Dispatches from a second story bedroom

10 carat fool

Sorry to keep going on about it, but I have seriously been experiencing the brain drains lately. The only thing I can focus on is a new collaboration that will be completed in several weeks if all goes according to plan. It is the only thing I can hunker down and sit for long periods thinking about. I hate being coy about it but I'm keepin' it like a secret until it's all done. 

I tried watching Mesrine tonight but my brain kept saying this. I don't have any patience for subtítulos anymore. What is wrong with me? I'm not down for a French gangster flick? It's like I don't even recognize myself anymore.

M. Mesrine obviously can't compete.

I am however totally engrossed with a Bette Davis biography I picked up at the dollar store. FOR. A. DOLLAR. Did you know she went on a date with Henry Fonda before they both were famous? She kept his calling card because she was a New Yankee Hoarder. People used to have cards with just their name on them to give to people, like they were living in a civilization. Can you believe? Incredible.

This is a 8x10 of Joanie doctored by Bette among her personal papers that were donated to Boston University. Incredible. 

there were blue flames burning the sheets of his bed

Susan Meiselas is the Diane Arbus of our times. I love this set from a book called Pandora's Box. The décor is so Versailles-cum-Paris, Texas with a twist of Guccione's Caligula.

the smell of death surrounds you

Roquette Rockers ph: Ken Pate

I keep dozens upon dozens of tabs open and am just cleaning out my browser for your amusement/amazement. In case you missed them or don't surf my brainwaves, this fantastic blog posted them about a month ago. Another French motorcycle blog posted different ones from the same mythic book back in March. There isn't much information on the internet otherwise. I emailed my librarian friend, we'll see what he turns up, he's a genius book bloodhound. 

These photos are just the sort of inspiration I need for my LA junkie boots. I have no problems looking like a Gun Club groupie. 

book bags

 
 
 

VS. 

  

 
While it is true that Olympia Le Tan's clutches are more like cigar boxes with embroidered covers and less functional clutch, they were the first. Plus, they're hand crafted, and her taste in book selections is better. Kate Spade attracts the sort of woman who still considers Prada Sport nylon backpacks as a thing anyone cares about. Consequently she's in that purgatory of brands that are loathesome for possibly the wrong reasons, like Roberto Cavalli and Coach. Secretaries of a certain age who have Costco memberships and scrapbook think those brands matter and I can't enjoy them because of this associative taint. 

Still, there is a small part of me that wants the clutch functionality, (Can you imagine a lipstick rolling around in a Le Tan all night? I'm pre-annoyed just thinking about it.) while retaining the hand embroidered good taste of the originals.  

Then Olympia had to go and make a bag that addresses my nagging doubt. The war is officially won.

  

i did them all

Oh man, I know what I'm doing this weekend. R.Crumb's Genesis at PAM.

And the complete Metropolis at Cinema 21.

And The Dutchess & the Duke at The East End.

going good

This book is on my wish list.

I'm Mike D and I'm back from the dead...

The weather got super nice and somehow being on the internet stopped happening as much. It was weird.

Behold these engraveyourbook.com Moleskine covers that you can have your own image or drawing applied to. They say "engrave" and it sorta does look like leather stamping but they do photographs so I'm confused by the process but so very into it.

The professional artists don't have anything on the personal engravings because they're all kind of dopey but imagine what you could put on a reusable Moleskine cover. I think these would make great remember-the-time-we-went-to-Tijuana gifts for a group of friends and I usually hate that Group Hug™ sort of sentimentality but I'll make an exception for a Moleskine associated product. Imagine this thing engraved with photo booth strips of photos of your dumb face for your lovah's Christmas/Valentine gift. So Ricky Smith epic.

Gasoline in the sand

"Yeah it's just what you need when you're down in the dumps, one half hillbilly and one half punk. Big long legs and one big mouth. The hottest thing from the north to come out of the south..."

Yvan you are killing me. This doesn't exist in our earthly realm. London might as well be Mars because I'm never gonna see this in the flesh.  He is a Fashion Plate come to life, you remember Fashion Plates, right?

He also reminds me of this book by Bruce Davidson called Brooklyn Gang: Summer 1959. It's full of pictures of greasers wearing chinos and getting cartoon skunk tattoos on their tough guy spots and not having it look stupid. Oh hey internet thanks for uploading the entire book into a youtube video.

source

Ride the pony.

I went on vacation a couple of weeks ago and fell off the wagon and didn't ever want to get back on because Jesus fuck it's fashion week and I love clothes as much as I love sleep but I go through phases where I feel like fashion will still keep eating it's own goddamned tail whether I'm there to witness or not, y'know? I can be just as indifferent to the fashion world as it is to me, or I can make a valiant attempt is what I'm trying to say.

But maybe, just maybe my opinions about clothing and fashion in general are too fucking purple and mired down with references that no one ever gets anyway. It sucks to be old and still like things that are always evolving and upgrading and having kids look at you like you're from Mars because you remember things they're getting into retroactively and resent that they don't have to ever wear mom jeans without lycra unless they want to and can't imagine a world that was ever so cruel because the world has never been that cruel to them.

I don't want to have to shake my tiny fists at the sky over something as insignificant as seasonal fashion. The whole world is everyone's fucking oyster now that we've all got D's internutz. You'd never know it with how 85% of American males still think it's a good idea to walk around in cargo pants, nay, cargo shorts even, and still think they deserve a vagina for their penis. (For shame by the way.) So feeling boxed in by the two months of the year where clothing is displayed for the super wealthy is just not a healthy way to live. As Ms. Holiday said, "God bless the child that's got his own." I got my own thanks.

I finally went and saw Gomorrah after waiting almost a month and it did not live up to the personal hype. There were only 9 people in the theater on a Friday night. I kept laughing at darkly comic things but no one else was laughing. If some fat goombah in a tight red long-sleeved shirt with the phrase "Action Girl" kills you, that is meant to be funny. I don't care if it comes at the end of a film where everyone gets killed and you're maybe emotionally drained, that is black humor, straight up.

The two fucktard protags get it in the end after a series of misadventures which is used to show us that gangsters will always die, but they won't always(or perhaps will never) go out like Tony Montana. This movie still is sitting there in front of my brain like a basketball I'm trying to impossibly palm. I always feel that movie makers are trying to say something about whatever themes they cover but this movie seemed hellbent on reinforcing a lot of stereotypes that movies already helped build about the mob. "Mother of mercy! Is this the end of Rico?" Yes, apparently so.

The camera work was largely handheld and got close to people's faces giving a pervasive sense of dread. It was like watching a first person shooter game sometimes. I worried every time the camera went first person thinking that the person was going to get it through the fucking brain. It didn't happen ever (I don't think) but I believe that was the film maker's intent.

I liked the money man's desperation and willingness to trade four lives for his own just to switch sides when the war started. If he was Danny Glover he would have said, "I'm gettin' too old for this shit!" but that's another movie with another ol' grizzly bear for another time.

My mind kept asking these teenagers would want this for themselves. Why wouldn't or couldn't a whole generation of kids say, "Fuck this noise, I'm goin' to the libarry!"? Not one character in the film had any true hustle. Their aspirations seemed to top out at owning brightly colored mesh shirts and enough coke to last the whole weekend. They were all capital G gangsters with the primary emphasis on being a member of a gang. It reminded me a lot of The Wire except it was simultaneously trying to be a Bruce Springsteen concert in that, it's not that great, it's really long, but wow-- what energy!

I didn't like that every single character was too fucking stupid to hustle. Or if they did have any ambition it was immediately quashed usually through their own death or threat upon their family.There were no quiet hustlers, everyone was too busy buying euro-trashy whiskered Diesel denim and listening to Italo-techno and wearing beach sandals like my dad to fly under anyone's radar. I didn't need a Stand and Deliver-style thread to balance the story, but after two hours it was hard to imagine how in the hell any mob family has managed to not kill everyone with their incessant idiot shenanigans. Even the highest level clean money man hired kids as day laborers when some toxic waste disposal went awry. For serious?

That linen suit though, oh how it traveled.

I saw a documentary last year about anti-Mafia lawyers in italy in the 80s and how they all ended up fucking dead save one dude who managed to live long enough to see a gigantic trial of the major crime bosses completed. They killed family members of all the prosecutors and even their own people who weren't committed enough just to send a message. It was awful and it really happened, not like this movie.

I should probably read the book on which the documentary Excellent Cadavers is based, huh?  Additionally, in my excitment over this movie I discovered a secret subset of boys who like Martin Scorsese but aren't really into the Mafia so much as looking el señor macho with their superficial likes and dislikes. You can't like one but not the other. I mean, you can but it's like enjoying Ernest Hemingway but not bullfighting. You like the idea of machismo but not actual in your face disgusting sweaty bust-a-nut testosterone on display. What is this pose you're doing? Lame.

I'm intrigued by cultures that think enough of themselves to rationalize killing people on a regular basis. People who put that much importance on what they do is mind-boggling to a wage slave like myself. It must be awesome to either be stupid enough or self-assured enough to believe in your own bullshit so completely as to feel ok with killing other people on command.  I've never believed in anything that much or perhaps been that stupid? Either way, I enjoy watching the polar opposite of myself get on with their business.