween-themed short, wonder if it’s still online, and what he’s up to these days.
I’m kept busy with gigs here, which used to be unheard of. Last night was Oishi, visiting from London. Great to see my favorite local percussionist Brian Chu play with them.
Bill
hey bill ! thank u 🙂 i’m doing well, mostly i’m helping to run xray litmag, reading lots of submissions & stuff. hoping that everything is awesome for u
You did mention the morse code in the film, yeah! I think you said it was something like ‘come over here’ or ‘come see me’ or something? Still holding on to that little factoid to trick people into thinking I know morse code when the film comes out. Oh, by the way, apparently there’s some sort of archaeological dig somewhere super, super rural in the States — like Alaska or Maine (???) — where they’re finding all this cool cave writing that seems to date back to back before they thought there was writing at all. So far they’ve got a ‘H’ at the start, an ‘n’ the middle-ish, and what’s either an ‘s’ or a ‘5’ at the end. More on that on Monday. Between now and then, I’ll definitely keep my eyes peeled for ‘Hi, Oscar’ tattoos.
This was such a cool read. The one with the deer also got me. I love deer — they’re just so cool. Just fun little dudes, out there eating grass. What a life.
God, I have no idea how my grandma would react to ‘Flunker’. I think it’s a 50/50. That would be a good one to put on a blurb, though: ‘grandma approved’. How’s your weekend looking? Feeling a little better? :3
thank u for reading ! deer are fun little dudes for sure
Thank you Chris! Very much enjoying the immersiveness of this project, which I hope we will see develop.
The latest instalment of my show Play Therapy v2.0 is online here via Tak Tent Radio! With this new episode, Ben ‘Jack Your Body’ Robinson brings you a heavily Chicago-inflected selection.
hello ! i appreciate yr comment so much, thank u for reading
hi! I hope your weekend was nice, or ok at least, considering the mini heatwave you mentioned and film stress etc. we also had a heatwave and it was especially terrible on saturday so my weekend is kind of sucking because of it. although I’m still being pretty productive somehow. I drew and painted a bit for the first time in ages, made some collages my friends seemed to really love and I’m still writing of course. you can take your time wrt the zine, I didn’t mean to be pushy, sorry. anyways, again, I hope you’re good and that you fully got over your cold too. sending love from over here!
Btw ! D’you wanna electronically swap art ? My email’s [email protected] 🙂
sure I’d love to!! I’ll send you an email sometime soon:)
Here’s my favorite “11 O’Clock Number”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVgQouT9LuI
And here’s the greatest of all 11 O’Clock Numbers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byDPXhYETZI
Response to ten thousand macro micro-stories – 0.001% of that number of vignettes on my weekend:
((Performer 1: baby oil soaked wifebeater. My skull was almost hit in the curve whilst they self-flagelated with a metal chain.
Performer 2: rush poppers smeared at the entrance of a mandalla. He’s also soaked in baby oil. Told him it felt more like sex-with-someone-i-love than any performance I’ve seen before. I think he blushes.
My boyfriend’s boyfriend is telling me about stealing a herm sprenger collar from a dog trainer that gave bad advice. “I have to point the jagged bits outwards from my neck because it does actually break the skin.”
Hitching a ride to a 30th in the bright red van of a friend’s hookup. He’s asking me sexually intrusive questions in a cute haphazard way. And in five hours or so I’ll be at a sex party and i’ll be asked considered politically-correct questions. The dog in the van licks my face.
Someone tries to pop out the top of a giant cardboard cake. The head can’t break the tissuepaper lid – the whole thing keeps lifting up instead – showing ankles. (big pink cake with ankles). Partner runs over to hold down the edges.
The karaoke ends before I get the chance to sing stone roses’ I Wanna Be Adored. I have a bit I always do – where I tell the room, “The lyrics on the screen are wrong actually. The song’s called ‘I Wanna Be a Door’ – like *I mime opening a door, then walking through it* I wanna be entered.”
– “Sorry, I need to pick up some blueberry chewing-gum before I go.”
– “Does it need to be blueberry?”
– “Yeah, I’m thinking of making it my thing.”
An hour in to the afters, I have to tell my friend its a sex party. He says, “I just assumed people were dressed like that cause its a really warm night.”
Peeling skin off blisters – two circles of red exposed skin on each heel. Kind of looks like holes in the pantyhose of bank-robbers’ wives.
“They say you should get the toothbrushes they give to chemo patients.”))
Hope you had a gorge wee weekend yourself – any fun moments ?
thank u for yr badass response ! i googled ‘herm sprenger collar’ & had a fun time
I didn’t get invited to the Oulipo prom.
Hi!!
I’m really glad you’re feeling better! But I do hope love finally pulls himself together this weekend and makes this whole fuckery disappear, ear stuff and all.
This is completely unrelated to everything we’ve been talking about, but have you ever been to Fire Island? I’m reading a book about its history/culture, and I was wondering.
That’s the least love could offer under the circumstances – an ice cream sandwich! Love spending the weekend in a K-hole, Od.
Here’s a whole buch of stuff about the Count of Montebello — a great aesthete and a Total Babe
https://www.bing.com/search?q=philippe+de+montebello&form=WSBEDG&qs=SC&cvid=8b6734162ffe4c5791b79153803033c7&pq=Phillippe+De+Montebello&cc=US&setlang=en-US&PC=HCTS&nclid=F0A203B25D9DE83C4618BA94C5B261B8&ts=1721584187681&wsso=Moderate
Hey Dennis,
Great post, and many thumbs up and encouragement to Chris for this project. Really enjoyed reading through this over the weekend. Can’t wait to see more.
Things have been bit… off centre, I’d say, here. Nothing too major. My dad had like a mini-heart attack a few weeks back, like so mini he didn’t even know about it, but what was weird about the situation was that it was because of me that he kinda ended up getting it checked out… we talk about our aches and pains and he was telling me about his and I was all “go get it checked out” and then my younger sister walked in his end, and was like “what’s wrong with you?” and if it hadn’t been for me calling he wouldn’t have told any of them. Seems strange me going from black sheep to like mystic. He’s all good now, had to have a small little keyhole op thing but all sorted.
“Flunker” arrived this weekend, so I’m excited to get to reading that. Just started reading “Love in the Big City” by Sang Young Park, so I’m gonna be reading the stories of “Flunker” in between breaks of that. I read ‘Face Eraser’ (of course I couldn’t wait to begin) and absolutely loved it.
I saw during my daily blog visits/readings, that you’ve wrote the first draft of you and Zac’s next film project. How is that? How long does it generally take you to write the first draft of a script?
Hope you’re well. Love and hugs,
Dom
Oh My Sta Biden’s not running and he;ss putting Kamala Harris in his place. The Rethuglicans are apoplecti. Cue Sondheim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Huv1pGndJfIrs
HI! I had a good day yesterday on my own, I went to some book stores. There’s an English language second hand bookstore called ‘Hibernian’ which I would recommend. I did see they had a copy of ‘Try’ there, the cover with the tv and the Bret Easton Ellis quote. I wandered around by my own volition and it felt very intoxicating to be completely on my own in a place where I’m a foreigner, and to ride the metro and only being able to guess what the people around me are saying. Sometimes being away from everything familiar is a comfort in itself if that makes sense. Though basically everyone I’ve met here speaks English.
The siesta thing is interesting. I wanted to go to a book store immediately and realised that there were a couple of hours in the middle of the day when everything shuts. It makes sense, It’s difficult to work in this heat. I also like that everything shuts late. Everything happens later in Spain.
Went to the Picasso museum today. None of his famous famous works but a lot of stuff spread out from different periods. Expensive but worth the trip if interested. His first self portrait from when he was like fifteen was there. Funnily enough, the museum exists because he donated 900 of his early works to the government in order to escape paying taxes.
There were whole rooms dedicated to studies and sketches for a single painting, and what inspired me was that he kept moving and acted before thinking, and probably made a lot of happy accidents along the way which informed the final piece. Whole rooms were work from like one week or something. They had this painting ‘Las Meninas’ and there was this massive room with paintings, each for a single aspect of the piece. There were different versions of the models and backgrounds etc. Since Picasso had the money he could afford to do all of these trial runs on canvases which is probably why there are so many Picasso’s, because he could always afford canvases.
We have our last full day here tomorrow.
Yeah, Tapas is not my thing either. Mexican food rules, though you’re a Californian originally so I’m sure you’re better versed on what the good stuff is. The Guacamole in supermarkets here is leagues ahead of what we have in the supermarkets in the UK, so thick and delicious. And the allioli of course which is basically crack, though you can get the same brand in the UK that’s everywhere here.
Love this selection! Is that Adam Ant in ‘Jubilee’ in (751)? Love him in that movie, with the eyeshadow on only one eye.
Damn. Sorry I wrote so much. I try not to do that, but like my writing, I’m terrible at cutting.
Michel Foucault wrote a whole book about “Las Meninas+
How is Brett Easton Ellis these days? Back in the day he was quite the gay barfly .
Hey, Dennis! Thanks for restoring this post, as it’s brand new to me. I find interpretation fascinating, so these captions are really fun. It kind of reminds me of this game I used to play with a friend ages ago — we would put on old films we’d never seen, and with the sound muted, make our own dialog. Glad my email made it your way. Hopefully your health’s upswing continued through the weekend. Did you get to anything on your weekend checklist? ‘Twisters’? ‘Flunker’ secured? Ice cream? My weekend was pretty much as predicted, but in a lovely sort of low-key way.
thanks so much for reading !
I have to say, I can’t imagine another cover for Try except the orange one with the entangled bodies. Maybe I would think different if way back in the day I had the other one? I don’t think so. Truly feels like the heart of the cycle it is with that burning hot cover and Guide one is the only right follower. I will have the design soon on my wall wink wink. Love from Chania and nice to know you are doing way better (hopefully entirely back on your beat by now)