Two or Three

There are only two things more beautiful than a gun: a Swiss watch or a woman from anywhere. Ever had a good... Swiss watch?

There's three times in a man's life when he has a right to yell at the moon: when he marries, when his children come, and... and when he finishes a job he had to be crazy to start.

the mystery of loss

or a little nudge to polish pornstars

And there is something about videotape, isn't there, and this particular kind of crime? This is a crime designed for random taping and immediate playing. You sit there and wonder if this kind of crime became more possible when the means of taping an event and playing it immediately, without a neutral interval, a balancing space and time, became widely available.

(c) Underworld by Don Delillo

Things flashes and die

From an interview with Harun Farocki:

On why he included images drawn from flight simulators and early virtual reality machines used by the war industry in Images of the World?

Oh, I think that's quite obvious because that's the subject of the film, that somehow in the history of this depiction we have come to a point where it seems to be a great project similar to this film by Bresson where somebody asks, "But who is it who sets up all this silliness?" In the same sense, I always ask what is the tendency, why, who decided that we rebuild a second parallel world, a virtual one to the real one? Do we want to replace [the real one]? Does it get lost and therefore replaced, same as if an animal (species] is dying, you put the last two into a zoo? Is that the meaning? I don't know the meaning or the reasons, but for me it's quite obvious that this ongoing creation of the secondary world has something to do with a threat to the first so-called real one.

All the people who taught me card tricks are dying.

there's more to bebop, paolo conte, once upon a time in the west, den haag and "frankly my dear i don't give a krakau damn" than you would think.

Paolo Conte was born, grew up, and is to this day a most illustrious citizen of Asti, a small city in the north-western Italian region of Piedmont.

Though internationally synonymous with the names Martini and Cinzano, nothing could be more misleading. For the wine drunk by town and country folk alike is the dark red Barbera which it is not unheard of to find even in the soups and local pasta dishes. This is that part of Piedmont where you can begin to notice a thickening in certain French traits, just as you acknowledge more and more the presence of the Franco-Italian Alps.

The region has of course strong historical links with the French and this is certainly evident in the dialects, but nowadays only the echoes of these ancient ties remain. Asti is far more tied to the Italian way of life of the Po valley, submerged by the unifying effects of the modern state structure though typically "campanilista" and therefore fiercely conscious of its own separate identity and traditions. In one way or another, the "Astigiani" are all connected to the land of the surrounding hills, and to a rural way of life; everyone seems to have some sort of a family history in a rural setting.

Such was also the case of one Paolo Conte, born on 6 January 1937 into a family of solicitors that for generations has practised in the town centre. Though he grew up in the city he spent a fair amount of time, particularly during the war, on his grandfather's country farm and would later recall his upbringing as particularly favourable to an understanding and respect not just for people of all walks of life but also for his own local ways and traditions.

His family background is said to have been musically diverse with both parents enjoying serious music as well as modern popular song, be it Italian, French or American. At quite an early age Paolo and his younger brother Giorgio were started on piano lessons, but apparently neither applied themselves with any particular zeal and this first more traditional approach to music making slowly fizzled out.

on hume and women

alright macho lovers, lets only have one subject tonight:

first off for background music: a new Cat Power song has been released from her upcoming album The Greatest. It will be released in January (i'm not particularly fond of the song but we'll cross our fingers for the rest of the album).

but the main issue : I saw parts of Peter Weir's Year of Living Dangerously again tonight and must admit I'm adding Sigourney to my "Nature Giveth and Taketh" beauty queen list (cheers to Dan Knauf for terminology btw).

The rules for that one are as easy as can be:

be very attractive at some point in your movie life and be very spooky at a later date (bad plastic surgery or scary make-up is not accepted, we're really talking about natural beauty fading away really quickly, as if it never happened, which off course happens to us all but these ladies are quite exceptional examples me thinks)

To get a hang of it, here's some other examples:

- Lauren Bacall: To Have and Have Not & The Shootist
- Angie Dickinson: Rio Bravo & around Big Bad Mama

I'm cooking up more examples, maybe Dolores can do one for the gents.

it is only at the tree loaded with fruit that people throw stones

so i'm listening to Zeigefinger by a band that describe their music as an unholy ambient mixture of slow jazz ballads, black sabbath doom and down tuned autopsy sounds. i bet it would please ozzy.

so i'm contemplating the fact that i only find out now that denis lavant is the actor in the rabbit in your headlights video (mpg, 49MB) and that there also might be a similar car scene in one of the carax movies lavant did and that i'm really far out for not recognizing this icon and that i'm just not watching enough french movies, i should truly watch more & more & carve deeper.

so i'm watching long dark shadows and the beast and the monkey probably got it right, where does all this come from and when did we turn towards it.

so go chop a dollar and try, at least try.

Goodluck at 6am

Senor Crisscrass has raised the bar again!
shoutouts to the scheld'apen crew

The more I am working as a freelancer in the lucrative world of producing advertisements the less I feel like being a filmmaker. And yet I prefer making a living on a shoot for some famous or less famous brand than getting a regular job and really make some steady money. Because at least it still feels like I'm close to the movies. Close to what it was all about. I wonder if maybe it wouldn't be better to steer away and do something entirely different just to stimulate the need to be making a film again.A real film, not a product. I want to get out of the cave, away from the play of shadosw on the walls, and look into the sun again. Next time someone screams "ACTION" and the cameras are rolling I want to feel a heartbeat, a pulse, any sign that there is life in what we are doing. Even better, I want to be the one that whispers "action", and may life be screaming upon me, I will not back down, I will not yield, only the essential matters. I will be standing there, burning my eyes staring into the sun and remembering. Not what it can be all about but what it is about. What it is. What is. Essence.

“I’m gonna stick my dick in a vagina in a minute, and everything is gonna be cool"

What else you need?
Our ever brilliant genius Yoni Wolf puts it so much better than you.
Elephant Eyelash (we've been slacking in checking it out but a kind soul pushed us right through the perineum, so yeahh cheers) is just doper than any crackazz record this year. The attacks of the elephants steam through yo. Now on to Hymie's Basement Redux & we will masturbate at your birthday party too!

[more yoni words check here]

An elephant eyelash is a hard on. Elephants grow old and have really good memories and seem sad. Elephants are big and awkward but have beautifull eyes with long girlish lashes.

CMJ - September 2005

So, WHY?....What's This Song About?
Interview by Christopher R. Weingarten

“Yo Yo Bye Bye”
We were playing this show in Tempe or something, and this girl comes up to me. I was looking at her the whole time. She was really cute. She gives me her address if I wanna be pen pals or something on some 13-year-old shit. So I wrote a letter to her. In San Antonio, I called my girlfriend and told her the story. She said, “You fucking asshole!” and broke up with me. I was sad as hell, walking around, looking for a pole to do pull-ups on and started to write this song. We were heading home from San Antonio. You stop at rest stops every three hours and there’s always a fucking DQ. We were in DQ and this guy was like, “No more! I can make no more cones! No more cones! Only Blizzards!” All these fucking fat people in there like [in a southern accent] “Goddammit, I gotta get a fucking Blizzard? I wanted a cone!” I wasn’t talking to nobody because I was so depressed, and then the line popped in my head—“I’m fucking cold like a DQ Blizzard”—and I started cracking up. Can I say that in a song? It was just the way I felt right then. It was so gritty it felt like the right thing to say.

“Fall Saddles”
This song is written to my dad. When I was 13 he gave me this tape he had just found in the closet. “Listen to these songs I recorded when I was 18.” They were really fucking dope. When I moved to California I took the tape with me. And I found that past the songs, there’s this letter to my mom. She had broken up with him and moved to Kansas City, and he had just found God in the Jesus Freak movement. He sent her this recorded letter, so that’s his voice cut up on my song. “Your fisted language still affects my style, though I still catch your visions like a child.” That was from one of his songs. Somebody says his voice sounds like Jerry Garcia, but I don’t know if that’s the case since I never listened to the Dead and he never did either. Our relationship has always been a little weird because he has that basis of spirituality; he’s a messianic rabbi—Jews who believe in Jesus. Holidays are quite a mix of things: speaking in tongues and doing Passover dinner.

“Gemini (Birthday Song)”
This is about [my ex] again. We went to Cincinnati for my brother’s wedding. We were staying at her parents’ old house, which was empty except for a bare mattress on the floor. She was sitting there clipping her toenails and just letting ’em fall. Certain girls can get away with that. If I did that, I’d be fucking nasty. But there’s a certain kind of girl that can get away with that and still be attractive for some reason. That became this visual metaphor for what our relationship was. The song is like a diary of the time. An “elephant eyelash” is a hard-on. I like to make my own pantheon of slang. Isn’t having a hard-on kind of vulnerable? It’s an anticipation. You’re always anticipating that things are gonna be cool in a minute. “I’m gonna stick my dick in a vagina in a minute, and everything is gonna be cool.” But you’re just standing there with a hard-on.

“Whispers Into The Other”
This was the only song written after we had split up. I stayed over her house one night ’cause I had locked myself out of my house. I was taking a piss and I found a fuckin’ used condom in the trash can. The absolute worst feeling you can have ever. Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep that night.

Why?’s second album, Elephant Eyelash (Anticon), is a pre-break-up album full of Yoni Wolf’s tiny snatches of hip-hop-centric mood poetry and a rollicking, Elephant-6-ready four-piece band. He is currently single, but the ex-girl in question (featured on the cover art) is currently dating someone who Wolf chivalrously describes as “a cool dude.”

Another Road Master

BEGIN VOICE OVER:
My life fades, the vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land. But most of all, I remember the Road Warrior, the man we called Max. To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time when the world was powered by the black fuel and the deserts sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing.

They’d built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked, and talked, and talked but nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled, the cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting. A firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white-line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of justice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed. Men like Max.

The warrior Max. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything and became a shell of a man. A burnt out, desolate man. A man haunted by the demons of his past. A man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place that he learned to live again.

Steve Pick an Odd Frogh name

"Odd Frogh" is a genuine Norwegian name and apparently one odd fella even went to the States to work.

"Steve Pick" is a genuine English name but pronounced in norwegian it gets a slightly different meaning. "Stiv" (which sounds just like "Steve") means "hard", and "pikk" means "penis".

(c) a certain kevral