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p.s. Hey. ** CAUTIVOS, Hi. It’s hard for me to imagine Reed’s work having the same excitement level in translation, but I know translators work magic since I only read translations. No hang over for me. I don’t drink, and I don’t even have a psychological hangover. Thanks! ** _Black_Acrylic, Fantastic news about the Flash Fiction course’s reprieve! Yay! Get those symbolic ink pens full of symbolic ink. ** Dorna, Oh, wow. Hi, Dorna! Thank you, thank you. I miss you! I so wish I could see you! I’ll be in LA a lot until the end of April, so if you make a trip back there for some reason, let me know. I hope everything is spectacular with you. ** Dominik, Hi!!! ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ is incredible. Yes, stupidly, really, I hung onto my LA apartment all this time because it’s really cool, and perfectly located, and still fairly inexpensive since I lived there so long. My friend/roommate Joel lives there and takes care of the place. Thank love for me about the duet. I’ll keep my ears wide open. Ha ha, and thank your yesterday love for being so practical. It’s probably good that I got the Switch right before leaving for a while because I don’t want to start a game and then have to pause it for weeks. This company that makes a grilled seitan product that I live and eat all the time just stopped making it, so I’m going to have to ask love to be a prick and threaten the company with bankruptcy unless they reverse course immediately, G. ** Billy, No, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. That was a horrible idea. We outliers will find a way. We always do. Thanks about the film. We’re getting there. Love to you too. ** David Ehrenstein, Indeed. ** malcolm, Shoot dates! Awesome! And so soon. Ours is in mid-March and that feels really, really soon. Do hook me up with the kickstarter campaign. And awesome you got your dream lead! His name is familiar. I will check out those songs, hopefully today, thank you! I’m really excited for you. And for me and for us. We have a ton to do on the upcoming trip. Secure the shooting location (90% of the film takes place in and around one house), cast the remaining three important roles, find a DP (we’re way behind on that), figure out the shooting schedule, find a sound guy, and other stuff. It’s going to be intense. Love in mega-return. And of course also mega-luck with your film if you need any positive outside vibe-based interference. ** Minet, Hi. Yes, I love ‘The System of Dante’s Hell’. I did a post about it. Let me see if I can find it. Here. I’ll do my best to spread the good word fruitfully. Not having played games for, like, four years due to my lack of system, there are a ton of games I want to get. ‘Breath of the Wild’, of course. Top priority is the newest Paper Mario because I absolutely love those games. I guess if I had to choose, I’d say my favorite Zelda games are ‘Majorca’ and ‘Windwaker’. Ha ha, yes, on the Smash Brothers battle. Wow, good one. xo ** Loser, Hi, Twelve, assuming that’s still a moniker option. Thank you for the kind words too. I interviewed Lukas Haas while he was making ‘Boys’ for Spin Magazine, although they only published a tiny slice of it. He was so cool and sweet. At the time he was about to star as Pecker in John Waters’s ‘Pecker’, but then he got sick and couldn’t do it, sadly. Anyway, blah blah, yes, I agree with you. ‘Boys’ should’ve been a thousand times better. Such a wasted opportunity. ** ellie, Well, you made my month, so take that, ha ha. I’d aim for Reed’s ‘The Free-lance Pallbearer’ or ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ if you haven’t read them. Thank you, pal. <3 ** Bill, Thanks, B. Are you on your way home now? Yikes, just thinking about that flight shivers me timbers. I have an 11 hour skyward jaunt on Sunday, which is quite enough. ** Robert, Hey. Yeah, they always talk about eldest child syndrome or whatever. Although the artists I like seem to come from all over the sibling spectrum, so I don’t know. It was an interesting train of thought. I think I’ve only ever been miserable in the classic sense twice in my life, and I don’t remember them helping at all. Wow, ‘Moby Dick’. That’s a biggie. I do really recommend ‘Mumbo Jumbo’, and it’s a million times easier and less lengthy and funner to read than ‘MD’. ** Nick., Hi! Yeah, it was nice: the dinner. The Switch is red. It looks snazzy on my boring floor. Oh, Tennis, I like them. I’ve never seen them live. I’ll watch my local listings, as they say. That trip: It was pretty insane. Like I would be in the world and kind of functioning, but then I would go off into these hallucinations and reality was just gone for hours, and then I’d come back to the real world again sort of, and the really weird thing was that all the time I was completely gone, I had apparently been functioning somewhat normally –walking around, talking to people, doing whatever — without being aware of anything or having any control over myself physically at all. So it was like I was on auto-pilot or something. The trip took place in Hawaii on a family vacation. It went bad when my friend and I were hitchhiking and got picked up these Hawaiian guys who said they were going to kill us, and they drove off the road into a pineapple field, and I just totally lost it and started convulsing and stuff, and that weirded them out so they just dumped us in the pineapple field and drove off, and then I kind of convulsed and screamed and stuff for about eight hours while my poor, also high friend stayed and watched over me. He was as high as me, but luckily at that point he was in a kind of semi-alert state. It was terrible. It wiped me out for months. My favorite joke is a really old one that sadly everybody knows now and is kind of dated but it still cracks me up for some reason: ‘What were Kurt Cobain’s last words?’ ‘Hole’s gonna be big’. What’s your most laughter inducing joke? And have an amazing day. ** Caesar, Hi. I’m good, yes, thanks. Ha ha ha. The new movie is about a strange family that turns their house into a haunted house attraction and charges people to go through it, basically. But lots of weird, unpredictable things end up happening that would take me too long to describe. I’m about 100% sure I’m not a witch. But, if I was, I would have lowered your temperature because I would be a good witch. As I’m typing this it is 10:33 am Paris time. The French kiss when they say hello and goodbye too. One kiss on each cheek. The same there? Your English is good. I like your English, and I think I understand everything. Have a great one. ** Montse, Montse! Yeah, when we’re editing, it’s pretty non-stop and consuming. And we’ve committed to screening the film here in Paris at a big art foundation around Halloween, so we’ll need to work hard to get it ready by then. Jeez, Primavera sounds really good this year. Oh, well, there’s always Youtube. Read ‘Mumbo Jumbo’. It’s so great. So, so good to get to talk with you, my buddy. Zac sends you his warmest hug. Huge love! ** I made a Tough Crowd post much like this one years ago, and I liked it, so I made a sequel. Pretty simple. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Hi!!
This post had the same effect on me as its predecessor: I really, really want to go to a concert now.
It makes perfect sense that you kept your L.A. place, especially if it’s so ideal. Are you going to stay there during your upcoming trip, then?
So, it’s basically just a little Switch teaser right now. Just making sure you know exactly what’ll be waiting for you when you get back.
Ah, I hate when that happens. I have pretty monotonous eating habits, and it can be jarring when one of my go-to meals suddenly disappears. So, I’m sure love will be as much of a prick as necessary to make the situation with the grilled seitan meal go away immediately.
Love trying to start a mosh pit at a Lana Del Rey show, Od.
Hi Dennis, where do you get all those gifs from? Yes, some translators work magic, but the original is always preferable. Do you read yourself in French? You have to see how the classics sometimes change from one translator to another. I prefer to read Ulysses Joyce without paying much attention to the footnotes. I still have to finish reading Infinist Jest in its entirety, but although I am not mistaken there is at least one footnote that extends beyond 200 pages and that is a novel within a novel. A laugh novel, an infinite joke. I stopped at that lengthy footnote and was unable to go any further. Let’s see when I get some free time to resume or start over with the novel. However, in your work, Dennis, I don’t see many footnotes, unless they are the translator’s own notes. I know you don’t like to play smart and let the imagination interpret your own images of him. Finally, as always, a big hug.
Dennis, Cool that your bday was…cool.
Work ain’t so bad. A lot of it, but the people I’m working with are funny.
Reading ain’t going so well bc I’ve been tired and falling asleep pretty easily. Oh, well. Those words ain’t going nowhere.
Now, more work. And maybe some play later. Three-day weekend coming up, so that’ll be a’ight.
Do you already have a list of houses in L.A. you plan to visit for the shoot? Have you hired a casting agent?
For Artsfuse, I reviewed Alice Diop’s SAINT OMER: https://artsfuse.org/266989/film-review-saint-omer-medea-redux/
I’m writing a new song which uses samples of typewriters. A few days ago, an actor in my Instagram feed posted the sheet music for a Steven Sondheim song with a part written out for a typewriter! I programmed the rhythm into my song, but it was too fast and it overwhelmed all the other elements.
Hi, Dennis.
These gifs feel like fun itself. Posts like these remind me to go out more, lol, see the world.
That’s interesting about Lukas Haas and Pecker. I never knew that before.
Apparently “Boys” has a bit of a cult following on TikTok for some reason. I think because Wiley Wiggins has a cult following on TikTok now too. I’ve been on a bit of a Wiley Wiggins kick lately, so I just noticed this now hah. Poor Lukas doesn’t have the same amount of edits and videos on TikTok that Wiley has, but they’re out there. I think TikTok has a community for everything. Here’s a link to a youtube compilation of Wiley. Also I may email you some Lukas Haas/Boys edits.
https://youtu.be/jlHdWTCqFTc
I remember going to a lot of gigs in the 90s but never took part in any kind of moshpit as far as I can recall. British crowds would always be a bit too polite, or maybe it was just me?
Haha, I remember waxing nostalgic about the predecessor. Now that we’re back to a semblance of normalcy (here, at least), I can enjoy these without feeling too sad.
Just got home. The flight was manageable. I ended up reading Jesse Ball’s early novel Samedi the Deafness, which was flawed but entertaining, and worked surprisingly well on the flight. Wow, you’re flying to LA already? Hope your flight will slip through the bad weather we’ve been having. I was lucky to arrive on our one dry day this week.
Bill
hi how are you? introductions are really Awkard for me, erghh… :X
(Oh, btw sorry what I said wasn’t directed towards you, at least I don’t think it was but anyways.)
I HAD A DREAM LAST NIGHT I was watching Neutral Milk Hotel perform at a record story, isn’t that funny? Jeff Mangum kept whispering things to me, but I can’t remember the words.
Today I felt something I hadn’t felt in so long and that is the feeling of stepping into a library and greatly being overwhelmed by nostalgia as well as an abundance of BOOKS!! our library is amazing I think, there’s a bunch of homeless people that chill outside and I practically lived in the library as a younger kid when my mom was homeless because she used the computer there lol. I was at the library because I had tutoring but as I was waiting, I picked two books, ones about a boy and what it was like growing up with his schizophrenic father as well as one about an Iranian woman with bipolar disorder. side note, every time I see the word borderline personality disorder and the other bpd in the same sentence, I always see them as these two siblings struggling to fit into the world. I’m not sure if that makes sense, hope it doesn’t sound strange, my mind autonomously connects certain things and gives them relationships, for example I always saw the number 3 as a caring father figure fighting for custody over 4 from their alcoholic mother 2 (probably why I failed math because I’m too busy creating relationships with the numbers Haha) Do you do things like that? Maybe? like not just visual things, for example, certain piano chords played together creates an image or a relationship in my head.
I found out some really amazing things today that are making me so incredibly happy and excited for the future, I wish I could say it but I’m not just to keep this brief but know that they are LOVELY!! <3333
I hope your day goes well OH, funny side note, my tutor asked who my favorite author was at the moment, and I thought of saying you, but I didn't and just kind of hinted your type of writing lol
Hi! Wow sounds crazy but all I can think to say is what a friend to have and I’m glad you did. I think I can relate to your autopilot I was derealized? In a state of derealization for a few well I guess the better part of a year awhile ago and while I was incredibly anxious every second of everyday and the world looked pretty and really vivid I was somehow still a functioning person much to my surprise. Kinda funny isn’t it being a decent person and having literally little to no memory of it? Ive actually never heard that joke surprisingly and as a big Kurt fan and a mild hole enjoyer I actually really like it! Mine would be “What do a catholic priest and an olympic silver medalist have in common? They both came in a little behind!” Tasteless I know but I find it hilarious every time. I did have a good day nothing too fun to report but thanks for the wishes I hope yours was good too what’d you get into? And new question you’re gonna be stuck on an island for awhile and can bring three things what do you bring? Hope you’re doing well as always!
Dear Dennis, I hope you are well today too. I am just responding as I have had a somewhat busy day regarding readings and appointments. Keep making fresh which is a blessing. Your new film sounds amazing! I think I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, I’m a fan of haunted houses! There is always so much to tell there. Shirley Jackson taught me that at the end of the day, it’s the people who are haunted. I find it fascinating. What are your inspirations for this film? Always looking forward to hearing more haunted house stories! I look forward to seeing it!
You’re a sweetheart, thanks for your good vibes! I didn’t know they greeted like that in France too. We don’t give two kisses, but one as a greeting and one as a farewell. We almost always hug, I love that.
I feel I need to work more on my English and I hope I can do it. I have so much to read and see that is not in Spanish! As I write this to you it is 6 am. Summer insomnia again. I hope to adjust my biological clock soon (although I must admit that I enjoy being a nocturnal animal like when I was 15 years old and when I go back to work and college I won’t be able to do it anymore. I must take advantage of it). I listen to a podcast that talks about literature that talks about affected bodies, sick, experiences, fiction. If you can contribute works it would be great.
I hope you are sleeping well. See you later. Greetings and kisses!!!
PS: I started reading “Hogg” by Samuel Delany. It’s fucked up. I can’t believe he wrote this. Thanks for this!!!
Hi, Dennis!
The film stuff sounds so exciting. But you and Zac do so so much work! I imagine editing is key. It must be a very interesting process, but also exhausting. Now I’m thinking maybe I should wait until the screening for Halloween to visit Paris, haha. Yes! I’ll read ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ as soon as I can. A colleague of mine, Inga Pellisa, translated it into Spanish a few years ago, so I definitely should get to it. She’s a top translator. I’d love to be among one of these tough crowds! I’ve just sent you an email re: Boy Harsher. Safe travels to LA and a big hug to Zac!!