The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Varioso #30: DeSantis, Roussel, Peirone, quiz, People Who Do Noise, Regbo, “serial dependent” visual perception, camera, Korzukhin, KN, Cuba’s National Art Schools, BLACK METAL BOY, Wain, Sodeöka, Bijijo, Ww, Kopel, Leister, Hydro Floors, PH, Epecuen *

* (restored)

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cool theme song i had stuck in my head, so i decided to try it out.

 

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Whatever I wrote was surrounded by rays of light. I used to close the curtains, for I was afraid that the shining rays emanating from my pen might escape into the outside world through even the smallest chink; I wanted suddenly to throw back the screen and light up the world.

 

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Julia Peirone

 

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‘This was painted by a person with a rare and severe mental disorder. He was constantly seeing his own fantasies all around him. He also had a certain phobia (undisclosed).

‘A psychiatry professor showed this painting in a lecture, and said there was one tell-tale sign in it that showed the painter’s insanity.

‘The professor didn’t say what that sign was, leaving the students to do the guesswork. The only clues he gave was, “don’t look for small details, look at the whole; if you figure out what the phobia was, you’ve got the answer; ask yourself what could have preceded this scene; think of what the place would look like with all the objects removed“.

‘The professor said that during the 15 years of his teaching, only one student had figured it out.’ — sightless, 2 + 2

 

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‘Noise may not be to everyone’s taste (in fact by definition noise is classed as “unwanted” sounds) but to the hardcore few it’s a way of life. People Who Do Noise follows some of those artists and shows them performing live, often on homemade or radically modified kit, and talking about the philosophy and influences behind their work.

‘The film takes a very personal approach, capturing the musicians working alone with no interference from a live audience. What often took place in crowded basements or dark smoky venues was stripped bare for the cameras, providing an unprecedented glimpse of the many different instruments and methods used.

‘Covering a wide range of artists and styles, the film features everything from the absurdist free-improvisations of genre-pioneers Smegma, to the harsh-noise assaults of Oscillating Innards and everything in between. Many of the artists in the film, such as Yellow Swans and Daniel Menche, have performed and sold records all over the world. In spite of such successes, noise music remains one of the least understood and most inaccessible of genres.’ — Dangerous Minds

 

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The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.

Andrei Tarkovsky

 

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Toby Regbo

 

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‘A new study in Nature Neuroscience by MIT postdoctoral fellow Jason Fischer and his University of California-Berkeley colleague David Whitney suggests that humans are equipped with “serially dependent” visual perception, a process that uses prior stimuli and current information to construct the scene in front of us.

‘The researchers tested the idea with experiments that asked subjects to look at flashes of “randomly oriented gratings presented several seconds apart in time” and then report “the perceived orientation of each grating” by marking it on a computer screen. “We found that perceived orientation was strongly and systematically attracted toward orientations seen over the last several seconds,” the scientists write. “This perceptual serial dependence was modulated by attention and was spatially tuned, occurring more strongly for successive stimuli that appeared nearby in space.”

‘The researchers term the space in which the phenomenon occurs a “continuity field,” and conducted other experiments to ensure that it wasn’t simply the result of consistency in “motor responses or decision processes.”

‘But isn’t spotting subtle change important? Why are our eyes deceiving us with this stale field of croissants?

‘Without a visual mechanism to adjust the current scene for recent prior stimuli, daily life would be more akin to a jarring acid trip, according to the authors. “The continuity field smoothes what would otherwise be a jittery perception of object features over time,” David Whitney, senior author and associate professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, told the university’s news center. Accounting for an aggregate of small recent changes in the environment—due to “head and eye movements,” shadows, and lighting—allows us to walk around without feeling like we’ve stepped into a field of melting clocks.’ — Ryan Jacobs, Pacific Standard

 

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The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera—point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text description of the scene. Modern digital cameras capture gobs of parsable metadata about photos such as the camera’s settings, the location of the photo, the date, and time, but they don’t output any information about the content of the photo. The Descriptive Camera only outputs the metadata about the content.

‘After the shutter button is pressed, the photo is sent to Mechanical Turk for processing and the camera waits for the results. A yellow LED indicates that the results are still “developing” in a nod to film-based photo technology. With a HIT price of $1.25, results are returned typically within 6 minutes and sometimes as fast as 3 minutes. The thermal printer outputs the resulting text in the style of a polaroid print.’ — Matt Richardson

 

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Alexei Korzukhin

 

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To make things “perfectly clear” is reactionary and stupefying. The real is not perfectly clear.

For pleasure to be what it is, it has to exceed a limit of what is altogether wholesome and healthy. Our idioms reflect this: when we like something we tend to say we were “blown away” or “It killed me,” and other deadly utterances. To the extent that pleasure is something that one seeks, it also has to make us confront the limits of our being. Otherwise it’s something like contentedness, which can be shown to be in fact an abandonment of pleasure.

So. Sometimes you have to scream to be heard.

Avital Ronell

 

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‘It’s one of those harsh truths that no one really wants to accept: vintage porn was kind of terrible. Films had the herky-jerk motion of old Charlie Chaplin movies, soundtracks all sounded like they were pulled straight out of failed sitcoms, and grooming was non-existent. I like a nice set of pubes as much as the next guy, but there’s a fine line between a manly bush and, “Holy shit, why does your cock look like Cat Stevens’ face?”’ — Jeremy Feist

 

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‘The story of Cuba’s National Art Schools is at the same time the story of the Cuban revolution, of its saddest failures and its most ebullient hopes. Born and educated in Venice, Roberto Gottardi was working in Caracas when Fidel Castro’s victory march arrived in Havana in January 1959. Like many European leftists, he was enthralled by Cuba’s revolution. In Caracas he had met a Cuban architect named Ricardo Porro, a young radical who had fled Fulgencio Batista’s government. Porro returned to Havana and invited Gottardi and another Italian architect, Vittorio Garatti, to join him. Their talents were sorely needed, as half of the island’s architects had left. A new nation was to be built, and not only that. Cuba intended to construct, in Che Guevara’s words, a ‘new man’.

‘In 1961, as legend has it, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara played a round of golf on what had until recently been the manicured greens of the Havana Country Club, a few miles west of the capital. The society they envisioned had no place for country clubs, so the two revolutionaries agreed to build an art school. Culture would be no longer a commodity hoarded by the wealthy but the birthright of the people. It would begin here, where the rich had played, created by the children of the poor. Castro assigned the project to Porro, who brought on Gottardi and Garatti. None of the architects had any experience with such scale, but then, Gottardi pointed out with eyebrows raised, ‘the revolution meant that anything was possible’.

‘The schools would be located on five campuses, and Gottardi would design the School of Dramatic Arts. Aside from a few basic directives, the architects were given complete creative licence. ‘The euphoria of that time’, he told me, ‘is difficult to describe’. The project was not merely inspired by revolutionary ideals – it embodied them. The buildings themselves were extraordinary, departing equally from the chilly Modernism that had dominated the architecture of the time and from the colonial Neo-Classicism that had preceded it. Porro designed the School of Modern Dance as an explosive complex of interconnected, fragmentary vaults. His School of Plastic Arts turned to Cuba’s African roots – a surreally erotic sub-Saharan village recast in brick among the palms. The cupolas of Garatti’s School of Ballet curved through a ravine and his School of Music wound like a lizard’s tail tracing the banks of the river that limned the old club.

‘Gottardi’s School of Drama, a complex of airy classrooms surrounding a central amphitheatre, strived to recreate the intimacy and spontaneity of urban space. Brick-walled corridors curved like alleys in a North African medina. Sight lines were intentionally obscured, ‘so that you wouldn’t know what’s coming’, Gottardi said. ‘Like life.’ On 26 July 1965, though they were far from complete, the National Art Schools were officially declared open. But their inauguration was also a death sentence; construction would never resume.

‘A lot had changed in four years. “Architecture must add a poetic dimension to everyday life”, no longer fitted the prevailing ideology. Castro began to lean towards a Soviet model. The art schools’ ecstatic organicism suddenly reeked of heresy. Their design, possessed as it was by revolution, was accused of being ‘insufficiently revolutionary’. In the end only Porro’s buildings were substantially completed; Garatti’s music school was not even half done. Although most of the classrooms were finished, the theatre at the centre of Gottardi’s drama school would never be built. Its winding corridors converged on empty space. The metaphors are impossible to resist: as the years passed, Castro’s revolution grew more stultified, and the art schools languished. Roots and vines ate at the mortar and cracked the terracotta tiles. Looters took what they could. The revolution’s bright dream was pilfered and abandoned.’ –– Ben Ehrenreich, Frieze


ruins


reconstruction

 

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BLACK METAL BOY GOES TO THE GROCERY STORE WITH FRIEND


BLACK METAL BOY’S NEW YEARS EVE

 

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‘Louis Wain was a man of some artistic talent, and he adored cats. While his young wife was gradually succumbing to illness over a period of several years, Wain often used the household cat, Peter, to amuse her, dressing him up in glasses and making it seem as if he were reading the paper, just for chuckles. He began to draw Peter, of whom he would later say “To him properly belongs the foundation of my career, the developments of my initial efforts, and the establishing of my work” — and indeed, many of his early published drawings and paintings are of the family cat. In the beginning, his work was more or less naturalistic, like the above.

‘After his wife passed away, he became more and more obsessed by cats. His furry subjects were often anthropomorphized in cutesy ways — in fact, he seemed almost incapable of drawing human beings. He wrote, “I take a sketch-book to a restaurant, or other public place, and draw the people in their different positions as cats, getting as near to their human characteristics as possible.” His cats-doing-people-stuff work got him a lot of attention, and he became something of a national sensation, with his drawings reproduced on cards and posters.

‘In the 1910s and 20s, things took a turn for the worse. His behavior became increasingly erratic. In 1924, his sisters committed him to the pauper’s ward of a mental asylum. He languished there for a year until a newspaper article was written about the deplorable conditions he was forced to endure, and when big-name fans came out of the woodwork — H.G. Wells said “English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves” — he was moved to a much more pleasant asylum, where he lived for another ten years or so before passing away. In that time, he began to paint and draw again, and though his subject was the same as ever, his increasingly bizarre style seemed evidence of some mental disorder, possibly schizophrenia.’ — mental floss

 

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Yöshi Sodeöka

 

 

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Bijijo ‘Saturday Evening with Justin Bieber’

‘If used properly, the Faces of Justin Timberlake may be employed as a fortune-telling device. Each Face is assigned a specific meaning which may be viewed by hovering over or clicking on the Face. Study the Faces of Justin Timberlake, then choose either the Man Face or the Woman Face as a Significator from which to read a spread of the Faces. Once the choice is submitted, a spread will be generated and guidance provided.’ — Bijijo

 

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Weatherwax

 

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Two boys, wearing track jackets,
with shaved heads and smooth hands,
are breathing Pine-Sol out of
a plastic bag and breaking
into a car with coat hangers.
Sad, thin-skinned kids with flammable
names and feathers for lungs.
Who tape their regrets to the top of the Atari.
Who write out their girlfriends’ names in gasoline.
Who take a match to the front yard
before cutting a path through police tape
to get to a tall, cool, catholic school gym.
From the bleachers they stand as if to say
I sing for the canary gassed beyond belief
in the basement of the biology building.
I scream City of Love! City by the River!
Don’t disown your skinny fisted sons
locked inside the locker room.
They too are the father of you.
They too are made mostly of noise.

Ben Kopel

 

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Elizabeth Leister

 

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Hydrofloors is a company focusing primarily on the concept, design and custom manufacture of complex systems for covering and dividing swimming pools. The design and manufacture of our moveable floors, submersible booms and motorised hatches is executed in our own facilities in Belgium. This gives us full flexibility, control and reliability in serving our clients. We are uncompromising in providing products at the cutting edge of technology that are also the highest quality possible and this commitment together with our attention to detail and highly skilled team of employees is well recognised by our clients in the International markets in which we work. We manage each project from conception through to completion working together with the architect, the client and the swimming pool construction company. Hydrofloors is driven to meet the project needs of the individual clients by the application of intense technological expertise and innovation.

 

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Puppet Heap

 

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An Argentinian town has re-emerged after being underwater for 25 years

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*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I’m happy you’re a fan of Breer’s films, of course. I’ll … Everyone, If you’re in LA, here’s an awesome opportunity from Mr. E in his own words: ‘For those living in the L.A. area, I have a press screening of Coppola’s recut “The Cotton Club” on the 25the at 4:30 at the Lionsgate screening room. Let me know if you’d like to come by dropping me a line at cllrdr@ehrensteinland.com.’ And, also, speaking of golden opportunities in LA, and this one for a very good cause, here’s David again: ‘My seemingly endless sale of CDs, DVDs and books has reached a crisis point. I am badly in need of funds. Please write me, drop by and BUY.’ ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Thank you. Well, I sent it to my agent. She’ll read it, and, assuming she doesn’t hate it and drop me, I guess she’ll have publishing ideas, and she and I will talk about that. Everyone, Here’s Mr. Erickson: ‘David Ehrenstein posted a link to his review of WHERE’S MY ROY COHN? yesterday. Here’s my interview with its director Matt Tyrnauer.’ My email is finally back, thank you. Blut Aus Nord! I haven’t heard the new thing, and of course I’ll check it out. Thanks for that too. Everyone, One more goodie from Steve E., in his language: ‘Also, here’s my New York Film Festival overview for Gay City News, with my thoughts on YOUNG AHMED, ZOMBI CHILD & BORN TO BE.’ Look forward to reading that. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Cool, very glad he/it caught your fancy. His big moving sculptures are really great if some art venue near you ever curates them. Awesome about The Call getting there. And, yes, very large demo here too yesterday. I would love to think it’ll matter. ** Brendan, B-ster. Oh, cool, great. Very happy you connected with it. Very sweet about the camera, especially the 4×5 option. So love those. ** Misanthrope, I’m of the belief that if a writer is true to and uncompromising in getting at their exact personal interest in what they’re writing about, the work will be different and unique. Thanks about the novel. Now the real test begins as it comes up against what the world wants and thinks. I liked Justin. We literally just said hi and talked for maybe 30 seconds, but he seemed very nice and very cool. Be chill. ** rewritedept, Hi, Chris. Nice to see you, man. You have a blog! You’ve bought into this dying or at least fading format. High five. I’ll bookmark it. Everyone, rewritedept has started a blog! And, knowing him, it will be a must-check kind of situation. The first post is up, so please start your inevitable addiction (in the good sense) by clicking this. I’m good. I’m glad you found some cozy meds. I did just have the great pleasure of hanging with Mark and Erin here in the city of lights, yes. Oh, my email: denniscooper72@outlook.com. Take it easy, man. ** MyNeighbourJohnTurturro, Hey, bud! Always a super pleasure to get to see you! Mm, no, I don’t think I’ve devoted a post to that medium at large but I’ve made posts about a number of filmmakers who work therein. I’ll look into it. Awesome that you liked a lot of what I liked in the gig, you of the impeccable tastes. Totally, the new JPEGMAFIA is amazing. It’s my go-to addiction right now. Halloween officially starts eating most of the blog as it does annually starting on Monday! I quite like Rob Zombie’s music. I really liked his first two films. I was disappointed by his more compromised ones, although I liked things in them. I hear really good things about the new one. I’m way into seeing that. Have a great weekend, sir. ** Kyler, Hi, K. Thank you, man. I sent it to my agent yesterday, so that seems to be the moment of it officially being finished. It’s been basically finished for a few weeks, but I was waiting on some feedback to make sure I wasn’t deluded about it. And hopefully the great feedback means I’m not, but we’ll see. It’s a strange one. Very nice to hear that about you and your sister. That’s very heartening. And then there are the brownies! ** IfICouldKeatonBackTime, Ouch. The escalator motor kick. That scared me. What does that say about me and escalators. The obvious them over us thing, I guess. Hope you snared some great throw backs. Great weekend to you! ** Armando, Hi. Glad you liked it. My email is back so I’ll get to you. Think I’m going to see the new Serra film today. Maybe try out this new vegan burger place. And the usual. You? ** Shane Christmass, Thank you, Shane. Ha, yes, I had seen the original news thing about that Daniel Johns kerfuffle. Seemed a bit dodgy at the time, not that I know DJ, obviously. I did sort of meet him once years ago at a vegan restaurant in LA where we shared our worship of The Melvins while King Buzzo ate in our vicinity. Man, he looks different now, but I guess he would. Well, I’m on his side. Why not? Happy weekend. ** Bill, His stuff’s very good. I want to see ‘Desolation Center’ very badly. Friends of mine organised it, and a bunch of my friends went, but I couldn’t go for reasons I don’t remember. I can’t imagine it will open in France, but it seems like an obvious streaming thing, so I figure I can see it when I’m in LA for Halloween if nothing else. Cool you got the chance. ** Right. So, on my old, murdered blog, I used to do this series of posts called ‘Varioso’ that consisted of things I was interested by but which didn’t have the heft to warrant entire posts to themselves. This, the 30th one, is the first of them that I’ve restored. Enjoy the array. See you on Monday.

25 Comments

  1. David Ehrenstein

    Lovely Potpourri this weekend.

    Great interview with matt, Stevee. I think Michael J. Pollard should play Scotty in the biopic.

    Please write me about my sale and if you want to see “The Cotton Club” with me.

    • Armando

      @David Ehrenstein,

      Hello,

      How are you?

      I’m sorry, do you have a catalogue of sorts or something of the Books, CDs and DVDs you’re selling?

      Best Regards,

      Armando.

    • Armando

      @David Ehrenstein,

      Hello, David.

      How are you?

      I’m sorry, would you happen to have a catalogue of sorts or something of the Books, CDs, DVDs you’re selling?

      Thank You.

      Best Regards,

      Armando.

  2. David Ehrenstein

    Yes I do Armondo. Write me at cllrdr@ehrensteinland.com and I’ll forward it to you.

    Meanwhile . .

    Latest FaBlog: The “Seventeen” Excuse

    • Armando

      Thank you, David.

      Already emailed you.

      Regards,

      Armando.

  3. KK

    These are great. I especially love that poem. It feels in tangent with the black metal kid videos and the sunken city.

    The Robert Breer post was cool too. I didn’t recognize the name, but I know I’ve seen ‘Fuji’ somewhere. It might have played as a filler at AFS, but I don’t remember.

    Speaking of AFS I’m going there tonight to catch ‘Desolation Center’. It looks fucking sick, can’t wait.

    Yesterday my order from the library came through with ‘Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers’ and I’m glued. I peeped your post you did on Pierre. I found a relatively cheap copy of ‘Eden Eden Eden’ on amazon so I’ll let you know what I think when I’m done with them. I also grabbed a copy of Leve’s book ‘Suicide’. I read ‘Autoportrait’ earlier this year, and, i don’t know, I think it might be one of the most important books of the century. It’s so good. How it morphs the mundane into something completely surreal without falling into surrealist pacing. It does the same thing from start to finish but then something just happens in the process of reading it. I was blown away. I was reminded of Perec, who I guess Leve was a fan of, and his movie ‘The Man Who Sleeps’.

    Great news on ‘I Wished’. Obviously excited to read. And seriously no rush on the manu. I’m happy to have it out of my hands for a minute.

    Favorite soups: I’m privy to chowders on a cold day, but I also love lentil pretty much any time of the year. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually had split pea but I’m sure i can find it at the store. Borscht has to be my favorite. I’ll make it sometimes and that’ll last me a few days. It doesn’t require a lot of energy to make and it feels cool making something with a name like “borscht”.

    Take care.

  4. Bill

    A variously marvelous stack of restorations, Dennis. I think I missed this the first time around. The Justin Timberlake faces are hilarious, and I’m a bit creeped out by the Puppet Heap. Can’t get Ben Kopel’s link to work, but I see many interesting traces from him online.

    Desolation Center is pretty excellent. Swezey comes across as a nice lowkey fellow, and keeps the doc moving at a cracking pace with lots of old footage and photos, great stories and remarks from the talking heads. The premiere at the SF IndieFest sold out, and it’s getting a well-deserved 1-week stint here.

    Bill

  5. Sypha

    I love Louis Wain (as you can probably have guessed), have a few art books about him. Actually, I wrote a (very brief) article about Wain for Yuck ‘n Yum a few years ago, which is one of my (published) few non-fiction pieces: I liked Justin. We literally just said hi and talked for maybe 30 seconds, but he seemed very nice and very cool.

    Oh, I said it on Facebook but I’ll say it again on here, congrats on finishing your new novel, looking forward to reading it and hope you have good fortune in finding a home for it (as you know, I loathe that part of the process more than anything).

    • Kyler

      Sypha – tell me about it 😉

      Dennis – yes, the brownies – one more left for tomorrow night! I wish you could have had my grandmother’s split pea soup – the very best in the world (take my word for it.) Nice cats.

  6. Sypha

    (I forgot to link it above but here was my Wain article, in case you’ve never seen it: http://www.yucknyum.org/zine/summer-2012/5/)

    • _Black_Acrylic

      It was a great article, thank you so much for that!

  7. David Ehrenstein

    Here are the books I have on sale

    J.R. by William Gaddis, paperback edition with cover by Andy Warhol

    The Oliver Stone Experience by Matt Zoller Seitz, 480pp, Abrams, (list price $50.00 )

    Tom Bianchi catalogue of photographs of male nudes, 28 pp. Glenn-Dash Gallery, 1990

    Ed Ruscha reproductions of his art works with essays by Ned Benezra, Kerry Brougher and Phyllis Rosenzweig, 208 pp. Scalon, 2001

    Robert Redford: The Biography by Michael Feeney Callan 468pp. Alfred A. Knopf 2011

    Scenes of Anomalisa by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, 64 pp.Rizzoli, 2015

    Life Outside by Michelangelo Signorile, 315pp.Harper Collins 1997

    The Pure Lover: A Memoir of Grief by David Plante 115pp Beacon Press, 2009

    Then Comes Marriage by Roberta Kaplan with Lisa Dickey 450 pp, Norton,2015

    Glittering Images by Camille Paglia,202pp., Pantheon 2012

    Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to “a Clockword Orange” — How a Generation of Pop Rebels Broke All The Taboos by Robert Hofler 344pp. ItBooks, 2014

    The Making of The Life of Pi: A Film Journey by Jean-Christophe Castelli, 159pp. HarperDesign 2012

    Burlesque: The Motion Picture Intorduction by Cher, 170pp. Universe books 2010

    The Art of Rise of the Guardians by Ramin Zahed, Insight Books, 2012

    The Ballad of Rango: The Art & Making of an Outlaw Film by David S. CohenInsight Books. (Sealed copy) 2011

    Screenplay Books
    Martha Marcy May Marlene
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441326/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

    Jackie
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1619029/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

    127 Hours
    http://www.imby
    The Sessions
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1866249/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

    Win Win
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1606392/?ref_=nv_sr_3

    Love and Friendship
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3068194/?ref_=nv_sr_1

    The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1412386/?ref_=nv_sr_1

    Hitchcock
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0975645/?ref_=nv_sr_2

    Beasts of No Nation
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1365050/
    db.com/title/tt1542344/?ref_=nv_sr_1

    Black Swan
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0947798/?ref_=nv_sr_1

    Magazines of LGBT interest:

    Outlook National Lesbian and Gay Quarterly,Fall 1988 Tom pf Finland
    Outlook National Lesbian and Gay Quarterly,Fall 1989 James Baldwin, Paul Lynde
    Outlook National Lesbian and Gay Quarterly,Fall 1990, Marlon Riggs, Edmund White
    The Gay and Lesbian Review Spring 2000 Patricia Highsmith, John Rechy, Ned Rorem
    The Gay and Lesbian Review Spring 2000 Winter 2000 Robert Mapplethorpe, Gore Vidal, MichaelBronski
    Discourse 15.1 Fall 1992 “Is This Child Gay?

    Please look this list over and contact me at cllrdr@ehrensteinland.com about prices

  8. David Ehrenstein

    Here are the CDs I have on sale

    Body Heat soundtrack — John Barry
    Ran Blake/Jeanne Lee –You Stepped out of a Cloud
    Nat King Gole – After Midnight
    Petula Clark – Warm and Tender
    Pee Wee Crayton – Blues After Hours
    Bulworth soundtrack Ennio Morricone
    Andy Williams (Japanese CD)
    Beams – Jane Irving
    Meredit D’Ambrosip — Love is Not a Game
    Cheryl Bentine – Something Cool
    Chet Baker (Japanese CD)

    Duke Ellington – Take the A Train
    Sammy Awards — Sammy Davis Jr.
    Selena jones – Night Mood
    Carmen McCreae – Bittersweet
    The Complete Capitol Fpur Frshman fifties session (4 CDs)
    Andy Bey – Shades of Bey
    Bonnie J. Jensen — Blue Joy
    Petula Clark Anthology Volume 1
    Meredith D’Ambrosio — South to a Warmer Place
    Kelleye Gray – Standards
    Lois and Keely Love at the Sahara — Jake Broder nd Vaness Claire Smith
    Jackie and Roy — Sing Baby Sing
    Buddy Greco — Back to Basics
    Johnny Holiday — Songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim
    The Magic of Burt Bacharch
    Aretha in Paris
    Small Circle of Friends
    Mel Torme and the Mel-Tones
    Meredit D’Abrosio – Manny Albam
    The Parade
    Tommy Wolf – Wolf At Your Door
    Jane Seidel – Sweet Days
    Bill Evans Trio – Waltz For Debby
    The PeggyLeeSongbook
    Early Bebop
    Francine Griffin – The Song Bird
    Nancy Marano – Sure Thing
    Bill Henderson Live
    Nat King Cole Trio 1943-1945
    Frank Sinatra conducts the music of Alec Wilder
    The Best of John Pizzarelli
    Marilyn Burroughs – I Feel Pretty
    Brooks Arthur – Songs Are Like Prayers
    Nat King Cole – Just oNe of Those Things (and More)
    Shirley Horn Trio – A Lazy Afternoon
    Gino Paolo / Ennio Morricone
    Vic Damone – Live
    The Best of Jane Birkin
    Max Roach – It’s Time
    Randy Van Warner – The Third Child
    Ryuichi Sakamoto — Snake Eyes soundtrack
    Lookin’ For a Boy
    Kicks! – Oscar Brown Jr.
    Peggy Lee – Moments Like This
    The Hurriance — soundrack
    Pigmeat Markham’
    Jerry
    s Boys — Original Cast album
    Amateur– soundtrack to hal Harley film (various artists)
    Nick and Nora — original cast album’
    John Legend — Get Lifted
    The Golden Voyage of Sinbad – Miklos Rozsa
    Marai Callas and DiStafno Final Tour 1974
    Roy Hamilton – Goldn Classics
    Jon Hendricks – Evolution of the Blues Song
    Christopher Gines sings Charles DeForest
    Peggy Lee
    Discord – Remixes
    Maria Callas – Paris 1959
    I Hear Music in the Air – Gospel anthology
    Niagara Triang;e Voume 1
    Nic DeCaro – Love Storm
    The Sound and The Fury – Alex North
    Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer – Music from
    A Bout de Souffle / le Scandlae / La Peau Douce /Two English Girls
    Brian Wilson
    Each Time
    Paul Misraki – Alphaville, Le Doulos, etc.
    City of Joy – Ennio Morricone
    Ryuichi Sakamoto — Sweet Revenge Tour 1994
    La Voce Della Luna – Nicola Piovani (soundtrack)
    Rita Reyes – Once Upon a Summertime
    Prisoners – Johann Johannsson (soundtrac)
    Sadistic Mika Band
    Boy Meets Girl (soundtrack)
    Takeshi Tna — Golden Hits (Gilbert and George cover)
    The Produces – Original Broadway Cast
    Clairborne Carey
    Brooks Arthur
    Ellen McIlwaine – Soul Source
    Boy Erased (soundtrack)
    Richard Rodney Bennett – I Never Went Away
    Inner Voices – Prarie Jazz
    Kiss Me Kate – Brian Stokes Mitchell, Marin Mazzie
    Dwight Dickerson – Dwight’s Rights
    Gilberto Gil
    Maria Calla – Recital (1953-57)
    Bolero California
    Al Haig Quartet
    North By Northwest — soundtrack by Bernard Herrman
    Rockabye Babye! — Lullaby renditions of Rolling Stones song
    Guys and Dolls– revival with Nathan Lane
    West Side Story — Original cast
    Dolores eade Hope — Now and Then
    Mark Murphy – Night Mood
    25th Anniversary of MTM
    Sweet Sue Evans
    Mel Torme GoesSouth of the Border
    Sheila Jordan and Harvey Schwartz
    Niagara Moon – Eiichi Ohtaki
    Ann Richards – I hear Music
    Red Mitchell – Simpl Isn’t Easy
    Johnny Holiday Sings
    Sarah Vaughan — The Masters
    Together / Have a Good Time – Joe Williams Harry “sweets” Edison
    Meet marlene – Marlene Verplank
    Mark Murphy – Rah

    Look them over and contact me at cllrdr@ehrensteinland.com

  9. David Ehrenstein

    Here are the DVDs I have for sale

    Ponyo – Hayao Miyzaki $15
    The Guardains – Xavier Beauois $10
    Creature From the Black Lagoon – Jack Arnold $10
    Seven Brides For Seven Brothers – Stanley Donen $10
    Walesa , Man of Hope – Andrej Wajda $10
    Stay Rich For Ever & Ever EdSlott $10
    Sympathy For the Devil – Jean-Luc Godard, The Rolling Stones $12
    Every Man For Himself – Jean-Luc Godard $12
    Chantal Ackerman in the Seenties: La Chambre, Hotel Moterey, News From Home,Je Tu Il Elle, Les Rendez-Vous D’Anna. $20
    The Prisoner of Shark Island – John Ford $20
    Faust — F.W. Murnau $20
    Rebels on Pointe — The Ballets Trocadero de Monte Carlo $10.

    I also have a beautiful gold-plate framed mirror (a steal at $100.00 ) That would have to be purchased in person

    Please contact me at cllrdr@ehrensteinland.com

  10. James

    Dennis, I just wanted to drop in and tell you how much I love you!

    Love,
    James in Seattle

  11. Keatouac

    I dont hit that shop until right before Halloween. It’s like it should be a hobby/magic shop but its a Halloween shop. The chick that used to do that wore silver pants back in the 90’s. I feel like I’ve seen someone dead on one before. Too many years in the mall. Great varioso. The first pics look like that Billie Eilish video. Phobia, hm, a phobic is a maturing neurotic, possibly a proper type. Afraid of but fascinated by or attracted to. Permutation is supposedly the proper treatment. “The horse is not your father, Lil Hans.” Why does art or LSD have anything to do with preparation for dying? The knife seems easier than most ways, hate to think about it. I’ve become my pet, can’t stand animals. Hydrofloors, exactly! There’s a town of thousands of skeletons under water at the edge of the big lake. Neato post, thanks!

  12. Misanthrope

    Dennis, A Varioso! One of my fave type days of yours. Those and the Galeries! Thanks. I really enjoyed everything on here.

    Right? What the world wants and thinks and all that. Bleh. Blah. Meh. Eh. But I predict…success! It’ll work out.

    I just finished my next to last chapter the other night. Have to go over it once more and then on to the last. After that, go over the whole thing again. I’m definitely changing shit in the first chapter. Didn’t really work out/get my mojo until the third, so I really have to look at those first two chapters and…”bring them in line.” Or something.

    Yeah, Justin and I get on quite well online. I have a feeling we’ll get on even better in person, as tone and that sort of thing isn’t lost. Nice guy, really good writer, funny as hell.

    Chillin’ like a villain all weekend and next. And then a week of travel, which I expect to be very fun and chill. Things are getting exciting. 😀

  13. Steve Erickson

    Given the stories Scotty Bowers tells in Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary about him, like having sex with J. Edgar Hoover in drag and Cole Porter sucking off 6 sailors in a row, and the fact that Tyrnauer’s narrative film about Scotty will be produced by Fox, I wonder how it’s possible to make something that won’t be sanitized to death!

    Surprising but very effective music choices: Scott Walker’s “Next” played in its entirety as strippers drug and rob men in HUSTLERS, which I saw yesterday. (The audience clapped when Lizzo’s name appeared in the closing credits.)

  14. David Ehrenstein

    Cary Grant’s Socks

  15. Dominik

    Hi!!

    First of all: congratulations!! Your 10th novel!! I’m so, so, so curious, I can’t wait to read it! How do you feel about it? I take your trusted reader found the time to read it and gave an unambiguous thumbs-up, then? Ah, I’m so happy for you! And for us, lucky future-readers!

    Yes, your facebook SCAB-post attracted WAY more reactions than my “official” facebook announcement and I’m so grateful! I’m really happy you like the issue. Aesthetically, it’s the direct continuation of the 4th but it feels more compact, more like a whole somehow. I’m already excited to see what’s next.

    Please do, yes and I’ll also let you know when I’m about to visit my brother! It’d be amazing to meet in Amsterdam! We’re planning to visit Paris next summer with Anita! I’ll definitely share all possible dates and details as soon as it starts taking shape!! And, of course, you’re always welcome to visit here, too!!

    How was your week/end?

    I had my interview for the LGBTQ helpline thingy. They promised to let me know about their decision by the end of the month so we’ll see.

    Tons of love, Dennis!!

  16. _Black_Acrylic

    Ooh I love that Ben Kopel poem! I was looking for his book Victory but it seems to be expensive these days. Further Variosos would defo be very welcome.

  17. Natty

    Hiya! Great stuff. Love Louis Wain but I never knew who he was, just those examples of his stuff that they always put in pieces about mental illness.

    Dennis was so nice meeting you! Just a really enjoyable conversation and definitely the highlight of my trip (tho the spa I went to in Berlin was insanely beautiful). I ended up going to a bar called RAIDD after I saw you which had a shower show and it was just hilarious and great. And in Berlin I found the seediness for sure. What an interesting city with dark energy. I’ve been back in Pittsburgh for a couple days now. I wanted to link you to that Rodney Ascher short I was telling you about: https://vimeo.com/18332484 I’m not sure where the one he did about mannequins and dummies is but here’s a trailer for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m9tLAEkzs4 Also his movie “The Nightmare” is on Netflix and stuff and it’s really really good. And here’s a song from that band Women I was telling you about, though you said you were listening to more electronic stuff lately so maybe you won’t like it but anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n2gJ9TD1fE

    xoxoxo

  18. Paul Curran

    Truly excellent about finishing your novel, Dennis! That was some amazing news. Congrats again, and best wishes for its onward journey!

    Great Varioso post today, too. I remember some of these. Don’t remember the answer to the painting one though.

    Not anywhere as near to the end of my novel yet, but I’m happy with the summer’s progress. Going to get back into it right now. Have a super week! xx

  19. alan

    Hi Dennis. Sorry if I missed your talking about this, but did you ever get to see the new Tarantino movie, as I know you were planning to at one point? I thought it was maybe his best. Wondered what you thought, especially since it’s set in LA and all.

  20. Armando

    Hey,

    Well, OK, so you’ve seen it. OK. We’ll see now.

    “Think I’m going to see the new Serra film today.”

    ^ *Jaw Drops To The Floor*. I’m so fucking envious of you!!! I am *DYING* to see it!!! Did you end up going indeed???!!! How was it???!!!

    And the vegan burger place?

    I worked and exchanged messages and emails with various people and and just tried to chill, basically.

    Good day, good luck;

    a.

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