my black eye? dracula, where's leatherface? sucking off frankenstein? i like candy.

 

tsai ming liang

we're in the midst of an exclusive engagement here in nyc (actually we're nearing the end, but who's counting) of "i don't want to sleep alone", tsai ming liang's new film. if you've seen any of his films before (rebels of a neon god, hole, the river, what time is it there?) then you know the score. little if any dialogue whatsoever, steady camera shots that last for minutes on end, and themes of loneliness and desperation that are depicted through the pollution and disease of the city in which they're filmed. typically his movies are shot in tapei, but this new one was shot in kuala lumpur and utilizes the "malaysian haze" (caused by slash and burn forestry in indonesia) that was polluting the city last summer. PRETTY COOL, PEOPLE. (one of my favorite images in this film is pictured right - people wearing homemade gas masks constructed of styrofoam bowls and plastic bags to avoid the choking smog.)
it's really difficult to describe the effect of a tsai ming liang film. some people have vehement negative reactions. the silence and ultra-extended shots are just too much to bear. for those that have the patience however, the rewards are great. "i don't want to sleep alone" is a beautiful film. intense, languid, and at a few points highly disturbing (but nothing that we haven't been shown in his films before, or, and let's be honest, that we don't do ourselves in the privacy of our own bedrooms and kitchens.)
speaking of a little sexual dysfunction, another ming liang film out recently is la saveur de la pastèque or "the wayward cloud". this one seems a little different than the plaintive melancholy of a flooded taipei or a smogged out kuala lumpur. since most of his films have scant dialogue, the stories are told through songs, however i've never seen one that has songs quite like this; apparently on the verge of a full-blown bollywood blow out:




i highly recommend checking that link, though admittedly it is NSFW, so those of you with internet crises at home (looking in your direction, v) will just have to use your sordid imaginations. just think WATERMELONS.
posted by scarnsworth at 7:44 AM

 
wheras you might try to ride a zebra

today's a great day, for today i head out to buy the long awaited Retina Riddim dvd by musical artists GGD. i depart in 30 minutes. i saw this once at a preview party and let me just say it's mindblowing. for those of you who are in atl this weekend and want to drop some angel dust with me and watch this little piece of heaven CALL ME.
hopefully you will have a dvd player and a television. and some angel dust.


posted by scarnsworth at 11:00 AM

 
maxim

trying to make a lizard mind you is like trying to bathe using a cube of jell-o.
i was just googling the phrase "milk the lizard" and came across this interesting news item from the uk. tally ho!
posted by scarnsworth at 11:16 AM

 
guess who's going to belarus!



that's right! iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad is wheels up on his way to minsk to meet with alexander lukashenko for a couple days. he's stressing iran's need to strenghthen ties with belarus.
posted by scarnsworth at 3:11 AM

 
I'm currently working on the script for a movie about a man in his twenties who likes to have sex in dark places with geriatric women. It's currently titled Nooks and Grannies.
posted by kenniebloggins at 12:49 PM

 
what's going on in belarus!











"for belarus - for people"

wow, lots is going on in belarus this week people. "like what?" you ask? well, try this on for size:
for starters, belarus got SLAP DENIED a seat on the un human rights council! get that shit out of here! apparently human rights groups had been campaigning for weeks to stop this from happening. which begs the question: what the hell was belarus even doing on the roster to begin with!! god almighty. originally belarus and slovenia were submitted for the seat, but belarus (which as we all know by now is europe's last dictatorship) has some of the worst human rights violations this side of the baltic. UN believable. at any rate, BOSNIA was persuaded to put a bid in for the seat and they beat out belarus yesterday. chaos! on a related note, EGYPT is on this particular human rights council, so it's not like they have cred.
also going on in belarus-
remember that whole pipeline shenanigan that was going on round the turn of the year? belarus and russia made an agreement which was supposed to be signed today, but that shit has been postponed indefinitely. i think the fuel is still flowing through the pipeline, but i'm not sure on the details of this story as it is late breaking. i'll give a more detailed report over the weekend.
lastly, if you watched steven colbert last night (a show that some can't stomach for more than the teaser he gives at the end of the daily show) he mentioned belarus! the context was that belarus is behind the us in the number of people it keeps in it's prisons! well, that's not surprising for two reasons. 1. america is larger in size. and 2. belarus may not provide accurate statistics on such matters.

anyway! i just saw a commercial from T.G.I. Friday's and they said "enjoy the weekend all week round!" and i think that they mean to go there to T.G.I. Friday's and eat wings on tuesday and wednesday, but i'm going to infer that i should drink all week.
posted by scarnsworth at 11:01 AM

 
I'm on the golf course trippin' with the Osbournes

If you haven't seen the video for Shop Boyz' "Party Like a Rock Star," do yourself a favor and get your mindset geared for the weekend. When they go all Kiss Army and shit, thugz cry. I'ain't bullshittin'.

P.S. Steam got blow'd.
posted by kenniebloggins at 11:40 PM

 
I need to seriously blow off some steam. I'm not angry. In fact, I'm far from it. However, I've become some facsimile of a workaholic over the past year and one-half. I know everybody who reads this is probably snickering or laughing his or her goddamn head to fucking Saturn, but I'm serious. Since finishing my degree, I've only let indolence flood into my weekends. During the week, I either work night school or stay late planning new lessons for the next day. With six days left in school, my students don't give a shit about what I do. However, I care, I guess. I purposefully assigned a fun, curriculum-spanning research project for my students, and then extended the due date until tomorrow. With a week remaining in the school year, I'll have a minimum of 40 projects to grade (this is a group assignment). Also, we just finished a unit covering portions of Fast Food Nation and Supersize Me, which I put together as we went along. So, to be succint this late in the game, I'm fucking exhausted and I can't stop. I'm being a good teacher (maybe the best I've ever been), but I'm not letting myself enjoy the presence of my students (which I should be doing). Turning to the bottle to blow off steam isn't the answer here. Shit, what do you guys do when work is hectic?

Okay, file this under the most straightforward, banal personal post this blog has ever registered, and one that I promise to stray from in future entries, but my head is about to go the route of Fred Williamson's in From Dusk Til Dawn.
posted by kenniebloggins at 9:06 PM

 
i got this sickness as i got off the train

did you guys hear about the republican debates the other night? where some no-name dude said something like "we provoked 9/11 by fighting wars in the middle east for the past 2 or 3 decades"? and then when america's mayor, rudolph giuliani, trembling with rage, raised his finger (omg this is his moment) and said "I'VE HEARD SOME PRETTY RIDICULOUS EXPLANATIONS FOR SEPTEMBER 11 BUT I'VE NEVER HEARD ANYTHING LIKE THAT BEFORE." and then the crowd came. they came ropes. ropes of cum. onto one another. with glee.
ok, let me first say, that if giuliani has never heard anything like that before then he obviously hasn't been listening to anything that any rationally minded human has said since september 12, nor has he listened to anything that any critic of the war has said for the last 5 years, nor has he listened to the thousands of mix-tapes senor bin laden has been putting out over the past couple years.
he has never heard that before? really?
but the stunning (and at the same time unsurprising) part of all this is that the crowd was on their feet before he had even said anything. GET EM RUDY! HE TALKIN BOUT 911. who cares if you can't give a coherent answer to any other question asked of you.
ropes. of. cum.
posted by scarnsworth at 11:33 AM

 
pics from mah celly!


posted by scarnsworth at 11:58 PM

 
word to the wise

never be a noisy neighbor to someone who owns a pleasurehorse record.

carry on.
posted by scarnsworth at 11:58 AM

 
hurried love, is like an avalanche

well! i spent this weekend (one of the best weekends i've ever had in new york (and i've been here over a year; i celebrated my anniversary 12 days ago alone in my apartment masturbating to zelnorm commercials on yewtewb.), this weekend was the one of the best. i spent it with my new female BFF's and lonnie, allstar qb! yes, lonnie was in town this week for work, and he decided to allot himself a few extra days in the apple to hang with your scarnsworth in my meager abode here on the ues.
cool grey skies and big brown eyes greeted us on friday night as lonnie and i made it out to the dark dark bar at 445p. (love those bars that remain dark dark during the day. must be vamp instincts i reckon.) from there we had some california styles in the taco place with a maggarita that did the damn thang. after that we came back to the death star and got ready for the evening with my new female bff's. the night was an astonishing expose of dirty south exposition married with big nyc city stupidity. infused votkas, jazz bars with assaholic bartenders and ruddy dogs (man that dog's fur is rufff nickahh), easter shorts and scintillating raspberry dranks. then from there me and lonnie and the ladies decided to make it to the darkest bar in the city for bourbon.
the right and the only decision.
flash forward to the apartment: new rooftop explorations and accomplishments and philosophies that manifest themselves in puddles with cigarette butts and bottle caps and expatriate southerners taking garbage out at 445a. underpant clotheslines and obelisks and blue lights flickering in windows. all in all interesting. plus the cheri; can't forget that part. made me a fan of tennis and champagne again. dimness.
that being friday, saturday came thru and killed like jason when we met up with the new female BFF's and hit the park de la centrale to watch the waterfights and joint smoking by the teens and flying object throwing by the dim, dim, dim adults. it got a little to heavy and the female bff's wanted to go to the hudson, so we decided to heeaad for some way too expensive brews in the courtyard with a wedding party and frankly the most beautiful women i've encountered in nyc wearing ill-tied kimonos. yes. slowly we drank the dranks. then the new female bff's wen't back to their apartments to freshen up for tha sat. eve. but me and lonnie, undeterred by the 68 degree temps, had some bbq and beers with the biggest assaholics in nyc before coming back to the death star and watching body double. then we went out with the bff's and in conclusion; most killer saturday eva. mind dissolver 2k7 nick.
CANNON CANNON


posted by scarnsworth at 5:59 PM

 
what's going on in belarus!!

god i've been slack. here is an awesome belarussian website that shows renditions of american movie posters done BELAURS STYLE! people. this is the chit. apparently they can't bring in american made movie posters, but they can bring in the movies. GO FIGURE. here is an example:




ps: i got this from table of malcontents
posted by scarnsworth at 10:14 AM

 
Cupcakes, Schmupcakes

For the past year or thereabouts, I've heard absolutely nothing but raves about cupcakes. It seems that, at some point, somebody (probably in New York or some other very large city) decided that it was time to pull the nostalgia switch and bring back the "Cupcakes are amazing" line that didn't work for the fat kid in kindergarten with snot-encrusted left nostril whose mother was either too bad of a cook to bake a cake with some layers or so thrifty that she had counted the exact number of kids in the class prior to either baking or buying the cupcakes, therefore foregoing having any leftover cake so a kid other than her fat son could have seconds. A second take on this features the fucking evil mother who always shows up for the kid's class party, decides to play teacher and pass out the cupcakes and mysteriously end up one short of the exact number. And, it always seems that the kid who ate too much cake and puked on the mother's rug at the fat kid's last birthday party is the one left out. Oh, how karma works in such mysteriously diabolical ways (insert evil laughter here).
But, I digress.
So, anyway, what has been the big deal with cupcakes? I don't get it. I was first alerted to the phenomenon after that whole SNL novelty rap about Prince Caspian, or The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe or whatever. After that, it seems as if I've heard about cupcakes everywhere. Once, a very cute, black girl with a slight Sade quality stood in front of me in line at the grocery store and raved about cupcakes (vegan) for five whole minutes. I almost changed my mind at that point, but it really just made me wonder why people are going insane over what should pale in comparison to the Little Debbie snack craze of my youth and the elder days of yore. Cupcakes are unreliable and often tend to stick to the cupcake paper. They are also cooked in tins, which puts them in the same category as muffins. And when was the last time anybody ever throttled a chubby one to visions of Otis Spunkmeyer dancing in his head? Cupcakes also cause a conundrum at birthday parties for candle-blowing-out activities. The birthday person is forced to pick a spot and decide upon the direction in whcih to blow air at the candles. Also, since an analogy can easily be drawn between bowling and blowing out multiple candles, the birthday person has to commit to a strategy for blowing out candles in order to maximize the blow. Essentially, cupcake may potentially ruin what would be perfectly fine birthday gatherings.
Finally, cupcakes are bad for you. Cupcakes seem to contain more sugary icing per square millimeter than any other edible item imaginable. When you buy a cupcake at your favorite bakery, there should be a sign reading "If you love cupcakes, then you'll really dig Type II diabetes." Dentists should probably give bratty kids cupcakes when the kids are in the chair as prolonged punishment. It could be the dentist's way of saying, "Hey kid, thanks for biting me. Keep eating those cupcakes and we'll see who you'll be chomping on when you're gumming split pea soup at age 25."
I think the irony of all this is that the people at Jane who probably revitalized the popularity of the cupcake probably would never dare to step inside a BK Lounge in the year 2007 because, as we all know, fast food will kill you. Hell no. It's the cupcakes, dude. They're the grim reaper in disguise and the red-heart icing is his scythe. Cupcakes: they will fucking destroy you for eternity.
By the way...I'm stoned, so does anybody know where a man can get some carrot cake at 11:59 p.m. on a Wednesday night in the Classic City?
posted by kenniebloggins at 11:26 PM

 
Graduation, bitch

Here's the skinny. I'm graduating from graduate school for the second time. I'm fucking tittilated to a maximum level of stokedness over this thing. I didn't celebrate when I finished my Masters degree, so this one counts twice. I'll be hosting a cookout at my apartment at 150 Dubose Ave. on Friday, May 11, at 7:30 p.m. Bring some type of carcass, whether animal or vegetable, to toss upon the grill, some drank, or just some good human fellowship. So, rsvp if you want, or just put that mean mug away and put yo party face on. Let's fire this shit up. Oh yeah, no fightin', no wall holders, and if you stank, stay at home. Or, wash before you come!
posted by kenniebloggins at 10:37 PM

 
Summer of Re-Inaction

I just got my life back. For the last 1.8 years shit has been raining down uponn me. And then I finished. And then I will grad-ee-ate with an Ed.S., which leads to weird questions. I support life, Since mine is restored. I wanna just fucking lie on a raft and listen to Anti-pop Consortium and the Wedding Present and the fuckin Trap and watch Cadyshack a milllion times, but that was the Summer of 2001, which has stayed way close to my life forever. The summer of Action was rad. Mergefest was rad. Making out was rad. That movie with Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Philipe was rad (not really) and that crush was way rad. Riverfront was rad. And yall seen what I seen. I just want Agassi to win the French again after being down. I wanna see the teardrops. I want to predict the aqueducts flowing and my mom crying alone. Me with a major hangover and wishing for Stade Roland Garros. Reading the Steppenwolf. Riding the red Tercel with no air. Getting calls at 6:50 a.m. from soccer coaches. Watching lil league. Eating Shrooms. Rutledge puking in the tub. Arguing about the Jesus and Mary Chain. Summer of Sam. NYC on the 4th. Dan and Amy and buying the fake GShock with the dolphin in Chinatown. Still at Baxter St. Party on Reese Street and Arbor Mist. Me I luv life.
posted by kenniebloggins at 12:42 AM

 
what's going down in cat town

i'm trying to decide whether or not i should stroll over to the drugstore and steal a thermometer.
you know how people are encouraged to steal books? i've never quite understood why (it must have something to do with keeping authors penniless so that they'll look like beggars and be admired by the artistic community), but i steal all of my books to this day. that's not why i want to steal a thermometer though. i want to steal the thermometer because last week when i strolled into the drugstore looking for a snack, i ended up paying $8.60 for a sleeve (not a box) of Lorna Doone's and a 12-pack of sprite zero. where do those motherfuckers get the nerve? but that's not why i need to steal the thermometer. no, i need to steal it because for the past two days i've been ill. i think i've been running a fever since tuesday night, but i can't be certain on this point. my face is red. i look like boris yeltsin coming off a three day holiday in sochi, and i'm shaking just as badly. my concentration is nonexistant and if it weren't for my steady intake of junk food i may have passed away into the night by now. but i press on. i press on because there are heroes in this world like george the dog. george was a 9 year old jack russell terrier who saved 4 children from two "marauding" pit bulls who would have certainly mauled them. george was able to fend off the beasts long enough for the children to get away safely, but unfortunately george was put down due to the excessive injuries he sustained in the battle. it is for animals like george that i press onward. eating my wasabi peas in silence - the only sound echoing throughout the apartment being a running toilet and the commercial on comedy central which says, "could you make the money that you think you could?" i keep thinking, could i? "what are you doing still on the couch? get up and go over to the phone.." well, at least i operate on a totally cellular basis which affords me the luxury of not having to get up and go over to my phone, and i suppose that counts for something. i munch more lorna doones. then refill the humidifier. my fever dreams have been getting more intense recently and i'm wagering that my increased body temperature is likely involved. the other day i dreamed that my sink was ripped from the wall and replaced by a dishwasher, and my stove was replaced as well. this only filled me with a sense of dread. i don't know why. another time in my dream as i walked to my bed, i noticed costumes spread about the duvet and even hanging from the walls. santa and mrs. claus, various s&m getups and the like. sex costumes. they also filled me with dread. it's nightmares people. but i've got to remember george. he persevered. yes. i'll pour a little bit more sprite zero to see what that will do. maybe i'm not getting sleep like the machinist. like, thinking i'm gettin sleep but not getting it. i'm not sure.
posted by scarnsworth at 11:49 AM