October 2009 Archives

From Video Poetry and Video Fictions, courtesy of Richard Kostelanetz, who produced the visual content in 1989, and Seth G. Samuel, who composed and performed the music in 2009.

Postscript: Nov. 2 -- A change from the change ... and I doan care if dey mispell Artur's name ...

Here's the truth, simply stated ... bookstores are suffering from a serious crisis of falling sales. Don't believe a single zero of all those editions claimed to be 100,000! 40,000! ... even 400 copies! just for suckers! Alack! ... Alas! ... only love and romance ... and even then! ... manage to keep selling ... and a few murder mysteries ... rather wanly ... Matter of fact, nothing is selling ... bad times! ... Movies, TV, appliances, mopeds, big cars, little cars, middle-sized cars really hurt book sales ... credit merchandise! imagine! and weekends! ... and those good old two! three month! vacations ... and posh cruises! ... hi there, little budgets! ...watch those debts! ... not a red cent to spare! ... so, you know, buying a book! ... a camper? well! ... but a book? ... easiest thing to borrow there is! ... a book gets read, for sure, by at least twenty ... twenty-five readers ... Hah, just suppose bread, or better yet, ham, could satisfy, one slice! some twenty! ... twenty-five consumers! what a windfall! ... the miracle of shared loaves would set you dreaming, but the miracle of shared books, and the writer working for free, is a well-established fact. This miracle takes place, no fuss, at the secondhand counters or, a bit more nicely, in reading rooms, and so forth and so on ... In every case the author goes a-begging. That's the main thing!

Those are the opening lines of Conversations with Professor Y, published more than half a century ago, though you'd never know it.

Here's the beginning of a nice little tale of blackmail and paranoia by the late Kurt Vonnegut. It's one of 14 previously unpublished stories in a new collection of short fiction, Look at the Birdie, just out from Random House.

I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I hated -- and a man with a beard sat down beside me, and he said amiably, "Why don't you have him killed?"

"I've thought of it," I said. "Don't think I haven't."

"Let me help you to think about it clearly," he said.

You can read the rest courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.

Did you see this? How could you not? It was frontpage -- front and center above the fold -- the kind of news that sends the mind reeling: Wounded Soldiers Return to Iraq, Seeking Solace.

Really.

Americans wounded in the Iraq war are being ferried back to the scenes where they were maimed to help achieve psychological closure, the first time such visits have been tried while a war is still in progress.

Carl Weissner, author of Death in Paris, his latest thriller, was bemused:

Bill Hicks is biting his ass in frustration for having to miss out on this one. This is worse than all the styrofoam Flat Daddies in the world. Dante, in fact, is weeping uncontrollably he's so frustrated and feeling left out.

Papers will be written at the Army War College on the healing action of business-class-cum-red-carpet all the way. Guys who have never flown business class, they automatically achieve closure; the minute the flight attendant says, 'Take yr legs off or whatever, boys, make yourself at home...' It's a medical fact.

To steal a quote from the Command Sergeant Major, "It's the new Iraq." Or to quote the walking wounded, "Hoo-ah!"

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Malcolm Mc Neill animated Televolution 20 years ago. "I redid it for Charles Darwin," he said the other day, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and to pay tribute to On the Origin of Species. The 19th-century naturalist's masterwork was published in November 1859. Mc Neill's animated cartoon consists of 1859 frames.

Televolution originally aired in 1990, in Japan. "The iPhone was science fiction and the Internet had just gotten started," Mc Neill says. "Now wearable data-transmission devices are the norm, biophysical integration is just around the corner, and the conquest of gravity is on the way."

He dismisses the idea that "evolutionary theory has removed God" from the natural universe. "In fact," he says, "Darwin simply redefined Him as a kind of super Walt Disney who changes one thing into another on a whim. Life has been viewed as an animated cartoon ever since."

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Postscript: After this item went live, Mc Neill messaged:

I'm not exactly a Darwinist -- or any kind of ''ist." Certainly not a Creationist. Evolution theory is only 150 years old. Flat earth lasted a whole lot longer. And every generation has its own version of a flat earth theory. Look at how smoking turned around in 30 years. Doctors used to say it was GOOD for you. And global warming. In 1976 scientists were so concerned about global COOLING that they were considering dumping soot on the North Pole. If Darwin was right, I only hope we can figure out what it was that made a fish turn into a rhinoceros and get ourselves the heck out of here. Human is a terrible state to be in. We've had thousands of years of carnage so far. If "flying wombats" is next let's get on with it.

Have a look at "The Subliminal Kid," a short, brilliant sequence from Andre Perkowski's "Nova Express." Excerpts of his montage film, a three-hour work-in-progress based on the writings of William S. Burroughs, will be screened tonight at the School for the Visual Arts in New York as part of an ongoing homage to Burroughs, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Naked Lunch.

Here is a longer, equally brilliant sequence, "Crab Nebula," from the film. Burroughs himself reads the text. Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman are featured in readings of other texts.

The music throughout the film is by Kristin Palker and Perkowski.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

José Tomás shows in just 37 stunning seconds why he is the last best hope
for bullfighting ...

... and if that doesn't prove it, have a look at these two and a half minutes.
¡Olé!

Postscript: Oct. 7 -- Yesterday, during arguments in a a free-speech case involving a ban on animal-cruelty videos, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia asked, "What if I am an aficionado of bullfights, and I think, contrary to the animal cruelty people, they ennoble both beast and man? I would not be able to market videos showing people how exciting a bullfight is."

Well, if Scalia is for it, I'm against it. Almost makes me cringe in shame for posting this video. Besides, I never thought the bull was ennobled. My staff of thousands also wonders why I posted it.

"Hmmm," the staff wrote, "very interesting. Made us think of that football player Michael Vick who got sent to prison for dog fighting. Too bad. He should have dressed up in some tight, Liberace-style pants and made a homoerotic ritual out of it in the name of ancient Moorish-Hispano Kulchur and Hemingway manliness. Gladiators, ha! But better a bull than a Christian or Jew."

I protested that the analogy was unfair, that Vick and his dogfighting ring risked nothing -- he simply had underperforming dogs "killed by electrocution, hanging, drowning and other violent means."

"I don't think bullfighters are risking all that much," came the reply. "I wonder what the kill ratio is between matadors and bulls over the last 50 years -- maybe a 1,000 to 1? Or 10,000 to 5? The bulls don't have a chance. Of course, it's not one of those things worth much worry. There are thousands of other far worse things that reinforce human brutality. I would imagine that the murder rate in NYC in the early 1990s was higher than the death rate for matadors."

Not content to guess, the staff found an article, "Death and Flamenco in the Afternoon," that gives actual bullfighting stats: Five matadors killed since the mid-1990s and 10 in the last 50 years vs. 40,000 bulls killed annually in Spain's 600 or so bullrings. "It's not a fair fight," the article concludes. "The death rate stands at one matador to several hundred thousand bulls."

And how about the latest twist, a matador's deal to advertise a drink for gays on his cape? "Wait till Saturday Night Live gets hold of that," says the staff.