I know I don’t give this blog a lot of love and attention lately, but I really do love it. Case in point: I’m currently working on my application for an artist fellowship, and while looking through the story files on my computer today (I was updating my resume and including my writing experience for the first time) I came across this one: Upwardly Mobile.
It was never submitted anywhere, never published, but it’s totally finished and (I realized as I read through it) not all that bad.
So it’s times like this that I’m glad to have this website as a venue for stuff that I’d otherwise have no purpose for. Like I said, it’s not a bad story – a little sexual socioeconomic fantasy (that was actually inspired by an episode of “Mad Men”) that does what it does.
And all of this helped me to put off writing my resume a little longer, which is a good thing.
1) Meek’s Cutoff
A slow-motion picture by anybody’s estimation, with lots of long takes where nothing much happens, that is nevertheless filled with tension. Reichardt gives the audience choices. Do you care about these people enough to feel anxious about what will happen to them? Does the hubris of the whole American enterprise render them unsympathetic? Are strangers to be generally trusted or feared? The final scene offers a conundrum that is as politically relevant as anything I’ve seen this year.
2) Drive
Stylized to within an inch of its life. Every element in harmony. That the soundtrack and the costumes already have a life of their own says something about the potency of the vision here – this is one that’s going to stick around for a while, one that will instantly garner a cult.
3) Tree of Life
Saw this one in the front row of a packed movie theater. Near the end of the film I was closing my eyes frequently because it was all too much, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Staggered out of the theater 2+ hours later feeling like a veil had been put over my eyes, or maybe lifted from them – the world looked different for a good while, my perception had been altered.
4) Weekend
5) Cedar Rapids
Good not great: Melancholia, Tabloid, The Skin I Live In, Take Shelter, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, Bridesmaids
Need to see: Margaret, The Future, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Carnage, Win Win, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Young Adult, Fright Night, Our Idiot Brother, Another Earth, Kaboom!, We Were Here
MUSIC
(in no particular order)
Smith Westerns, Dye It Blonde: Listened to this one maybe more than any of the others this year. Every single song is good.
Black Lips, Arabia Mountain
Dum Dum Girls, Only in Dreams
Papercuts, Fading Parade
Crystal Stilts, In Love With Oblivion
R.E.M., Collapse Into Now
Real Estate, Days: I resisted this band for as long as I could, cause every time I tried them out it sounded so bland. But I think the blandness is sort of the point. This is easy-listening music for ***sters, and it doesn’t come much lovelier (and it sounds a lot like Felt).
Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Belong: Mostly for this song.
So you can now order Backwoods, the print version, on Amazon for $9.04. That’s only some cents over the price of the ebook version on Amazon. Why is it so cheap? I have no idea!
Furthermore, I have yet to see a copy of it. I can’t believe it. How is it that I could conceivably order a copy off of fucking Amazon and see it in two or three days, yet I haven’t seen it?
YES I’M FRUSTRATED.
Every day I come home and hope to see it on my doorstep, and every day I’m disappointed. It’s passed the point where I’m even going to be excited about it. I’m just going to be relieved and a little less annoyed.
Also, here is the Smashwords edition. Smashwords lets you download the book in a bunch of different formats, such as HTML or PDF, for people who don’t have a Kindle or an ebook reader.
Apparently Amazon gets the copies of Rebel Satori’s physical books before anywhere else gets them, so while I still haven’t seen the book yet, I’m thinking it’s gonna be any day now.
Hello! Here’s a couple photos that my friend Anthony DeAngelis took of me, to be used in promoting my book.
And I should mention that I’ve recently come out of the closet about some semi-nude photos of me by cult filmmaker Bruce LaBruce.
This happened many years ago in Pittsburgh, and the photos initially popped up in an issue of this snooty gay French magazine. I used to be a little embarrassed by them, but I’m not now. And now LaBruce put one of them on the cover of his new monograph. Click here to see it, I’m in there somewhere…
Repost from old blog, 2/16/2007
Is there anything sadder than a pedophile?
Born with his predilection, the pedophile is forced to make a choice: submit to his desires, either through pornography or child rape, and live life as a criminal, most likely ruining young lives in the process. Or, remain a slave to his sexual proclivities for the entirety of his life, always knowing that he is a freak and a degenerate, never able to truly accept himself or love himself in a society where he is unilaterally demonized.
In a country as oversexually stimulated as America, to maintain a neutered state of mind must be a challenge. We are bombarded with the sexualized images of young children – youth is put at a premium. It’s all “look – but don’t look too closely – and certainly don’t touch.”
As a gay man, I sympathize with the plight of the pedophile, even as I see their actions as repellent. I know what it’s like to be born differently, to not have any control over your desires even when you most want to. There was no way I could have lived a straight life. And there is no way a pedophile can live a life any other way.
This makes me question nature. Isn’t nature supposed to make sense? If a person is born with certain desires, shouldn’t they be able to act on them?
No. Nature doesn’t make sense – nature is as chaotic and uncompromising as it is beautiful and nurturing. So living beings will always have to die to keep other beings alive. So violence is essential for creation. So we’ve been given brains large enough to devise things (nukes) capable of destroying all of this.
It’s life. I guess no one ever said it was easy, but I’m going to say that sometimes: Life Sucks.
