*
p.s. Hey. ** Bill, ‘Ludwig’ is definitely worth a view, but do the long version, although, knowing you, its length might stop you in your tracks. But still, ha ha. One of the good things about being from LA and going there mostly when I go to the US is that it’s almost as possible to just pretend the whole Trump nightmare isn’t happening there for short periods of time as it is over here for some reason. How’s stuff? ** Kyler, Hey. Oh, understood. I think I’m just into appreciating pleasure and its rare commodity status these days. So, like, … ‘The new Star Wars gave you pleasure? That’s good enough for me.’ Anyway, it sounds like you got some good stuff from the X. Early Happy New Years to you too! ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you! Wonderful Visconti knowledge and back stories and wisdom sharing. And thank you kindly for the Leiris-related link. It will be used with pleasure. ** Steve Erickson, I like ‘The Damned’ and ‘Death in Venice’ very much. I haven’t seen ‘Conversation Piece’ and ‘The Innocent’ in a while, but I thought they were Visconti’s least distinctive films by far. ** Sypha, I just knocked on some wood for you. Or I think it was wood. It’s so hard to tell these days. Any version of ‘Death in Venice’ that doesn’t have an Introduction by Michael Cunningham is better than one that does. Wow, now that’s a list to test list fetishists, ha ha. I’ll, of course, be testing myself via it shortly. Everyone, You want to be impressed and humbled? Well, here’s Sypha: ‘Oh, you may have seen me mention this a few days ago, but recently I finalized my ten year reading experiment. If anyone here is really bored and needs something to read, here’s a list of the 812+ books I read over a ten year span.’ May your day be as non-sniffly as possible. ** _Black_Acrylic, ‘The Damned’ is a blast. Cool, readable. That’s an excellent start. ** Chris Cochrane, Hi, Chris! Very happy in-between holiday greetings to you! So psyched for you about that Southeast Asia trip, man. And envious to boot. Wish I could check out the Julian Eastman festival. Damn. Nice. I’m pretty sure Zac will be in NYC for at least a bit since he’s never seen ‘Them’, and it does seem like the upcoming run might actually be the last chance, although I thought that the last time it was reborn. I think Gisele might pop over too for the same reason. Uh, yeah, I think the best thing to do music rec-wise is to link you to my 2017 faves list and let you choose of five from the music list. It’s here. I would say you can’t be steered wrong. I still have a little room for pop guys. Not a ton, ha ha, but … How moly, that’s a new album by you! Well, you and another guy. Sweet. I’ll be streaming and forking out in just a few minutes. Awesome! Everyone, Chris Cochrane, who’s a genius guitarist and music creator/generator, and who is responsible for the music for Ishmael Houston-Jones’, Chris’s, and my performance/dance piece ‘Them’, has a new LP that he made with Stuart Popejoy called ‘Geologic Time’, and you can listen to it and score it for cheap on bandcamp, i.e. here, and I most highly recommend that you do. Great to see you maestro buddy, and, yeah, much more to come! ** Misanthrope, I never saw ‘Carol’, but I certainly remember it. Do you decorate your cubicle? Xmas decorations or pix of the family or sexy pin-ups or … ? I’m so sorry about the coming cold, but I’ll happily trade you for the blah mid-40s we’re dealing with over here. ** Okay. Lonely Link. Speaks for itself. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
*
Hi!!
Thank you! These last three days flew by so quickly! I had a pretty nice and relaxing time of eating and gifts and eating and family and some more eating, haha. I finally had the chance to curl up in my bed and read ‘The Sarah Book’ in one go. I loved it so much.
I’m really happy to hear your meeting with Gisele went smoothly AND that your Buche was amazing! Haha, especially after the unexpected (semi-)encounter with Lars von Trier at the hotel!
How was your Christmas? Was/Is your own Buche delicious?
I’m back at the gallery today but it’s the last week, the first of the last three days, to be exact so… I’ll just shut up and go through with this, I guess.
How are you? What’s happening over there? I hope everything’s great, Dennis!
[ Dennis! Goddammit, I got this thing again where this site only loads up to the previous day, so I posted the following comment yesterday afternoon under your Dec 25th post because I could not access the more recent one… grrrr
Anyway! Here it is, a bit late!]
Dennis, Dennis, Dennis!!!
Happy Christmas my dude, or, as they say up North and am now saying all the time because I love it so much, ‘Merry Crimbo’!
Such a lovely tree today, thanks for that! We did not even have time to get one this year, sadly. We’re making do with a big xmas ‘bouquet’ of red berry-things, thistles and pussy-willows, which do look like branches out of which grow dozens of very, very small and soft kitten-paws. Pretty neat.
Food-wise, I’ve perfected my tofurkey recipe, and we had it with all the fancy trimmings they do in the UK. We’re staying home and doing fuck all but catching up on the movies of the year we missed, but this is turning out to be a list mostly composed of heavy and dark stuff, so we added Wonder Woman to it yesterday because you can’t spend xmas watching dark heavy stuff. No, that’s not true – you can. But, you know, ‘One might want to avoid it, if one can’ kinda thing. Anyway, that’s us.
For all the lovely food stuff though we are missing a bûche de Noël, but will vicariously enjoy yours. I am surprised that, with all the ‘fancy food traditions we can import from France and market the shit out of’ you see here, the bûche de Noël has not made it yet. I give it 3 years.
Are you good? You seem good! Have some crimbo hugs! XX
It’s best to pretend Donald Trump doesn’t exist. He’s a “non-person” to start with and he won’t be around that much longer. The Mueller investigation will climax with indictments at which point I’m betting he’ll take the gas pipe.
An interesting piece on Romain Gary
And here are this year’s “Jon Swift Award” winners
… ok hang on Dennsterz, I have to check: I just discovered the magical and completely insane Snow and Ice town / festival in Harbin (China) where they build a whole city out of ice in the winter and light the buildings up – did you know about it? Because if you don’t, there’s a day waiting right there!!
For game images, these are oddly painterly. I like the fact that 75% of them show Link from the back.
There is a new Hollywood TOMB RAIDER reboot starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft. When I got a press release about it, I E-mailed the publicist and raved to him about Peggy Ahwesh’s SHE PUPPET, asking if he’d ever seen it. He never replied and I probably ensured I won’t get any more press releases about this film.
I was thrilled that Moonshake replied on Twitter today to a months-old tweet praising one of their songs. I tweeted to them (or whoever runs their account) asking if their FIRST EP will ever be made available for legal download on iTunes and if all the songs from it are up on YouTube.
Johnny Depp played Trump in a made-for-TV adaptation of his memoir THE ART OF THE DEAL many years ago. You can find clips of it on YouTube.
Ha, I forgot that that copy of “Death in Venice” had a Cunningham introduction.
Yeah, right now my leaky nose and cough have pretty much vanished, but I seem to be in the “spitting up mucus” stage, which tends to be the end of these colds for me (except on the occasions where they morph into sinus infections, as they’re prone to do). I have a feeling one reason this one is lingering is because of the fucking ARCTIC conditions we’re experiencing here now (and which will last for at least the next ten days). Thank god I have a vacation coming up soon (the week after next week).
Thanks for giving a shout-out to my list (which I’ve joked is almost as long to read as a book itself, ha ha). I’m quite proud of it, though. There’s like ten years of my life in there, and reading it over felt like going back in time a bit.
Oh, and here’s my musical picks and pans for 2017 (reposted from Facebook):
Album of the Year: Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie (Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie)
Runner-ups: Rainbow (Kesha), Harry Styles (Harry Styles), Luciferian Towers (Godspeed You! Black Emperor)
Other Notables: The Spirals of Great Harm (Skullflower), Add Violence (Nine Inch Nails), Lust for Life (Lana Del Rey)
Okay, but could have been better: Melodrama (Lorde), Low in High School (Morrissey)
Not that great: Spirit (Depeche Mode), Damage and Joy (Jesus & Mary Chain), All The Way (Diamanda Galas), Witness (Katy Perry), Younger Now (Miley Cyrus), You Make it Feel Like Christmas (Gwen Stefani)
Leeds had a bit of snow this morning but just a quick blast of the slushy crap that’s hardly even worth calling snow. It didn’t stick around. And how come Link never sees anything snowlike, at least not in today’s stack of landscapes?
Not much to report from the late Xmas scene here, just eating a few chocolates and watching my Twin Peaks DVD present. Plus I started Chris Kraus’s Kathy Acker bio and I must say that I’m liking it very much so far.
D.! Hope you liked the present. It’s the least I could
do. How many years of your books under my tree. Things
are good as a mutherfucker here. It’s December and 80 lol.
Got a cement alligator for Christmas. Bought myself a fishtank
and one of those 500 game Nintendos. Went to a psychic and had
a palm reading, even though she never looked at my palms? Got a
special feeling about 2018. Maybe see you in Paris this spring.
Feeling a trip to Greece. Ah Death in Venice, I have that in a
collection, a little book, as heavy as a brick. Ghost in my house
tends to make a fuss of things when there are extraordinary happenings.
Turns my TV off and on. Throws things off the counters. Reading a philosophy
of Warhol book and Solitary Fitness by Charles Bronson. Poor Link, so alone.
I always wondered whats under his skirt until I assfucked a guy with a tail.
Links freaking adorable though. Off to find trouble surely
Dennis, Hahaha, do you know how great this post is? I love it. No, I LOVE it.
Yeah, Steve just alerted me to the fact that “Carol” was directed by Todd Haynes. I had no idea.
Oh, no, I learned a long time ago not to keep too much stuff in my cube. You could be let go at any moment (especially being a contractor like I am) and you don’t want to be hauling a lot of shit out the door with you or have to make more than one trip. My cube is pretty spare. Some paper, some pens, a computer, whatever book I’m currently reading (for break time and down time), phone, headset, and…that’s about it. I lose this job, I can just grab my book and be gone.
My friend Oksana has guardianship of her three nephews. The oldest is the 11, the (fraternal) twins are 9. When they come in, they always make fun of my cube for being so boring and plain.
The one twin loves me to death, for whatever reason. Last time they were in, I was telling a story and I looked at him and I never saw a kid so rapt before in my life, like he was hanging on my every word, eyes all big and a huge smile on his face. You’d think I was saying the most important thing ever. That made me feel good…and a little uneasy because now I have to live up to some sort of expectation! But nah, he’s a special little guy, always wants to hold your hand when you’re walking with him or jump on your back and have you carry him or sit in your lap when you’re just sitting around shooting the shit. It makes him feel safe, and I know that, so I’m okay with it.
People are interesting.
Ugh, I think I got food poisoning tonight. I started feeling nauseous about 2 and 1/2 hours ago and then threw up 10 minutes ago. I actually feel better after vomiting, which is usually a sign of poisoning as opposed to the stomach flu. But now I have a large plastic bag next to me, with paper towels, and I think I should stay up for another hour just to make sure I don’t need to puke again, even though it’s 1:17 AM in New York right now. also my apartment is so fucking cold.