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Dennis Cooper, James Greer, Mark Gluth, West Coasting
Let's raise one in a salty salute. I know at least one of this motley trio - Dennis Cooper - is in hog heaven for a set of West Coast readings, starting tonight at Book Soup in West Hollywood and heading up to San Francisco for a date at City Lights the following night. HH 'cause he's such a big proponent of the newest and best, and he's on tour with two relative yearling heavyweights on the lit scene. First of all James Greer (Jim Greer of Guided By Voices and rock journalism fame, Spin et al) is with him (and well, why do you think one of Cooper's best albumbly titled books goes by Guide), and second Mark Gluth has penned one of the best books of the year with The Later Works of Margaret Kroftis. Gluth's getting to be a hefty music writer himself. Some suggested, by the Book Soup blood red, almost Warlohesque pic, that they should be a band. I think this could be possible. Regardless, read the jpegs there for the info and come out and see. You'll get music one way or another. Horror Hotel at least. -CM
Music
Four Tet: There is Love in You
Ah Four Tet, king of the click, or pop click, clique, off the beaten blip of a tick...tock...dock? or sundry sampled warble, or what can I say? tough transition there for a while, ashes rising from the 2000 dot com crash, a reemergence from lazy house Dj-ing - when every Autechre release was so lauded and scrutinized, and people faux feigned an interest in Libeskind style architecture?…ha…I was digging the classic compositions of Four Tet (Kieran Hebden) and Aphex Twin, Mouse on Mars and Prefuse 73. Well…if uninitiated, god, maybe Tet's sound now is actually a bit retro (or re...de...fined, no apologies) - if not, it's a fucking warm bath (which incidentally I should do, now, take a bath, cause I can't keep any more info in my head....ha, "the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"...I do remember that - almost mixed up Four Tet with Boom Bip, one of their remixers for a sec, similar, also quite good, whatevs, music is good. FT deserves better than I can pen.). -C.M.
Music
Shining: Blackjazz
Could say this is like the bastard step child of Albert Ayler or Miles Davis Bitches Brew era and um… Opeth? but it's something even weirder. I hate that I downloaded it too 'cause the album art is worth the admission itself. In brief, looking for something different and have wax to spare in yer ears? Try the darkly frenetic BPMs of Shining and their Blackjazz album. This may not be pure Norweigian Black Metal, but let's praise that blasphemy. -CM
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Music
On the most recent WHY? album frontman Yoni Wolf sings, "I know saying all this in public oughta make me feel funny/but you gotta yell something out you'd never tell nobody." After five years as a backing multi-instrumentalist in his brother's band, Josiah Wolf, a classically trained drummer capable of some incredible riffs, is speaking his mind in his first solo album. Through a multitude of overdubs, Josiah played all of instruments on this sonic exploration of the dissolution of his 11-year marriage. Chelsea Martin, author of Everything Was Fine Until Whatever, interviewed Wolf and finds much to praise in the album but wonders whether the anxiety over the novel being supplanted by the memoir has its parallel in music.
Events
Monday, March 15, 10| ART/DESIGN | Joseph Beuys: The Multiples | la |
| ART/DESIGN | The Early Works of Edward Kienholz | la |
| ART/DESIGN | Keren Cytter | la |
| ART/DESIGN | MOCA's First Thirty Years | la |
| ETC. | Whale Watching Cruise | la |
Blog
Ok it's old Star Trek and I stole it from Reddit, but damnit, it's funny
Dennis Cooper, Mark Gluth and James Greer... West Coast Styling
Come See Bruce Covey at Whitespace Tonight
Corey "The Haimster" Haim is Dead
Film
Tastes Good Still? Oscars 2010
Benjamin Strong
03.08.10
We are so bitchy we'll never get any star interviews...oh well. As Ben Strong elucidates: "The Oscars exist for the sole purpose of Hollywood’s identity maintenance." But the Academy didn't need Avatar to win to prove anything to itself. 'Cause The Hurt Locker "more closely resembles Hollywood’s image of itself than do blue people." Alas, it ended with historic precedents. And George Clooney had a hockey haircut, ha....and Ben Strong gives Fanzine's annual second take opinion on the event. (What we are hoping for in the future? I'm not sure…but I wouldn't mind seeing Rob Lowe take another stab at some song and dance, cracked out Disney style. -CM)
Film
From Party Animals to Gilt Queens to a New Hollywood Dame: Oscars 2010
Kevin Killian
03.08.10
Some changes in the Oscars over the years, and especially this year - 2010 sees 10 best picture noms as opposed to 5, a woman winning best director, and no gilded Miramax flick in the bunch, right? Except that “damned Helen Mirren” still got unwanted attention from co-host Steve Martin. Kevin Killian notes what has changed and looks back on a man who maybe got the Oscar show rolling in a new direction long ago, Allan Carr, who once ruled the Hollywood party scene and blew it all on a weird Snow White night. There’s a new book out about him by Robert Hofler called Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll.
Film
Kim Ji-woon's Tale of Two Sisters
Emily Carter
03.03.10
Alfred Hitchcock either popularized or created the term "MacGuffin" to describe any highly valued object that sets the plot in motion: the ticking bomb, top secret microfilm or the stolen necklace. Is it a stretch to say that in a romantic comedy, the completion of the romantic union is a type of MacGuffin? U.S. films often trot out romantic or sexual union as kind of plot device, while several Korean films I've seen seem to use the re-completion of the family unit as one of the central concerns. Director Bong Joon-ho's excellent 2006 swamp monster film, The Host revolves around a family getting their daughter back after she's been eaten by a giant mutant squid and dragged into the sewers. (Fittingly, Bong's latest film which opens next month is titled Mother.) Kim Ji-woon's particularly unpleasant depiction of "blended" family life, oddly helped Emily Carter, author of Glory Goes and Gets Some, to heal the wounds in her own.
Poetry
Kay Ryan: The Best of It
Aneesa Davenport
03.02.10
In July, Kay Ryan was appointed the 16th U.S. Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress. It's a sudden change for a poet, whose reclusiveness has earned her comparisons to Emily Dickinson. For the last 33 years, Ryan has quietly taught remedial English for as an adjunct professor at a California community college instead of accepting an tenure track position leading writing workshops. Although critics claim that her poems haven't changed much over the years, writer Aneesa Davenport explains that "They are like hard little diamonds, each brilliant but cut only slightly differently."
Music
A Boy Named Xiu
Mark Gluth
02.27.10
Xiu Xiu’s first album, Knife Play, felt new, an eye opening reconfiguration of so many thoughts, desires, and influences that it sounded like music you’d heard before, the way a platypus looks like an otter. As their career has progressed over a multitude of releases and side projects they have both refined and expanded their sound and lyrical obsessions. Dear God I Hate Myself, their latest full length, is available now. Mark Gluth is the author of a new acclaimed novella, The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis, on Akashic’s Little House on The Bowery series.
Art
Self-Erasure: Banksy Hunting in Utah
Rob Tennant
02.25.10
As Salinger's recent death reminded us, a quest for invisibility magnifies a certain type of public fascination. During the lead-up to this year's Sundance Film Festival –– where Exit through the Gift Shop, a film by/about British graffiti artist Banksy was set to premiere –– there were rumors he would unveil his identity, and then works resembling his began to appear around Salt Lake City and adjacent areas. Rob Tennant tells the story with an eye for the role of new media as an archive of ephemeral street art and with the patience to psychoanalyze his hometown. Photos by the author.
Fiction
The Lever
Jim Ruland
02.24.10
Jim Ruland is the author of the short story collection Big Lonesome, a recurring contributor to The Believer, and the host of the irreverent reading series Vermin on the Mount at the Mountain Bar in L.A.'s Chinatown. Ruland lives in San Diego and has family on both sides of the national dividing line. His story "The Lever" reflects life in a border town during the current narco-conflict and how even those who aren't causing the violence may begin to feel culpable. Accompanying image by Eugene Delacroix.
Art
Inspirational Critique: a conversation with Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade of My Barbarian
Jesi Khadivi
02.15.10
I first saw My Barbarian perform as the grand finale of Liz Glynn's "24-Hour Rome Reconstruction Project (or Building Rome in a Day)" at Machine Project here in Los Angeles. Compressing the 1200 year history of ancient Rome to 24 hours, participants built an impresive scale model of the city, from cardboard and hot glue until at the stroke of midnight My Barbarian arrived in the role of Visigoths to sing and perform while participants destroyed the replica they had spent all day creating. This is just one of the many historio-critical-performative-collaborative projects My Barbarian (Jade Gordon, Malik Gaines, Alexandro Segade) have been a part of. Jesi Khadivi, curator of Berlin's Golden Parachutes gallery, interviews. -BB