You’ve probably came across Seth Bogart, the multi-disciplinary artist, in one form or another: whether that be with his zany punk pop ceramics or as the big Bogart personality with the heavy gelled black painted hair and shiny red suit or as the front man for Hunx and his punx or as the other more stripped down perpetually shirtless speedo wearing guitar wielding rockstar who just released the new album “Men on the verge of nothing.”

 

 

In his musical career he has toured and collaborated with Kathleen Hannah and had Shannon from Shannon and the clams as band mate in Hunx and his punkettes. Besides being a fixture in the L.A music and art scene, Seth Bogart also has a succesfull streetwear label Wacky Wacko with a fabric print collaboration with Saint Laurent for a mens shirt. In 2012 Seth Bogart launched a web series called “Hollywood nailz” likened to a bizzarro 80’s public access style variety show.

In 2018 the production company World of Wonder, who are the creators behind Rupaul’s drag race, created the web series Feeling fruity by incorporating Bogart and his handmade installations (a la Peevy Herman playhouse) into a variety show.

 

Trailer sampler for “Men on the verge of nothing”

 

“Library Fantasy Vol 1” currently on show at Fierman gallery in N.Y which compromises of ceramic replicas of books, true to size and displayed on shelves as in a bookstore. It’s a imaginary library of a septuagenarian pioneer of the queer community.

 

 

Don’t ever call Seth Bogart an influencer.
by Bridgette Read. Vogue, Feb 2019

What’s it like being a lifelong punk in a city as matcha-soaked and millennial-pink-hued as L.A.? If you ask Seth Bogart, it’s not as hard as you might think. “It’s my favorite punk scene,” the Tucson-born Bogart says of his home for the last seven years or so, where he performs as the frontman of Hunx and His Punx. “When punk started in the late seventies, in L.A. especially it was the most diverse here. It was lots of people of color, and women, and queers and stuff. Every punk scene’s just a bunch of white dudes for the most part, with some women sprinkled in. Here you have, like, Alice Bag, and the Go-Go’s, and Darby Crash.”

 

 

Bogart’s prodigious creative output—ceramics, painting, music, clothing design—feels like an oasis of DIY in a sea of unrelenting digital non-labor. A longtime West Coast fixture in the queer and punk art scenes, he takes up material culture from the fringe, and distorts Hollywood glamour into a freewheeling free-sex utopia. And even as it’s become harder and harder to stay autonomous as an artist, he remains staunchly, exhilaratingly fuck-you-oriented, even if the rent in L.A. is too damn high. “It’s sort of sad and hard, yes,” in terms of sticking it out, he said on the phone with Vogue in January. “But I still think that there’s so much going on here and it’s such a great city. I always want to move somewhere else, but I don’t really know where to go.”

 

 

Bogart started out as a hairdresser in beauty school and as a performer in the Oakland punk scene, and the marriage of two worlds—pop and punk—comes together in his career, which is now primarily focused on three things: recording a new album, prepping for an upcoming exhibition of his Beetlejuice-meets-Warhol ceramic objects in Chicago, and making new items for Wacky Wacko, his clothing line and curio shop. Last year, he hosted a zany Pee Wee Herman–style show called Feelin’ Fruity for World of Wonder in which he and comedians Kate Berlant and John Early make and model garbage-bag couture, in front of a set he made totally by hand with collaborator Christine Stormberg (a.k.a. Hardcore Tina). This was preceded by his initial foray into video with 2012’s minimall fever dream Hollywood Nails, described by Bogart and cocreator Brande Bytheway as “a nail-biting extravaganza of mostly useless products and pansexual hijinks!!!”

 

 

This has meant that he’s had a few confrontations with mainstream outfits that were looking to cash in on queer culture. When I ask about an aborted 2017 meeting with a nationally prominent news organization aimed at hip millennials, he says, “I didn’t walk out, but I was just like, ugh. They approached me with weird ulterior intentions. They wanted me to host some makeover show, but they didn’t just tell me that, so I shared all these ideas with them and then it just turned into them wanting me to do this other thing and that’s when I kind of was like, I’m not interested, bye! Because I’m not really trying to do someone else’s idea, you know? I mean, I like collaborating, but it was clear that they already had something in mind, and honestly I don’t really like that company or like a lot of what they’ve done and stand for.” Instead, Bogart looks to others who were successful without compromising their strangeness, like John Waters, Divine, and Kathleen Hanna: “I’m pretty grateful for my upbringing, and being punk, and growing up listening to Riot Grrl music, because I feel like it gave me a backbone.”

 

 

So how do you translate the Seth Bogart experience for the Instagram generation? He doesn’t, really (although he isn’t above posting the occasional studly selfie). “I generally hate it and wish I didn’t have to,” he says, of the ubiquitous drive to post. “I feel like it’s like selling myself in a tiny box.” And he hates the censorship most of all: “I can’t post a lot of art I make on there because it’s explicit, or there’s stuff I made it about, like hating men, that’s not even violent and it will get erased.” It’s ironic that what he does share, especially ingenious, irreverent ceramic objects like a Maybelline mascara wand that doubles as a bong and a toothbrush out of which crawls a stiletto, plays masterfully with the clean neutrality of the platform. “The reason I make all these products and stuff, I think, is because of brain damage from beauty school,” says Bogart. “I hate the fucking fashion world, it sucks, but it’s nowhere near as bad as the art world or Hollywood. I did like a Saint Laurent collaboration, where his doodled “Hunx Notebook” print was used on button-down shirts, backpacks, and lace-up sneakers for the Fall 2014 men’s collection, “which was cute . . . And then I was like, I don’t really want to follow these rules.” He favors other arty L.A. brands like Online Ceramics, Surprising Health Benefits, and No Sesso.

 

 

A second season of Feelin’ Fruity could be coming down the pike, but regardless, Bogart’s influence can very much be felt in the evolution of the weirder corners of Instagram and YouTube, or in Dis Magazine’s recent pivot to video. Just don’t use that word: ”Someone called me an influencer the other day and I was like, What? Fuck you.” As of now, for Bogart, the goal is to keep living and working, follower count be damned: “Every artist that I really like is someone who always did what they wanted to do, and didn’t try to do what would get them a lot of attention at the time, or do what everyone else was doing. And they just stuck with it and eventually people realized that and appreciated it. When I’m down or whatever, like, What the fuck am I doing?—which is all the time—I just need to trust myself and keep going, because it’s too late to turn back.”

 

 

Seth Bogart cut his teeth in the band Gravy train!!!! SF Weekly compared them to The Cramps if they were a sexed-up riot grrrl band.

It’s certainly not great music,” Pitchfork critic Julianne Escobedo Shepherd wrote of the 2003 Gravy Train!!!! album Hello Doctor, which she gave a score of 2.9 out of 10. “Its terribleness is trumped by its incredible disregard for human decency.”

 

 

Hunx and his punx was formed in 2008. They have a boneheaded garage punk sound along with the catchiness of a 60’s girl band.

 

 

In 2009 Seth Bogart appeared in an X rated version of the Girls music video for Lust for life.

 

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Today the blog gets the big treat of this guest post from d.l. Ferdinand about the multidisciplinary wild guy artist of endless stripes Seth Bogart. If you don’t know his work, you will now or already do depending on whether you view this place from top to bottom or vice versa. Enjoy the shebang and give a verbal shout out to Ferdinand to express your interest and/or thanks. And thank you, F., from the bottomest part of the blog’s heart. ** David Ehrenstein, Very glad you found his work of interest. ** Dominik, Hi, D!!! It’s true I’m not wildly surprised that you like his work, but what a bonus. Okay, I’ll do a hunt for his new film with moderate expectations, thank you. It was a very good pizza. Best pizza in Paris possibly. When you finally visit the big P, we’ll munch there together. I can imagine that proof-reading would have a giant instructional booklet that one can take with grains of salt sometimes? Ha ha. Finally yesterday after years of scouring slave profiles I found one whose slave is looking for a master who knows my work and whose slave name is Frisk love, Dennis. ** Jeff J, Hi, Jeff. Yes, indeed, that Altmejd piece was on the cover of Derek’s ‘The Show That Smells’. Derek chose it and Joel Westendorf, the official LHotB cover designer, did the layout. I’m doing my new Julien Calendar exploring today as yesterday got away from me. I like so many of Sarraute’s books. If I had to choose very favorites, maybe, in addition to the aforementioned and ‘TGF’, ‘The Planetarium’, ‘Martereau’, and ‘The Use of Speech’. And, obviously, ‘Tropisms’ is insanely great. We’re squared away re: Skype, and I look forward to it! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. No, stupidly and temporarily tragically, I still haven’t watch ‘Twin Peaks 3’. Absurd, I know. ** Bill, It’s possible, about ‘Le Samourai’. It might have been on my top 50 films list, I can’t remember. I don’t know ‘Slow Machine’. Wow, I can’t remember the last time I saw a film characterised as ‘mumblecore’. That takes me back and also intrigues. Thanks. Toe continues to incrementally cease calling attention to itself. ** Misanthrope, You know I agree. Two weeks sounds sane. I don’t remember ever celebrating Columbus Day, but then I’ve never had a 9-5 job, and it seems like one of those dates celebrated only via maybe getting off work. Celebrating that dude is gross, if you ask me, but there are much worse problems. Internet/email has made everything to do with submitting work or manuscripts many infinite times better, yes. ** john christopher, Hi, jc. I totally and obviously agree about Altmejd’s stuff. Big indeed to you about that jingle. Still, to this day, when I remember it, it gets stuck in my head and tortures me for days. Whenever humanly possible, I do Halloween in Southern California. It’s the kingdom, the Mt. Olympus of Halloween with hundreds of home haunts and haunted house attractions, which are my soul’s oxygen. One would think London would have figured out how to bear hug Halloween and its incomparable possibilities by this point in time. Paris too, actually, but it’s a wasteland here as well. Oh, wow, thank you, I would love to get that Halloween pamphlet! I don’t give my address here, but send me a quick email at [email protected], and I’ll jet it back to you. Thanks a ton. I’m excited to read that. It’s cold here too. I might even have to pull out my scarf today for goodness sake. ** Scunnard, Hey JP! Great to see you, man, and thanks a bunch. You good? You seem to be doing good from the mid-distance that social media’s information providing talents allows. ** Steve Erickson, Ah, well, may your eyes show you impeccable patience. ** Nick Toti, Hi, Nick. Oh, cool. Will do. Thanks for targeting this bunch for feedback. Everyone, Superlative magnetising filmmaker Nick Toti has a request/gift for you. Here he is to explain: ‘I have a new cut of a short film that I’m hoping to get some feedback on. Would you mind sharing with the locals? If anyone watches and wants to let me know how it’s landing (good or bad), they can email me at diediemaomao @gmail.com. I’ll give them a “special thanks” in the credits for their trouble. Here’s the link. Password: wendy. Take care, man. ** Brian O’Connell, Hey, B. My true pleasure, of course, on the galerie show. I think our easy new restrictions will be very short-lived. Like you, but differently since the powers-that-be here are relatively sane and cogent, we’re in for a quite rough next set of months. Bertolucci’s ‘The Conformist’ is a great film. I definitely second the recommendation. Bertolucci pretty much totally lost it in my opinion at a certain point, but all of his films up through ‘Luna’ are varying degrees of great. ‘The Conformist’ is one of his very best. So, yes, go for it, and I’d be interested to hear what you think, if you watch it and feel like sharing its impact. ** Gus, Hi, Gus! Very good to meet you, and thank you for stepping inside here, and consider the door eternally open. No, I haven’t read Kier-La Janisse’s ‘House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films’. What a title. I had never even heard of it until now. Thank you a lot, I’ll go chase it down. I haven’t seen ‘The Moor’s Head’, and wow, it must be out there and viewable somewhere. Thanks a ton for that tip too. Ha ha, good old Cubby Branch. Back in 2000, there were a series of events at NYU celebrating my ‘George Miles Cycle’ books, and one of the events involved artists and writers and so on reading from my work, and Thurston read those liner notes, which was one of the most amazing and funniest things I’ve ever seen. It’s on tape, but it’s not public for whatever reason. Anyway, thanks. That’s my favorite SY album. Yeah, so stick around if you feel like it. What are you up to? What’s going on with you? Take care. ** Right. Please rejoin the Seth Bogart fest in progress. See you tomorrow.

* (Halloween countdown post #6)

 

‘David Altmejd’s work is a unique and heady mix of science and magic, science fiction and gothic romanticism: a post-apocalyptic vision which is at the same time essentially optimistic, containing as it always does the potential for regeneration, evolution and invention.

‘‘A perfect object for me’, the artist has said, ‘is something that is extremely seductive and extremely repulsive at the same time’. Decay exists in balance with regeneration, the exquisite in tandem with the grotesque. The sculpted heads that have been Altmejd’s recent focus provoke that shiver of the uncanny lifelike sculpture tends to induce, but skilfully realistic features are interspersed with crude expressionism, gobbets of raw matter or hanks of fur. They have a hallucinatory quality – vivid and startling. One head might sprout another, inverted, so that they they share a pair of eyes, or a face is split into a trio of profiles and half-a-dozen eyes, as if refracted by a kaleidoscope. In others the faces are gone, as if they have been scooped out, but the gaping wounds reveal cavities of dazzling crystal or the inside of a hollowed-out fruit, as if to collapse the categories of animal, vegetable and mineral. There is an immediate sensuality in the artist’s juxtaposition of finely-wrought realism with crude gesture; the proximity of crystals and delicate gold chains with fur and abject matter suggesting ever-present decay.

‘In counter-balance to the aesthetic of profusion is a sculptural impulse to containment and order, evinced in gridded forms and orthogonal mirrored structures recalling Sol Lewitt or Lucas Samaras. Some of Altmejd’s best-known works are his vast, labyrinthine vitrines built of Plexiglas, and often with mirrored elements. They play on the aesthetics of design and display as well as minimalism, but these structures are not simply a means to contain or protect the elements housed within. Rather, the entire structure is an organism or a machine, making visible the processes of growth and decay, generation and destruction that take place inside it. Movement is frozen, but sculptural elements are animated through repetition and incremental change, like the stuttering frames of stop-motion film.

‘Altmejd described himself early in his career as a ‘process artist’. His works not only reveal the process of their making, but suggest that those processes have simply been paused in their unfolding. His monochrome relief panels are austere in comparison to the heads, focusing our attention on the plaster-like material and the actions wrought on it − where it has fallen in wet splats, where a brittle, chalky surface is scratched or fractured, where hands have gouged and clawed. Hands themselves, in cast form, appear and multiply in some of the sculptures, fostering the illusion that the works create themselves. Monumental figures, such as the ‘Bodybuilders’ and the ‘Watchers’, are similarly engaged in their own making or unmaking, sprouting hands that clutch and mould the very substance of their bodies.’ — White Cube

 

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Further

David Altmejd Site
DA @ Xavier Hufkens
DA @ David Kordansky Gallery
DA @ Instagram
DA @ Twitter
Yeasayer + David Altmejd
Learning from Objects: An Interview with David Altmejd
David Altmejd, le prestidigitateur
Video: David Altmejd: The Heart is a Werewolf
In Conversation: David Altmejd
Video: Chaorismatique, David Altmejd sculpteur
La métamorphose dans l’œuvre de David Altmejd
Inside David Altmejd’s Crystal Palace
David Altmejd Creates Sculptures That Blur Concepts
David Altmejd’s New Busts Embrace the Real and Absurd
David Altmejd’s World of Pure Imagination
David Altmejd’s seductive yet repulsive sculptures
David Altmejd: la beauté du monstre
Dans les abysses mentales de David Altmejd
David Altmejd ou l’art du malaise absurde
Getting Lost in David Altmejd’s Hall of Mirrors
David Altmejd is Arresting
Ten questions for David Altmejd

 

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Extras

The Desert and the Seed, 2015

David Altmejd at MAC Montreal

David Altmejd at MAC Montreal

David Altmejd: Heads | Art21 “Extended Play”

 

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Interview

 

Philippa Snow: I wanted to ask you about how you got into using the werewolf motif.
David Altmejd: It was pretty intuitive. I think I just felt as though my work was a little too structural, very minimalist; I would use large light tables, I would use Plexiglas, so all the materials were pretty cold. I just thought at one point that these structures I was building needed to be infected with something. Then I started thinking, what would be the one object that would contrast with them the most? So I thought about a body part. Actually, I thought about a head, which I thought would be powerful enough, and would contrast with the coldness of the structure. I thought with a head, I could start creating a very particular energy.
But then I thought that maybe a human body part, the human head, was a little — not necessarily cliché, but certainly something that had become commonplace in contemporary art. Some of my favourite artists have been Kiki Smith, and Louise Bourgeois, and Robert Gober, and I love their work; but I did feel that following work like theirs, the use of human body parts in art had become more predictable. So I thought instead about referring to the body of the werewolf, which in my mind is the most humanlike monster: meaning the werewolf body part would be just as powerful to look at as the human body part. It’s possible for a viewer to identify with it. But at the same time, it’s weird instead of being familiar. And I really like that.
So that’s the reason I started using the werewolf body parts in my art. And very soon afterwards, once it found its place in my work, I started being conscious of ideas of transformation, and energy, and contrasts between light and darkness, and tension, and all these things, so I just decided to keep the werewolf as a kind of totemic figure in my work.

PS: It’s interesting that you mention the transformation aspect of it, because a lot of your work has the appearance of being…this is an odd thing to say about sculpture, but it almost has the look of something that’s in flux, or something that’s in development. It looks like an organic thing.
DA: Yeah, and it’s important for me to feel that the object, or the sculpture itself, is in the process of developing. One of the things I realised about sculpture that made it really amazing, and that gave it so much potential, is the fact that it exists in a real space. It doesn’t exist in the space of representation. So it exists in the world in almost the same way that a body does, or a person does, you know?

PS: Right. A photograph or a painting of a body that’s life sized is never going to be like a body in the same way as a sculpture of one at the same scale.
DA: And the body of a person is probably the most amazing thing that exists, for so many reasons. So the fact that sculpture inhabits the same space means that it has the potential for having the same kind of presence. Ever since I realised that, I’ve been trying to use the body of a person as a model; and one of the characteristics of a human body is that it’s constantly transforming. A person is never a finished object, and that’s part of what makes them amazing.

PS: And because a lot of the structures are quite dreamlike, there’s quite often the suggestion of a psychological transformation as well.
DA: Absolutely, yeah.

PS: Are there any filmmakers you’re particularly inspired by?
DA: There are certainly filmmakers whose work has excited me. Often I don’t like saying this, because I think that people consider it really, really obvious, but I love David Cronenberg.

PS: Oh, me too!
DA: But not necessarily because of his taste for the organic or the weird. I like him conceptually. I like the way he builds a movie. I like the way he understands — and this is my interpretation, I don’t know if it’s his, but I just have a feeling that he understands the film as being this independent object that develops its own intelligence, and its own language; its own logic, its own sexuality. I kind of like the fact that he steps back and lets the film develop by itself as if it was a body. Who else?

PS: I mean: David Lynch was the big one I was thinking of. But I’m always thinking about David Lynch.
DA: I would say that Lynch has been very, very important for me. Just as much as certain American visual artists from the eighties and the nineties are an influence — ones that still work today, but were very well-known then, like Cindy Sherman, Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler, Mike Kelley — I see David Lynch the same way. They were very important for me at the beginning. I really admired that attitude; the space that they were exploring, which was somewhere between supercomedy and superdrama. You know how sometimes there are scenes in Lynch where you don’t know if you’re supposed to laugh, or to feel uncomfortable?

PS: I was thinking about it because of his being very interested in the fragmentation and the refraction of the human body — but especially in the head. There’s always a lot of stuff about head trauma, decapitation. Are you watching the new series of Twin Peaks?
DA: No, I haven’t been.

PS: Oh it’s amazing! I’m a Lynch obsessive anyway, but it’s really pulled me right back into the depths of that obsession.
DA: I do intend to watch it; I saw the first episode and I’m meaning to go back. I really loved the way the special effects are so clumsy, if I’m allowed to call them that?

PS: He loves that, I think.
DA: Because they could have been high-tech, but he obviously chose otherwise. That was amazing. That was completely his sensibility. Nobody else could have done that and actually pulled it off.

PS: No — it’s like the robin at the end of Blue Velvet. It’s an aesthetic decision.
DA: And so funny and not-funny at the same time. Personally, I like being uncomfortable. I think my favourite kind of laughter is uncomfortable laughter; and I think the best horror is the sort of horror that makes me want to giggle because I’m so uncomfortable.

PS: On an unrelated note (or maybe a related note, as we’re talking about uncomfortable laughter) — I read in an interview that you’re really into the Real Housewives?
DA: Oh my God! Yeah, yeah, absolutely!

PS: Because I’ve never seen the Real Housewives shows, but I did do a thing this year for which I had to watch every episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians ever broadcast in one month. There are thirteen series of it, so that was intense.
DA: I’ve never watched Keeping Up With The Kardashians, but my idea is that it’s one family, so they’re all sort of together in this, right? They’re not all rivals? But the Real Housewives are so great because they’re all rivals.

PS: Is that inspiring somehow, because you’re watching — I don’t know, humanity play itself out?
DA: I mean: it’s hard to see the humanity.

PS: Really? It’s just totally inhumane?
DA: Totally inhumane. I think that it’s totally human, because even the producers are human, so it’s technically a product of humanity. So it’s human in that way. But the set-up is so unlike anything you could understand or experience. I can’t start to think or imagine what it would be like to have a camera on you all the time, or have people there encouraging you to drink wine all the time so that you’ll be in a volatile mood. And producers who will make more money if there’s a fight! It’s a horrifying set-up. It’s like putting a rat in a maze, a labyrinth: of course they’re going to act like rats. They’re in a context that’s kind of indescribable. So it’s hard to understand them. But it’s exciting to see human beings try to survive in such a weird, extreme environment.

PS: We could tie it into our earlier discussion by saying that Real Housewives is a constructed take on the organic. And there are a lot of physically constructed bodies in reality TV, also! Certainly in the case of the Kardashians.
DA: Yeah, you mean facelifts and so on?

PS: And really extreme body augmentations. I find that fascinating, as well.
DA: And it’s funny, because with the Real Housewives there are different — they call them franchises, but it means there are spin-offs in different cities. And they’re usually groups of women who have transformed their bodies in very different ways. For example, the Real Housewives of New York are a group of women who are transforming in one very specific direction, and then you go to Beverly Hills and the Housewives there are taking a totally different transformative route. They end up looking like different species, in the end. It’s amazing.

 

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Show

First Werewolf, 1999

 

Untitled (Jane), 2003

 

Untitled (Black), 2003

 

Untitled (Blue Jay), 2004

 

Untitled (Swallow), 2004

 

The Lovers, 2004

 

The Builders, 2005

 

Untitled, 2006

 

Untitled, 2006

 

The New North, 2007

 

Untitled (Dark), 2008

 

The Center, 2008

 

The Egg, 2008

 

Untitled, 2010

 

Untitled, 2011

 

Untitled, 2011

 

Untitled, 2012

 

Untitled 3 (Rabbit Holes), 2013

 

Untitled 5 (Rabbit Holes), 2013

 

Untitled 6 (Rabbit Holes), 2013

 

Untitled, 2014

 

The Flux and the Puddle, 2014

 

Eye, 2015

 

Le Grand Theatre, 2016

 

The Vibrating Man, 2019

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you sharing your wisdom and knowledge about Melville, David. ** john christopher, Well, hello there, sir. Happy almost Halloween! That’s one wild coincidence about the New Narrative turning up in such a timely fashion. Nice that it was found on the street too, I don’t know why. I’m doing all right, thanks. You? You sound good. Thanks about the masks. Yes, there were, I think, two gifs from ‘Season of the Witch’ taken from the evil TV commercial thing. I like that movie. People seem to think it’s the runt of the litter/franchise, but I beg to differ. Good to see you! ** Misanthrope, Okay, that sounds essentially like good under the circumstances news, and, at least in my case, lifelong little things do seem to get less little as you evolve, i.e. my stupid back thing. Good you’re having a nuclear (whoa!) scan though. You’re on it, and that’s all I can ask. Wow, they still celebrate Columbus Day over there?  Weird. You still have gyms. Ours are kaput for the time being. Yeah, sending the first however many pages of a novel is pretty standard, from what people tell me. Good, you sound rather fit. ** politekid, Hey, Oscar! Everything pretty okay with me, I think. I’m also a big believer that unclunked means full speed ahead. All right, TM cut you loose. Their loss, fuck their eyes and their mothers’ eyes, etc. Super wishing I could see the Michael Clarke show. Ha ha, its audience sounds exactly like the audience I would imagine it would have, and, yes, I don’t have a clue how to enjoy that type either. The weirdest foreigners. Those kinds of dramas are the airborne, contemporaneous quicksand that cartoons and old movies used to warn us about. That pamphlet sounds like a total keeper, yeah, def. That is a load of twee right there. I like me some twee sometimes. I mean I love Wes Anderson’s films, and I guess they’re supposed to be twee. And twee pop music can be among pop’s best. So, yeah. I’m not sure I fully understand your question about ‘Guide’. I think I still believe everything I was trying to posit in that book, but I would venture to say that I’m maybe not as monstrous as the guy I semi-pretended was its author. So there’s a hard to understand answer to your hard (for me) to understand question, ha ha. I’ve been up to … working on stuff (new film funding seek, film script to be directed by Gisele, other stuff) and basically okay except I broke my toe forever ago and it still hurts. Excellence to see you, pal! And to hear about you, sir! I will endeavour to make Halloween sing via the blog until the 31st arrives and destroys our fun. ** Brian O’Connell, Hi, Brian. Melville’s pretty great. Not everything IMO, but he had a pretty great run there for a decade or so. Midterms, man, all the luck acing those, and nose to the grindstone, and take sanity breaks, and so on. They put new restrictions on here, but they aren’t too bad, and yet the cases continue to grow fast, so I suspect it’s about to get heavier. But so far I still think we’ve been pretty lucky. Stuff any better or better-feeling there? Warmest wishes in speedy return. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Your new episode did the major trick for my physical and psychological well being as well as adding motion to my booty this weekend, so thank you! I’d watch that Margiela doc, and I’ll try to. Thanks for that tip, buddy. ** Ian, Morning (if it’s morning), Ian. Exactly, re: that cool thing about him and his stuff. Granted, I haven’t read ‘Candy’ in many yonks, but I think it must still be tons of fun. Is it? Thank you for your info too. Two way street and all of that. ** Dominik, Hi, Dominick!!! It’s kind of like that here too – gloomy, melancholic, etc. I kind of like it though. You having listed to Cheap Trick just made my face look like a face you would have carved into a classic pumpkin. I did see and, of course, like ‘Suicide Room’. And I think I’ve used quite a few gifs from it in my gif books. How is his new film? I’m okay. My toe still hurts, but it’s starting to hurt less, and that’s all I can hope for. My weekend was pretty lowkey-ish. Saw the Christo show at the Pompidou, it was meh. Ate very good pizza, which was a bigger deal than it sounds because it was the first cheese I’d eaten in a long time, me being in a vegan phase. Zoomed with one of my oldest friends, the poet Amy Gerstler. Worked on stuff. How did your weekend turn out? Ha ha, nice love there. Macho love baking a huge wedding cake for sissy love, Dennis. ** Steve Erickson, I would have to go with ‘Le Samourai’ and ‘Army of Shadows’ maybe. Not having seen or having any intention of seeing that ‘Boys in the Band’ remake, I think ‘what is the point’ is the absolute question. Everything you say about it radiates from the mere knowledge of its existence. Hope the new glasses help. ** Jeff Jackson, Hi, Jeff. Huh, ever since the blog was ‘fixed’ that message you got is planted at the top of the comments every day, and I don’t know why. Anyway, your comment made it through, obvs. I haven’t read ‘Melville on Melville’, no, but it has long tempted me. I love ‘Did You Hear Them?’. It was one of my very favorites of hers when I did my initial Nouveau Roman reading binge in the mid-80s. ‘Childhood’ was her big hit. It’s nice, but it’s much more conventional than her others. I wouldn’t put it at the top of your list. Excellent if you’re cracked the novel’s vexing point. Right, the new Julien Calendar! I still haven’t scored it. Will do today. Everyone, Jeff Jackson’s awesome band/musical unit has a new EP out, their third, which is undoubtedly a must hear among must hears. Please join me in grabbing it on/from bandcamp right here. Skype this week sounds great. Just let me know when’s good for you. ** Kyler, Good morning to you, Kyler, and I’m sorry I’m wrecking your morning, ha ha. Or no ha ha. Or both. Um, yes, I think I understand what he’s writing about ‘The Marbled Swarm’. He seems to be aligning it with Polari, this coded, made-up language gays used to us in the UK to communicate secretly back in the severe repression days. I will say that ‘TMS’ has absolutely nothing to do with Polari from my (the writer’s) perspective. I never thought about it. And ‘TMS’ is not about disguising the narrator’s alleged queerness since his being queer is greatly in question in the first place. But it’s an interesting and unexpected way to try to interpret that novel, I guess. So, I think I get what he was writing. But if you didn’t, that’s not your problem, man. May your morning end up very well. ** Right. Back to the Halloween celebrations today via a galerie exhibition of the works of David Altmejd. Spooky fun too be had should you allow. See you tomorrow.