I received a conspiratorial -- nay, revolutionary! -- fortune in my fortune cookie: You will soon find someone sympathetic to your cause.

Have I given up the ghost for good? Forgot my obligations? No, no, no, I've just crept back for business. I've been shaken lately by the opening of wounds decades closed -- annoying fatuations -- and two of the men I admire most in life have very nearly asked of Anubis, "Why not weigh me?" One still asks. Was King Tut worth his weight in gold?

Judging by the King Tutankhamun exhibit at LACMA, I'd have to say, ehhhh. Woke up at about 5am to get in line. This must be the first museum show I've ever seen that's sold and structured just like a ride at Disneyland. The wait in line is about 2 hours. While in line, you gape at the people, engage in small talk, or munch on the free Krispy Kremes supplied by the museum. Every once in awhile, as you creep forward, you pass fake Egyptian columns or statues made of plaster. When you finally reach the end of the line, you and 50 other souls gather in a tiny room, the doors close around you (locked in! Just like Disney's Haunted Mansion ride!) and a short video narrated by Omar Sharif plays on widescreen tv. When it's over, a door mysteriously opens, and an illuminated bust of Tut awaits.

The conversation you hear at large-scale museum shows is a swamp of disinformation and honest naïveté ("Tut must have payed a lot of money for the workers he hired to make these artifacts" or "Why'd they raid his tomb, anyway?"). The show itself? Perhaps it's a bit post-modern of me, but I've seen so many fake Egyptian artifacts, good reproductions apparently, that the real things carried no aura for me. The fake stuff you see while standing in line doesn't help in this regard. I turned a corner in the show and saw a huge, beautiful bust of an Egyptian god, sure that it was another prop. (I'm reminded of Dylan's song Isis, "I broke into the tomb, but the casket was empty. There was no jewels, no nothin'! I felt I'd been had"). There were, however, a few wonderful pieces that rekindled my childhood dream of being an archaeologist (I only wanted to be an archaeologist of the 20s or 30s, fighting fascists and swinging from whips). An intricately carved child's chair, giant model ships, golden statues of falcon-headed Horus, gold necklaces ("I was thinkin' about turquoise, I was thinkin' about gold, I was thinkin' about diamonds and the world's biggest necklace"). The biggest disappointment, though, was that the iconic pieces you think about when you think about Tut (the golden death-mask and coffin) were nowhere to be found. They were too expensive to insure for travel to the United States.

Another writer I admire has started a blog: Dennis Cooper.

I remember my freshman year of college when Professor Earl Jackson, Jr. read some excerpts from Frisk in class and a preppy girl sitting next to me scrawled in her notebook, "Note: avoid Dennis Cooper."

It would be great if other writers associated with the New Narrative would start blogging. Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian would be excellent bloggers, addictive reads. I've read some of Killian's blog-like entries on the Poetics List and he's a natural.

One of my favorite prose writers, Pamela Lu, has a blog: Open Reader. via Tympan

Settling into a new home after a protracted move to the east side. Expect more frequent posts in the near-time.

Saw a license plate, MTRURTH. First thought: Monster Earth?

David Lynch reads today's weather report.

Caught old avant-gardeners (to steal a phrase from Josh Corey’s committee chair) Michael Snow and Tony Conrad at the Getty Tuesday night. Snow showed a “remixed” version of his classic Wavelength that managed to betray the promise of its title, WVLNT—Wavelength for Those Who Don't Have the Time. I suppose it’s a pun, since this version was shortened from 45 to 15 minutes, and if Wavelength is about anything it’s about the concept of time and duration (for those not in-the-know Wavelength is one seemingly continuous 45 minute zoom through a room – though it’s actually several different takes –that ends on a photograph of ocean waves, accompanied by a sine-wave electronic soundtrack); but someone watching WVLNT without having seen Wavelength will not get a condensed or Cliffs Noted version; rather she’ll see an entirely different film, as WVLNT super-imposes three sections of the film and soundtrack, running them simultaneously. In this case I’d suggest sticking with the classics. Snow also disappointed by implying he’s against remix culture and artistic appropriation. When explaining why he made this new version of Wavelength, and why there's no DVD copy of the original available, he replied that Wavelength should only be seen in its original medium (which I agree with) and that these days young people can remix anything once it’s in a digital format. He figured he’d remix it himself before another artist got his hands on it. I guess he wants to avoid the fate of John Baldessari.


from Living Room by Michael Snow

Snow also screened See You Later/Au Revoir, and The Living Room, the latter notable for using digital effects now common in many Hollywood films. Here I think Snow has achieved something; he’s made a decidedly non-kitsch film entirely out of kitsch components. Living Room reminded me somewhat of that famous Richard Hamilton collage with a muscle-man in a living room, but in an interview Snow says it’s just coincidental. Regarding See You Later/Au Revoir (in which a 30 second shot of a businessman getting up from his desk, passing by his secretary, and leaving the office is slo-moed to last 18 minutes), I was quite surprised to learn of the non-theoretical intent of the piece – I figured a hardcore structuralist like Snow would have a complex theory behind his work. In conversation he basically said that he just thought it would be interesting to slow things down.

I’ll leave Franklin to describe the Tony Conrad films; aside from the footage of a young Mike Kelley yelling like Jerry Lewis in the army, and the hypnotic criss-crossings of Straight and Narrow, his films did nothing for me. Conrad did have a few good quotes, though. I wish I had copied them down, but paraphrasing: film is the space between nothing happening and something happening (suitable for a structuralist, I’d say); and later, describing how most artists he knew in New York City during the 1960s didn’t have jobs, or were ideologically against the idea of having jobs: we managed to survive by floating along on society’s economic froth.

An unceremoniuos return, then. Here's an interesting video of a biomimetic robot currently in construction (construction: is that the right word for robots?) at NASA.

Biomimetic Robot

I was pleased and rather shocked to learn that NASA scientists know who Paul McCarthy is.

Somewhat related, Charlotte Street on plastic beings.

Sad and agitating days down here. Trying to buy a house in Los Angeles is making me age. Things will continue to be quiet on Harlequin Knights until I land a pad. Wish me luck.

Countless other bloggers have already linked to this, but I think it's worth linking to one more time. A concise and damning history of the Iraq War reminiscent of Joe Brainard's I Remember.

What I Heard About Iraq by Eliot Weinberger

The Sontag: Feminist Hair Wear



A new multiple by Paige Gratland (1" clip-on grey hair extension) in commemoration of the late great Susan Sontag

still from Star Spangled to Death, Ken Jacobs

My year-end film list does not include “favorites”; it is not a top-ten (though I have limited it, by convention, to ten films in each category) and it is not a “best-of” list. I’m increasingly dissatisfied with simply liking certain films. Did I like that edited version of Elf I saw on the plane between New York and Los Angeles? Sure, Will Ferrell can be effortlessly hilarious. I chuckled now and then at the film’s low humor. But I make no claims on its status as a work of art (it sounds ridiculous to even talk about Elf in this way – I’m pretty sure the filmmakers make no claims on its status as a work of art either; they only wish to entertain). A film doesn’t need to entertain. It doesn’t necessarily need to be art (or an “art film”) either, but it should be interesting, which is to say, it should fascinate. The following films all fascinated me to some extent. They each prompted me to read more about their subjects, to re-examine their claims, and to second-guess my initial, visceral reactions. I didn’t like all of these films, but that’s not the point. These films incited reflection, and in a thoughtless, reactionary age, that’s definitely the good stuff. Hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll spend some time commenting on why these films were important to me in 2004.

Newly Released Films

Twenty-Nine Palms (Bruno Dumont)

Woman is the Future of Man (Hong Sang-soo)

The 5 Obstructions (Lars von Trier & Jorgen Leth )

Notre musique (Jean-Luc Godard)

Dogville (Lars von Trier)

Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar)

Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Star Spangled to Death (Ken Jacobs)

Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen)

Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Re-releases and Revivals

Playtime (Jacques Tati)

The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo)

Tres tristes tigres (Raoul Ruiz)

Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson)

I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini)

The Exiles (Kent MacKenzie)

Film About a Woman Who…(Yvonne Rainer)

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman)

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Park Chan-wook)

Bless Their Little Hearts (Billy Woodberry)

Notable

Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)

Last Life in the Universe (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang)

The Return (Andrei Zvyagintsev)

Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi)

Vera Drake (Mike Leigh)

Ten (Abbas Kiarostami)

Remembrance of Things to Come (Chris Marker & Yannick Bellon)

Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene)

Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque (Jacques Richard)

Movies I Want to See ASAP

2046 (Wong Kar Wai)

Café Lumiere (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

Cinévardaphoto (Agnès Varda)

The Holy Girl (Lucrecia Martel)

L’Intrus (Claire Denis)

Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow (Theo Angelopoulos)

The World (Jia Zhang Ke)

Old Boy (Park Chan-wook)

Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin)

Clean (Olivier Assayas)

A Hole in My Heart (Lukas Moodysson)

Salomon Huerta, Untitled Head (2002)

The New Chicano Movement by Josh Kun

(excerpt)

"I don't think I make Chicano art," says [artist Mario Ybarra, Jr.], standing in Slanguage's backroom, which is cluttered with Mac computers, crates of records, an Osama bin Laden piñata and a spray-painted portrait of reggae singer Jimmy Cliff. "It's something I have learned as a history and acquired as a filter. But right now, I don't think I could say I'm making it. It's like saying I make abstract expressionist painting. I'm not an ab-ex painter. I can't go back and make that art. I make contemporary art that is filtered from a Mexican American experience in Los Angeles."
Ybarra thinks of it as the Edward James Olmos theory of Chicano art. He wants to be less like the actor in "American Me" and "Zoot Suit"—in which Olmos was prison tough and pachuco savvy—and more like Olmos' character in "Blade Runner." In the film's dystopian 2029 L.A. future, Olmos is Gaff—a digital urban polyglot, a Chinese Chicano detective who speaks a street patois of English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Hungarian and German.
"My main drive," says Ybarra, "is not to learn Nahuatl, but to learn Mandarin or Cantonese."


Mario Ybarra, Jr., Go Tell It, 2004

David Thorne, Be Happy
image courtesy Clockshop

Projects off-line have barred my expansiveness on-line. Here’s a New Year’s resolution to improve my bloggy rigor and vigor. In the meantime, those living in Los Angeles can hear what I’ve been up to this Saturday night at the galleries at 6150 Wilshire. I’ll be reading from an essay I co-wrote with Rita Gonzalez that will be included in an artist’s monograph. Read more about the project below.

Image Control: Billboard Oases

Clockshop.org

Clockshop hosts a closing event at 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Saturday, January 8, from 6 to 8 p.m., to coincide with the publication of a limited-edition book about the project. For information, call (323) 666-2599.

And then, less than a week later, I come across this passage in George Albon's Brief Capital of Disturbances.

INTERVIEWER: You were saying earlier that the inspiration comes from--

AGNES MARTIN: --your mind. It comes from your mind.

Agnes Martin: 1912-2004

This video of Encore by DJ Dangermouse (off the Grey Album) is really worth the download. Ringo on the turntable! John breakdancing!

A friend at work points me to this impending piece of insipid legislation in Alabama:

Gay Book Ban Goal of State Lawmaker

(registration required)

An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries.
A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda."
"Our culture, how we know it today, is under attack from every angle," Allen said in a press conference Tuesday.
Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from library shelves and destroyed.

I should point out that such a law would make illegal the works of Plato, Petronius, Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, Thomas Mann, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Wolfe, Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, Evelyn Waugh, Herman Melville, Jean Genet, E.M. Forster, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, ad infinitum.

***

As promised, here is a link to the full text version of Slavoj Zizek's Somewhere Over the Rainbow. (via Charlotte Street).

Even the traffic jams seem longer.

On the verge of tears. I need some time to digest this.