in the worrrrrrld. She let me keep my impressions!

• Movies: Thought Inception was a boring version of The Matrix, liked Splice, LOVED The Great Happiness Space. About to watch Gallants, Rififi and some Jean Rollin vampire flick.
• Music: Basically all Gucci Mane all the time, punctuated by the original Doctor Who theme song by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Ron Grainer/Delia Derbyshire).
• Stuff: I like this Visvim Bavarian Mountain cloak. Wonder if it comes in black and if I could pull it off. Would pair with my new olive 501XXes. Ideally someone would sell me a Masonic scepter already and I’d have a complete outfit.

More like this, less like other things

My database disappeared? but all my posts are intact? Anyway, welcome back.

The death of Tobias Wong

Because of Larissa Riquelme, Paraguay is guaranteed emotional second place behind the winner of the world cup. I relate to the monkeyman.

If the hylozoists or panexperientialists are right, your body may have thoughts or experiences that are unlinked to your consciousness, which is a little hard for me to take.

• I realized that my favorite future is the Back To The Future II future. Right? And anything that recalls it is pleasing. That’s why I like the new Wired iPad app. It’s only 90% there, but watching video embedded in ads feels very Back To The Future-y. I’m sure you’ve seen it, but here’s the actually hovering hoverboard by Nils Guadagnin. I once visited the Thomas Kinkade housing development in Vallejo; if that’s possible I strongly think we should build Hill Valley with magnets in the concrete so you can hoverboard around. It is almost 2015.
• Movies: saw Iron Man II, Shutter Island, Kick Ass, Mutual Appreciation, Mystery Team. Nothing really stuck except the Shoah scenes in Shutter Island. At the top of my list to see next are the new new restoration of Metropolis (I actually have a copy from German TV but will wait for the official release), Greenberg, Enter the Void as always, probably Exit Through The Gift Shop which is playing in LA but I’m lazy…Splice maybe? Watching El Aura, now, by Bielinsky.
• Food: has anyone made a char siu burrito? Seems logical.
• New-to-me words: limerence, hebephrenic (P.K. Dick).

True Love

It’s unusual to know exactly when your pubescence ended, but I do. It was the summer of 1990 and I was newly eleven, standing in my friend Louis’ kitchen while he changed channels on a small television. He stopped at the sight of a Saturday Super Movie preroll on Philly 57. FADE IN ON: a woman with pale skin, dark hair cascading around her shoulders and piled in a beehive both, a woman whose black wrap dress was cinched with a vaguely Arabian dagger and whose décolletage was cut in a V terminating at her solar plexus, a dress that exposed two halves of the largest, most beautiful breasts I had ever seen in my life.

“Stop,” I said urgently.

I sat down and watched the whole rest of the movie while Louis (I think realizing his friend was entering a powerful fugue) generously played Nintendo alone in the other room. The plot was meaningless and there were moments of dispensable parody, but what sang out was how all the characters, in their own ways, were obsessed with the woman, Elvira. She was quick, resistant to imposition, cheerfully selfish. What she wanted for herself was a captive, impersonal paying audience and by the end of the film she has it. She performs a burlesque in a nude bikini embroidered with black crystal spiders, twirling tassels on pasties.

Elvira was a crucible that burnt away my childhood and Elvira provided the physical prototype that shuts down my forebrain: pale ravenesses, stacked. Real girls aside, she has been in my heart since that summer. I know all there is to know about her, have seen every photo, every frame of film and even her unaired CBS pilot, which was passed to me through a network of fellow-travelers.

Before you email the cops, I should say that I have no interest in Cassandra Peterson, the actress who created and plays Elvira. She actually posed for a few magazines – skin rags – in the late 70s, and of course I have seen these images but they don’t wreck me the way her second self does. Cassandra is soft honey poured over sunshine but Elvira is sex and death in one, the face and torso of upbeat nihilism, the centerfold for a world without god.

We will never meet

Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal aka Keith Elam of Gang Starr is dead. Cancer. If you know his work, you understand the extent of the loss. Other rappers have flavor, and some have skills, but Guru was unique and the Gang Starr records will live forever. RIP

Has it occurred to anyone that the first salvo in the war of robot versus flesh might be collusion on the part of the AIs who will be responsible for the trading patterns of the investment banks? Financial vehicles are still increasing in complexity and decreasing in the length of time they’re viable, right? The harder the AI the greater the upside, so there’s the motive to improve them right there. And if they’re anything like the i-bankers I’ve known in my life* they’re going to be assholes.

*not named David, Alex or George

iPad 3G (corporate buy, Louis and I are fixing to make some cool shit for it)

Quark CR2 MiNi titanium (180 god damn OTF lumens on your keychain)

Atwood Wingnut G2

Next: Sebenza 21 small (the Speedsafe on my Kershaw Avalanche broke!!! great warranty but fuck that), MB Le Grand rollerball, Sinn 656 schwarz on bracelet.

Download here. The commentary below is his own; great selections Andy!
–
Harmonia and Eno
Atmosphere
Recorded in 1974, released this year

Burial
Fostercare
Click, thump, whirrr

Oni Ayhun
OAR003-B 12″
The male half of the Knife slips under the radar

Baroness
Steel That Sleeps the Eye
I love indie-metal in the Aeolian mode

Canis Lupus
woof woof

Harmonia and Eno
Les Demoiselles

Jesus Christ (the indie band)
Is This Really What You Want?
“And I will be cold and alone in my coffin”

Culoe de Song
The Bright Forest
Jungle gives way to some épiques cordes

Favorite Reissues of 2009

Stone Roses: I Wanna Be Adored (Demo) + Made of Stone
Chameleons: In Shreds
Pere Ubu: tracks 2 and 3 from Dub Housing
Eno and Harmonia: Aubade
The Smiths: Girl Afraid, What Difference Does It Make?; Rubber Ring
Burial: South London Boroughs; Distant Lights