Monday, April 28, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Sunday, April 20th 7pm
Salacious Banter Salon
(a.k.a. my apartment)
900 S 5th St., Milwaukee
5th & Walker in Walker's Point
1 Block South of National, La Perla, & the Mexican Restaurant District
3 Blocks West of 2nd St & the Gay Bar District(a.k.a. Fun for Everyone!)
Enter on Walker St.
Come on up.
salaciousbanter@gmail.com
for questions, concerns, my number in case you get lost, etc.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
The Wire
I'm now through Season 2 of The Wire. And it seems like something people do alot when they talk about The Wire is try to say what it's "about", because it really is incredibly sprawling and I guess one feels the need to make sense out of it. So here's my stab at it. The Wire is about the fact that there is a certain set of social norms and ways of behaving and moving goods to and fro and moving within late capitalism's infrastructure that have always existed and will always strawberry goodtime John McCain's Honda Gold Wing polaroid-derived funyuns...
And it all unravels.
So I can't really explain what it's "about". It might just be that the corruption and certain codes of "loyalty" that permeate America in various forms (not just in "gang-banging") of palms greasing other palms and hands reaching into pockets, and various territorial pissings bleeding into each other are all so prevalent that's it's hard to discern where It ends and Society begins. Or once you start following the money, you have no idea where it's going to go.
I do have to say that Idris Elba, who plays Stringer Bell, is a really good actor because the character of Bell scares the shit out of me, what with his freakishly unbreakable composure punctuated by the little mouth tics and eye rolls he exhibits when you know that whoever just crossed him is fucked.
I also think about what Kasey Mohammad said about The Sopranos, how by the end of it everything is "so totally beyond fucked", and that that is basically exhibited in every frame of it. And how The Wire has that in an even more all-encompassing, wide-swath-cutting way, how it seems like it has an even more "hyper-realistic grasp of the American and global now". Or as The Greek, Season 2's main target says, "The world's gotten smaller." So maybe these two shows are just demonstrating (I mean, not to presume their, like, verisimiltude, but what would contemporary HBO drama be without the V-word?) how the sociopolitical phenomena I tried to articulate above have reacted chemically with globalization and mutated in ways no-fuckin-body can even begin to understand but are almost uniformly evil... almost giving some perverse credence to characters on The Wire who use platitudes like "all in the game" and "business is business". The fact that so much of what is perpetrated in The Wire makes complete sense from the point of view of the perpetrater, is another part of what makes it so fuckin scary. But that's pretty grim. And I guess the verdict (for me anyway) is still out on The Wire, since I'm only past Season 2.
Oh, and Joshua Clover has a pretty interesting post about television as the new long form here that incorporates The Wire.
I'm now through Season 2 of The Wire. And it seems like something people do alot when they talk about The Wire is try to say what it's "about", because it really is incredibly sprawling and I guess one feels the need to make sense out of it. So here's my stab at it. The Wire is about the fact that there is a certain set of social norms and ways of behaving and moving goods to and fro and moving within late capitalism's infrastructure that have always existed and will always strawberry goodtime John McCain's Honda Gold Wing polaroid-derived funyuns...
And it all unravels.
So I can't really explain what it's "about". It might just be that the corruption and certain codes of "loyalty" that permeate America in various forms (not just in "gang-banging") of palms greasing other palms and hands reaching into pockets, and various territorial pissings bleeding into each other are all so prevalent that's it's hard to discern where It ends and Society begins. Or once you start following the money, you have no idea where it's going to go.
I do have to say that Idris Elba, who plays Stringer Bell, is a really good actor because the character of Bell scares the shit out of me, what with his freakishly unbreakable composure punctuated by the little mouth tics and eye rolls he exhibits when you know that whoever just crossed him is fucked.
I also think about what Kasey Mohammad said about The Sopranos, how by the end of it everything is "so totally beyond fucked", and that that is basically exhibited in every frame of it. And how The Wire has that in an even more all-encompassing, wide-swath-cutting way, how it seems like it has an even more "hyper-realistic grasp of the American and global now". Or as The Greek, Season 2's main target says, "The world's gotten smaller." So maybe these two shows are just demonstrating (I mean, not to presume their, like, verisimiltude, but what would contemporary HBO drama be without the V-word?) how the sociopolitical phenomena I tried to articulate above have reacted chemically with globalization and mutated in ways no-fuckin-body can even begin to understand but are almost uniformly evil... almost giving some perverse credence to characters on The Wire who use platitudes like "all in the game" and "business is business". The fact that so much of what is perpetrated in The Wire makes complete sense from the point of view of the perpetrater, is another part of what makes it so fuckin scary. But that's pretty grim. And I guess the verdict (for me anyway) is still out on The Wire, since I'm only past Season 2.
Oh, and Joshua Clover has a pretty interesting post about television as the new long form here that incorporates The Wire.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Start/Stop Making Sense
Sometimes I think my problem is that I look at things and don't see that they make sense, or do so at least out of a feeling like I don't need to see that they make sense, that things really need to make sense, and they really do make sense, but I'm already off somewhere else not making sense, and it just ends up not making sense, or just being something that someone made that doesn't make sense.
Sometimes I think my problem is that I look at things and don't see that they make sense, or do so at least out of a feeling like I don't need to see that they make sense, that things really need to make sense, and they really do make sense, but I'm already off somewhere else not making sense, and it just ends up not making sense, or just being something that someone made that doesn't make sense.
How To Prepare For a Cognitive Dissonance
those keys are just near each other on the keyboard
4 5 6 4 8
don’t worry
you did not
“we seek out the best in Christian video
for substance and sizzle”
forget how to count
_____________
The Divide Between The Rich And The Poor
I have my own
probably at least
somewhat misinformed
ideas about it
but my source who
never lets his right hand
know what the left one is doing
says its part of
an increasingly untenable
unassailable
and intractable
unmentionable
those keys are just near each other on the keyboard
4 5 6 4 8
don’t worry
you did not
“we seek out the best in Christian video
for substance and sizzle”
forget how to count
_____________
The Divide Between The Rich And The Poor
I have my own
probably at least
somewhat misinformed
ideas about it
but my source who
never lets his right hand
know what the left one is doing
says its part of
an increasingly untenable
unassailable
and intractable
unmentionable
Repost from 3/07
On the 60 bus, people at two consecutive stops waved the vehicle by, as they were waiting for the much more popular 15 bus. The first person, a woman in her 50/60s, did a kind of misleading gesture with the index finger, a gesture like "Come here, but then pass by me." The second person, a man in his 20s probably, did a more dismissive be-gone-from-my-sight, right hand swinging low back-and-forth gesture.
On the 60 bus, people at two consecutive stops waved the vehicle by, as they were waiting for the much more popular 15 bus. The first person, a woman in her 50/60s, did a kind of misleading gesture with the index finger, a gesture like "Come here, but then pass by me." The second person, a man in his 20s probably, did a more dismissive be-gone-from-my-sight, right hand swinging low back-and-forth gesture.
Absolute Annoyance in Absolute Space
Lately when I'm in the coffee shop I do alot more thinking than activity. I become that guy shaped by the space around him. Slumped comfortably within irritatons of bendable hope. Hope schmope. I'm not making sense so why should you? One thing we can't measure is how fast this becomes lopsided, in talking grief. Refusable, come-pleteness of the completely Tom Landry memory. One thing we can't measure is how NFL Films fast this slips away. And how everything NFL Films breaks down. And finally it just broke down. Curving back on itself. I don't want to be doing anything in this coffee shop so I leave it.
Fuck it.
The volume outside the next door is too loud. I write slow. Write this slowly. Lumbering reprosed lines. Now I'm writing in New Sentences. Will someone please tell me the difference between NFL Films and the New Sentence? I'm serious that's a compliment. Or, I'm not serious and that isn't a compliment.
Write something about birds I'm depressed.
Means magically feeling sorry for Absolute Space. Sleazily so. In the bendable reforming of it's own Incredible Hulk likeness. I don't know the difference between NFL Films and the New Sentence. I think about weird things y'know, like what if Mr. T and E.T. had a baby. I think it would sound a little something like this. "I pity the fool who doesn't phone home."
Plus absolute annoyance in the refried some shit or other shit, and reverting to Robin Williams.
Needs an ending unlike the R.W. stream and self-consciousness forming there of.
Lately when I'm in the coffee shop I do alot more thinking than activity. I become that guy shaped by the space around him. Slumped comfortably within irritatons of bendable hope. Hope schmope. I'm not making sense so why should you? One thing we can't measure is how fast this becomes lopsided, in talking grief. Refusable, come-pleteness of the completely Tom Landry memory. One thing we can't measure is how NFL Films fast this slips away. And how everything NFL Films breaks down. And finally it just broke down. Curving back on itself. I don't want to be doing anything in this coffee shop so I leave it.
Fuck it.
The volume outside the next door is too loud. I write slow. Write this slowly. Lumbering reprosed lines. Now I'm writing in New Sentences. Will someone please tell me the difference between NFL Films and the New Sentence? I'm serious that's a compliment. Or, I'm not serious and that isn't a compliment.
Write something about birds I'm depressed.
Means magically feeling sorry for Absolute Space. Sleazily so. In the bendable reforming of it's own Incredible Hulk likeness. I don't know the difference between NFL Films and the New Sentence. I think about weird things y'know, like what if Mr. T and E.T. had a baby. I think it would sound a little something like this. "I pity the fool who doesn't phone home."
Plus absolute annoyance in the refried some shit or other shit, and reverting to Robin Williams.
Needs an ending unlike the R.W. stream and self-consciousness forming there of.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Beach House
I'm really liking this band, uh, Beach House. Uh yeah, they're good, ooh especially that song Turtle Island, like makes me all soft and gooey inside, and that reminds me I have to do a wash. And even though that sentence makes it sound like, oh never mind.
It's just the basket with fresh laundry is getting heavily outnumbered, that's all.
My favorite Beach House songs though, and I haven't heard that many yet, would have to be Astronaut and Turtle Island. Yes, good late-night listening, in a way similar to Blue Skied An' Clear, a Slowdive song I downloaded a couple weeks ago.
Their cover of Some Things Last A Long Time is pretty good. I kind of want them to cover Father Figure by George Michael. No wait, I want to cover Father Figure by George Michael.
Victoria Legrand has a voice that makes me wanna do a wash. In fact it makes me wanna be a wash, be in the wash, or take a bubble bath and pretend that it is some kind of oceanic laundry cycle, in the ocean. Anyway its very pretty and it sneaks up on you. And the last few cooey seconds of Turtle Island remind me, as if I could've forgotten, man, it's really time to do a load of wash. That's laundry's piling up and I don't seem to care.
Hopefully somewhere Karl Saffran is smiling.
I'm really liking this band, uh, Beach House. Uh yeah, they're good, ooh especially that song Turtle Island, like makes me all soft and gooey inside, and that reminds me I have to do a wash. And even though that sentence makes it sound like, oh never mind.
It's just the basket with fresh laundry is getting heavily outnumbered, that's all.
My favorite Beach House songs though, and I haven't heard that many yet, would have to be Astronaut and Turtle Island. Yes, good late-night listening, in a way similar to Blue Skied An' Clear, a Slowdive song I downloaded a couple weeks ago.
Their cover of Some Things Last A Long Time is pretty good. I kind of want them to cover Father Figure by George Michael. No wait, I want to cover Father Figure by George Michael.
Victoria Legrand has a voice that makes me wanna do a wash. In fact it makes me wanna be a wash, be in the wash, or take a bubble bath and pretend that it is some kind of oceanic laundry cycle, in the ocean. Anyway its very pretty and it sneaks up on you. And the last few cooey seconds of Turtle Island remind me, as if I could've forgotten, man, it's really time to do a load of wash. That's laundry's piling up and I don't seem to care.
Hopefully somewhere Karl Saffran is smiling.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Question
You are wearing a pair of those sweatpants that have something printed on the butt. What it would it say?
I'll start it off. Mine would say either CAN'T HANDLE THIS or POST-AVANT. Or P=R=I=N=C=E=S=S.
Maybe DOUBLEMINT. Or KONG PAO.
But not HILLARY 08. Or BEAR STEARNS. Or CHOMSKY.
They could say I HATE SPEECH. Or EX-TRACK COACH DIES. But not STIMULUS CHECK.
They could possibly say YOST. Or BOOTIETASTIC. Or SPRING AND ALL. Or CANTOS. But probably not PERSONAE. Or THE IDEA OF PRINT ON THE BUTT SWEATPANTS AT KEY WEST.
I might consider POET LAUREATE. Or I WAS MENTIONED ON SILLIMAN'S BLOG. But probably not STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE. Or BLACK METAL.
I would need a bigger butt for some of these.
Like for instance if they said WOODLAND PATTERN, which would be totally cool, don't get me wrong.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
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