March 07, 2008
DIY Vinyl Toys Show at Atomic Pop in Baltimore
We have been caught up in the sweep of graffiti-kid vinyls for quite a bit now... and then Atomic Pop came along and made buying them a local community service and so our addiction bloomed. Go check out their show of Baltimore Artists vs. the various do-it-yourself blank forms that have been coming out for the past year or so. I know I'm looking forward to Brian Ralph, Nolan Strals, and Ben Claassen III -- not to mention barako'munny from Kevin Sherry (right, photo by Rachel Whang) and tons more. |  |
 | Vinylmore Here's a CityPaper story about the show. And click the poster for a bigger view where you can actually read all the designers' names. |
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
January 30, 2008
A Second Helping of Sundance, Please
Pam Martin
Despite the dozens of eager fans star-stalking outside Fred Segal and, gag, the MySpace Celebrity Lounge, this year’s Sundance seemed a bit low key. Some films had already been picked up – one of the festival’s centerpieces,In Bruges with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes, is headed to theaters February 8 – and some A-list machines that were expected to be snatched up right away... well, weren’t.
One screening for my favorite film of the festival, Strangers, wasn’t even full. Granted, I saw it on a Sunday night at 11:45pm but Sundance is supposed to be a 24/7 party. I guess the crowds were up on Main Street trying to glimpse Adrian Grenier headed to the screening of his latest, Adventures of Power, or over at the library seeing the Hanks-fest Great Buck Howard, starring both Tom and Colin.
OK, I’m ragging on the people who seem to live in anticipation of seeing a celebrity in the flesh, but, truth be told, I’m one of them. My stomach jumped when I saw Adrian in the airport two days later. I kept a tally in my head of the celebs I saw during the five days I spent in Park City: Patricia Clarkson! Ben Kingsley!! Quentin Tarantino!!!
Does this make me lame? Is it a product of me living in Los Angeles? Is it normal that I’ve caught myself contemplating how Michelle Williams’ grief over Heath Ledger’s death compares to the grief she portrayed after losing her son and husband in another film I saw at Sundance, Incendiary? Maybe it’s time for me to get out of this town.
But that’s a discussion for another time. I didn’t go to Sundance just to freeze my toes off in a quest to see a handful of Hollywood icons (I can do that at home without the frostbite). I went to reunite with old friends and see new, great films. And that I did.
Strangers is a story of impossible love between an Israeli man and a Palestinian woman shot in Berlin and Paris during the 2006 Lebanon War between Hezbollah and the Israeli military. There was an outline for the film, but no script – all of the dialogue, including the actors’ reactions to the war as it unfolded, was improvised. Simply brilliant.
Incendiary is carried by Williams as a young mother grieving the loss of her son and husband after a terrorist bombing at a London soccer stadium. Screenwriter and director Sharon Maguire, who previously directed the polar opposite Bridget Jones’ Diary, has a gift for portraying strong, if complicated, women. Unfortunately, I don’t think this film has much hope of being picked up considering how war-themed films did at the box office last fall. Prove me wrong, Hollywood!
The second Fanning sister, Elle, stars as the title character in the colorful Phoebe in Wonderland about a girl who retreats into a world of fantasy inspired by the Lewis Carroll tale. I was a little put off by Felicity Huffman’s too-neurotic performance as Phoebe’s mother but Patricia Clarkson was perfect as Phoebe’s drama teacher – Heidi braids and all.
Of course, I would have loved to see more films but I also had to squeeze in requisite snowy-weather activities like skiing and snow tubing. Viva la Park City!
&npbs;
+++
And be sure to check out...
2007 Sundance coverage from Pam
2006 Sundance coverage from Jamie
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
January 23, 2008
Ask A Robot To Pick the Next President
As Super Tuesday approaches -- not to mention the race beyond it -- we thought we'd ask the robot public who they were pulling for... or perhaps they are predicting? We'll check back with them periodically in coming months to see how they respond to the ups and downs of the media circus.
Who should be the next President of the United States?
 Marquis-Minded Robot |  Ladylike Robot |  An Expensive Robot |  The Checking It Twice Robot |
Names and appearances of respondents have been altered to protect avoid retaliation from their employer-masters for their participation and opinions.
And to robots everywhere -- sorry we haven't talked in so long.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
January 16, 2008
Lips of the Cherubim
Joey Cashiola
download web PDF with sound (13.1 MB)
download print PDF (14.5 MB)
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
SUCCESS! Issue One
A Narrow House Occassional
73pp of poetry, artwork, prose and so on, edited by Lauren Bender
download web PDF (1.5 MB)
download print PDF (5.7 MB)
Featuring work from:
David Baratier | Jeffery Beam | John M. Bennett | John Berndt | Dan Breen | David-Baptiste Chirot | Mark Dickinson | Adam Good | Diana Bellessi translated by Cathy Eisenhower | Raymond Farr | Jamie Gaughran-Perez | Amira Hanafi | Jeff Harrison | Amy King | Richard Kostelanetz | M. Magnus | Megan McShea (with John Eaton) | a.e.m. | Tom Orange | Ross Priddle | Ric Royer | Cole Swenson | Chris Toll | justin sirois | Irving Weiss
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
November 28, 2007
For Your Consideration...
We happened on this great blog, Indexed. Let it be a daily meditation... a glorious and graphical daily meditation on the nature of our world. Things both deep and shallow... nature and Nature.
For instance:
So go check it out: http://indexed.blogspot.com/
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
October 10, 2007
internal memorandum 10
from the Grope Group, July 6, 2007 - Friday
Memo as received (PDF)
hitting send merely shot nitroglycerine into the hatchback's plastic cabin, steering to avoid barriers in rear of the fear – the strong signal igniting nothing & the wrong pediatrician burning terminal. It's the gadget's guts, not the bark or ribbed bit that changes the Jacuzzi torrents between you & the you we've been taught to follow. Mouth opens like a torn shirt. The human condition never changes, but the human experience Decepticons by the microsecond – we've downloaded paper walls whose compositions, when slide into a sheath of flesh, glow through that material like messages from the bottom of a pool. Swim with me then, as sound travels faster at the bottom of this well, a cistern no brothers or sisters could ever throw you into
+++
Previous Group Group memorandum
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
August 08, 2007
Don't Miss This Play (DC)
| Taffety Punk Presents "The Devil in His Own Words" August 10 - 26 Flashpoint Mead Theater, Washington DC Directed by Lise Bruneau Who or what is the Devil? Why is he here? Who does he serve? Tracing his appearances over the ages, Marcus Kyd has compiled scenes ancient and modern to find out. The Taffety Punks probe the darkest limits of our dreams to find the lifeblood of the world's oldest anarchist. |  |
More info about the play (ticket prices, times, etc) and the Taffety Punk Theater Company over here: www.taffetypunk.com
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
July 18, 2007
internal memorandum nine (after CH)
from the Grope Group
debuting tomorrow, the new iAye will not only be a revolutionary, keyless media center & cellular phone, it will function as an electric shaver, portable dinner plate & multi speed personal massager. Someone will open its source, of course & the soundings we require for this device will need to feel like kissing someone with a mouthful of bells, like waltzing at the Policeman's Ball & standing inches away from a falling chandelier as it becomes sodium particles at your toes
pulling the fire alarm only produced gasoline from the ceiling!
hear the whole office screaming?
capture that emotion & condense it a one word sentence
stone all other ringtones to death with your phonic neutrinos
malicious Pirate, de-vice their cellular service by reversing their perverse ingenuity. The see & the bells are no longer two different practices – surging up, usurping the hiccup before the diaphragm spasms – rising down, saddle this unfamiliar medium to your cheek & listen to the veil of the eye echoing eyes
+++
Find out more about the Grope Group at this myspace page, including an earlier draft of this piece.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 PM
June 20, 2007
The Beginning of Beauty
Ryan Walker
ooh oooohh, Mel Nichols' The Beginning of Beauty (Edge Books) is a very good book.
Meets meets meets. Then they go their separate ways, and stay that ways in at least several ways.
It is rich, containing more than you are likely to expect from poems, so it kind of tumbles out like a popcorn sofa.
Such titles as "easy living with the sectional", "wild and foamy jaws", "limen", "'I fucked a dense torte' on your birthday", and “stretching like thumbless design”. One can't not read things so titled.
A little bit of the quick Raworth line, at times, but hmmm it's different, the lines seem more inhabited. There's perhaps slightly more of a sense of story or scene living through or around the lines. Nothing pushy or too complete, tho.
From “stretching like thumbless design”:
I met Rothko at Le Tour Eiffel red
against all the worn antiseptic Great
Books in Haiku very
curvy and smooth
with random Eiffel-orange giraffe effect
Those lines aren’t especially representative of the volume as a whole, but neither is anything else it contains. It’s a bit unruly in that respect. You like it that way.
Features and specs: 31 pages of solid state froth-free poetry with not a mot unjuste to be found, plus some additional pages for covers and things; edition of 150 copies; a wax sleeve with an enclosed physical thing and a detachable cover credit; translucent lining; color photo of a thing that resembles the physical thing in the wax bag; black construction paper.
The volume is in fact “Part 1” of The Beginning of Beauty. There is a subtitle: hottest new ringtones, mnichol6. The “mnichol6” is her email handle from her days at gmu.edu.
+++
[ed note: this title hasn’t made it to the Edge Books site yet, but you are resourceful and can figure how to get your own copy.]
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
April 11, 2007
Ask a Robot: Iraq Revisited
Back in November we asked some robots about U.S. policy concerning the situation in Iraq. A season and change later, an additional 20,000 U.S. troops are in-theater. So we ask...
Think this surge thing is gonna work?
 The Robot of the Collective Consciousness |  The Robot of Personal Ties and Tenderness | Marquis-Minded Robot |  Robot of Collected Information and Branded Attitude |
Names and appearances of respondents have been altered to protect avoid retaliation from their employer-masters for their participation and opinions. Some responses have been edited for length.
Previously on Ask a Robot: Your response to the President’s State of the Union address?
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:07 AM
February 28, 2007
Ignore The Deluxe Soundstage Behind the Curtain
Bob Massey
So my friend Cate is the assistant editor on this feature film. And they're mixing the sound on a stage at Warner Bros. in Burbank. Cate invited me to come check it out because it's a pretty nifty process.
So I show up in my big unsexy Ford van, get my temporary pass from the guard, and park in the visitors' lot next to a bunch of fancy sports cars. Eventually I find the room they're mixing in (it's a big place, that Warner Bros.). And I swear to you it's like they're on the bridge of the USS Enterprise.
picture is of an older stage but you get the idea
It's basically a multiplex-sized screen, a mixing board with somewhere around a hundred automated channels, six ProTools stations, and a bunch of other shit that goes "ping!" (The actual Macs are in a server room next door. Very quiet, very sexy.) Behind the board is an expanse of hardwood floor. Then on a small deck is a (auto-reclining) leather couch and some overstuffed chairs. Behind that is a table with snacks and stuff.
So the director of the film sits in the Captain Kirk position, with editors and such around him. Down in the Mister Sulu position at the board are between three and nine sound mixers. In various seats are the dialogue editor, the assistant to the composer, the film editor and assistant editor, and so on. I'm not clear on all the different jobs, but this is the kind of thing that makes movies cost millions and millions of dollars. The room itself, with mixers, is something like $1,500/hour.
Anyway, what's really crazy is when they kill the dialogue from the mix because suddenly you see the scene with all the background sounds -- wind, footsteps, water dripping, the creak of doors -- but no speaking. It's hard to describe how eerie it is. It's like God himself just reached down and wiped out whatever you were saying. And as a moviegoer, you don't really realize that every sound element in a scene was put there on purpose. It's not all just coming from the microphone on the set. These Foley (aka sound effects) artists have huge libraries of sounds and they build each scene's audio from the ground up. It's nuts.
Behind this room, by the way, is the Director's Suite, which is like a deluxe hotel room. Kitchen, shower, veranda, desk, enormous HD TV, and so on. And it's not just about luxury. These dudes (Hollywood directors are still predominantly dudes) spend crazy hours on the mix stage.
So here's the best moment of my visit. These guys who do the mixing have all worked there for years and years. Another guy rolls in who they haven't seen in ages, literally. So they're trying to remember when they last worked together. Finally, they were like, "Oh yeah, it was for Redux, right? You remember how we stored all those sound elements over at [wherever]? Well, somehow they lost them. The only reason that film got re-cut and re-mastered was because [someone] found copies of the sound elements in a trash can in a warehouse in London." What they were talking about, I learned, was Apocalypse Now. They had last worked together on the director's cut, but they had also worked on the original. And someone in the studio system just LOST all the sound effects somehow.
In. Sane.
After I left the Warner Bros. lot I drove over to the valley to help a pal pick up gear for a short film he's shooting. It was like the yin and yang of Hollywood. From upper-crusty white collar to hungover blue collar. Tatts, ironic t-shirts, and heavy boxes. We loaded my van up with light stands and clamps and crates and whatnot. But all those people at the rental warehouse are the people who make big directors look smart. The director’s name might go above the line, but it's their expertise that puts him there.
<< Previously from Bob Massey
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
February 20, 2007
Some Day You Will See Brandon Downing's Short Movies and Say Wow
And so closes our non-week of randomness. Come back and see us kick it proper for a Week 99 bash.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
January 31, 2007
A Very Special Sundance
Pam Martin
Having a friend whose family lives in Park City, UT is a wonderful thing; especially around Sundance time. Though our trip was too short, we were still able to squeeze in a few movies and some stargazing.
The City
Park City is equal parts beautiful and freezing. It’s the kind of place I would love to live if I didn’t absolutely hate the cold.
Coldest/grumpiest moment: Waiting in line for newly released tickets at 7:30am on Saturday after only three hours of sleep.
Most unexpected pleasantry: It’s shockingly easy to get around, with festival shuttles running every five minutes and city buses that ask for “donations only.” Just make sure you get off at the right stop.
The Films
Our Saturday morning cold-fest yielded us a few tickets to Hear and Now, a documentary about a deaf couple in their mid 60’s, Paul and Sally Taylor, who decide to undergo an implant surgery that restores their sense of hearing – to a point.
This was easily one of the most emotional movie-going experiences I’ve ever had. Look for it on HBO in the coming months; and have some Kleenex in hand.
We also got to see Away From Her, actress Sarah Polley’s (The Sweet Hereafter, Go) first feature-length film as a director. This one was also about an older couple dealing with a medical condition – this time, Alzheimer’s. Not the kind of movie I would usually seek out, but it was good.
There’s one movie I’m kind of glad I didn’t get to see... Rumor has it that a few people were seen puking in the aisle during a screening of An American Crime, Terry O’Haver’s retelling of a gruesome 1965 murder, starring Catherine Keener.
I’m definitely intrigued, but I think it’s one I’ll Netflix and watch at home – perhaps with a bucket nearby.
The Celebrities
And then, of course, there were the celebs.
Our trip was bookended by Katherine Moennig and Leisha Hailey (Shane and Alice on The L Word) on the flight to Salt Lake City, and Camryn Manheim (The Practice) on the flight back.
Once in Park City, we had a few high profile misses – among them Kevin Bacon, who had just disappeared after posing for photos with fans on Main Street.
The most frustrating miss for me, though, was Miss Veronica Mars herself, Kristen Bell. I was standing right next to my friends when they all saw her, but, apparently, I’m blind.
And once again proving that he attends every event, regardless of whether he has any business there, we spotted P. Diddy, not once, but twice in the same night.
The first time he was walking down Main Street drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag and the second time, a few hours later – still on Main Street – he and a friend were debating whether they should get cheeseburgers or turkey burgers for dinner. A question for the ages, indeed.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
January 24, 2007
Ask a Robot: The State of our Union
Last night (Tuesday, January 23), President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address to Congress and the American people. He declared victory in the War for Dikembe Mutombo's Citizenship to great applause, sending a wave of good feeling throughout the land.
With that hard-fought battle behind us, President Bush proposed bold new initiatives opening fronts in the War on Earmarks, the War on Junk Lawsuits Against Good Doctors, the War on Gasoline Usage, the War for the Right to Mention 9/11 At Any Time, and re-doubling our nation’s commitment to the War on the Deficit among others.
Today, as we wake up as a country living in a new world. Rock Heals turns to the robot community for their reactions to our President’s aggressive agenda. Opinions were surely mixed.
Your response to the President’s State of the Union address?
Marquis-Minded Robot |  Robot That Connects Names and Places |  The Robot of Democracy |  Robot of the National Pastime |
Do the President’s proposals set us on the right course?
Robot of Collected Information and Branded Attitude |
Has the President lost touch?
 Technology Assistance Robot | The Robot of Personal Ties and Tenderness | Marquis-Minded Robot |
Is the President guiding us into a better future?
An Expensive Robot | Marquis-Minded Robot |
Names and appearances of respondents have been altered to protect avoid retaliation from their employer-masters for their participation and opinions. Some responses have been edited for length.
Previously on Ask a Robot: Ask a Robot: New Years Resolutions, 2007
++++
Jamie Gaughran-Perez has interviewed robots concerning a variety of subjects over the past two years as part of an ongoing project.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
January 17, 2007
Hot House 5 for the New Year
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
 | [music] A Swedish band with a Spanish name that sings quasi-girl group songs in English? Couldn’t make enough sense to me. “God Knows” may feel repetitive at first, but with eat into your brain like Khan’s earwig thingy. Give it/them a listen on their myspace. |
[web-ish] If you accept submissions from people and get all kinds of random crap all the time, a little virus scanning goes a long way. A friend turned me on to this web-based one, HouseCall from Trend Micro and it’s done me well. Takes quite a while to run (it’s free people), just hit go and walk away. Check it out (thanks Mr. Durst) |  |
 | [poetry / web] A great new site from a great Baltimore reading series. If you are a Baltimore poetry-liker or someone who should be reading in Baltimore for the poetry-likers, you should check it out. Soon to contain more pictures, links to recordings of the readings, and more. Get on over there |
[tv] Heard The Wire is some of the best tv ever made? If you’ve “missed it all” rollback to Season 1 and catch up. A drama parading as a cop show with equal time/love for the good and the bad on both sides of the law. Class-casting is an ever-present subtext; Season 4 introduced a group of Baltimore junior high kids. It’s like your heart got jumped. |  |
 | [web / humor] My decompressor of the moment, poaching it for a few minutes every week or so. Funny pictures of cats, usually with added text … LOTS of ’em. Keep up with the latest development in cat-based humor. The picture shown is from my favorite subgenre … “I’m [on/in/etc.] your [object] [verb-ing] your [“related” object].” A phrasing that has been invading my own rhetoric. Git yr laff on |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
January 03, 2007
Ask a Robot: New Years Resolutions, 2007
We figured we'd check in with the robots on what they hoped to accomplish in the year ahead. And in response to one of Rock Heals own resolutions, we were able to track down a whole new crop of robots as well as visit some old friends.
What are your New Years resolutions for 2007?
 An Expensive Robot |  CY-8E11E |  Selection Assistant for Commercial Interests | Another Robot Substituting for a Dead Person |
Robot of Collected Information and Branded Attitude |  Inspired by Nonsense Bot |  Amy the Robot |  Doesn't Seem to Be from Around Here Robot |
Names and appearances of respondents have been altered to protect avoid retaliation from their employer-masters for their participation and opinions. Some responses have been edited for length.
Previously on Ask a Robot: What should we do in Iraq?
++++
Jamie Gaughran-Perez has interviewed robots concerning a variety of subjects over the past two years as part of an ongoing project.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
December 13, 2006
for kari
Michael Ball
kari,
" let's begin again "
is the last line yet at the same time
is the entire last page of your book - obedience -
___
you'd always signed off in your e-mails -
"peace
kari"
and
" again thank you for everything, for your kindness, understanding and
support.
peace
kari "
___
What and that we'll continue learning, experiencing, accompanying you -
your life & work reading rereading again & again . . .
Courage Compassion
For With
___
Thank you for everything, for your kindness, understanding and
support.
peace
Michael
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
November 15, 2006
Ask the Robots: What should we do in Iraq?
Following the midterm elections in the U.S. – many believe there is a mandate for a new course in U.S.-Iraq policy. But Iraq is a mess and any next step will carry the country into a new set of problems. What to do? We turn to the robots…
What is our next step in Iraq?
| The Robot of Personal Ties and Tenderness | Robot of Collected Information and Branded Attitude | Selection Assistant for Commercial Interests | The Robot of the Collective Consciousness |
Names and appearances of respondents have been altered to protect avoid retaliation from their employer-masters for their participation and opinions. Some responses have been edited for length.
Previously on Ask a Robot: Does George Bush care about black people?
++++
Jamie Gaughran-Perez has interviewed robots concerning a variety of subjects over the past two years as part of an ongoing project.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
November 01, 2006
The Director's Cunt: Mrs. Garrett in Surrealism's Bad Rap
Garrett Caples
they just keep teasing me
and you know like they like they don’t know
—Bob Marley, “Hammer”
Come in! I’ve been asked to write some account of Surrealism’s Bad Rap, and though I fear it is giving away the game a little too early, I also immensely enjoyed trivia concerning albums I loved as a lad, haven’t the heart to refuse, indeed am dying to display my minute cleverness and, I realize, no one may care later. Thus may I gratify my vanity, and perhaps satisfy a curiosity in whose existence I’m uncertain I truly believe. Let me say here too that I have a constitutional disdain for poets who write extensive essays about their own poetry, or indulge in theories about it. But this again is an album, so fuck it.
1) “Four Tune” was recorded in my apartment, not, as the liner notes indicate, at the St. George Poetry Festival staged by Joshua Beckman back in 2002. I was the last reader at the all day event, which made me nervous because I figured everyone would be gone by then. So I went up and read 2 or 3 or 4 poems, a very short set because I figured people were exhausted, but there were still enough people in the theatre for a resounding burst of applause, a combined effect of its being the end of a truly successful event, the relief, nonetheless, at its end, as an entire day of poetry can be taxing, and, I imagine, some gratitude to this final reader for not droning on and on now that he had the mic. For me, it recreates the “feel” of the moment, inflated by time and my ego.
It is in fact the most recently written poem on the album, an attempt to write something sonically different from anything I’ve done before. The text is composed entirely of four letter words in couplets. Note the fuck-up on the verse “gums / gems,” where I say “gums gem.”
2) “Synth” is dedicated to Jeff Clark, originally appearing, I think, in a batch of 31 copies for a party marking his 31st birthday then subsequently published in the E edition of the journal 26. Vaguely related, in my mind, to his “Chocolate and Mantis,” which opens his magnificent second book, Music and Suicide (FSG 2004).
3) The text of “Robocop” was initially generated as liner notes for an album, Sooltime (2005) by the band Sool, which featured funny little news broadcasts about Robocop. I liked the text so much I kept it among my “real” poems and couldn’t resist the opportunity to throw it on the album even though, as a recording, it definitely “imitates” the Sool album, and is therefore in some sense derivative. [listen to "Robocop"]
4) “Turning on the Tongue” is dedicated to Barbara Guest; the title came from going to eat with Andrew Joron at a Salvadorian restaurant that served tongue in huge, tastebud-dimpled slabs. I confess I love tongue, am too afraid of mad cow to pursue this dish with vigor, but at the time, I riffed on the conceptual wrongness of eating a muscle using the very same muscle itself. It was, I said, “turning on the tongue.” The detached phrase, in its ambiguities, pleased Andrew so much I used it for a poem, though the poem has absolutely no connection to the incident which generated the phrase.
Graham Connah provided the most cosmic keyboard substance to the goofiest beat I could concoct using presets in Apple’s primitive Garage Band software. The beat and vocals are the earliest things I recorded for the album.
5) “Ordinary History America” is somehow dedicated to John Ashbery; either from meeting him around the time I wrote it or from thinking hard about his work, as I do from time to time.
6) & 7) “Assassin Raising Scalpel” and “‘I Have Seen Enough’” are both about Philip Lamantia, the first dedicated to him shortly after meeting him and published in The Garrett Caples Reader (Black Square Editions 1999), the second dedicated to his wife Nancy Peters, after visiting his apartment for the first time after his death. All the description of birds in the poem are literally true, except of course, one didn’t start telling me a story. Nancy told me the lawnmower story.
8) The actual last poem of the St. George Poetry festival was “Light Sleeper (Elegy for George Harrison),” a much shorter poem as befitted the occasion described above; turned into a song by my friend Jeff Mellin, a brilliant though underknown artist who runs the Stereorrific label (www.stereorrific.com) and the non-profit Waxfruit Arts Media Collaborative (waxfruit.org); only song on which I don’t actually appear.
9) “Untitled” is recorded as four separate simultaneous vocal tracks, seemingly related to the notion of a singular personality becoming a collective plural that is kinda “in” the poem. It used to have a title.
10) & 11) “Puna Baedekker” was published in The Garrett Caples Reader, inspired, of course, by Mina Loy. “The Mermaid’s Diaper” is simply “Puna” set to a track with greatly multiplied vocal parts rendering the words almost inaudible, hence the subsequently recorded but first-presented “plain” version, recorded while I had a cold. (I accentuated, rather than hid, my congestion, just to add a different vocal texture.) [listen to "The Mermaid's Diaper"]
The “Mr. Ashbery” movie dialogue samples at the beginning of “Mermaid” are too good to give up. Sole hint: woman saying “I dig” in the first bit is Charlotte Rae, later TV’s Mrs. Garrett, from The Facts of Life.
12) & 13) “Bianca” and “Liquid Diary” are two love poems.
14) The text of “T.Rex” is taken from “The Slider” in The Garrett Caples Reader.
15) GCR again; first poem in the book.
16) GCR, title stolen from a song on the first Mötley Crüe album, Too Fast for Love.
17) “Godzilla” is a true story about meeting the rapper Yukmouth that I published in a Norfolk, VA music magazine called Ninevolt and later in The Philistine’s Guide to Hip Hop (2004), a little cafepress thing we did based on the Ninevolt articles. The title is not based on the “Windows for Dummies” model but rather from my nom de plume for the Ninevolt pieces, which were signed “The Philistine.” One love to J-Stalin for his reminiscences and rap.
Matt Mitchell recorded the music to this tune some years before on a four-track, for his extremely limited-circulation cassette E.P. called Joe “Robbie” Blount. It was an instrumental called “Stomping Ground of Insects.” My one technical contribution is that the track was like 3 minutes and it takes at least 7 to read the story, so I had to loop the song’s two main movements twice each to achieve the necessary length. But this groove has always knocked me out, reminding me of Velvet Underground.
18) “Hugo Ballin’” is Andrew Joron reading a Dada sound poem by Hugo Ball, with a beat in which I was trying, completely unsuccessfully, to imitate the kind of beat I imagined E-40’s son Droop-E would have made for it. I may have missed the mark but I nonetheless appreciate where the shot landed. My personal favorite track.
19) “Prufrock Shakur” was first published by Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellemy in their magazine, MIRAGE/Period(ical), and was dedicated to Creely and Lamantia after their deaths. Andre Breton is sampled saying “Ma Femme” from his poem “Free Union” on the album Surrealism Revisited. Geoff Dyer and I recorded this version the night Tookie Williams was executed and if you listen closely, near the end I’m double-tracked in a sort of call and response mode saying, “Tonight they’re killing Tookie Williams / Don’t kill Tookie Williams.” They did.
20) GCR again.
21) “Little White Noise”: Someone requested I write a text but this wasn’t at all what he had in mind so I kept it and started using it at readings. This version was recorded at my friend Rob Norris’s studio on absinthe, so I sound a little drunk, which I was.
22) “Lucid Cloud” comes from the same session and bottle of absinthe.
23) “Wallace Stevens in the 4th Grade” is a title I stole from a Robert Bly poem, because I thought it deserved a better poem, or at least something remotely Stevensian. Stevens exerted the single greatest influence on my earliest attempts at poetry, but I tend to think of him as a shit these days, particularly after reading his essay “Insurance and Social Change” (1937), in which he recommends the Insurance company he helped run (Hartford) invest in cemeteries to turn a profit under Soviet Communism and German and Italian Fascism (Opus Posthumous 236-237). I admit I should have been warned by titles like “Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery,” probably made some allowance for “the times,” but the coldness with which he proposes to profit from the impending European War destroyed my former love for Stevens. It’s hard to take pleasure in his work anymore, though my astonishment at “what he could do” in a poem admittedly remains.
24) “Uncle Bud” is made from Graham Connah’s keyboards and a sample I cooked up into a beat of Zora Neale Hurston singing some of the folksongs she collected in Florida. The original is available somewhere on the Library of Congress website.
25) “First National Anthem” I remember I began writing in a parked car, and it was a wistful piece, really about my happiness at the time of knowing Brian Lucas and Jeff Clark, who were the first poets approximately my age I’d ever met that I didn’t think were a drag, though please temper my arrogance here with knowledge that I didn’t go to an MFA program so my opportunities in this regard were at the time slight. But Brian and Jeff I loved and still do, and we had a few exhilarating years hanging out together in San Francisco/Oakland as young poets before each moved away in turn. Recorded one afternoon with Geoff Dyer, who perfectly improvised the parts one after the other, it was basically the first completed track on the album.
26) The title of “Clothesline Ballet” is taken from Fats Waller, while the poem is taken from the GCR. Last poem in the book as well as last poem written for it.
27) The unlisted bonus track is called “Sitting Inside a Box,” and was entirely recorded by Rob Norris, including the guitar solo I “pretend” is mine, in his home studio one evening by himself. I loved it—wouldn’t let him “improve” any of the takes because he sounded so in tune with himself that night—and merely added what seemed to me a Ray Davies-ish voiceover during an empty verse. This song he wrote one night about his ill-tempered parrot, Forrest, immediately laid it down, and forgot about it, until we rediscovered it accidentally while listening to the “absinthe” vocal takes and deciding which to turn into songs.
The “blind baby, cook” business that occurs on multiple tracks with Mr. Norris comes from what in retrospect is an off-color, if not racist skit about a blues-singer named “Blind Melon Chitlin” from a Cheech and Chong album that we listened to one night in high school on mushrooms. I apologize for perpetuating it, but it is the single longest running in-joke of my life (well over 20 years at this point) that Rob and I, whenever we greet or take leave of one another, or indeed need to tie off a mutually-understood conversational implication without a word, use Blind Melon’s “Yaow” and, if necessary, can communicate quite extensively using the “Yaow” in its different intonations and moods. And we’ve been unable to drop it, even when we once didn’t speak to each other for over two years. The minute we began to talk again, the “Yaow” was fully embedded in the conversation. Let me just say, too, no guitarist has ever quite astonished me the way Rob continues to do, and if I could solo like I pretend to here, I most certainly wouldn’t be a writer.
Overall, the idea for me was to make an album, as opposed to a recording of myself reading my poems, and the texts are treated with a certain amount of contempt or indifference—pretexts, if you will, for doing the tracks—and while I acknowledge that the album is a mess in terms of mixing and even certain basic vocal recordings, I recall that, too, sonic clarity was never in itself a premium to someone whose favorite records as a teen included the Stones’ Exile on Main Street or Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat. Aside from the spur of the moment addition of West Oakland rapper J-Stalin when he was at my apartment one day, I couldn’t bring myself to ask any of the hip hop artists I’ve become friendly with to give me music because sonic clarity is necessarily vital to these artists; I was too embarrassed to put my work alongside theirs. All the same, with all its shortcomings, I regard Surrealism’s Bad Rap, not as a work of genius certainly, but as an interesting and, on its own terms, quite successful work of art.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
Pop on the Easel: the Art of Jeff Mellin
Garrett Caples
Jeff Mellin was the first and quite possibly only genuine pop song writer I’ve ever met, despite the fact, years after our initial encounter at Livingston College (Rutgers), I’ve unexpectedly become an occasional, half-willing, professional music journalist. What I mean is that Jeff was the first person I met who approached both the art and the craft of the pop song from a perspective close to my own as a listener. He had an enthusiastic yet by no means uncritical appreciation of the classics (the Beatles, say, or Dylan) but too could savour those genuine, if ephemeral or even vapid pleasures, of Brill Building hackery, Tom Waitsian Cole Porterism, Jim Croce’s AM tongue in cheek, Donovan’s “I Love My Shirt.” The joy of pop songs is often quite simply their utter ridiculousness, for which Jeff retains a keen, though unironic relish. Some of my favorite memories of college are just sitting around his dormroom, paging through the massive hardbound Beatles studio session logbook, seeing who added what little part when, wanting to know how it was done in the studio, though, as a songwriter armed solely with an acoustic guitar and Johnny Cash’s pickless style of strumming, Jeff had already arrived. He wrote crazy good songs like “Geologic Time,” a genre-piece of the you-don’t-like-me-so-I’m-leaving-not-that-you-give-a-shit-anyway school, which climaxed with the embittered long view of: you think you are so pretty, think you look so fine, but girl your life won’t mean a thing in Geologic Time, a conceit which allowed him to work in words like “trilobites,” which is what seems to me the true goal of pop lyricism.
Later after college, when he began making music in studios, his writing changed, with perhaps slightly less emphasis on the obvious lyrical cleverness necessary to the naked acoustic strummer, just as Dylan’s going electric afforded him a whole new set of writing possibilities. Yet still Jeff would endlessly turn out gorgeous lines like she reads my face like a novel, but she skips to the end of the book, or brilliant changes in scope, like a frog on the back of a whale, both from “Typical Male,” a song he recorded with his mid-’90s pop garage band, the Eddies. And of course his art continues to evolve in unanticipated directions, like the golly-Buddy-Holly simplicity of “Blue Corduroy,” from his 2001 solo album Good for a Gander (Stereorrific, 2001).
Still, while it’s often difficult to gauge the worth of pop lyrics printed on the page without musical accompaniment, it’s remarkable how well his forthcoming book of lyrics, Skin and Bones, reads, as lyrics in the poetic sense. Slightly archaic, perhaps, with their unfussy rhymes, though entirely free of neoconservative Wilburism in the handling of line and meter, Jeff’s lyrics considered as poetry at their best evoke the only-just stylistically-belated (late 1940s), yet entirely individual and intense poems of Weldon Kees; even at their least effective, they have the readable lightness of Edward Arlington Robinson, and everyone knows Paul Simon made “Richard Corey” a better song than it ever was a poem, which illustrates my point nicely.
Being a close friend and collaborator, my feelings on Jeff’s abilities are perhaps biased. All I care to add is the fact that Jeff once took a poem I wrote, “Light Sleeper (Elegy for George Harrison),” and turned it into the lyrics of a beautiful tribute to one of the most profound men ever to have the mantle of “pop star” thrust upon him. (Coincidentally, I’d copped the title “Light Sleeper” itself from a song, by Oakland rapper Saafir, the Saucy Nomad.) Clearly Jeff and I were both feeling Harrison’s loss in a similar way, though I was astonished he wanted to use my poem instead of his own lyrics, which are so goddamn good. It may be the highest complement my poetry has ever received.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
October 25, 2006
Hot House 5 For October Cometh
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
 | [tv] A steam punk sentient robot? Mr. Dog? Emperor Zombie? Abe Lincoln (yes, that Abe Lincoln)? A monkey with a machine gun? Nothing really describes this one sprung from the mind of Mike Mignola (Hellboy). If you scour, I’m sure you can find it online somewhere. We hope (yet doubt) they’ll make more. |
[music] A little folk and a lotta crazy. A little instruments and a lotta drums. I’m loving their freeform approach to songwriting (Lyrics? Fuck’em. We’re just going to screech on this one). This is my fave of their albums and “Tigers” is my favorite song. Everybody’s loving everybody’s loving tigers tigers tigers. Get it |  |
 | [web] Chalk this up as another doing one thing and doing it great web site in the tradition of Is Lost a Repeat?. To paraphrase someone else, the thing about weather.com is that you have to think about whether you need your coat or not. Check for yourself |
[food] This book will wring out your soul, in a good way. A man takes care of his son in a post-apocalyptic world, simple enough. If you’ve read a post-apocalyptic book you’ve been through this plot before. But the telling is incredible. And it’s a quick read. And yes it is almost entirely gray. Get it Extra credit: Samuel Delaney’s Dhalgren. |  |
 | [food] So you’re trying to make mousaka and the recipe is calling for “herbs de provence.” Herbs de provence? What the hey? Enter Gourmet Sleuth’s handy substitutions guide. Can’t find cracker meal? They’ll hook you up. Get subbing |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
October 04, 2006
Ask The Robots: How would you respond to a North Korean nuclear test?
Once upon a time we justified invasion of a country with the spectre of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Today we ask robots on the street how they would respond if North Korea were to conduct a nuclear test.
How would you respond to a North Korean nuclear test?
Marquis-Minded Robot | Robot of Collected Information and Branded Attitude | The Checking It Twice Robot |  Simulated G Robot |
Names and appearances of respondents have been altered to protect avoid retaliation from their employer-masters for their participation and opinions.
Previously on Ask a Robot: Does George Bush care about black people?
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Jamie Gaughran-Perez has interviewed robots concerning a variety of subjects over the past two years as part of an ongoing project.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
September 13, 2006
Hot House 5 from 9,000 ft (The Telluride Film Festival)
David Wilson
David Wilson rolls with a dangerous mix of charm and intelligence. He organizes the True/False Film Festival. Fortunate for us, he played our man in the field.
 | Day one. Staff screening. It's Babel, a film that I know nothing about. This is the best part of Telluride. The films are secret until the day the fest starts, and they're pretty much all world premieres. What this means for me as a viewer is that I have no baggage, no reviews, nothing. I watch a movie with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett and it makes me cry and gasp and, here I get maudlin, believe in the transformative power of movies. | |
 | Lightning strikes again with Severance. If you had told me that Telluride, bastion of cinematic purity, would show a comedic slasher film, I just might have done a genuine spit-take. But this film is so good. More Aliens than Alien, it's also laugh-out-loud funny. | |
 | Yes, Telluride has the hits, and that's what most of the folks who pay $600-$3500 for their passes want to see. But those hits will all be in movie theaters in a matter of months. What makes this fest great (and makes me travel 1,000 miles to volunteer for them) is bringing films like Playtime back into the public consciousness, and in a gorgeous 70mm print no less. The film, by Jacques Tati, is a hyper-modernist slapstick comedy - Keaton via Beckett maybe. Mostly, it's just SO good. | |
 | Asger Leth, son of Jurgen Leth, whom we all know from the 5 Obstructions, made a doc about Haiti. It's called Ghosts of Cite Soleil and it's fantastic. Telluride doesn't really "believe" in parties, so they saved up all their party mojo for Toronto, where Wyclef Jean played a hour of party bangers, and I got to stand next to Ron fucking Perlman, who was wearing some sort of ECKO Wolverine shirt or something. | |
 | Telluride is the most beautiful place I've ever been. It's expensive and ridiculous and all that stuff, but it's still just ridiculously gorgeous. |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
September 06, 2006
Slash Circle Slash: Drinking with Matt Sesow (Part 1 of ???)
Interview by Jon Lee
Matt Sesow is a punk. Matt Sesow hates art. Matt Sesow thinks your life is boring. Matt Sesow is doing what you want to do.
I met Matt Sesow in 2001. He was quiet, cute and not at all what I expect when I think of an artist completely fucking with the art world’s business and aesthetic conventions. Then I went to his 2001 show at Corcoran’s White Walls Gallery. I realized this quiet, polite and handsome guy was doing something I hadn’t seen in the DC art scene: He was making art because he had to.
By the end of 2001, Sesow was painting full time in his small, turpentine-soaked studio apartment in Adams Morgan. Today, the man is constantly painting and constantly showing. He’s had plays written in response to his paintings. He’s been given fellowships and glossy spreads in magazines and papers. Matt Sesow is a successful painter and he doesn’t give a shit. Well, not really.
Matt and I sat down on April Fool’s Day 2006 to drink way too much beer and chat about work, art and whatever the hell came out of our mouths for over four hours. When I arrived at Matt’s studio, he was finishing up a painting called Japanese Boy Learning to Play Guitar.
JON LEE: So, you think of this painting as a failure?
MATT SESOW: They all are. The ones I struggle with the most are the ones that are most successful for other people. For me it’s a lot of paint. It’s muddy. It’s just a lot of paint. And it’s probably done.
JL: Do you like any other artists? Are there any other artists you admire?
SESOW: I don’t like paintings. I don’t like art. I really don’t. I think it’s stupid. I go to shows and I hate it all.
JL: There’s not one artist out there? You like Picasso, no?
SESOW: Not really. I was looking at his book today. A lot of it looks junky. Like, a lot of his stuff looks fast. Yeah. I really don’t like art. I really don’t like art. This is a scoop.
JL: Yeppers.
SESOW: I don’t like painting. I don’t. I see something in Bacon and De Kooning. But I don’t like them. I mean, I’d rather have my paintings up in here than a Bacon, or even a Basquiat. When I look at other paintings, I always think they are junky and fast. Like there isn’t enough paint on them. I don’t think people use enough paint. Especially in America.
It’s really funny. People that are privileged and have electricity are skimpy on paint. It blows me away. You should never skimp on paint. You should paint like a millionaire.
I used a whole fucking tube of Prussian blue today. I was squeezing it on and suddenly it was done. It’s like twenty bucks and you’re done. But, you know, it’s fine.
JL: Well, and you’re going to sell that.
SESOW: For forty bucks at Sowebo. Seriously. If nobody buys it online, I’ll take it to Baltimore and some kid with a mohawk will say, hey I like that and I’ll say eh forty bucks and he’ll buy it.
But online it’s gonna be $300. Because I want the kid with the mohawk to have my painting over some bourgeoisie pig in New York City. Although I do have a lot of great fans in New York City and I love them all. But I would rather the blue collar or the lower income people have my paintings. I’ve given my paintings away to people before because they liked it. I mean, if you like it, take it. I don’t care. I’ll do more. You need that kind of freedom as a painter and an artist.
To have that freedom you have to squirrel away all your money. I guess people need cell phones these days. I don’t have one. But try not to have a car. Live in a city. You can’t really live out in Paducah, Kentucky and be an artist. I almost moved to Paducah. You really can’t. You can’t. You need to have open studios. You need to go out and see a homeless man throw up on a church step. You need to see that. You need to hear stories about muggings and protests. You need to hear the 42 bus hissing all day. You know? Otherwise, you’re making it up.
JL: Answer honestly. What do you do?
SESOW: God. I don’t know. What do I do? I try to keep myself from getting depressed. I constantly strive to be different. Or to continue to be different. That’s what I do. But what I think defines us is our youth. And lucky me, I got hit by an airplane when I was youth[sic]. So what happens to us early on is probably what defines us the most. Fortunately for most people, or unfortunately if you are trying to be a painter, most people have normal lives in America. Maybe drugs, divorce, but really, it’s a normal life.
We are defined by a moment. That moment might be getting married or having a child. Which is great, congratulations. But for me, if I tried to do those things I wouldn’t be happy and I would end up shooting myself.
Oh, I’m going to paint about my kids today. Or I’m going to paint about the PTA today. Which is fine. And you know what, families are more important than being a painter. I didn’t say that out loud did I? I will never have a family. Other than these children in here. These are my children.
JL: Having a kid and painting are actually similar things. They are affecting the world. The passion that is on these walls is creating something. You may even deride it, but when it goes out in the world and goes on people’s walls, it’s doing something right? It’s more than decorating.
SESOW: I think at current estimate, there are around 5,000 Sesow paintings. And eBay is mysteriously silent. There were two in the last two months. And those people will be paying full price from now on. You put my stuff on eBay, you’re dead to me.
JL: What’s wrong with eBay? Why can’t people sell your stuff on eBay?
SESOW: Because I’m not dead yet. They can buy an original from me for less than what it’s going to cost them on eBay. And what I do now, when I see something on eBay, I recreate it and put it on my web site and sell it for less.
eBay is the anti Sesow. Artists on eBay should ask themselves what they are going to buy with that money. What are you going to buy with that money? You going to buy a car? Are you going to buy a girlfriend? Or are you going to buy paint? Are you going to buy canvas?
You need to ask yourself, where does your money go? eBay to me is money. And what are you going to do with your money? It’s silly. I’m going to make a million dollars? I don’t know what I’d do with a million dollars. I’d do the same thing as I’m doing right now.
JL: You use your web site to sell artwork. People using eBay are doing the same thing.
SESOW: It’s bidding. It’s thirst for unattainable things. It’s like a flea market. You want to be the first one to grab the pink underwear because everyone wants the pink underwear. I used to live in San Jose for three years. We used to go to the flea market at this big drive-in theater on Saturday and Sunday. We would go to the flea market and there would be hundreds of vendors.
People swarm around things on eBay because other people give things value. You can create a false sense of interest in a product. Like I could have my friends artificially bid up the price of my paintings. Intellectually, I think selling paintings on eBay is a scam. Making money doesn’t mean success.
JL: You are a successful artist. Did you want to be a famous artist?
SESOW: 99.999999 percent of artists wanted to be artists. They wanted to be painters. They want to be famous. I never wanted to be a famous painter. I think I wanted to be famous. But I wanted to be a famous porn star. Seriously. Or like a Bill Gates.
JL: You didn’t want to be a painter?
SESOW: You know me. I don’t live the painter life. I don’t go out and fuck chicks. I don’t go out and fuck. I don’t go out and… I don’t go out. I don’t go out in Adams Morgan and say, eh I’m Mat Sesow the painter. I don’t go to Starbucks and Tryst.
JL: I’ve only been out with you once besides art shows and you were at the Black Cat.
SESOW: And I was probably passed out drunk. Because I can’t deal with it. I can’t fucking deal with the idea of being a painter. Here I am. My studio is safe. This is safe land. When I go out to shows… It’s a disease I have. Um, alcoholism is what they call it. But seriously, I can’t deal with it. I can’t deal with people dealing with me as a painter. I want people to deal with me as me. I didn’t sit in my bedroom when I was twelve and say I want to be a painter.
JL: Well there are people that do.
SESOW: 99.9 percent of painters do. Your readers do. I challenge them to travel. Join the Peace Corps. Do it.
Stay tuned for more…
Japanese Boy Learning to Play Guitar, Matt Sesow, 2006
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
August 30, 2006
Ask The Robots: Does George Bush Care About Black People?
A year ago yesterday, Hurricane Katrina rolled over New Orleans leaving death and destruction in its wake. An emotionally overwhelmed Kanye West, on live TV, struggled to make sense of the tragedy then baldly stated, "George Bush does not care about black people."
One year later, President Bush has certainly recognized many of the mistakes of the the federal governments action in response to Katrina. But we felt we owed it to Kanye to follow up, Does George Bush care about black people yet? Who better to ask then the Robots who walk among us.
Does George Bush care about black people?
The Robot of Personal Ties and Tenderness | Robot The Connects Names and Places | The Checking It Twice Robot | Marquis-Minded Robot |
Names and appearances of respondents have been altered to protect avoid retaliation from their employer-masters for their participation and opinions.
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Jamie Gaughran-Perez has interviewed robots concerning a variety of subjects over the past two years as part of an ongoing project.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
July 05, 2006
Hot House 5: Vacation Survival Guide
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
Rock Heals made the tough trip to the beach for you! We’ve spent our time researching the must-haves for the 2006 vacation season. Don’t be caught riding the lazy river and sipping a baybreeze while the cool kids snicker.
 | [music] Born to Run for the open-window drive to the beach. Nebraska for sipping on a drink after the sun goes down. As Mischa Barton, cultural bellwether, said with her dying breaths in the OC finale, “It’s the summer of Bruce, baby. If you can’t get with him, you can’t get with me.” |
[dvd] British Comedy isn't “my thing,” but League of Gentlemen is as funny as I've seen in years. Set in a small town (Royston Vasey) with its local shop for local people – things get very wrong very fast. Verité camerawork and genre bending (soap opera, horror, etc.) work together toward a single-minded goal: making the funniest funny. One day I found myself trying to explain why I wanted “Rape our dead mouths” written on my wife’s birthday cake, thanks LoG! | 
|
| [book] I read a review of this and said, “Tracey, here’s the book you’ll want to read on vacation.” I was right. About a guy who walks across Afghanistan in early 2002, which probably ain’t so much an advisable idea then or now. Seems he has some time on his hands. Check out the NYT review I read. |
[food] Tilapia, red snapper, catfish – I’ll take ‘em all. Nothing says summer like fresh pico de gallo, simple guacamole, chipotle mayo and some grilled fish for killer tacos. We subbed habañeros for chipotle at yesterday’s Fiesta de la Indepencia -- freedom requires improvisation. Take heed: marinating time for the fish is roughly the length of a World Cup match – you don’t want the fish to cook in the marinade, and you won’t want to miss that goal in the 85th. Enjoy with Mexican beer, margaritas, and/or our fave Paloma. |  |
 | [activity] Drop your heart rate. Drop your blood pressure. Drop everything. And plant your head to pillow for the Slumber of the Ancients. We’re talking serious 8-hour+ stretches. Adrenaline is so late-90s. Don’t be caught dead on bungee cords, kite jumping, or moving faster than a lumbering gait. |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 PM
June 28, 2006
A Letter From Galina
[Received 6/7/2006]
Hello,
I want to start my first letter from a question: "Is it possible to be happy without LOVE?"
I think that you will agree with me if the answer will be "NO WAY." Love is the most beautiful and exciting thing! It inspires us only for doing positive things towards each other.
One very famous writer said: "The beauty will rescue the world." I agree with his words but still would add: "LOVE and Beauty will re-secure the world."
There's love to God, to Mother, to a child to the country where you were born, and there's love that joins a man and woman. That is the LOVE I'm looking for! And I'm seeking for the man who is eager to have this life-long adventure. Will you join me for this trip?
I do realise that it should be very difficult to say "Yes" from the first letter having no idea about me. I just offer to get to know each other better though correspondence that will reveal many things about each other whether we match perfectly or not.
Well closing my first letter, just want to thank you for reading, and I really hope that you'll share my point of view.
Good-bye,
Galia [sic] S.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
June 21, 2006
So Very Los Angeles
Bob Massey
From the continuing correspondence of our man in the field.
Today I saw a very L.A. thing. It’s a sunny Saturday, so I walked down to the coffee joint in my neighborhood. It’s the kind of place that bakes its own bread and croissants and cookies, which is a rare phenomenon these days (most places scoop that shit out of a plastic tub – I know, I did it for a living at one time), so people swarm the joint. There’s tables on the sidewalk and people tie up their dogs, so there’s also lots of good dog-scratchin’ to be had, for free.
Now, to my knowledge, this neighborhood is not particularly celeb-heavy. Not in a Paris Hiltony kind of way, anyhow. It’s mostly hipsters and latino families and musicians and writers. The two celebs I have personally seen in my neighborhood are Maggie Gyllenhaal and Kiefer Sutherland. And I wouldn’t have seen them at all if someone hadn’t pointed them out to me. My celeb radar is milky thin.
Which perhaps is the root of this anecdote. Because I was sitting there outside the coffee bakery dog joint when the guy next to me got up to leave. And as he was making his way past me, some dude at a nearby table gets up and pushes a CD at him. The following is a close paraphrase of what he said: “Hey, excuse me, I’d like you to listen to my CD, it’s a mix of electronica and indie, it’s from the heart, you know. I produced it myself.” At first I thought the guy was handing them out to everyone on the sidewalk, so I kinda ducked down into my magazine, because, sorry, but odds are about a hundred to one that his CD is awesome. But he only gave the one CD to this one guy. Who took it, said something vaguely encouraging, and walked off with a friend.
The thing is, I have no idea who the accostee was. And I know a silly amount about music and the people who make it, from obscure to ubiquitous. So it’s interesting to me that the accoster a) knew his face, b) had a CD for him, and c) had the stones to push it on him at a bakery. I’m also amused by his spiel (“It’s from the heart. I produced it myself.”) – not in a snarky way, but in an affectionate way, since I myself say idiotic things just talking to cute songwriter girls after their sets. And it probably says a lot about me – good or bad I don’t know – that I would never in a million years shove a CD at someone I admired, not if it was Leonard Cohen himself. So is my artistic output doomed to obscurity for that reason? If that accoster is the one in a hundred who’s genuinely great, is he now on his way?
Los Angeles. Where hope springs eternal. Until it doesn’t.
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Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
June 14, 2006
i.e. reading series: new time! new place! (b-more)
Saturday, June 17 will bring the wonderful i.e. reading series to it's new venue and time.
Saturday, June 17, 7pm
Chris Mason, Marshall Reese and Mark Jickling
i.e.
1821 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
(410)-727-1953
Here's a map
Yes, they names a whole store out of it...
For more info on the readers go over here -- a new schedule should be available soon.
Posted by Rock Heals at 05:00 AM
May 24, 2006
Write Zombie Haiku and Win!
Write a zombie haiku. Send it this way. Be awesome. Win a copy of Buck Downs' Pontiac Fever. Simple enough? Some definition:
Zombie Haiku: Short poem about, involving, or from the point of view of zombie or zombies. Need not be all out 5-7-5 style (syllables, I mean). If you need further definition of 'zombie,' please leave now.
Send it to: submit at rockheals dot com
(as in submit to the zombie fury)
Send it by: Howzabout June 30, 2006 -- that should give you plenty of time.
You could win: a copy of Pontiac Fever from Buck Downs (one winner selected by the official Rock Heals Committee on Zombie Literature)
We'll post examples as they arrive -- but thought we'd leave it wide open to interpretation for now. Have at. Have fun.
adorable zombie plushie from nopunchbacks
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Two tracks and more info on Pontiac Fire over here in case you missed it.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
May 03, 2006
Things I've learned in Hollywood
Bob Massey
People think that Hollywood is this 24/7 bacchanal of sex and liberalism, but perhaps they should point the pointy finger at Wal-Marts across America. That's where respectable ladies (and shady screenwriters) buy the trashy novels that provided the following purple prose.
For your amusement (and for a screenplay project I have to do), here is a list of actual sexual euphemisms from actual "romance" novels.
Do not try these at home.
- Manroot, man meat, seed bags, storehouse of the nectars of love, purple tulip, love juice, love honey, volcano gush, standing tall, engorged, life force, velvet steel, rod, turgid shaft, sword/sheath, organ, column of flesh, pillar of manhood
- Chalice of flesh, dewy petals, silky love grotto, mound of venus, honeypot, nether regions, mossy grotto, throbbing loins, dewy lips, pleasure bud
- Filling her tight sheath, impaling himself into her femininity, lock/key, fire/ice, entrance to her secret citadel, sword/sheath, weapon of flesh, dance as old as time, scale the peak of passion, climb the cliffs of ecstasy
- Cones of flesh, globes, diamond hard nipples, pert milky breasts/ nipples, nubbins, puckered nipples, pouting nipples, rosebuds, pleasure bud,
- Paroxysm of pleasure, milked dry by the rhythmic pulse of her climax, growl of release, burst inside her like a tidal wave, reached her zenith, brought to pleasure, scalding pulsations
It sure is good to be here in Gomorrah, CA, where we all we do is sip mint juleps at poolside and sup on the nectars of love.
Deadlines? Please. I'm scaling the peaks of passion.
+++++
New-ish 'round here? Don't worry there's much more from Massey where this came from. Get on it.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Hot House 5 for May
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
 | The creators of our beloved Pocket Ninjas comes back for more with the Pocket Stache. Rotofugi is plum out of ‘em – so you’ll have to look around to find one of your own, or wait on the nimble fingers of Shawn and his clone army. Make sure to hit their site to read up on the Stache’s checkered past |
Many times during this second season of Lost, my wife and I wondered allowed to one another, “did they decide to just suck?” Whoever left the writing staff was a real loss. But with The Map, Mr. Abrams stepped up the game – wrapping a thousand questions in a tiny package, promising answers… someday… sorta, and giving us something that’s just frickin’ cool. Google away for more than enough views of it. |  |
 | As the Boss said, and then Billy, …roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair… Well the night’s bustin’ open, these two lanes will take us anywhere… My first driving song for the season. Check it out over at Thrill Jockey. |
No shit, this is the best thing to come out for kids’ in a long time. Stripped away everything the kids don’t care about and all that’s left is pure amazing. The kids TV critics (all three of them) like to call it “the first operetta for pre-schoolers”… if that gives you a sense. Current house fave: “Wonder Pets Save the Skunk.” Get a good sense of it online |  |
 > | Who has time for a list of 10 funny things, Dave? Really! One of the many inspirations behind the Hot House 5’s – when he’s on he’s on. I tried to pick one of the more absurd as my example, below. But this guy’s humor is wide ranging, so give it a whirl and another and another. Enjoi, I say! |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
April 26, 2006
Fan The Flames: We Have a Winner
 | Did you think we'd forgotten? We got distracted. We apologize. But we do have a winner! 1. hoyasrule (71) ... 2. treeball (70) ... 3. G-Money(56) ... 4. jamie jeep (50) ... 4. The Wood (45) ... 6. Emily's picks (42) ... 6. mistermarr (41) So now the official winner is 'hoyasrule'. We know who you are Georgetown-lover. And really, a big part of the delay was making sure we had the perfect prize. Check out this shit! |
Roni to the Rescue (a book from Doma)
Find more about it at their site. We gushed about Doma recently over here.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
March 29, 2006
"Fan the Flames Challenge" Final Four Update
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1. hoyasrule (71) ... 2. treeball (70) ... 3. G-Money(56) ... 4. jamie jeep (50) ... 4. The Wood (45) ... 6. Emily's picks (42) ... 6. mistermarr (41) And the unofficial winner is 'hoyasrule'... since none of us were crazy enough to have picked this Final Four. If you are routing for George Mason to take it all, you are not an American. |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
March 22, 2006
"Fan the Flames Challenge" Update
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1. hoyasrule (47) ... 2. G-Money (44) ... 3. treeBall (42) ... 4. jamie jeep (38) ... 4. Emily's picks (38) ... 6. mistermarr (37) ... 6. The Wood (37) Hold on to your helmets -- still a lotta ball to be played. What's up Witchita State? What's up George Mason? Love yuh both. Unfortunately only one of you can go on. |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
March 15, 2006
"Fan the Flames" Tournament Challenge
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No purchase necessary and the winner will get a copy of the rhp002: Who's That Kickin' Yr Ass? and other cool stuff we'll figure out along the way.
To enter, you'll have to go through Yahoo's system and agree to their terms. Yes, they've been a little sketchy lately with private information, but we figure most of our readers have a login there.
1. Go here: http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/
2. Jump through hoops
3. Join this private group (Group ID#): 116500 with this password: rockheals
4. Make your picks
5. Enjoi le tourney
*monster lived who had bought my jacket I stretched my neck eagerly to look for that I received soon recalled me to myself and put me in the road back to the hotel like living they tell me on a sand heap underneath a burning glass He looked strong In going towards the door I passed the person who had come in and saw him plainly the opening prospect confused me I know that my juvenile When we came at last within a stage of London
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
Hot House 5 for March
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
 | I stumbled on Astronaut Jesus over at Kid Robot (store for toys by graffiti kids that I shouldn’t be spending my money on when I have my own kid to feed). Tis awesome. Then I did a little digging and found that DOMA is a group of [sic] Argentines that started out in the Buenos Aires street art scene in the late 90s and branched out from there. No, doesn’t mean shit to me either. Check out their stuff cuz it’s all kindsa hot. |
The other day I was at an ATM at an obscenely early hour and was faced with a new option when entering my pin. The regular “OK” or skip directly to Fast Cash $20. My whole transaction reduced to a 4-digit entry + 1 button pressed. We love the creativity that looks at a simple everyday thing and finds a way to save seconds here, wasted energy there. For real, this development will give back hundreds of thousands of combined hours across lives. Time that can be used to sit on hold while waiting to plead with the bank for an extension to your credit line. Whoever came up with this, you are a genius. |  |
 | There is no better panacea for writer’s block or a mental rut. The Oulipo are (to be way reductive) a group who use rules and constraints to unlock / access new creativity. Poetic formalism on crack, where crack is less harmful. See “A Void” by Perec -- a novel written without the letter e in French, and then translated to English still without e). One fave from the Compendium: n+7 -- replace words in a work with the words that come 7 later in the dictionary. Imagine what happens if The Sailor's Illustrated Dictionary: Full Explanations of more than 8,500 Terms and Phrases Used by Sailors, Boaters, and Seamen is your dictionary… Get it over at Small Press Distribution (or your bookseller of choice) |
Sarah White played in one of the great Charlottesville 1995 bands, Miracle Penny – and then moved out to San Francisco. From there she put out a couple of solo albums on Jagjaguwar – one of which was Bluebird (2000). This song, Crazy T, will stir up all that early-to-mid twenties nostalgia that’s buried deep inside (or will be). At least it’s beautiful to me. Get the album Check out some of her other stuff for free What she’s up to now |  |
 | As the Wu-Tang so presciently stated on their classic 1993 track Clan in Da Front – [Villanova] Killa Beez, we on a swarm! Sure, Villanova is the Wildcats but nobody gets caught up in Nostradamus’ details. Four little guys running their asses all over the court. Shit, they’ll put a 5-guard team out on the floor. Big men? Whodat? And that’s why we picked them as the winner in our Fan the Flames Control Group. |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
February 22, 2006
1. Bury 'em Above Ground
That’s just the way they do it in New Orleans (think water table) – leading to some amazing cemeteries. Add to that age + weather + a city that’s always in flux and you end up with this hodge-podge of crooked rows, a wild pastiche of architecture, and a variety of states of disrepair, good restoration, and mis-guided restoration (granite for one). When I head back, I’m going to get to a whole lot more cemeteries – New Orleans, like Baltimore, has more than its fair share.
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Hot House 5: Lovin' Up Some New Orleans
1. Bury 'em Above Ground
2. Herbsaint & Apertifs
3. Spoiled by Tom Varisco
4. Krewe of Barkus Parade
5. Ironwork
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
2. Herbsaint & Apertifs
A great example of “New Orleans is back.” Fine dining, but not overly so. A killer menu – if a bit skimpy (read: nearly non-existent) for the vegetarians among us. Luckily la famille Gaughran-Perez eats fish in our veggie diet. Check out the menu at their site. But true to form I stuck with the special – in this case it was skate wing. Yum.
But the piece de resistance showed itself when we opened the menu – a listing of apertifs. Of course drinking is de rigeur in New Orleans – but I’ve always been a quality over quantity guy. My years as a bartender led me to see plenty of quantity and led me to appreciate the craft of drinks from a killer martini to the Perfect Manhattan. Here I went with some French fortified wine – and while I’m usually a wine guy (somehow grew out of that) nor a sweet guy – this one was just right to get my eating off on the right foot.
A short stay and a toddler meant I didn’t get to investigate the depth of fine drinking New Orleans has to offer. Next time around I’ll search out the city’s best Sazerac (rye, absinthe, bitters, sugar) and then Tyler’s Ultimate-style perfect my own recipe – that will obviously substitute bourbon for rye – as God no doubt intended.
Other food highlights included
Beignets (duh)
Dick & Jenny’s (on Tchoupitoulas)
Hot House 5: Lovin' Up Some New Orleans
1. Bury 'em Above Ground
2. Herbsaint & Apertifs
3. Spoiled by Tom Varisco
4. Krewe of Barkus Parade
5. Ironwork
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
3. Spoiled by Tom Varisco
Found this little book (4x6, 20-ish photos across 40-ish pages) in a shop on Royal. I’d been seeing the remnants of hand painted signs of dissent, distress, and warning on buildings and plywood around the city when I randomly can across this book of photography. From its brief intro:
Most residents could not return to their homes for at least three weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit. They found their homes without power and their refrigerators filled with spoiled food. Most refrigerators were placed outside for pick up and disposal.
Graffiti ensued. And Tom documented it.
Do some armchair rebuilding, your 12 bucks + $1.50 shipping well-spent here:
http://tomvariscodesigns.com/spoiled/
Hot House 5: Lovin' Up Some New Orleans
1. Bury 'em Above Ground
2. Herbsaint & Apertifs
3. Spoiled by Tom Varisco
4. Krewe of Barkus Parade
5. Ironwork
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
4. Krewe of Barkus Parade
Mardi gras is full of parades – more than a dozen of them at different times over the course of the week+ that is Mardi Gras, following a variety of routes across the city and (mostly) into the French Quarter. Of course, this year’s parades are smaller with fewer floats, fewer marching bands, and so on. But they are still happening and still big fun. And they are all thrown by “Krewes” which are some kind of group with a nomenclature that looks as good as “Massive” sounds.
The Barkus Parade is basically “the parade of dogs in funny outfits with their owners that are very often in funny outfits, too.” Great if you are toting a toddler like I was. I don’t know if the Wizard of Oz theme was specific to this year, or the way it always is.
But the other great theme – and one you saw all over the city in t-shirts and graffiti and folk art – was the general discontent (to put it lightly) with FEMA, the government response, Mr. Bush, and so on. I like to see a healthy degree of public dissent where it is deserved – mixed with wit and creativity that takes it from protest to living political cartoon. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any good pictures of this in action (see toddler-toting mention above – I was lucky to get photos at all, and most of them came out blurry).
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Hot House 5: Lovin' Up Some New Orleans
1. Bury 'em Above Ground
2. Herbsaint & Apertifs
3. Spoiled by Tom Varisco
4. Krewe of Barkus Parade
5. Ironwork
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
5. Ironwork
You know the New Orleans architecture look – these big balconies with all sorts of iron finery. Those balconies are called galleries (to them, a gallery is self supported, while a balcony is not – but the locals call them balconies for the most part) and functioned in an air conditioning role. All over town – but especially in the Garden District – you find gorgeous wrought and cast iron work – both locally made and imported from around the country and across Europe. Master craftsmanship, regionally specific, and generally wicked.
The love of ironwork spills into the cemeteries with there odd gates that were never really explained.
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Hot House 5: Lovin' Up Some New Orleans
1. Bury 'em Above Ground
2. Herbsaint & Apertifs
3. Spoiled by Tom Varisco
4. Krewe of Barkus Parade
5. Ironwork
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
February 15, 2006
Feb 27: Damaged Goods: The New Vaudeville
The Taffety Punk Theatre Company will kick your goddamn ass. I don't even know who is doing what, but there will be drama, comedy, films, music. In a word: joy.
The Black Cat
Washington DC
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
February 01, 2006
More L.A. Shite from Bob
Bob Massey
I did a total effing triple-take the other day as I passed this cemetery down the street. It’s called Hollywood Forever. Do I shit you? I do not. It’s like Hell and Hollywood switched doormats. The only thing missing in this scenario is a sign arching over the 101 as you drive into town that reads “Relinquish hope all ye who enter.” Because over the door to the netherworld it clearly reads “Hollywood Forever.” God I hope not. Maybe something like Fish Tacos Forever. That I could get with.
Only rating a double-take was the neighborhood pole-climber for SBC (our phone/DSL provider). She’s totally hot. She’s rocking a utility belt and a helmet, too. Shexshie. This neighborhood must be her beat because I’ve seen her on this street a couple of times. She’s so hot, in fact, in that baby-tee and tool belt, that I kinda sorta wondered if I wasn’t witnessing some kind of B-roll to a porn shoot. You know, the big twist is that instead of the hunky male repairman at the door, it’s the hot – uh – pole climber. Here to fix the cable. Sir. Oh, are you having trouble with your pants?
Which brings us to blimps. There’s a lot of them in this town. I don’t know why. So far I’ve seen the following blimps: Sanyo, Goodyear, Met Life and this multi-colored, vaguely Keith Haring-style blimp. Which turns out to be the Ameriquest blimp. Five thousand school kids painted it. As blimps go, it rules. Which is saying a lot because blimps already ruled pretty hard. But the greatest thing about blimps is that you can hear the low drone of their engines for several minutes before they pass directly over your house. This gives you time to run out to the front yard in your boxers like a panting idiot and stare up at the sky, giggling with unmanly excitement. If you’re so inclined. Not that I am.
http://www.soaringdreams.org/news_051205.html
I am, however, inclined to declare that every song ever written about Los Angeles in general, and Hollywood in particular, is shit