tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35191631701450036752024-02-06T22:15:01.775-06:00Minerva's Wreck... and how the hell are you?Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-50010953835769009752015-06-09T07:52:00.003-05:002015-06-09T10:33:52.559-05:00LARS & THE REEL: The Austin Film Society's Lars Nilsen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">“Don’t </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Savlov</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> me,” says Lars Nilsen, referring to </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Austin Chronicle</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> movie critic </span><a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/authors/marc-savlov/" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Marc Savlov</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">. “Savlov is the worst. Oh, I </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">like</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> that little man, but I’ve talked to Savlov many times, and what I say just becomes written in Savlovese. I end up talking like Dizzy Gillespie. I don’t know where the hell he gets the stuff that he rewrites ~ stuff that I would never say, stuff that would be something that’s </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">exactly</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> what </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Marc </i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">would say ~ those words, coming out of my mouth. No real harm done, but aaaargh.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Lars Nilsen</b> is sitting in Ken’s Donuts on Guadalupe and devouring a thick, sugar-coated toroid of fried dough.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s3"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nilsen, whose brown hair used to intrude like an aggressive nimbus but is lately more tidily shorn, is the programming director at the <b><a href="http://www.austinfilm.org/">Austin Film Society</a></b> ~ and former film programmer for the <b><a href="http://drafthouse.com/austin">Alamo Drafthouse Cinema</a></b>. His previous employment comes a-haunting as I activate my phone’s audio-recorder app and, as if prompted, Nilsen’s own phone rings for the second time in five minutes. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s3"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Okay, Brenner, sorry,” Nilsen tells me, grabbing the device. “I’m gonna see what this is, get it out of the way, lemme just ~” He taps the phone to answer.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s3"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Hello?” says Nilsen, brushing a crumb of dough off his <b><a href="http://www.mjt.org/">Museum of Jurassic Technology</a></b> T-shirt. “Hey there, what’s happenin’? I’m in the middle of an interview right now ~ is this something you might be able to send me an email about? … No, I’m at Austin Film Society now, so I’m too classy for you … Yeah, you should certainly send an email to Tommy-dot-Swenson at Drafthouse-dot-com … <i>Swenson</i>. … Wait, no, you know what? Send it to Programming at Drafthouse-dot-com. … Yup … Yeah, I don’t work there anymore, but they’re still my buddies. … Okay, talk to you later, ’bye.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s3"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He ends the call, stashes his phone. “Sorry about that.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s3"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“No worries,” I say around a mouthful of chocolate pastry. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s3"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nilsen takes another bite of his doughnut. “Mmmmm, yeah,” he says, nodding, goofing deadpan. “You can really taste the sugar, I find.” </span></span></div>
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<span class="s3"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We’re sitting in <b>Ken’s Donuts</b> due to Nilsen’s insistence. It’s near where he used to live back in the day, back when he was working at <b>Kinko’s</b> and driving a cab and all of that. Back when the tall and lanky transplant from North Carolina first started <i>obsessing</i> about movies. He hasn’t been in Ken’s Donuts for years, but he’s made it the required venue for this interview.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s3"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I first chose to come here on a weird hunch,” says Nilsen. “One of those lapses of taste or judgment. And it was just a perfect kind of experience. I’ve lived here ten years and I never <i>haunted</i> the spot, but, sitting here right now, I was thinking how this place hasn’t changed at all ~ except they now have <i>two</i> ATMs instead of just one, thank God. And it’s owned by Indians now. And it’s just a shitty doughnut shop; it’s not very good. But it abides.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s3"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nilsen abides, too. He’s been abiding in Austin since 1994, eventually running the Alamo’s Weird Wednesdays series, providing pre-show compilations of bizarre yet thematic footage for the venue’s main features, generally helping Alamo founder <b>Tim League</b> turn the weird and awesome cinematic part of his business into the <i>best</i> weird and awesome cinematic part of anybody’s business. And now, as we’ve mentioned, Nilsen’s moved over to programming for the Austin Film Society, which is a sort of come-full-circle situation, considering the man’s personal history and inspirations, and he’s already expanded that Society’s offerings with ~ </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s3">Hold on, though. You don’t need a synopsis here, do you? A prefatory glut of exposition, some voice-over narration </span>to help you deal with, I don’t know, an origami unicorn later on? Instead, let’s allow the man to give you the details in his own words. Let’s … what do they say in the industry? “Roll sound,” do they say? <span class="s3">Okay, then:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> I grew up in a city ~ well, not a<i> city</i>, more of a small town. It was, and probably still is, about the same population: A city of 60,000 people, called Rocky Mountain, North Carolina. I was an only child. Probably not surprising. I recommend it ~ I recommend it for <i>others.</i> People who are unlucky enough to have siblings ~ <i>it’s not too late!</i></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner: </b>[laughs] Yeah, my daughter’s an only child. My <i>wife</i>’s an only child. It’s a good thing.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> I think I have a lot of working confidence in this life, and so much of it is because I’m an only child. Not having any brothers and sisters means I was never setting my bar to an older brother or something like that. I was setting my bar to people in books I read, or to people who were real grown-ups. I find that a lot of my ~ my girlfriend is an only child, a lot of people I know are only children.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner:</b> What were your parents like?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> My mom had a great sense of humor. <i>Has</i> a great sense of humor. And she read a lot. My parents divorced when I was really young, and I had a stepfather. I didn’t know my real father. I have a vague memory of meeting him when I was very young, but he just wasn’t in my life: He wasn’t sending checks, he wasn’t sending letters or cards or anything like that, he just wasn’t in my life. But my mom was very smart, and she just read <i>endlessly</i>, was always reading, and our house was full of books. We particularly loved reading books about the movies ~ and <i>loved</i> movies ~ and we had cable, such as it was at the time, in the Eighties ~ and we had a lot of the superstations, WOR and WGN and TBS, if these letters even mean anything to you, and they showed a lot of movies on these stations. We had HBO and all that stuff, too, but it was mainly these stations that showed all the old black-and-white movies. There’d be a <i>lot</i> of movies, and my mom ~ and, to a lesser extent, my stepfather ~ they’d be watching, and they’d say “Oh, there’s <b>Franklin Pangborn</b>,” they’d point out the bit players in all the movies. So I got to know who everybody was. And we had these books, <i>Whatever Became Of …?</i> And they bought <i>Hollywood Babylon</i> as soon as it came out. And if a bio of, like, <b>Marlon Brando</b> or <b>Elizabeth Taylor</b> came out, they bought it ~ in hardback. Even though we were very poor, we had <i>books</i>. And that was one thing that I was never refused. I couldn’t have had toys, probably, I couldn’t have had most things, but my parents never refused me a book that I wanted. If I wanted a book, we’d get it at the library or, if it was at the bookstore, we’d just buy it. And I didn’t know, at that time, that it was a hardship? But it <i>was</i> a hardship, you know? To have the books that we needed. But not only was there never a thought that I wouldn’t get those books, there was never <i>strain</i> exhibited. It was always “Yes, of <i>course</i> you can have this book!” How much would this be? Fifty dollars in 1981 dollars? “Fine, sure, we’ll do it.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen</b>: We were poor and we lived on the bad side of town. Rocky Mountain’s a weird city, because it’s poor and very rich at the same time. <b>Hardee’s</b> is based there.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner:</b> The hamburger chain? Where ~ how does it go? “Where The Burgers Are Charcoal-Broiled”?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> Yeah, it was founded there and based there. And it seemed like so many people I knew, their parents were executives at Hardee’s, or they were lawyers who worked for Hardee’s. Hardee’s was, it was kind of like a one-shop town. But then I was on the poor side of town. And there were the <i>good</i> schools and the <i>bad</i> schools, and I went to the <i>bad</i> schools. Although, at a certain point, they came up with this thing called Gifted & Talented, where they took those of us who were smart kids or readers or amazing geniuses ~ or prodigies like me ~ and put them in special classes. So that was pretty cool for a little while. And in sixth grade, they crammed the rich kids and the poor kids together, which is a great kind of culture shock, because I hadn’t realized that these kids were <i>that</i> rich. I mean, they probably weren’t, not <i>riiiiiiiiiich</i>, but they seemed like billionaires to me.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner:</b> And that childhood, then, is that where your love of movies started? With the superstations and all?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> I didn’t have a love of movies like what you see now. I liked reading <i>about</i> movies, and I <i>liked</i> movies, but I always wanted to be a writer when I was a kid. From the time I was 12 or so, I wanted to be a writer, it was kind of like my destiny. And I never got that big into movies until many years later, until I was probably 21 or 22, and I was living in New York and San Francisco and places like that, where there were real movie theatres. That’s when I became a big movie fan ~ and I was a little bit of a nut. So, those things, and moving here to Austin and having this <b><a href="http://www.vulcanvideo.com/">Vulcan Video</a></b> just around the corner, and Austin Film Society’s movies at Hogg Auditorium on campus, that’s really when I became a big movie fan ~ around ’94 or so. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner:</b> You moved to Austin in ’94?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> Yeah. I saw <i>Slacker</i> when I lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and I really loved the film, what the movie’s about. And, secondarily, in <i>Slacker</i> you’d see people in their little shitty apartments ~ they’re presumably <i>cheap</i> apartments ~ and you see people cutting across parking lots and all that kind of stuff. You got to see people going to the supermarket. You got to see <i>Austin</i>, and it was so much more beautiful than the places that I was accustomed to in Chapel Hill. And, years later, after kind of washing out after living in San Francisco and New York, after realizing I didn’t want to just, like, <i>perch</i> on the third or fourth floor of some shitty neighborhood forever, I thought back to those great apartments that I saw in <i>Slacker</i> ~ and the <i>energy</i> and the <i>sense of humor</i> that Austin seemed to have. And so I moved here. So you can see how it’s kind of come full circle in a way, right?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner:</b> Sure, with <b>Richard Linklater</b> starting the film society that you’re programming for now ~ it’s a kind of movielike thing right there. And what’d you do when you first got here?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> I stayed at the <b>Ace Motel</b> ~ which is still around, on Manor Road. And I went to every bookstore that existed, trying to find a job, but none were hiring, so I went back to a bad habit of mine: working for Kinko’s. I used to do that back in those days ~ I think I’ve worked at six separate Kinko’s in my life ~ but it was just something I could always go and do, just pick it up. So I worked at Kinko’s for the first three years that I lived in Austin. And I drove a cab for five years. I’d never driven a cab in other cities ~ wouldn’t even have <i>considered</i> it. But Austin’s a pretty safe place, and it was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. [Nilsen frowns.] This is dreadfully dull.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner:</b> Okay, tell me something more exciting. How’d you get hooked up with the Alamo Drafthouse?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> Okay. [Slurps coffee.] When I was working for Kinko’s and driving a cab, I was <i>in</i> that life but I was not <i>of</i> it, you know? It wasn’t all I did. During the whole of that time I was <i>obsessed</i> with movies. I was going crazy at Vulcan and <b><a href="http://www.iluvvideo.com/">I Luv Video</a></b>, and at every <b>Hollywood Video</b> in town where they had old VHS stock. I’d go through and find all these movies and learn all the alternate titles. And I was reading the <i>Psychotronic</i> video guides. And a book came out called <i>Immoral Tales</i> by <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pete-Tombs/e/B001J3RUNM">Pete Tombs</a></b> that blew my mind, just <i>destroyed</i> me, got me into European sex and horror films. I just went crazy, went <i>over the moon</i> with this stuff. And then <i>Mondo Macabro</i> ~ also by Pete Tombs ~ came out maybe a year later, and I freaked out about weird movies from around the world. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was writing about these things in my notebook; I was making videotapes for people. I’d go and rent these movies and I’d dub them from VCR to VCR. My house filled with videotapes, and I’d get a 160-minute tape and I’d record four movies on it in EP mode, and I’d give these as gifts to my friends ~ with extensive program notes about them, about what I loved about them. In the meantime, I was keeping a movie journal where I’d rank them, like a movie would get a score based on the personnel in the film and how high were the aims that it set and did it <i>achieve</i> those aims? All that stuff. I filled up graph-paper notebooks with this stuff, sitting in coffeeshops and just writing about movies, out of my mind with it all. I went crazy like this sort of pretend-movie-scholar for a few years. And I’d make cassette-tape recordings of scenes from my favorite movies, audio compilation tapes of scenes from movies that I loved, and music from those movies, and I’d sit out at the airport, waiting for a fare in my cab, and I’d listen to these tapes. I never went to college, and that was sort of like my film school, in a way.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, anyway, at a certain point, I’m working at Kinko’s at Medical Arts ~ it’s not there anymore ~ and I worked the latenight shift. And one night I looked over at one of the self-service counters and there were film books that I recognized, that I knew I probably wanted, and a <i>Superfly</i> soundtrack that I knew I probably wanted, and other film memorabilia ~ like lobby cards and such ~ and they were just sitting there. So I walked over and I said, “Well, somebody left this, and I feel really bad for them, but I’m gonna take all this stuff and put it in the lost & found. And when it’s time for me to go home at eight o’clock, I’m gonna take it home with me.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1">So I put it in the lost & found, like, <i>Okay, just wait here for me, I will not forget you</i>. And then some guy with a buzz cut came up to the counter a few minutes later and was like, “What happened to all my stuff? I had it sitting right here. Did somebody come and take it?” And I was like,<i> I can’t lie</i>, and I said “Ah, here you go ~ I thought somebody had left it.” And he was like, “I’m a Mac guy and I can’t figure out how to use these PCs, and I’m trying to print something out.” And he was trying to print out the first iteration of the Alamo guide. He was working on it, and I went to give him whatever help I could, and I looked at the calendar he was working on, and I was like, “Holy shit, you’re playing <i>that?</i> You’re playing <i>that?</i>” and just freaking out about the offerings. So we struck up a conversation, and I was probably talking a mile a minute, like “Oh! That part of the movie is <i>fantastic,</i> where there’s that really great <b>Curtis Mayfield</b> score and it comes in and just <i>changes</i> the whole character of the movie, it adds this, like, this <i>moral</i> element, and ~” I was really talking shit like that, to some guy I had just met, who just wanted to figure out why the printer wasn’t registering in the </span><span class="s2">dialogue or something. But we hit it off, and, maybe just to get rid of me, he gave me his card ~ <b>Tim League, Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas</b> ~ and he said, “We’re opening up this new place.” And that’s how I first met Tim. </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s2"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s2">I think he wrote “Admit One” on the back of his business card, as a free pass. And I started going to that theatre regularly once it opened. And I continued to talk a mile a minute with Tim. And I’d already been making videotapes for my friends, and I started making videotapes of little bits that were themed towards the movies that Tim was playing. And I’d bring them in and be like, “Hey, you’re gonna play <i>Gator Bait</i>, you should play this beforehand.” And he’d put it on, and that’d be the pre-show. Prior to that, the pre-shows had just been from Tim’s weird VHS collection of, like, <i>Angela Lansbury’s Dancing Grannies</i> or <i>OJ Simpson Goes Fishing</i> or whatever, </span><span class="s1">so if you got there thirty minutes early, you could watch thirty minutes of <b>Angela Lansbury</b>’s workout video. So I started making these themed tapes, and recommending movies, and after a while Tim was like, “Hey, I’m starting this series called Weird Wednesdays with all these prints that I bought. Look through this list of films.” And Tim was introducing all of these, and he wasn’t necessarily doing a <i>great </i>job of introducing them? So he asked me for help, to come in and kind of host the films and give him recommendations about which things to play. So that’s how I became a film programmer. And then Tim brought me on to do the pre-shows in 2003.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner:</b> And the pre-shows you made for the other features, those weren’t always as specific as the Weird Wednesday ones, were they?</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> No, but I wouldn’t even make themed pre-shows for <i>every</i> Weird Wednesday. Generally ~ and I <i>still</i> do this, even though now I don’t get paid for it, because so many of my files are still living on the Alamo servers ~ but I make pre-show collections with the assumption that people are stoned when they’re watching those movies. So I want to <i>thrill </i>those people and <i>freak them out</i> a little bit. I think of Weird Wednesdays as a series for people who are high on marijuana. And the pre-shows for those films are … for people who are high on marijuana.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner:</b> And what about the <i>general</i> pre-shows? Are those a bit less, ah ~</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> They’re for people who are high on marijuana.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner:</b> So, <i>everything</i> is ~</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> ~ for people who are high on marijuana. Absolutely.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner:</b> And it’s <i>made</i> by someone who’s high on marijuana?</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> Actually, I smoke very little pot these days. But I think it’s a helpful and valuable thing ~ especially for creative people.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Brenner:</b> Okay, and what you’re doing ~ what you <i>were</i> doing, programming for the Alamo, and now programming for the AFS, it’s what you were already doing for years, anyway, without being paid. So now that it’s been your actual job for a while, is it threatening ~ is it <i>starting</i> to threaten ~ to become a grind for you?</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Nilsen:</b> As you get a little bit older ~ well, I shouldn’t make this universal. It happened for <i>me</i> that, as I grew older, and I had jobs that I cared about a lot, the line between when-I’m-living-my-life and when-I’m-at-work just evaporated a little bit. Like, am I at work right now? <i>Am</i> I? Maybe I am. Because I’m talking to Brenner, and Brenner works at the <i>Chronicle</i>, and I like Brenner, and he’s just doing his thing. But maybe people will read this and then be more inclined to go to an AFS show. So, I don’t know, maybe I <i>am</i> working right now, you know? I feel like I’m just sitting and talking with a friend. But I’m often just sitting and talking with a friend, and I’m like, “Am I at work?” And if I’m at home and I’m watching a movie, I might be thinking, “Oh, this <b>Barbara Stanwyck</b> movie is incredible, we should totally show this movie.” So am I <i>then</i> at work? I think I <i>am</i>, kind of. So it’s really hard to say. </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you find a really fulfilling job, it’s just impossible to say “Am I at work now or not?” And it’s <i>not</i> a grind. There <i>are</i> grindy things about my job ~ there were a lot of grindy things about my Alamo job, towards the end ~ and there are still grindy things about my AFS job: It’s the nature of work. But I feel like I have such a facility with the non-grindy parts of my job that they almost seem to happen without me exerting any sort of will. I go in and I program without a feeling of exertion or a feeling that I’m doing any work. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’d worked at the Alamo for a long time ~ and it’s a great job, and it’s great people ~ but I was just tired of it. In the same way that probably Hugh Hefner goes to work and is like, “Ah, I <i>hate</i> this job,” you know? You do a thing for a long time, you just become a little tired of the usual grind. And if you’re like me, you want some new challenges, and the challenges that were arising at the Alamo weren’t necessarily challenges that I was excited about. Like the challenge of opening a theatre in a suburb where it’s mostly families with kids, and they mainly like newer movies, and things like that. It’s not a challenge I relish. </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So I started looking around, almost subconsciously, for other things that I could do. And my friend Holly moved to town from New York to work for AFS. And I’d just mentioned to my colleague <b>Zack Carlson</b> that I was thinking about quitting, and he said, “You should talk to Holly.” And I went to Holly and I was like, “Yeah, I’m thinking about quitting; I might just go drive a cab again.” And Holly said, “Well, let me go talk to <b>Rebecca Campbell</b>, maybe we’ve got something at AFS.” </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And now I’m programming movies for AFS’s arthouse series, and I’m very happy with it. And I’ve promiscuously started several new series, like <i>History of Television</i> and <i>Auteur Obscure</i> and <i>Race Films</i>, and I’m probably gonna start some more. I get to exercise mental muscles that I don’t normally get a chance to exercise.</span></span></div>
</div>
Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-85077089725143409822012-08-19T22:07:00.000-05:002012-08-19T22:18:08.442-05:00There Is A Bitten Thing.Do Not Put The Finger.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGXyh5dNX8pkEUKWkRAMVdAvrczC_8fk9_9SP7ExQkSD4HmZ0E45nOhE7fkKrxVkupW2xy9KWtlxPzkJMDCiDoj9XeEW6-XNf5sfuq_uqkAzHdHpRwdk__b8bGZuzFfmIHjTVZsZTrou8/s1600/cloves.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGXyh5dNX8pkEUKWkRAMVdAvrczC_8fk9_9SP7ExQkSD4HmZ0E45nOhE7fkKrxVkupW2xy9KWtlxPzkJMDCiDoj9XeEW6-XNf5sfuq_uqkAzHdHpRwdk__b8bGZuzFfmIHjTVZsZTrou8/s320/cloves.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Sheila requests a minute outside the blindfold.<br />
<br />
Sheila requests a minute, but Sylvia tells her no, tells her to return to a kneeling position, reminds her that this is the arrangement they agreed upon and this is the arrangement that will remain until the time ~ almost two more hours, according to the big digital clock on the warehouse's north wall, the glowing numbers shifting in relentless, calibrated procession, searing crimson against their rectangle of electric black ~ until the time they agreed upon for the arrangement to end.<br />
<br />
Picture blindfolded Sheila: Kneeling, naked; a long narrow scar on her left shin from a childhood fall from that year's Christmas bicycle; not overly fond of cauliflower as a rule but glad to indulge if it's part of a diverse stir fry that also includes a bit of shredded ginger; most relaxed when it's just her and her old cat on the balcony of her third-floor condo at twilight in the cooler part of the summer and the entire discography of the Quintet of the Hot Club of France on shuffle on her iPod; ignorant of all but the first two chapters of Ingeborg de Gruyter's erotico-scientific handbook <i>Cleavage to Beaver</i>.<br />
<br />
(Sylvia, though, has read that handbook so many times, cover to cover, that she's almost got it memorized.)<br />
<br />
"Bend forward a little more," says Sylvia.<br />
<br />
Sheila does as she's told, her back curving, her abdominal muscles tightening. She places her hands on her knees to add support.<br />
<br />
"That's good," says Sylvia. "That's perfect." She scoots forward in the wheeled office chair, rolls farther across the concrete floor until she's directly behind Sheila, the front of the chair's upholstered seat almost touching the small of Sheila's back.<br />
<br />
"Okay," says Sylvia. "This has been in the refrigerator ~ it might be a little cold." She dips a long thin paintbrush into the ceramic bowl in her lap, gathers a bit of natural henna paste onto the brush's bristles.<br />
<br />
Sheila shivers as the brush touches her skin for the first time, but remains silent as Sylvia inscribes words upon her back. Sylvia paints the words in elegant cursive, working henna into the pale skin, painting from left to right between Sheila's slight shoulders, one sentence all the way across, and then ~ after a pause in which Sylvia runs the fingers of her left hand down the side of Sheila's neck, shifting the long dark tangles of hair that hang there, giving the henna time to fully bind to Sheila's epidermal proteins ~ another sentence below.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;">You might have driven past this warehouse one day. It's there on the Eastside of Austin, not too far from where Industry Screenprinting used to be, close to the metalworks collective where Sixth Street ends, a few minutes' walk from the Salvadoran delicacies of El Azunzal, over where the letters of the familiar grocery store might better stand for Hispanic Enormous Bodega.</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">Sylvia and Sheila are borrowing the warehouse for this day only, for this purpose specifically, and it isn't costing them a thing. Sylvia has many friends, connections, a strong line of credit in the local favor bank. Sylvia is, if anything, resourceful.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
"Now lean back a little," says Sylvia. "That's it, straighten your body. That's good. Hands at your sides."<br />
<br />
Sheila obeys, kneeling there atop a black silk cushion on the warehouse floor.<br />
<br />
Sylvia kneels in front of Sheila, facing her. Sylvia is also on a cushion, but she's fully clothed: Loose white T-shirt; the powder-blue of old Levis more tightly fitted around her hips and ass and legs, almost snug in the crotch; a pair of black Converse that her last girlfriend bought for her in Houston five years ago. She's got a small wooden tray next to her, filled with papers, the papers weighed down by something long and thin that projects several inches beyond the tray's short walls and is wrapped in a swath of the same black silk that Sylvia used to make the cushions upon which she and Sheila kneel. She digs into the right front pocket of her jeans, pulls out a clear vial filled with viscous liquid.<br />
<br />
"Okay," says Sylvia. "This <i>hasn't</i> been in the refrigerator."<br />
<br />
A smile flickers across Sheila's lips. "Is this ..."<br />
<br />
"The clove oil," says Sylvia, unscrewing the vial's cap and trapping it easily in the curl of her little finger. She pours the oil into the palm of her left hand, forming a little pool of it there. She sets the emptied vial on the floor, screws the cap back on, returns the vial to her pocket, all the while making sure that her left hand remains level, that the oil doesn't spill out.<br />
<br />
Sylvia puts her right hand over the liquid-filled left and rubs them together until both palms are slick, are almost dripping with the pungent oil of cloves.<br />
<br />
"It smells like a dentist's office," says Sheila.<br />
<br />
"<i>Shhhhhh</i>," says Sylvia. She leans forward and kisses Sheila on the lips, as if to seal them from further speech, then reaches out and places her right palm between Sheila's small breasts. "This might get kind of warm," she says.<br />
<br />
Sylvia moves both her hands against Sheila's chest, spreading the oil across skin, over areolae and nipples.<br />
<br />
Sheila's jaw clenches.<br />
<br />
"Is it burning you, love?" asks Sylvia.<br />
<br />
"Not really <i>burning</i>," says Sheila tightly. "It's just ~ yeah, it's getting pretty hot. Especially on my nipples."<br />
<br />
"It'll pass," Sylvia assures her. "Just give it a minute, it'll fade."<br />
<br />
Sheila breathes deeply to calm herself, her mouth partly open, her glistening chest expanding and contracting as she kneels, naked and blindfolded in front of Sylvia, upon a small silk cushion near the center of a refurbished warehouse on the Eastside of Austin, Texas.<br />
<br />
Numbers shift, marking time's advance on the big digital clock. There's a stuttered rumbling of some large truck passing by outside.<br />
<br />
"Ah," says Sheila, finally relaxing. "That's better."<br />
<br />
"Good," says Sylvia, wiping her hands on the bottoms of her jeans' legs. She pulls the wooden tray closer, takes the silk-wrapped object from atop the papers and sets it to one side. "Okay," she says. "These are the pictures I told you about. I'm going to transfer the images to your chest, one at a time, and I won't stop until they're all done. You … you just stay quiet, understand?"<br />
<br />
"Yes, my love," says Sheila.<br />
<br />
Sylvia picks up the first picture. It's the photo-reproduction of a face, screenprinted in jellied blackberry juice onto a sheet of onionskin paper. (The other sheets, also onionskin, are printed with other faces ~ originally from paintings or photographs ~ in the same manner. There are, including the one Sylvia's holding, thirteen such sheets.) Sylvia places the sheet of printed onionskin against Sheila's chest. She smooths the delicate paper with the palms of her hands, flattening Sheila's breasts, working the blackberry image into the clove oil, onto skin.<br />
<br />
"Sappho," says Sylvia, naming the image upon Sheila's chest. She peels away the sheet and sets it behind her. The paper is translucent with clove oil; the image remains, faintly, on both onionskin and Sheilaskin.<br />
<br />
Sylvia picks up the next sheet and repeats the process; then again, then again, twelve more times in all, speaking each image's name as Sheila's chest becomes a palimpsest of indecipherable violet lines and shapes, as the sheets of saturated onionskin pile up behind her.<br />
<br />
"Geoffrey Chaucer," says Sylvia. "Aleister Crowley. Ada Lovelace. Shirley Jackson. Richard Feynman. David Lynch. Joss Whedon. Hedy Lamarr. Pamela Zoline. Aimee Weber. Tony Millionaire. Kathy Acker."<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;">You might have one of those small wooden trays of your own. Their proper name, according to the Container Store's extensive catalog, is: Modular Bamboo Drawer Organizer. The Modular Bamboo Drawer Organizer next to Sylvia's right knee is the 6" by 6" model ~ $6.99, crafted from solid bamboo, with "a warm, natural finish that looks great inside a drawer or on top of a counter, shelf, bureau, or desk" ~ that she bought from the store on Research Boulevard, where, coincidentally, Sheila had worked as an assistant manager until a year before Sylvia moved to Austin.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
The process is complete.<br />
<br />
Sheila breathes, a complexly marked bellows.<br />
<br />
Sylvia picks up the thin, silk-wrapped object.<br />
<br />
She uncovers it.<br />
<br />
It could be the end of an ancient spear, something from the Stone Age, its point blunted by much use and centuries of weathering. There are thirteen inches of it, nearly as pale as Sheila's skin and polished to a dull shine, its smoothness textured by helical striations.<br />
<br />
Sylvia places its cool length against the inside of Sheila's left thigh.<br />
<br />
"Oh my god," says Sheila. "Is that really ... ?"<br />
<br />
"Yes," says Sylvia. "It really is."<br />
<br />
"Oh my god," says Sheila again, hands gripping her hips in excitement.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #990000;">"The most conspicuous characteristic of the male narwhal," Wikipedia reports, "is its single 7-10 feet long tusk. It is an incisor tooth that projects from the left side of the upper jaw ans forms a left-handed helix. The tusk can be up to 9.8 feet long (compared with a body length of 13-16 feet) and weigh up to 22 pounds."</span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #990000;">Of course, narwhal tusks ~ even the broken-off tip of one, like what's being held against Sheila's thigh ~ aren't easy to acquire. But Sheila knows Scott Webel of Austin's Museum of Natural and Artificial Ephemerata, and Webel has a friend who has a friend who works at the Boston Marine Society, the "oldest association of sea captains in the world;" and Webel's friend's friend has long wanted to spend a weekend exploring Fredericksburg, just an hour outside of Austin and where that friend's forebears had first immigrated to; and Sylvia, due to an article she wrote for <i>Travel</i> magazine years ago, has long had an open invitation to spend a few days at one of Fredericksburg's better bed & breakfast establishments. And Sylvia is, if anything, resourceful.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
"I hold in my hand the tusk of a narwhal," says Sylvia, her voice almost singsong, as if chanting to invoke some eldritch power. "The foremost part of the legendary narwhal's tusk is what I hold, my text-ridden, image-stained love." She slides the polished rod farther, until its smooth blunt tip is tickling Sheila's pubic curls. "And what," says Sylvia, "do you think I'm going to do with it?"<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigevvg3H8CNKmEyGGPs73y8yyuiZdFEUqRvSuLcGcyEiw5hGqZcGbpufwf8yBr0xrrNXAN08iipvSGO6_HnMTZoykuRVt28tpKEdH9gTasP4Sb1fCP05d-w_akAOO4BFsMg4zYJl4tXaw/s1600/narwhal-tusk.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="68" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigevvg3H8CNKmEyGGPs73y8yyuiZdFEUqRvSuLcGcyEiw5hGqZcGbpufwf8yBr0xrrNXAN08iipvSGO6_HnMTZoykuRVt28tpKEdH9gTasP4Sb1fCP05d-w_akAOO4BFsMg4zYJl4tXaw/s320/narwhal-tusk.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-39412704883462074562012-06-12T22:08:00.000-05:002012-08-01T21:46:39.826-05:00Gnap! Theatre Projects'SHANNON McCORMICKIs In Dutch But Good<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> PHOTO BY KENNETH GALL</span><br />
<br />
<br />
Back in the day ~ and I mean <i>back</i> in the <i>day</i>, when tall ships ruled the seas and human flight was centuries away; back when the British were dissing Netherlanders so constantly that a small squadron of adjectival phrases barnacled itself onto the shifting hull of everyday speech ~ being “in Dutch” meant being in disfavor with someone.<br />
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That meaning still obtains, although, these days, the term is mostly vestigial. It’s used in the title above to suggest an answer to the riddle: When is Shannon McCormick not Shannon McCormick?<br />
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Because that McCormick ~ the founder & artistic director of <a href="http://gnaptheater.org/">Gnap! Theatre Projects</a>, the male half of Austin improv duo <a href="http://getup.austinimprov.com/">Get Up</a>, a former producer of the <a href="http://apply.outofboundscomedy.com/">Out of Bounds Comedy Festival</a>, a former member of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5vme3YQRw4">Backpack Picnic</a>, a frequent voice actor for <a href="http://rvb.wikia.com/wiki/Shannon_McCormick">all manner of animated endeavors</a>, and so on, and so on ~ that McCormick’s got sort of an alter ego who goes by the name of <b>Cornelius de Vries</b>.<br />
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Now, Cornelius is not a relentless identity ~ like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_(book)">Sybil</a> or something. Cornelius is a definite staged show: An ongoing series of one-man improvised monologues, in which McCormick relates the various experiences of a Dutch merchant who lived from the years 1600 to 1700.<br />
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I know, right? It sounds a bit … drier than the typical entertainments found in the often-wacky world of improv. And this anomaly is why it’s initially intriguing, but there are two reasons why the concept continues to fascinate: 1) The character’s life is fascinating, and 2) McCormick’s skill in bringing that life to vivid expression is nonpareil. The show even succeeds among general audiences looking for their usual idea of comedy improv, because, although the performances are never worked specifically for laughs, Cornelius himself can be quite witty.<br />
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So I’m focusing on Cornelius not just because that was a good excuse for the title’s pun, no. (I mean, hey, heaven forfend.) But neither am I showcasing the character only because the character is so intellectually fascinating. After all, McCormick himself, like most ~ hell, like maybe all ~ of the people featured in this ongoing Wreck, is sufficiently Of Interest without having to spotlight some fictional herring-chomper of a geezer he portrays in various venues across town.<br />
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No, the Cornelius focus was sparked by its visual potential. Due to the excellence of full-color print technology. Due to the sartorial gambits afforded by a 17th-century spice merchant. Due to the professional skills and generosity of <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonbolden">photographer Jon Bolden</a>.<br />
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I mean, just look at this finely draped peacock:<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> PHOTO BY JON BOLDEN</span><br />
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So let’s never mind McCormick’s original one-man show, <i>Unbeaten</i>, for which he collaborated with composer <b>Graham Reynolds</b> and videographer <b>Lowell Bartholomee</b> to create and perform a live, multicharacter narrative about two brothers battling each other on opposing pro football teams. Never mind him providing the voices of Akabane Kuroudo for the <i>Getbackers</i> anime and The Riddler in that new DC Universe MMORPG. Never mind his years wrangling the annual operational juggernaut that is the <b>Out of Bounds Comedy Festival</b>. And never mind the college-era writing awards, the sojourn in Prague, the stint as Mysterion in <i><a href="http://www.theintergalacticnemesis.com/">The Intergalactic Nemesis</a></i>, the year and a half as program manager at Salvage Vanguard Theater, the wife and two kids and gray-muzzled Rhodesian Ridgeback, the daunting knowledge of pop and esoteric culture.<br />
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Never mind any of that personal and creative bounty. Except as background shading, as what underlies only the first of the two pages of interview that follow and end with a brief conversation with the resplendent Mr. de Vries …<br />
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<span class="s1"><b>Brenner: </b>The Out of Bounds Comedy Festival ~ you didn’t start that, and you’re not producing it now. But you did for a while, right?</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>McCormick:</b> I produced it for five years. And in a lot of ways, I think they were the formative five years. It was run for two years by <b>Jeremy Lamb</b>, who started it, and the <b>Well Hung Jury</b>. And I don’t think there was anybody playing who was from outside of Texas those first two years. Maaaaaybe one or two people. And then, in 2004, <b>Mike D’Alonzo</b> and I took over the production of it, and we concentrated on getting people from out of town to apply. We expanded the range and established the reputation of <b>Out of Bounds</b> as a great place to come and play.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>Brenner: </b>And besides making it a national thing, weren’t you and D’Alonzo also the guys who moved the festival into formats beyond improv?</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>McCormick:</b> I think that probably would’ve happened regardless of who was doing it. I don’t even remember when we first started including sketch. There may have been sketch in 2002, 2003, and a lot of that had to do with who we knew. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>Brenner: </b>Like the <b>Edmond Bulldogs</b> and the <a href="http://www.lcp.org/">Latino Comedy Project</a>?</span></div>
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<b>McCormick:</b> Exactly. I mean, frankly, there wasn’t enough improv in Austin back in the day to fill up even a three-day festival.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>Which seems really weird now.</div>
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<b>McCormick: </b>Totally. It’s completely different.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>And what does producing mean, at least as far as the OOB is concerned?</div>
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<b>McCormick: </b>It’s about making sure that all of the aspects of the shows, besides the art itself, come off well. So: marketing, website maintenance, ticket sales, making sure that all the performers coming in from out of town have accommodations of one kind or another and are taken care of, made to feel welcome. It’s a huge time commitment ~ it’s definitely a labor of love. And when I had my second child, I decided that it was just too much effort for what I was gonna be able to give it. And Jeremy came back on as a producer, and now he’s the sole executive producer of the festival.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>How was running the OOB different than being artistic director of Gnap! Theater?</div>
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<b>McCormick: </b>Well, that’s the other thing: I wanted to concentrate on producing my <i>own</i> work. And, producing Out of Bounds, it’s a lot of time and effort to showcase other people and their talents and putting them forward. And that’s fine, there’s a place for that, and I think it’s a noble thing to do. But since I had to make a choice, I wanted to be in a spot where I was concentrating more on producing <i>my</i> work and the work that I wanted to see come into the world independent of anybody else’s artistic notions.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>And what sort of things do you do, day-to-day producing Gnap!?</div>
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<b>McCormick: </b>My main responsibilities are programming the shows, figuring out what it is that we’re gonna do. Not necessarily <i>directing</i> them ~ in fact, I direct very few of them ~ but making sure that the shows that we do produce have a certain <i>feel</i>, that they fit in with our outlook, and creating the space for people to make their shows.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>What <i>is</i> that outlook? Where does the name Gnap! come from?</div>
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<b>McCormick: </b>It’s a terrible name for a theatre company. Nobody can remember it, they always mispronounce it. It started when I was an undergrad, and ~ no, let’s take this all the way back to when I was a little kid.<br />
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So there was an episode of <i><b>The Smurfs</b></i> called “The Purple Smurfs,” which is based on one of the actual Smurf comics from the 60s, by Peyo, called “The Black Smurfs.” But when Hanna-Barbera adapted it for the US market in the early ’80s, they felt that having the bad Smurfs be black was maybe not a PC way to go. So in the episode, some kind of butterfly bites one of the Smurfs on the tail and it renders the Smurf very angry, very <span class="s2">aggressive and purple and highly contagious. So what the purple Smurfs do, they jump around and bite other Smurfs on the ass while shouting “Gnap! Gnap! Gnap!” That’s their vocabulary ~ it’s reduced to shouting “Gnap!” And it spreads like wildfire.</span><br />
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I can’t even remember how they solve the plague, but it <i>is</i> a plague. I mean, this insane Ionesco-like plague is visited upon the Smurfs. I think Smurfette, as a female, was immune to the thing, so it’s also, since it’s the early ’80s, it’s also this weird AIDS kind of metaphor, even though it wasn’t. But I found it to be one of the most trippy, subversive pieces of pop culture that I came into contact with as a kid, and it’s really disturbing. Those purple Smurfs, I mean, they’re <i>really</i> angry.<br />
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And so I was in college and, as you are wont to do in your early 20s, you obsess over and talk a lot about the pop-culture icons from your youth? And I used to talk about that episode all the time, about what a strange thing it was. And I had a group of friends who used to go to readings at the University of Iowa all the time ~ there were always a lot of awesome readers that would come because of the writing workshop there. And I don’t remember which writer it was, but it may have been <b>J.M. Coetzee</b>, the South African Nobel Prize Laureate? And he gave one of the most boring readings I’ve been to in my entire life. We joked that if you played his reading backwards, it would be him saying “I <i>also</i> won the Booker Prize.”<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> J.M. COETZEE </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"> PHOTO BY MARIUSZ KUBIK</span><br />
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So it may have been that reading, or it may have been <i>another</i> one, where the author’s books were published by Knopf. So it was, “Blah-blah-blah from Knopf Publishing.” And my friend leaned over to me and whispered “Gnap! Publishing,” because of the similarly strange, pronounced letter at the beginning of it. And I found it really hilarious. And it stuck with me, and I thought, “That should be the name of something.” And so, when I started producing No Shame Theatre at the Hideout back in 2001, I decided that would be the name of the company.<br />
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And “stuck” is maybe not the right word: I have <i>clung</i> to it.<br />
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I should also say, though, that there’s something about it that speaks to the aesthetic I’m interested in. Which is: Having things be simultaneously really weird or subversive or just nuts, with things that are wrapped in this umbrella of popularity or just some kind of pop veneer. And which gets more emphasis, I’m not sure, but there’s something really powerful about that, that I’m really interested in. And also as a metaphor for theatre, I’m most interested in that kind of work that’s maybe a little bit infectious, that gets spread by word of mouth, the way the Gnap! disease gets spread. I think any artist’s ideal is to have that level of you’ve-gotta-know-about-this surrounding their work.<br />
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<b>Brenner: </b>Okay, here’s what must be a perennial question: You’re married, you have two young kids, you have a day job, and besides being a frequent performer and producer you’re also a relentless and rather deep consumer of more types of culture and creativity than I can keep track of, so ~ where the fuck do you find the time?</div>
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<b>McCormick: </b>I drink a lot of coffee. And it probably comes at the expense of other things. I am involved in a lot of things, and I’m maybe not as efficient in any one of those as I might be, were I not as busy in all the others. Gnap! would be better run if I didn’t also spend so much time reading or pursuing obscure comics on the Web as I do. And my marriage might be better if I didn’t also run a theatre company. All these things are wrapped up around each other. [shrugs] I’m just doing what I can, man.<br />
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<b>Brenner: </b>Where did your Cornelius character come from?</div>
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<b>McCormick: </b>It was a show in search of an idea, actually. <a href="http://www.coldtownetheater.com/">ColdTowne Theater</a> opened their venue back in the fall of 2006, right? And they were programming it, and Get Up ~ Shana [Merlin] and I ~ were sort of the first people to open up the improv community to the ColdTowne guys. We met them and rehearsed with them back when they first moved here, and I think they felt, “Oh, we should ask Get Up to play at our theatre.” So we booked a series of shows in December of 2006, and then Shana realized she wasn’t gonna be in town for most of the dates. So I needed to come up with a solo show. And there’s a pretty famous performer in the improv world, named <b>Susan Messing</b>, and her show is called “Messing With A Friend,” where she invites another performer to play and they do a two-person show. So I was thinking, “What can I do with my <i>name</i> that would be a sort of clever pun and also set up a <i>solo</i> improv format?” So I was thinking of famous instances of McCormick, and of course there’s McCormick Spices, which is probably the most famous one. And I was like, “Hey, I know a lot about 17th century Dutch culture! I’ll do an improv show where I’m this old guy who’s lived through an entire century and can just tell stories about it, as a spice trader.”</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>You just ... <i>happen</i> to know so much about 17th century Dutch culture?</div>
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<b>McCormick:</b> When I was an undergrad, I was an art history minor, and I’ve always had a real affinity for Dutch art of that period. And when you learn about the art of that time, you end up learning a lot about the history of the Dutch republic as well.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>Ah. And is Cornelius ready to be interviewed right now?</div>
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<b>McCormick: </b>Sure. Of course. </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span class="s1">[Except now it’s not precisely McCormick speaking: There’s a Dutch accent shading his speech ~ “Shoo-uh,” he says, “Uf caws.” </span><span class="s1">His shoulders are slightly hunched, his head is drooping, his expressive hands suggesting the faintest tremor ~ as befits a geezer, regardless how physically fit, of circa 100 years. </span><span class="s2">The slightly bemused look blooming on the man’s pale face is not one of McCormick regarding his friend Brenner but of Herr de Vries preparing to be questioned by some foreign journalist less than half his age.]</span></b></span></div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>Would you state for the record, sir, your name?</div>
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<b>de Vries:</b> Cornelius Corneliuszoon de Vries.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>Corneliuszoon? </div>
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<b>de Vries: </b>Corneliuszoon means “son of Cornelius.” That is the middle name of the Dutch, typically the father’s name, and so I am Cornelius, son of Cornelius.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>Kind of like Cornelius, Jr.</div>
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<b>de Vries: </b>Something like this.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>And what time are you speaking from? I mean, do you exist in our present, or …?</div>
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<span class="s3"><b>de Vries: </b>The time is ~ what is the day, today? ~ April </span><span class="s4">the ninth. Of 1700. I have recently celebrated </span><span class="s3">my 100th birthday and have a century of knowledge of the past.</span></div>
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<span class="s4"><b>Brenner: </b>How do you account for having lived so long ~ especially from the 1600s, when life expectancy was much lower than it is now?</span></div>
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<span class="s3"><b>de Vries: </b>It is good hygiene. Also, ah, addiction to swimming in seawater, which is good for health of all kinds. And a daily glass of port ~ only one. And also, of course, the use of spices: pepper and other things that make life worth living.</span></div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>What’s your relationship with the Dutch East India Company?</div>
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<b>de Vries: </b>[smiles] Ah, you have asked a complicated question. But I have at times worked for them, including, at one point, having risen to the position of governor of some plantations in the Jakarta area, where there are many plantations of pepper and mace and nutmeg and things of this sort. I have worked at the, how would you say, corporate headquarters in Amsterdam ~ the V.O.C.’s main offices, where they dispatch many of the ships and keep the records of their trading. At other times I have been against them, as an independent raider of goods and services.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>You mean ... like a pirate?</div>
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<b>de Vries: </b>Like a privateer or pirate, yes ~ on my own ship or the ships of others. So we are a very strange relationship. We are, ah, twined ~ like the ropes on a ship. They are made of many strands, sometimes one is on top and the other is on the bottom: This is how I am related to the V.O.C.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>Did you have any involvement in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania">Tulip Mania</a>?</div>
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<span class="s3"><b>de Vries: </b>I was a young man, and I was abroad at the height of the tulip frenzy. But, also, my recommendation is for all who speculate in goods of all kinds, to buy early and sell early as well ~ because that is where the profits are. And I did trade a bulb of an Augustin’s tulip, for approximately 500 guilder at the time, then parted before the crash came. So I did very well with the tulip mania, unlike some of my countrymen ~ who were crazed by the flowers.</span></div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>What events in your childhood helped to make you the man you are today?</div>
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<b>de Vries: </b>I believe probably the most important was being, how do you say, <i>taken</i> to serve on ship against my will, as a young man.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>What we would call Shanghai’d.</div>
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<b>de Vries: </b>Yes. And this led to life on the sea. As a child at home, I was apprenticed to a tailor and would have spent my life sewing the clothes of aldermen and other wealthy individuals. Now I <i>buy </i>the clothes made by tailors.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>Were you reunited with your family, after you came back from the sea?</div>
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<b>de Vries: </b>Many of them.</div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>Many of them?</div>
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<b>de Vries: </b>I should say, I have had many families ~ in all parts of the world ~ and some are no more, and some know of me, and some, ah, want no knowledge of me.</div>
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<span class="s3"><b>Brenner: </b>So you’ve reached your 100th birthday here. And what’s it been like, watching so many people that you’ve cared for ... watching so many of them die as the years have piled up?</span></div>
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<b>de Vries: </b>It is quite tragic, of course, to see this happen<span class="s3">. But death comes for all, and we should not mourn the cycle of life that takes us away. Sometimes I wish that I had gone earlier than I have, for these reasons. It is also, em, quite painful to be so old.</span></div>
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<b>Brenner: </b>Cornelius, you’ve been all over the world, living the sort life most men can only dream of. With all of that behind you now, how do you pass the time of day?</div>
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<b>de Vries: </b>Drinking. And, also, with the telling of tales. Now that I am too old for new adventures, I stay young by reliving my youth, and a new energy comes over me.</div>
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</div>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-5051442586514265452012-04-10T10:00:00.000-05:002012-08-19T19:14:51.748-05:00LANCE 'FEVER' MYERSis a highly animated fellow:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;"> LANCE 'FEVER' MYERS</span></b><br />
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Lance Myers is currently working on a 20-minute animated video called <i><a href="http://www.lancefever.com/">The Boxer</a></i>, featuring his character Twomey Martin, a pugilist with a secret. Myers has done plenty of big-studio work, too – <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/"><i>A Scanner Darkly</i></a>, anyone? <i>Space Jam</i>? <i>Prince of Egypt</i>? – even while crafting personal (and award-winning) projects <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQE_ufa19P0">The Astronomer</a></i> (2000), <i>Subsidized Fate</i> (2003), and a comedy series called <i>The Ted Zone</i> for now-defunct SuperDeluxe.<br />
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We knew Myers first from Twomey’s appearance in <b>Jeanette Moreno</b>’s <i>Moko</i> comics anthology back in 1992, and were recently able to cajole the artist into creating an autobiographical comic for the final print edition of <i>Minerva's Wreck</i>.<br />
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(Eventually, Myers willing and the pixelcreek don't rise, we'll have those four pages up in <i>here</i> for your delight, too.)<br />
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Right now, we've got an interview with the man, conducted last year outside <b><a href="https://foursquare.com/v/tamale-house/49c1e480f964a520dc551fe3">Tamale House</a></b> on Airport Boulevard, both of us happily munching just, oh, <i>perfect</i> tacos at a storefront-shaded table beneath the big Texas sky …<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> SCENE FROM 'THE BOXER'</span><br />
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“<i>The Boxer</i> is sort of a snapshot of where I am, emotionally, about my work,” says Myers. “I’m doing everything myself, and I’ve had some very competent animators offer me their time to work on it – but I’m just not at the point where I can hand it off. I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m gonna work a day job – and it’s a <i>great</i> day job – but it’s not <i>entirely</i> creatively satisfying. So I’ll have my side project that I hold dear to my heart, and it will be all mine. I want to be able to just, if I spend a year designing a character and creating all the animation, and then I look at it and decide it’s not quite what I had in mind, I can <i>redo</i> it. And I don’t have to explain that to anybody, I don’t have to justify it, I don’t have to re-plan my schedule. And it’s not gonna sell, and it <i>may</i> show in festivals – I’d love for it to show in festivals – but I’m not creating it to sell, I’m not creating it for anybody else. This is what I want to do, so I’m gonna do it.<br />
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"I’m lucky enough that I have a job and a life that allows me that," says Myers, "so I’m gonna take advantage of that and just make something I want to make.”<br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: Where are you working, these days?<br />
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<b>Myers</b>: <a href="http://www.bioware.com/">BioWare</a>. I’m working on that new <i>Star Wars</i> MMO that’s going to come out soon. <i>Star Wars: The Old Republic</i>. It’s gonna be enormous.<br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: So you’re doing <i>The Boxer</i>, which is your biggest thing so far, and like so many of your other projects, this one is animated. What is it that, uh, <i>draws</i> you to animation so much?<br />
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<b>Myers</b>: It <i>moves</i>. [laughs] Y’know, I went through various career aspirations as an artist. I wanted to be a cartoonist, and that’s why I moved to Austin in the first place. I was looking at the <i><a href="http://www.dailytexanonline.com/">Daily Texan</a></i> stuff, <b>Jeanette</b> [Moreno]’s stuff, and <b>Tom King</b>, and <b>Walt</b> [Holcombe]. <b>Chris Ware</b> and <b>Korey Coleman</b> and <b>Karl Greenblatt</b>. All those people who were doing that stuff in the early ’90s, at the<i> Texan</i>. And I wanted to be a part of it, so I moved here for that.<br />
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And then almost all of those people got interested in animation at the same time, and we all started working at <b>Heart of Texas</b> together. And of course there was the band thing. But as far as visual arts go, I went back to school and wanted to be a painter. And discovered that any time I did a painting, any time I did a static image, I was always trying to tell a story with it ~ and painting wasn’t the right medium for it. Some people can pull it off, like <b>Robert Williams</b>, but it just didn’t work for me. I felt like, if I’m trying to tell a story I should just <i>tell a story</i>.<br />
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And I love film, and I think that painting and static images hanging in a gallery are, for better or for worse, not as culturally relevant as film is. In the two years I’ve been at BioWare, I’ve never come in to work and heard anyone discussing a painting they saw at a gallery. But I do hear discussions almost every day about <i>movies</i>. And, <i>occasionally</i>, books. But mostly <i>movies</i> ~ and TV shows. Do you agree with me at all about this?<br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: Well, I think that people at BioWare might be a pretty distinct subcultural set … but, at the same time, you’re saying that film, that video, and even stuff on TV, is much more culturally relevant in how pervasive it is. And yes, I do agree. In fact, it’s currently less bothersome that it’s culturally relevant. Because, years ago ~ many years, even ~ there was only network television stuff, and that was mostly crap. And so the cultural relevance of it, you’d wonder, what the fuck is wrong with people that they embrace such shit? What are they, idiots? But these days you can’t say that it generally sucks anymore. Because, especially with cable and the Internet, there’s so much good stuff out there. So I don’t think the greater cultural relevance is a bad thing at all.<br />
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<b>Myers</b>: Right. And, for me, this is coming from somebody who’s very into visual arts. I mean, I go to art shows and museums on a regular basis. I plan vacations around places that have works of art that I can go see. And I had lunch with <b>Michael Sieben</b> the other day, and he’s somebody who’s made a splash in the visual arts scene, whose work I admire. And I was kind of surprised to hear him agree with me on a lot of these points.<br />
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I have a degree in studio art with a minor in art history, and I love <i>talking</i> about art and <i>thinking</i> about art. And it’s easier for me to justify a work that’s <i>moving</i>, that <i>talks</i>, that <i>tells a story</i>. It’s easier for me to feel, in creating something like that, that it justifies itself somehow. Whereas, when I finish a painting, I oftentimes wonder, “Why did I just do that? What <i>is</i> that?”<br />
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That’s just a personal hang-up, maybe. It’s a weird thing. I would love to have a better understanding of how to create static images and be satisfied with them. I’m a big <i>fan</i> of static images, I’m just not a big fan of my <i>own</i> static images.Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-11347131569346554582012-04-09T10:00:00.000-05:002012-08-19T19:15:34.927-05:00RUSSELL ETCHEN:The Man Behind Austin's Domy Books<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><b>(Or, in this case, yes: The man <i>in front</i> <i>of it</i>.)</b><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> PHOTO BY </span><a href="http://caseyjameswilson.com/__/index.html" style="font-size: small;">CASEY JAMES WILSON</a><br />
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<b> MAYBE YOU SHOULDN'T BE WALKING INTO <a href="http://www.facebook.com/domyaustin">DOMY BOOKS</a>.</b><br />
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If what you really want is sequential art featuring super-powered people dressed in various forms of Spandex and generally beating the super-powered shit out of one another, then you should go to <a href="http://www.facebook.com/AustinBooks">Austin Books & Comics</a> ~ because Austin Books & Comics is the best place in all of Texas, and one of the best in the whole country, to assuage your jones for the latest adventures of the Fantastic Four and Green Lantern and Iron Man and the Runaways and that whole crowd. And only because the store is so well managed, so thoughtfully designed to attract and welcome, as if in spite of the depths of its geekery, will you also find a sweet array of non-superhero and indie titles (<i>alternative</i> comics, right?) and thick volumes of collected illustration and so on, gladly pointed out to you by the helpful staff. It's a terrific place, Austin Books & Comics.<br />
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<b> BUT.</b><br />
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If you're looking for just a <i>few</i> of those alternative comics, and you don't give a mutated rat's ass about <i>Captain Steroid-Man Versus The Nefarious Nematode</i> or whatever; and maybe you also want to have your eyes expanded and your mind blown by oversized volumes featuring the wildest street styles or the rarified conceptual stuff, by handstitched zines and skater rags and faux-brow periodicals, by the sort of slick graphic-design compilations and photographic anthologies that would give the collective body of the AIGA a raging hard-on; and, hell, you'd actually enjoy a display or two of Dunnies and Labbits and miniature Gundams; and, sure, you'd totally love a gallery of <a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2012-03-16/beauty-is-embarrassing-the-art-of-wayne-white/">original</a> <a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2011-05-13/as-above-so-below-the-art-of-the-secret-society/">art</a> right there in the same store?<br />
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<b> <a href="http://bit.ly/w43gnw">THEN YOU <i>SHOULD</i> BE WALKING INTO DOMY BOOKS</a>.</b><br />
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That's where, as <i>The Austin Chronicle</i> put it when they awarded Domy the ‘Most Dangerous Store for Graphic Design Addicts’ award in their <a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Awards/BestOfAustin/index?Award=810518">2009 Best of Austin</a> issue, "Russell Etchen is your towering ginger guide to much of what's best about having eyes and the knack for pattern recognition."<br />
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Well, yes: Etchen is the <i>manager</i> of the store, after all. He started it in Austin after he and some friends were successful with the first <a href="http://www.domystore.com/houston/">Domy Books in Houston</a>. He started the store; he stocks it well; he hires good people; he schedules the readings and the presentations and the exhibitions in the big one-room gallery; he makes connections with artists and publishers around the world and brings his favorites and their wares into the impressive Eastside venue. And he <i>is</i> towering ~ well, he's 6' 4" ~ and he <i>is</i> gingery.<br />
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But, like, what's his <i>story</i>?<br />
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"I was brought up in a very Christian home,” says Etchen.<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white;">[He's sitting in Domy's back room where, months before, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/1280475@N20/">a life-size and disturbingly realistic model</a> of the murder scene of Mary Kelly ~ Jack the Ripper's final victim ~ was on display, the body having been rendered in latex and placed upon painstakingly recreated furniture (with everything, even the desecrated flesh, in shades of gray: like the photo on which the scene was based) by the proprietor's friend, sculptor David N. Allen.]</span></b><br />
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"This was in the suburbs of Houston ~ in Clear Lake, near NASA," says Etchen. "Everything I was allowed to listen to also had to have roots in Christianity, except what my parents listened to ~ which was ‘50s pop music and ‘70s psychedelic records and things like that, from before they were Christian. Otherwise, I had no reference for culture ~ or current events, even. My parents and I, we had no common interests, except for talking about God. And, uh, I never really got down with that program.<br />
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"And then, around age 12, my dad got me a subscription to <i>Mad</i> magazine. Which was against everything he brought me up with. It was almost like my dad was secretly trying to subvert me ~ without my mom knowing or something? ~ even though he could only go so far. And from there I got into comicbooks, which were secular. But comicbooks were fine, and popular music was not. <i>The Simpsons</i> were not. There were a lot of very weird inconsistencies in what I was allowed to do or not do.<br />
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"Then, when I was 15, I met these kids from Chicago, twin brothers. We were in an office supply store with our moms, getting ready for the sophomore year of high school, and we both had on the same cartoon T-shirt ~ it was for a comicbook called <i>Bone</i> by Jeff Smith. So we were these 15-year-olds in the Office Depot, and I spotted the shirt that I was wearing, and without hesitation I went up to this kid and I was like, "You know about this?" Because this was in '93, I think, and Jeff Smith had just begun, was maybe six or eight issues into it? And me and the brothers became immediate friends.<br />
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"So I had this, like, <i>twin</i> crew. They'd been brought up in the suburbs, too ~ very Catholic. But the difference is that <i>their</i> dad would take them into Chicago to go to <a href="http://www.quimbys.com/">Quimby's Queer Store</a>, so they got exposed to many comics very early on. So, the first day I'm hanging out with them, they're showing me <b>Dan Clowes</b>'s <i>Eightball</i>, they're showing me the original Xerox copies of <i>Optic Nerve</i>, they're showing me <b>John Porcellino</b>'s <i>King-Cat</i>. And I was <i>hooked</i>. I dropped all superhero comics and got completely into alternative comics.<br />
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"And with these two guys, who ended up moving away about a year later, we managed to put out a whole bunch of stuff. We did an anthology comic called <i>Velvet</i> that was terrible. I made zines about dancing; they made zines about the stories they wanted to tell. And, for like a year and a half, we didn't have any friends outside of our crew. We'd just go and hang out all night at the Kinko's nearby and scam the shit out of them. We'd walk around ~ we weren't doing drugs, we weren't drinking beers, we weren't even smoking cigarettes ~ we were just straight nerds. None of us had girlfriends; none of us could <i>talk</i> to girls. We just sat around and listened to college radio and the Velvet Underground. And we made videos, these weird documentaries that we made about ourselves, just shot them in their room, making shit up, making stories up.<br />
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"And so I completely immersed myself into zine culture. Because I needed that. All my social skills, everything that I learned about being friends with people, came out of writing letters. Every day I'd come home from high school and I'd look at the mailbox and there'd be four or five zines waiting for me. And I'd send mine out in trade. There was a magazine about zines, called <i>Factsheet Five</i>. And Porcellino used to run a distro called Spit and a Half, selling minicomics and zines from his house. And at one point he was distributing our zine, and I discovered all sorts of people because of Spit and a Half. That's how I discovered <b>Ron Rege</b>, how I discovered a guy called <b>Al Burian</b>, who's been writing this book called <i>Burn Collector</i> for years. My whole world was opened up because of zines.<br />
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"And then I found punk rock and got really involved in music for a long time. Me and my friends ran a booking collective in Houston called Hands Up, and that lasted for four or five years ~ and we brought hundreds and hundreds of shows to Houston that weren't coming before. And then I got burned out on that and got a real job and finished school. I'd kind of fallen out of self-publishing for a few years, had no real desire to share what I was thinking about with anyone. And I decided that if I was ever gonna do that again, I'd only do it for my friends ~ because your friends are the only ones who care about it anyway, so you might as well just stick to what you know."<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white;">[At this point ~ and you may think that your reporter is pulling your leg; you may suspect this is some sort of orchestrated, Paul Auster-like coincidence of plot; but, no, it's true, this is exactly what happened ~ David Allen, the sculptor, walks into the back room with two cold bottles of Stella Artois: It's a surprise! Etchen introduces us, and there's much cheerful huzzah and hands being shaken and fists being bumped all around. Allen takes a nearby chair, Etchen and he crack open their crispy Stellas, and the three of us get to talking about the Mary Kelly piece and about Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's <i>From Hell</i> and about the genius of Alan Moore in general, and about plans for future projects. And then Allen leaves, and it's just me and Etchen again, and it's time to ask about Domy itself.]</span></b><br />
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"I worked a regular job in Houston for three years," says Etchen. "And then, my girlfriend at the time was working for <b>Magda Sayeg</b>, who's the wife of <b>Dan Fergus</b>, who owns Domy. Magda had a store called <b>Raye</b>, and I was hanging out there a lot ~ and at <b>Brasil</b>, the cafe that Dan also owns. And one day Dan was like, 'Look, how can I get you to work here? I have this extra space, and I don't really know what I want to do with it. I know how the food industry works, but I don't know retail.' And I said, 'I don't know how business works, but I know what I'd stock.'<br />
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"I could see the whole store in my head. And I knew all the places to go to get the stuff, because I'd been sitting on the information since I was 15 ~ the things I was accumulating, the knowledge I was gathering, I was like a sponge. And I couldn't really share it with anybody, either ~ because, out of context, it's just a bunch of nerdy stuff that very few people care about. But when you can actually put it in their hands and talk to them about it, it totally changes everything.<br />
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"I think about those first few moments in your adolescence, when that first thing clicks, the first time somebody does something, introduces you to something ~ whether it's a record store employee or you see something in the back of <i>Spin</i> magazine. Whatever that moment is, where, suddenly, your world opens up a little bit and you're just blown away. Like, 'Oh my God, I didn't know this was out there!' Those moments are so sacred to me, and I wanted to replicate that experience for other people. I wanted to get kids into the store, but also have a place that was gonna appeal to a hardened, jaded consumer or art collector, a person who's seen it all and done it all and is kind of looking for other things.<br />
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"So, along with <b>Patrick Phipps</b>, who also runs the Menil bookstore, and my friend Seth and the owner, Dan, the four of us opened the Houston store in four months. And we just celebrated the four-year anniversary on April Fools' Day. And this year, this shop is coming up on two years in June ~ June seventh. And we're doing great. We're not raking it in, some months are better than others ~ but we're paying all our bills, we get a lot of great artists in here, and a community is really developing around the place."<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white;">[Congratulations are offered there in the back room, where the ghost of the latex model of the last woman who was killed by a surgically skilled maniac in London in 1888 might still haunt anyone who saw last year’s grisly circa-Halloween installation. And Russell Etchen, the tall ginger proprietor in jeans and an untucked button-down, grins ~ because the store's success is no small matter to him. Because, to him, the store is … what?]</span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #990000; font-size: large;">"Domy Books is a place where I can share all the things that I'm obsessed with," says Etchen. "Even if I'm no longer interested in some of them. I had my moment with them, and it's done, and I can talk about it. There are some things that I'm interested in that I don’t share here, because I'm still exploring them for myself. But, yeah, it all pretty much goes back to <i>Mad</i> magazine for me. Cartooning, comicbooks, and punk rock. I will forever call myself a punk; I will forever claim that ~ because that's how I feel. Because being a punk isn’t about fucking shit up; it's about, you know, being open and willing to try things out that you wouldn't normally try."</span><br />
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<br />Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-17930450701782363402012-04-07T10:00:00.000-05:002012-08-19T19:10:49.859-05:00JACQUELINE MAYisn't blind to the beauty of braille.<br />
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She isn’t blind at all, in fact: The artist sees quite well, thank you ~ even better without glasses than some of us do <i>with</i> glasses. Her deep blue eyes have successfully watched her dominant hand guide a paintbrush for many years, have observed and abetted the creation of works ~ in acrylics, in encaustic wax, via lithography, with gold leaf and aluminum leaf and more ~ that have improved the walls of <b>Gallery Lombardi</b>, <a href="http://www.arthousetexas.org/mainpage/">Arthouse</a>, <a href="http://www.womenandtheirwork.org/">Women & Their Work</a>, <a href="http://www.studio2gallery.com/">Studio2Gallery</a>, and San Antonio’s <b>Galeria Ortiz</b>. It’s just that, especially in recent years, Jacqueline May has used braille to enhance, to complicate, to inform those works.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> THE WORD MADE FLESH</span><br />
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“I’ve always been interested in secret-code type things,” says May, over java and a piece of rich sweet cake at <a href="http://www.quacksbakery.com/">Quack’s 43rd Street Bakery</a>. “But what got me interested in braille, specifically, is that I was doing volunteer work at the Recording for the Blind center on 45th Street, and I was seeing all these braille things in my immediate surroundings. And it sort of clicked over, like <i>this is another thing</i>, this is another secret code that some people can read and other people can’t, like another level of meaning that’s embedded in our everyday reality. A <i>stealth</i> thing. Like those ancient photographs that have been exposed by some arcane process, that tell us a secret or something about our environment that we wouldn’t otherwise know.”<br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: What was the first piece that you used braille in?<br />
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<b>May</b>: It’s been a while, but I think I started out by using cut-out dots on some drawings. Then I got intrigued by these sheets of clear dots that I had, that are for sticking on the backs of paintings. I had sheets and sheets of them, so my paintings wouldn’t scuff up the walls. And the little dots had their own existence ~ they were pretty little things, all rainbowy in the light, looked like drops of water. And I started sticking them on my studio wall … and, uh, a movement was born.<br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: A movement that involves braille and … fish?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> CHARON'S FLOCK</span><br />
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<b>May</b>: I shot this video in Chinatown, in San Francisco, when I was traveling. I was going through a lot of internal stuff about reuniting with my birth family, and some of that came out in the video as looking around at my surroundings. There were these fish, swimming around in a tank at a fish-seller’s stall, swimming back and forth. And it just struck me how they were fated to die. Like seeing the human condition, how we’re all here, swimming around, waiting for our ultimate demise. And here’s this fish-seller on the other side of the tank, and you order from him ~ “That fish right there!” ~ and he takes your fish and dispatches it for you.<br />
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So I shot this video, and as I’m shooting this fish tank that separates you from the fish-seller, I pan around, and there’s this long row of skyscrapers on either side. And you get the sensation that you, yourself, are in a fish tank.<br />
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Well, I don’t know if too many people got that out of the video, but it was my private story that I was making for myself. And that’s where the painting <i>Charon’s Flock</i> came from. And because I’d started doing the braille work at the time, it seemed like a natural progression to drill holes in the painting and install lights behind the holes. And the holes are the braille version of a quote from Walt Whitman:<br />
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<b>Whoever walks a furlong<br />without sympathy walks to<br />his own funeral drest in his shroud.</b><br />
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So there’s this poetry that occurs because there’s light coming from the holes, but, for someone who’s blind, they’re never going to see that light. And it’s like a marriage of complex flavors, like when you sip something that has a really complex taste: It’s a visual parallel to that. And I’ve used braille in lots and lots of other things since then, it’s become a standard.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> THE FLOW</span><br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: Have you had feedback from people who are blind, who’ve experienced any of the braille that you’ve used?<br />
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<b>May</b>: Yes ~ and they really enjoy that somebody has thought about them in creating artwork. But I can’t say, to tell you the truth, that the foremost thing in my mind was “Let’s go and make artwork that’s accessible.” That was secondary to the initial concept.<br />
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But, at the same time, as a person who has a heart, I do care about people having access. And it also opened the door for me, to some opportunities that I wouldn’t otherwise have had. In July, I’m going to be in Norway, in Christiansund, doing a braille installation there. It’ll be in between the health center and the public library, there’ll be rainbowy dots on the wall … and I’ve been talking to a couple of friends about the possibility of throwing in some runes for craziness’s sake.<br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: Jacqueline, have you made any art recently that doesn’t incorporate braille?<br />
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<b>May</b>: Well, I’ve been doing some video artwork lately ~ although I’m throwing some braille in that, too, as a sort of frustration factor. It’s just a funny, quirky thing. People see these dots scrolling across the screen and they think, “Oh, a pret-ty lit-tle pat-tern,” and it’s just an inside joke for me and my two best friends. Of course, now I include you into that circle.<br />
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<br />Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-65006969699972692852012-04-06T10:00:00.000-05:002012-08-19T19:13:06.875-05:00STEVE BRUDNIAK:Whatever you do …<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> PHOTO BY <a href="http://davidjewellpoet.com/category/photos/">DAVID JEWELL</a></span><br />
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Really, steampunk is the wrong word.<br />
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Because the steampunk impulse springs from a desire to embody a fictional existence within the context of our putatively duller reality, to engage in a sort of retro-cultural cosplay ~ regardless that it's a form of cosplay both less specifically derivative than most genre-based costuming and more often on par with inspired pinnacles of mainstream craftwork.<br />
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<i>And that's not <a href="http://stevebrudniak.com/artwork.php">what Steve Brudniak is doing</a></i>.<br />
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Right?<br />
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"I don't know," says the artist over coffee at the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Green-Muse-Cafe/111442248875463?sk=info">Green Muse Cafe</a> on Oltorf Avenue,<br />
"I wonder if ~"<br />
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No, <i>steampunk</i> is the wrong word. Because what Brudniak is doing is another thing entirely. He's not forcibly <a href="http://minervaswreck.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-is-steampunk.html">regressing modern tech toward some brass-hinged Victorian aesthetic</a> for the delight of those who might yearn for a brighter, more mechanized version of (mostly European) days gone by.<br />
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Right?<br />
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"I don't know," says the artist over coffee at the Green Muse Cafe on Oltorf Avenue,<br />
"I wonder if my denial of steampunk ~"<br />
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No, nevermind the steampunk. What Brudniak is doing in his Bouldin Creek studio that's equipped with drill presses and table saws and arc welders and industrial-strength angle grinders … what he’s doing in that workspace where the walls' shelves are chockablock with thick lengths of molded aluminum and iron, with copper tubing and johnson rods, with lenses and lasers and antique tiles and porcelain fixtures and dismantled apparatus that looks ripped from the guts of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decepticon">Decepticon</a> … what he <i>has been doing there for almost three decades</i> is using salvaged scientific and industrial equipment to create eerie structures that embody a timeless, ur-technological style. He's constructing machinelike (and painstakingly machined) objects that often serve as thick-plated frames or repositories for more fluid and personal … things.<br />
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<i>It's a completely different motivation</i>.<br />
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Right?<br />
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"I don't know," says the artist over coffee at the Green Muse Cafe on Oltorf Avenue,<br />
where several of his scientific-looking sculptures are installed. "I wonder if my denial of steampunk might, ah, come back and bite me in the ass someday."<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> THE VAGUS LEVIATHAN</span><br />
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"I started out working with found objects in about 1982," says the artist, tearing hungrily into a thick Green Muse sandwich. "Which makes it, what? Longer than time is supposed to be. Twenty- eight years. And I just fell right into it, too. I started with some clay and went right to a neon-sign transformer after that. I was … 22?<br />
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“I was a bit of a science nerd, starting out. I think I just <i>found</i> the transformer at a neon-sign dump, and it said, on the side of it, that it would put out 15,000 volts. And what comes out of the wall is 110 volts. So I thought, <i>hey, I'm gonna see what this does</i>, and started playing around with it. Because you can take the two electrodes and you get a two-inch spark going like <i>bzzzzt!</i> between them."<br />
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"Like a <a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Cost-Jacobs-Ladder-Made-From-A-Salvaged-Oil-T/">Jacob's Ladder</a>?" says your reporter.<br />
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"I actually made a Jacob's Ladder with coat hangers," says Brudniak. "And I had a landlord who worked for the electric company, and he said, 'Oh, transformers like that, you can't even get <i>near</i> them, a spark could just jump out and kill you.' And I didn't realize that he was talking about the big transformers up on the lightpoles. So for the first month of me playing with this neon-sign thing, I'd get a broomstick and poke it with that. And I started experimenting with fruit, cutting a banana in two and sticking the halves on the ends of coat-hanger wire. And electric sparks started jumping between the two halves of the banana ~ because, y'know, there's moisture in a banana, so the water conducts the current. And I ended up making my first sculpture, which was a carved <i>wooden</i> banana and a little angel from a <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> set, a metal angel that's holding a staff, and the banana comes down, and there's ~ <i>bzzzzzt!</i> ~ a little spark that jumps to it. And it's all in this glass case, gilded, in stained glass. You can see it on my website."<br />
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"From the start," says your reporter, munching a few <a href="http://www.zapps.com/flavors.php?zURLTitle=zapps-cajun-dill-potato-chips&zURLAppId=1&zURLAppDbId=6">Zapp's salt & vinegar-flavored potato chips</a> that the artist has kindly offered him, "you've set your works up as parts of an exhibition from some giant, gorgeous museum that doesn't actually exist. With the glass cases and the gilding, as you say, with the frames and all. What made you decide to do that, as opposed to just 'Okay, I've finished this object, now I'll move on to the next one?'"<br />
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"I've always had a real fascination for science museums," says Brudniak. "Since I was a kid, I've loved the <i>displays</i> in science museums ~ and art museums. Just the fact that something has been made precious by being surrounded by glass, in a vitrine, or framed and on the wall. Like, have you seen the photograph, the World's First Photograph, at the <a href="http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/wfp/">Harry Ransom Center</a>? It's got a booth of its own; and then you go into the booth and there's a glass case; and in the case there's another case <i>full of nitrogen</i>; and in the nitrogen case is the photograph ~ <i>inside</i> a <i>picture frame</i>. And there's something gorgeous about that.<br />
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"So, yeah, almost everything I do has a central, ah, focus. Like a window or a tube or a case. Something that's being held, behind glass. And some of that relates well to the human, ah, psyche, you know? How there's this whole body that we've got that ages ~ it gets older and starts falling apart, gets gray … but inside there's still that little seven-year-old kid, you know what I mean?"<br />
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"Sure ~ it's <i>preserved</i>," suggests your reporter. "Like with the reliquaries you make, right? With your mentors' blood in them … ?"<br />
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"The blood reliquaries, yeah," says the artist.<br />
"They're over at the <a href="http://eastsideshowroom.com/">East Side Show Room</a> right now."<br />
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"And what got you started on that, on putting human fluids in with all this mechanical stuff?"<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> BLOOD OF A MENTOR: CULTIVATOR OPTIMISM AND HUMOR</span><br />
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"Well," says Brudniak, "I'd been using biological things previous to that, too. And I'd seen a Catholic relic called <i>The Blood of St. Genarius</i>. It's this pole that the Pope or a bishop or somebody holds. It's all fancy, and it's got this glass bowl or jar at the top of it. It's this giant <i>wand</i> that the bishop uses. And what's in it is the blood of <a href="http://www.aysor.am/en/news/2009/11/30/commemoration-day/">St. Genarius</a>, and it's coagulated. But the bishop does a ritual, and starts to move the pole, and the blood <i>magically becomes fluid</i> ~ supposedly. And I saw that, and I thought, <i>wow, what an awesome idea</i>. Because, what is it? It's a relic. It's a relic that's been <i>framed and put into a context where it's on display</i> ~ and so it's a <i>reliquary</i>. And the Buddhists have their reliquaries, too, like the bones of their saints. So I thought I'd just use my <i>own</i> saints ~ or people who had affected my life."<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Which people in particular?<br />
<br />
<b>Brudniak</b>: I went all the way back to my best friend in fifth grade, who was like the guy who pulled me out of my early nerd-dom. He'd be like, "Steve, let's jump between these two buildings!" And we <i>would</i>. And another friend who, later on in life, was one of my spiritual guides and teachers, in a way, who taught me a lot about Letting Go. And my parents are in one reliquary. And a good friend of mine who taught me a lot about how to laugh and be optimistic. And another one is an ex-girlfriend who taught me about benevolence and giving. There could've been a lot more reliquaries, but those pieces take a long, long time to make.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> BODHISATTVA SETTEE</span><br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: Do you draw the blood yourself, or do you have a dedicated phlebotomist<br />
that you work with?<br />
<br />
<b>Brudniak</b>: I have two doctors who help me. And, oddly enough, my friend from fifth grade had always wanted to be a pilot, and I hadn’t talked to him in twenty years, and when I finally got in touch with him through the interwebs, he was like, “Hey, I’m actually a pilot now.” And I told him about the reliquary project, and I was like, “Can you do this?” And he goes, “Well, you know, I happen to be flying to Texas <i>tomorrow</i>.” And I go, “Oh, really? Where you going?” And he goes, “San Antonio.” And I’m like, “Guess where my doctor lives.” And so, the next <i>day</i>, my doctor’s drawing his blood.<br />
<br />
And I have a psychiatrist friend who’s also collected some of my work; he did my parents. My dad’s like, “Steve, why the <i>hell</i> do you wanna use my ~ why couldn’t you put <i>flowers</i> or something in there, something that’ll <i>sell</i>?” It was tough, getting my parents to give it up, but they did it.<br />
<br />
And then my friend, my guru buddy ~ who’s actually dead now ~ I had to go to Oklahoma to get his blood. But I couldn’t find a doctor in Oklahoma, so I went to a hospital and went to the supply room, and talked the guy there into giving me the phlebotomy kit. I’d seen it done enough times ~ I’d been a guinea pig at Pharmaco, so I’d had <i>my</i> blood drawn, like, eight million times when I was in my late twenties. So I did my first and only blood draw, ever. Luckily, this friend of mine had huge veins. And I did it perfectly: he didn’t even flinch! So I got his blood, and that was fun. Fun and scary ~ because I’m real squeamish about blood, so it helped me get through that.<br />
<br />
There was one point, where I was filling up one of the reliquaries ~ and you have to get a syringe and squirt the blood in, and you have to have an outlet for the air ~ and I filled it up too far and some of the blood just ~ <i>psssshhhhh!</i> ~ it sprayed out onto the wall. And I remember getting really dizzy. I almost passed out working on my own art.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: What about that arrangement with game designer <a href="http://richardgarriott.com/">Richard Garriott</a>, where you got some reliquaries taken to the International Space Station? How’d that come about?<br />
<br />
<b>Brudniak</b>: I met Richard a long time ago ~ back in the Eighties. And he had a Tesla coil, and I had made a piece of art with a Tesla coil ~ the San Antonio Museum of Art owns it now ~ and I’d kind of met him back when we had a science museum here: Discovery Hall. I didn’t get to know him very well … but there’s a group of artists called <a href="http://wiki.therobotgroup.org/wiki/Main_Page">The Robot Group</a>, real sweet group of people who are doing some neat stuff and bringing technology to kids, and another group called Jumpstart, and we got city grant money to do science workshops with kids at schools. And I think it was through one of the guys in The Robot Group that I got Richard’s number. And I sent him some photos of my work, and he eventually got back to me and said he wanted to buy a bunch of it. And he did; he bought a few pieces from me.<br />
<br />
And a few years later, he came over and bought some more work. So we began kind of a dialogue, and once in a while we'd chat online, and I got a tour of his awesome house. And then I heard him on the radio, talking about going to the space station. So I emailed him and said, "You know, I have this idea. If I make a piece of art, and you take it to the space station and bring it back, I'll let you keep it." And he was like, "Well, that's a great idea, I'm gonna be bringing up some of my mother's watercolors … "<br />
<br />
But he told me that the artwork had to be very small and not be able to crack or break and so on. And I'd been thinking about doing little blood reliquaries, but Richard said it couldn't be anything that could potentially contaminate the air in the space shuttle. And his <i>father</i> was an astronaut, so I got a clipping of Richard's hair, and a clipping of his father's hair, and got these little Cartier watches from the Seventies ~ these were <i>fake</i> Cartier watches ~ but they have a cool little window, kind of square, and there's tiny screws all the way around. I happened to find two of those at a thrift store and I'd been wanting to do something with them. So I pretty much ground everything off the watch until there was this perfect little window, and I took the guts out, put a little velvet in there, and stuck some of their hair in each one.<br />
<br />
My plan was that I would keep one, and Richard would keep one. And he didn't really do an art show up there, but I have a video where you can see him doing a demonstration with some tennis balls on the space shuttle, and the watches are stuck on this bulletin board behind him. He put Velcro on the back of them ~ everything he had was literally stuck on this bulletin board. And I was watching the video, and I was like, "There they are! There they are!" But Richard's plan was to keep <i>both</i> of them. Which he has, so far. But, fortunately, I have two <i>other</i> pieces of art that I borrowed back from him … <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> HEIROPHANTIC APERTURE (SAMSARA)</span><br />
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<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: So by now you're making a living from your art?<br />
<br />
<b>Brudniak</b>: It's <i>always</i> now.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: You … uh, you've <i>always</i> made … a living from … ?<br />
<br />
<b>Brudniak</b>: No ~ it's always <i>now</i>, Brenner.<br />
It's <i>always</i> now. <i>This</i> is the moment.<br />
<br />
<b>[Nota bene: <i>The wry grin, the Zen sparkle in the artist's eyes</i>. Nota bene: <i>The frown, the flow-thwarted frustration in your reporter's eyes</i>. Nota bene: <i>He's a sincere man, this Brudniak, a decent man; but he will fuck with you</i>.]</b><br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: No, I mean ~ look, at some point ~ at <i>some</i> point ~ <i>including</i> now ~<br />
you started making a living by selling your art. Is that right?<br />
<br />
<b>Brudniak</b>: I've always made <i>part</i> of my living selling art, because, eventually, I sell every piece that I make. But some of them take a while ~ like that very first piece, with the wooden banana: It was a very good piece, but it took twenty-some-odd years to sell. And I'm just now getting prices on my work where I can ~ I mean, if I sold everything I made, immediately, I couldn't <i>quite</i> make a living at it. Because, in a good year, I can only make two or three large pieces a year, with another five or so smaller pieces. In my best year, I think I made nine pieces of art. The piece I'm working on now, I've been working on it since last October, maybe earlier than that. And hopefully somebody will buy it and I'll get close to $20,000 or so for it. But it's a tough sell ~ somebody's got to want a weird-ass thing, and they have to have <i>room</i> for it. They've got to be <i>rich</i>, pretty much. <i>I</i> certainly could never afford …<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: To buy your own art?<br />
<br />
<b>Brudniak</b>: Yeah, you know? The really sad thing in the art world is that, if you go 25 or 30 years and you're still selling your big pieces of art for a thousand dollars, people are gonna be like … well, the collectors want to buy valuable work that's <i>valuable</i>, you know? So I raised my prices a couple years ago and was still able to sell stuff. But it's a slow process. I rent out space, part of the property I own, and last year was a really good art year ~ so my income was split about fifty-fifty, between the art sales and the being-an-evil-landlord sales. But the only reason I <i>bought</i> the property and turned it into rentals was so I'd have time to make art and not have to worry about whether I sold anything. Because the market is so unpredictable.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: And times are hard.<br />
<br />
<b>Brudniak</b>: And people have different tastes ~ everybody buys for different reasons. You might buy a, like, a Jeff Koons because you can <i>invest</i> with it later or something, you know? There's a lot of people that are infected by the Emperor's New Clothes virus: Ninety percent of the art world is.<br />
<br />
<br />Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-36919742518553568032012-04-05T10:00:00.000-05:002015-05-16T11:42:14.205-05:00NAKATOMI INC:The Amazing Adventures of Tim Doylein the World of Limited-Edition Prints<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">PHOTO BY <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonbolden">JON BOLDEN</a></span></div>
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<b>He’s not a robot, no.<br />He’s not made from the same material<br />as those giant Transformers he enjoys so much.<br /><br />But Tim Doyle, ladies and gentlemen, Tim Doyle is a fucking <i>machine</i>.</b><br />
<br />
That’s why the man was able to run three different comic-book stores at once. That’s how he could take the <a href="http://drafthouse.com/austin">Alamo Drafthouse Cinema</a>’s <a href="http://www.mondotees.com/POSTERS_c_12.html">Mondo Tees</a> store and guide it to become the successful, internationally acclaimed graphic-design venture it is today. And that’s why, post-Alamo, he’s achieving the same thing with his own <a href="http://store.nakatomiinc.com/Collection.aspx">Nakatomi Inc.</a> while helping his wife raise their son and infant daughter and ride herd on what seems to be a constant flood of stray and/or adopted cats.<br />
<br />
Because the short, hefty, raven-haired and quick-witted artist, curmudgeon, and serial entrepreneur is a <i>machine</i>.<br />
<br />
“Brenner,” says Doyle, shaking his head, scooting another cat off his busy drawing table. “I’m not a machine. Dude. I’m just as human as you are.”<br />
<br />
“Tim,” I tell him. “<i>Metaphorically</i>, Tim.”<br />
<br />
“Brenner,” begins Doyle, but … is distracted as two more cats, appearing as if from some eldritch portal, grab hold of a still-wet paintbrush.<br />
<br />
Of course it’s not just the <i>drive</i> of this man that equals success. No, Timothy Paul Doyle had a lot of raw talent to begin with, yes, he could do certain things with marks on paper, things that resembled the real world at least enough to be recognizable. But that foundation only led to more effort; even that advantage was met with further diligence. Doyle honed his talent over time, producing numerous acrylic paintings of, e.g., Vespa scooters and oldschool telephones and personal friends and pop-culture icons … writing and drawing a daily journal in three-panel comic form, covering every waking day for two years … creating those first movie-based posters when he started at Mondo Tees.<br />
<br />
And then came <i><a href="http://www.theintergalacticnemesis.com/">The Interglactic Nemesis</a></i>.<br />
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<b>Jason Neulander</b>’s old-timey sci-fi radio serial, performed live by a sharp cast of voice talents (and featuring <b>Buzz Moran</b> on sound effects), was a cornball throwback to the ripping yarns of yesteryear. It was also, Neulander figured while plotting to spread the goofy hit across as many media as possible, perfect for adapting as a comicbook series ~ with the comic-book further adapted as a quasi-animated slideshow, to be projected on a giant screen behind the internationally touring cast.<br />
<br />
The adaptations would require hundreds of new, full-color images, dozens of pages of sequential art hewing to the mutated script, and all of it on a tight schedule with deadlines harder than, oh, I don’t know, <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Adamantium">adamantium</a>?<br />
<br />
Doyle was offered the job; he took it and charged right in.<br />
<br />
Accommodating that much illustration under those conditions, turning out seven complete issues of around 28 pages each (in addition to collateral graphics) in one year ~ all while making sure Nakatomi remained a viable business ~ was the creative boot camp that pushed Doyle’s drawing and page-composition abilities from <i>yeah, that’s pretty good</i> all the way to <i>Okay: Doyle, Pope, Cooke, Los Bros, ah, I suppose it’s just a matter of what sort of thing one is looking for at the time, y’know?</i><br />
<br />
Seriously: Just look at the pieces included here;<br />
or at the <a href="http://store.nakatomiinc.com/timdoyle.aspx">greater variety</a> on that Nakatomi site.<br />
<br />
Impressive? Certainly. And yet another reason<br />
for me to shut up and let the man himself do more of the talking …<br />
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<b> </b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Vietnam on Wheels</span><br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: So, above this sentence, that's what I first saw in the Bicycle Prints show at <a href="http://galleryblacklagoon.com/">Gallery Black Lagoon</a>: the <i>Vietnam on Wheels</i> poster that seems a bit more, ah, subdued? More subdued than the work you usually do. Tim, what can you tell me about that one?<br />
<br />
<b>Doyle</b>: I was really happy with the way it turned out ~ it looks different from anything else I’ve done. And I picked the 16 x 20 size, too, because it’s a size I haven’t worked in before, and it forced me to make a couple of different compositional choices. It’s not out of my wheelhouse as far as the drawing method, but the subject matter is.<br />
<br />
I’d just finished a poster for <i>Apocalypse Now</i>, and a couple months before that I’d done a poster for <i>Full Metal Jacket</i>. And I really like the way Vietnam looks, so I was doing a little Googling around, and there’s this <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/vietnam_on_wheels/">Flickr group called Vietnam On Wheels</a>, and I was overwhelmed by all the scooters and bicycles and the different forms of transportation, the three-wheeled motorcarts. And there was an artist out of China, actually, who did this amazing print of Chinese street life, and I was like, “Oh boy, I really want to do that.”<br />
<br />
Because I do a lot of cityscape stuff. Like that <i>Reservoir Dogs</i> print, there’s Harvey Keitel and the car and the blood, and it really looks cool, but I’m <i>really</i> into drawing the trainyard and the telephone pole in the background. I just really like city junk.<br />
<br />
And Asian countries ~ Vietnam in particular ~ it looks like it’s still on planet Earth, yeah, but it’s just weird enough, y’know what I mean? None of the signs are in English, obviously, but they’re still using the English alphabet, which I guess is from the French influence. But what really gets me is the way their electrical grid is put together, like everything is bolted on and thrown onto these buildings? Like, in America, there’s powerlines everywhere, but we go out of our way to make them not so obtrusive? But looking at the Vietnam streets, it’s like, now <i>that</i> is an electrical accident waiting to happen. And it’s really appealing to me.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: How has doing comics, sequential art, influenced your compositions<br />
for a single-panel work?<br />
<br />
<b>Doyle</b>: A lot of the stuff I do, I kind of try to capture a scene in a story. And when you’re doing comic-books, you have to leave a lot of room for the lettering? Which means you have to make compositional choices about all the breathing space in the background. Like, it can’t just be close-ups of faces, or else the lettering bubbles are gonna wind up on everybody’s forehead. And I think that influenced me a lot, working on <i>Intergalactic Nemesis</i> and having to put in a lot of, I mean, it’s a wordy play, in many regards, so you have to leave a lot of space for word balloons. And when you get away from that sort of thing, you’re like, “Oh, wow, what do I do with all this extra space back here?” And you start drawing the trees and the surrounding environment. And I’m obviously influenced by <a href="http://www.vachss.com/media/comics/geof_darrow.html">Geof Darrow</a> ~ I love his stuff so much. And no matter how much detail I put into a panel, there’d be still <i>another</i> detail that Geof Darrow would have put in. His stuff is like a fractal: The closer you get, the more there is to see. A lot of poster artists take the easy way out and just do big portraits, you know, a big essential image. But I’m more interested in setting an environment.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> The Sea Also Rises: King Crab</span><br />
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<b>Doyle</b>: It’s graphic design versus illustration, is what it comes down to. I like to think my posters are well graphically designed but still <i>drawn</i>. Something I’ve learned by looking at a lot of comic-book art is that most comic-book artists are not good graphic designers. They can tell a story through art, which is important, but they can’t … like, there can be a guy who does amazing interiors but he can’t draw a cover to save his damn life. Because the cover has to hang together in the way a single panel doesn’t. That’s something I’m learning more and more as I go on.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: So you’re running a successful business; you’re creating your own works and selling them; you’re commissioning works by other artists and selling those; you’re making original illustrations for some pretty high-profile galleries and venues; you’re making a living doing what you love. Why don’t all artists do this sort of thing?<br />
<br />
<b>Doyle</b>: People get this tunnel vision, y’know? Like “I wanna get my artwork out there, and it’s gotta be <i>this</i> specific way,” and they miss all these other opportunities. In the modern marketplace for art and music, the old ways are dying off, and you’ve gotta get with it or else you’re in trouble.<br />
<br />
And the pop-culture silkscreen art game, it’s like I helped build that niche through my work over at Mondo. We built this whole collectors’ community. There was a community that was already into buying rock posters, and we took those same artists and had them doing movie posters, and the appeal was so much wider. Because people were like, “Oh, that’s a brilliant poster – but it’s for Phish.” Whereas everybody likes <b>John Carpenter</b>’s <i>The Thing</i>, so if you can get <a href="http://www.tstout.com/welcome">Tyler Stout</a>, who’s a really good artist, to do his take on <i>The Thing</i>, that’s a home run.<br />
<br />
I mean, I’m not saying that I invented pop-culture silkscreens, by any means, but we kicked it up in a way that I don’t think had been done before. And I decided I no longer wanted to be on the administration side of it, I wanted to be on the <i>creation</i> side of it. And here I am now: It’s what I do.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Apocalypse Now</span><br />
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I’ve got two people working for me. <b>Sean Robb</b>, who used to work for me at Mondo Tees, and <b>Zane Thomas</b> ~ who also used to work at the Alamo. They work part-time, maybe 25, 30 hours a week. Sean, because he’s got a license, does a lot of the errands for me. I can just loan him my truck and say, “Okay, I need this, this, this, and this done today,” and he does that. And when he’s not doing that, he’s printing. And Zane does all the file prep. Like, I do my own color separations when I’m creating a piece, but we do take on print jobs from other artists, so they send the files to Zane and he does all the prep and the printing as well. And Angie [Doyle’s wife] does all the accounting, the customer service, oversees the packing and shipping. And I talk to the artists, make the deals, and do my own artwork.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: And what time do you start drawing?<br />
<br />
<b>Doyle</b>: It varies wildly, depending on what needs to get done. Like, the day before a big release, the day usually starts off with making the blog posts, taking photos, stuff like that. I’ll start drawing anywhere from 7 or 8pm to midnight, sometimes work until 2 in the morning.<br />
<br />
I wish I had more time to draw, but there are just so many other details. And I really try hard to promote the other artists on the site, because, y’know, they’re coming to me and I feel I owe it to them to sell the artwork so I can pay them. Which is why I like to work with people who are ~ not that they’re hungry, like they’re poor or they need the money ~ but that they want to make it work. Because there are artists who reach a certain station, where they don’t have to hustle so much? And a lot of artists are pretty terrible at self-promotion. And if they’re not pushing it on their end, sometimes it doesn’t do well.<br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: And when it <i>does</i> do well, are you and the other artists ~ how to put this other than crassly? ~ are you raking in the dough?<br />
<br />
<b>Doyle</b>: Well, here I am, two and a half years after leaving Mondo Tees, and I’ve quadrupled my income over what I was making there.<br />
<br />
And all my deals with artists are 50-50. If it’s something I’m publishing of theirs, it’s 50-50. And I take all the financial risk up front. So if they do something really good, it works out great for them.<br />
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But it’s a crap shoot ~ you never know. Like, some of the best stuff I’ve ever done sells terribly. And some of the more mediocre stuff I’ve done sells amazingly well, so I know my barometer is off.<br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: But sometimes it’s right on, too, or else you wouldn’t be where you are right now. Which seems like a good place to be.<br />
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<b>Doyle</b>: Yeah, well, it’s not that I want to be famous or anything. But it is good seeing people say nice things about me on the Internet, y’know?<br />
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<br />Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-73902356565405314382012-04-04T10:00:00.000-05:002012-04-04T13:45:12.166-05:00JOHN ERLER is the master of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Master Pancake Theater, the singer for Journey cover band Odyssey, the host of KOOP Radio’s ‘Elk Mating Ritual,’ and he, ah, teaches Latin at Texas State University?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">PHOTO BY <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonbolden">JON BOLDEN</a></span>
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Uh, <i>no</i>, actually. At least, not lately.<br />
He used to do <i>all</i> those things, yes, but ~<br />
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“I’m not still teaching Latin,” says Erler, squinting as the afternoon sun, suddenly unclouded, reaches through the window to stab his eyes and glint off the side of his freshly shaved pate. “And the Journey cover band Odyssey doesn’t exist anymore,” he says. He shrugs, almost apologetic. “I don’t know if that ruins the whole dramatic structure of your story, but ~”<br />
<br />
Well, of course it does, Erler.<br>The entire goddam arc is shattered now,<br>the whole narrative is nothing but a sad shambles.<br />
<br />
Sweet bleeding Christ, Erler.<br />
<br />
No wonder <i><a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2004/08/30/daily16.html?page=all">Mister Sinus Theatre</a></i>, the live version of <i>Mystery Science Theatre 3000</i> that you created with <a href="http://owenegerton.com/">Owen Egerton</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/jermpollet">Jerm Pollet</a> and performed with such fierce energy and hilarious antics that it became one of the brightest gems in the early <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamo_Drafthouse_Cinema">Alamo Drafthouse Cinema</a> crown ~ no wonder that zany brilliance, <a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2007-01-19/437370/">wracked by personality conflicts</a>, ended in so vitriol-laden a manner that litigation was necessary and Pollet left for Brooklyn so he wouldn’t have to put up with your dramatic-structure-ruining ass anymore.<br />
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And now here you are, Erler.<br>No longer teaching Latin<br>or singing & playing bass in that Journey cover band.<br>Just. To. Fucking. Thwart. My. Story.<br />
<br />
I should’ve known.<br />
<br />
But let’s just <i>pretend</i> that isn’t the case. Let’s <i>pretend</i> that you didn’t do this on purpose because you’ve always fancied yourself a sort of real-life <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Doom">Victor Von Doom</a> and figured to use me as your own personal Reed Richards here, okay?<br />
<br />
Why’d you ditch the Latin?<br />
<br />
“Master Pancake was just taking up too much of my time, and I felt I had to devote all my energy to that,” says Erler. “Not just because it pays the bills, but because it seems like more of a calling than Latin. As much as I love imagining that I’m some kind of a Renaissance Man, I just, y’know, I was traveling to San Marcos, teaching at Texas State two days a week to a group of five kids ~ which I <i>loved</i> doing, I love the small class size, everybody gets something out of it ~ but, financially, it wasn’t making sense. And it was a lot of energy driving down there, making lesson plans, all of that. Because I can’t do anything half-hearted. So it didn’t make sense.”<br />
<br />
Well, damn, Erler, that sounds almost legit. Listening to you say that as we sit across from each other at a small table in <a href="http://www.quacksbakery.com/">Quack’s 43rd Street Bakery</a> in the heart of Austin’s Hyde Park neighborhood, I can almost believe that your reasons were other than an attempt at compromising my journalistic integrity. Of course, it does rather force the question of why a man gets so into a dead language to begin with. And I’ll ask you about that, later, and about what happened with Odyssey, too.<br />
<br />
But first I want you to notice, please, the young woman who’s sitting at the table next to us. Don’t let her notice that you’re noticing, okay, but check her out. Not because she’s uncommonly beautiful or anything ~ eh, she looks alright, for a kid ~ but because, man, seriously, she’s been listening to our conversation since we sat down. She may <i>look</i> like she’s obliviously nosedeep in that textbook she’s got with her, doing the whole student-in-a-coffeeshop thing, but I swear she’s been following every word we’ve said.<br />
<br />
There, you see what I mean? The way she kind of pauses in her reading and tilts her head so that her left ear’s getting more soundwaves from our direction? Okay, great. Just so I know that you know, Erler. Just so we’re on the same page here.<br />
<br />
Now let’s talk about Master Pancake. Because after Mister Sinus split up, it was obvious you were going to continue the show somehow. Because, well, you’re amazingly funny, and the show was just too damned good to let die. So you re-named it <a href="http://drafthouse.com/series/master_pancake/austin">Master Pancake Theater</a>, and now you and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000484971536&sk=wall">Joe Parsons</a> and another comic or two sit in the front row of the theatre and crack wise about whatever cheesy blockbuster you’ve decided to mock that week. And you do a sort of halftime show, too, stopping the movie at some obvious or random point and performing a relevant comedic sketch in which, more often than not, you wind up clad in nothing but your tighty-whities. Or, ah, tighty-<i>reddies</i>, as the case may be:<br />
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<b> <span style="font-size: x-small;">PHOTO BY BEN BARTLEY</span></b><br />
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<b>Erler</b>: Well, yeah, It <i>started off</i> as me and Joe Parsons and a rotating third member. But at this point Joe’s a very irregular player. About a year and a half ago, he decided that he was kind of gonna settle down, and he took a fulltime job selling insurance ~ God bless him. For some people, that’s the right thing to do, y’know? He still does occasional shows with us, like he just did the <b>Nicolas Cage-A-Thon</b> with us, which was <i>fantastic</i>. But right now it’s just me and two other rotating slots. But the flipside of that is that we’ve been doing Pancake for so long that there’s a pretty big pool of people who’ve rotated in and out, who can fill Joe’s shoes.<br />
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<b>Brenner</b>: Are there any plans to allow or start different Master Pancakes in other locations? I mean, now that <b>Tim & Karrie League</b> are expanding the Alamo empire beyond Texas?<br />
<br>
<b>Erler</b>: This is an ongoing conversation. My first instinct is that it’s possible to do a local version of Master Pancake in every outlet, but it probably wouldn’t be easy. Whatever weird art it is that we do, in talking and making fart noises over movies, it’s an art that I’ve been practicing for 11 years now. There’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.<br><br>
What I’m excited about is the possibility of doing shows in other cities. We just went to Houston back in March and had a great reception. We did two shows on a Saturday night, sold out a 300-person room for the first show, got 250 for the second one ~ even bigger than a typical night in Austin, and a big party feeling. And I want to make sure that, as the Alamo expands, we go to all the different places ~ that we go to San Antonio and so on. And if and when they finally get to New York and L.A., that we go there. But the question remains in my mind if we can start up a troupe in every city. And I don’t think it’s feasible to start up a Master Pancake troupe in every single city that the Alamo goes to.<br><br>
Honestly, even if we wanted to, greater minds and comedic talents than ours have tried and failed to have national chains of comedy troupes. Like Second City, which started out in Toronto and Chicago: A few years ago they tried to have an outlet in Las Vegas and L.A., but, for whatever reason, they couldn’t do it.<br><br>
I mean, comedy is hard, it’s a hard art, and it takes a lot of not only talent, but resources and money. And it takes the right kind of talent, too. It wouldn’t work in every town. Austin is just such a hotbed of the right elements. People really love movies here, they love comedy, they’re willing to try weird things. I’m not trying to exclude the idea of Pancakes spreading all over the country, it’s just that it’s not something I’m that excited about personally. I like crafting the shows and making sure each show is really, really funny. But, again, if and when the Alamo opens up in a market like L.A. or New York, then I’d be excited to go there and maybe try to train up a troupe and see how it goes – but not in every little market. But I’d like to at least travel to every city on a semi-regular basis and do shows. We have such a great time when we go to Houston, and now there’s a potential that the Alamo might be opening up in Colorado and Dallas and Baton Rouge.<br /><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: And, at present, Master Pancake Theatre continues to pack them in locally. And although you’re not teaching Latin anymore, and the rock & roll powerhouse called Odyssey is disbanded, you’re still doing your "Elk Mating Ritual" show, right?<br /><br>
<b>Erler</b>: Yeah, I’m still there, still <a href="http://www.koop.org/blogs/view.category.php?139">doing my thing on KOOP</a>, on Thursdays from 4:30 to 6pm.<br /><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: And how’d you get started on that? It’s kind of a long-running gig, isn’t it?<br /><br>
<b>Erler</b>: The original "Elk Mating" show started in 1998 or 1999 when I was still in grad school at UT, and I started working at KVRX, the student radio station.<br><br>
I’d done a radio show back in college in the ’80s, at <b>Swarthmore</b> outside of Philadelphia. I had a radio partner, and we’d do these goofy shows, play some classic rock and talk in between the music, do skits and stuff like that, make each other laugh. But we found this whale record, whale sounds recorded in the 1960s, and that was our favorite thing to play. Like, in the middle of “Stairway to Heaven,” we’d crank up the whale noises ~ and we just thought it was hysterical. And it was college, where you can do anything you want, so we’d do all kinds of stupid things, but we’d always come back to the whale noises. And that was probably 1988 or ’89.<br><br>
So fast-forward 10 years, I’m in graduate school at UT, and I decide that I’m probably not going to be an academic as a full-time profession. I realize that I like it but I don’t love it. I felt like, I’m a <i>performer</i>, I’ve got something in me that I need to get out, and it’s not going to be fulfilled by being a, y’know, Classics professor.<br><br>
So I started looking for other opportunites to perform. And God bless <a href="http://www.kvrx.org/">KVRX</a>, because they were there at the right time, and it’s such a great environment for young kids doing crazy stuff, a fertile melting pot of really fun people. And I was the oldest one there, a grad student, so I started doing radio at KVRX.<br><br>
But I needed some kind of a hook for the show, so I looked through the CD stacks, and they had this CD of elk sounds. And I put it in and previewed it, and I was like, “Wow! This is a lot like those whale noises back in college! I could probably build the show around this thing ...” And sure enough, that’s what I did.<br><br>
From the first episode, I just put in the CD of elk noises ~ <i>wreeeeeeeeeeee</i> ~ and played music around it. Back then I was, I think, playing the CD through the entire show. Later I got more selective, and now sometimes I’ll play it and sometimes I won’t. But it started out as the foundation for the whole show, and I’d let it play for long stretches and just let things get real quiet ~ I don’t know if it was <i>contemplative</i> silence or just <i>uncomfortable</i> silence, but, hey, experimental radio.<br><br>
And I started building little bits around that. And they had a phone line that you could put people on the air with, and I was fascinated with that, the interactivity of it. Then I left UT around 2004 ~ I didn’t get my Ph.D., I got my M.A., but I didn’t finish the Ph.D. ~ and I gave up the show there.<br><br>
And for about a year I was floating around with no radio show, and then I started working at KOOP, which shares the dial with KVRX, and I finally got a show there. And I was like, “I’ll keep playing those elk noises, call it the same thing, it’s basically the same idea.”<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: So then, following that brief, ah, interregnum ~<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: Oooh, nice.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: Ha ~ a little Latin for ya.<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: That’s a whole <i>lotta</i> Latin.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: And you’ve been doing "Elk Mating" for over 10 years?<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: Yeah, <i>12</i> years. With a year’s hiatus. So, <i>11</i> years.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: And is the show pretty much the same as when you started?<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: The format of "Elk Mating Ritual" has varied from day one. These days, it’s whatever music I’m interested in and listening to, and whatever themes I can find.<br><br>
On my good days, I can come up with a good theme, and I do a bunch of research and make it really interesting. On a bad day, I’ll just recycle the same old crap I’ve been playing, play them in a different order and hope that interesting people will call up and request something or add to the conversation. The elk songs and the phone calls are the consistent things that are always happening on the show.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: Do you have regular callers?<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: Yeah, and they fade in and out through the years. Sometimes they won’t call for years, and then I’ll hear from them again. There’s one guy who’s an old Austin dude, he lives somewhere around here, who will always call in and pretend to be Bob Schneider, the musician.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: But it’s not <a href="http://www.bobschneider.com/">Bob Schneider</a>?<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: It’s not Bob Schneider.<br><br>
<b>Girl at the next table, leaning over</b>: I’m sorry, excuse me, I’ve been listening and ~ that’s my <i>dad</i>.<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: That’s your ~ are you serious? Oh my God ...<br><br>
<b>Girl</b>: Yeah, I thought, oh, I know who he’s talking about.<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: That … is incredible.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: Man, I <i>love</i> this city.<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: What’s your name?<br><br>
<b>Girl</b>: I’m Annie.<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: Annie, pleased to meet you.<br><br>
<b>Annie</b>: I recognized your voice, but ~<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: Annie. Craig Long’s daughter. Annie Long?<br><br>
<b>Annie</b>: Yeah, I didn’t want to, I mean, this is gonna wind up in some publication?<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: Yeah, tell your dad to get a copy of <i>Minerva’s Wreck</i>.<br><br>
<b>Annie</b>: When I heard you, I was like, I know who that is.<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: "That’s that guy my <i>dad</i> listens to!"<br><br>
<b>Annie</b>: And I was a "Youth Spin" kid, so I was on KOOP, and I’d always listen to you.<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: I never realized that the daughter of Craig Long was on "Youth Spin."<br><br>
<b>Annie</b>: I’m sorry if I interrupted ~<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: No, I’m really glad you did. This is probably the most interesting thing in the whole article.<br><br>
<b>Annie</b>: Oh, good, I was worried ~<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: No, no, you did just the right thing. And I’m glad you caught me before I said anything slanderous about your dad. But I have to say, his Bob Schneider impersonation is <i>terrible</i>. It doesn’t bear any relation to the actual Bob Schneider, it’s just <i>a different voice than his actual voice</i>. But it’s very funny.<br><br>
<b>[Brief pause here while mutual farewells are wished and hands are shook<br>and coffee cups rearranged and so on.]</b><br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: So, then: Latin. Even if you’re not teaching it these days, the idea that Mr. John Erler, the guy who does those smart but wacky Master Pancake shows and plays elk noises on the radio, is also a Latin scholar … well, I was a bit gobsmacked when I heard about it. When did you get interested in Latin?<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: I was brought up in a Catholic household, and I think that’s part of the whole thing. And I was a strange, outsider kind of kid from a very young age. In high school I was offered the opportunity to take ancient Greek, so I jumped at that. And I was good at it. I was a really geeky kid, and I did Latin as kind of a side thing, because, as a Classics major, you had to study both ancient languages. And in college I majored in Greek, and I was <i>scornful</i> of Latin at the time. I was like, “Latin is an inferior, barbaric language. Greek is the way to express yourself ~ like all the great philosophers.”<br><br>
But there was this guy, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Foster_(Latinist)">Reginald Foster</a>, who is a monk who works at the Vatican. He’s one of the people who translate all the official papal proclamations into Latin. They’re drafted in Italian or whatever, and then translated, and he’s one of the guys of however many in the Vatican office.<br><br>
So I heard about him, and he teaches a summer course to anybody who’s interested in <i>spoken</i> Latin. He’s amazing ~ he’s one of the few people in the world who can actually <i>speak</i> Latin. And I had nothing better to do in the middle of grad school, so I went and took this course with him, and I fell in love with the language. Because of this guy, this amazingly weird, perverse, and charismatic dude.<br><br>
He’s a round-headed, bald guy with thick glasses, probably in his late 60s by now. He’s featured in that Bill Maher movie that came out a few years ago, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0815241/">Religulous</a></i>? He’s one of the few religious people who doesn’t come off as a nut in the movie. And he works at the Vatican, but he’s this amazing character. Like, if you ask him his opinion on things, he’s like “Oh, I’m an atheist; I don’t really believe in anything; it’s all nonsense.” But, I mean, he’s a <i>monk</i>. That’s Reginald Foster, and he’s just the best, <i>best</i> teacher in the world, y’know? And he teaches all these classes for free. You can go to Rome and take the classes yourself, all the way from the beginning level to the spoken, advanced level.<br><br>
So I ended up going to his summer program in 1995, and I went back again the next summer because I loved it so much. And then I wrote a Fulbright proposal based around studying with him, and I got a Fulbright fellowship and I went back again for a whole year in 1998. So it’s been a long sort of thing with Latin.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: And are there any bits of Roman wisdom, as prescribed by the ancients, that you’ve personally taken to heart so well that you have them memorized?<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: Roman wisdom? Well, obviously, the fact that Carthage must be destroyed is always weighing heavily on my mind. You know, <i>Carthago delenda est</i>? <b>[laughs]</b><br><br>
That may be a question I have to think about and get back to you on. But, I’ll tell you ~ this may be a little tangential ~ learning Latin is such a complicated thing. Not that it’s beyond the reach of anybody, but you become really familiar with grammar. It’s really a great mental exercise, a sort of cerebral juggling act. And ~<br>
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<b>[And here the man digresses into a sort of primer on Latin cases and conjugations, talking about “the nominative” and “the genitive” and “the passive paraphrastic” and so on, going on for a while as grackles prowl in search of dropped crumbs beyond the coffeeshop’s big main window and I note that the spots of coffee spilled earlier have joined on the floor to form what looks like a miniature, silhouetted profile of Abe Vigoda. I begin to make a mental note to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abe_Vigoda">check Wikipedia and see if Vigoda is actually still alive</a>, but am distracted ~ and compelled ~ by Erler now comparing the concentration necessary for keeping track of Latin linguistic details to what he does during a Master Pancake show.]</b><br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: When I’ve got a microphone in my hand, I’m not working off of notes. It’s like a play, a three-man play, and we’ve memorized all these lines for an hour-and-a-half performance. And not only have we memorized the lines and the jokes, but each line that we deliver is like a little bit of acting. You can’t just say the line straight, there’s always something behind it. You’re either pretending you’re doing it in the voice of Nicolas Cage, or in the voice of Sean Connery, or maybe you’re yourself and you’re taking a wry view of events, or you’re making a fart noise ~ there are all these different inflections you can use to deliver a joke. I’m not a good actor, but I have a basic ability to shade the things that I say with mood or tone. So when you memorize all these lines, you have to remember how you inflect them each time. And if you’re good, you’ll listen to what the audience thinks of the lines you’re saying. You’ll pay attention to the ones that get a laugh and the ones that don’t, and you’ll <i>file that away as you’re doing the show</i>, and you’ll tell yourself, like, “Okay, at the 10 o’clock show later tonight, I’ll say that line a <i>different</i> way,” or “I’m gonna drop that line; I’m gonna trim the bush so that other jokes can flourish.”<br><br>
I guess I must be anal-retentive or OCD or something, but there are a million different considerations that you’re going through as you’re performing this spectacle on-mic. And sometimes, as I’m doing it, I’m thinking, “I’m glad I took Latin and Greek, because that was perfect training for compartmentalizing all these different obscure little considerations.”<br><br>
But maybe that’s just life, I don’t know.<br>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">PHOTO BY <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonbolden">JON BOLDEN</a></span>
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<b>Brenner</b>: And where does the cover band Odyssey fit into the life of John Erler?<br>Or, I guess, where <i>did</i> it fit?<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: You should talk with the two ladies who started the ball rolling, <b>Caroline O’Connor</b> and <b>Elisabeth Sikes</b>. Those two gals were friends, and I knew them ~ I don’t even know how, anymore ~ and the two of them, before I got involved with it, wanted to learn some rock & roll instruments, because neither of them played anything.<br><br>
So Elisabeth bought an electric guitar and started taking lessons. And Caroline bought a drum set and was either teaching herself or taking lessons, maybe both. And at a certain point they contacted me and asked if I was interested in being in a Journey cover band.<br><br>
And I was like, “Well, what’s the deal?” And they were like, “Well, we’re teaching ourselves how to play these instruments, and we thought it’d be fun if you came along.” This was like 2005, 2006.<br><br>
And I didn’t even know what I was gonna do in the framework of the band, so I just sat in on one of their practices. I didn’t even have a bass at that point, I just brought a toy accordion and an acoustic guitar with me, and figured I’d try to fit in. And I realized when I sat in that what the band needed was somebody to play bass. So I went out and I bought a bass. And it was just amazing the way it came together so fast. I’d sung in bands before, but I’d never played bass in a band before, we were all just teaching ourselves how to play.<br><br>
For a long time it was just the three of us. We’d listen to the records and we’d try to, you know. And I don’t even know why Journey was the group that everybody thought would be a good idea. But the gals wanted to be in a rock & roll band, and they loved Journey, it was their decision.<br><br>
I never was a huge Journey fan, but I enjoyed the songs I heard on the radio. Who <i>doesn’t</i> like “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfUYuIVbFg0">Don’t Stop Believin’</a>”? I didn’t know any of their non-radio songs. But, then again, they have so many <i>radio</i> songs, there’s probably 20 songs people recognize as Journey songs without knowing anything about them.<br><br>
So, in a way, it was a great idea. And, in a way, it was a terrible idea. Because, y’know, my voice is like down here; I’m a baritone. And Steve Perry is this classic tenor or alto, I don’t even know what he is, but he’s got this amazing voice and it’s way up in the register. So it was a terrible idea for me to sing, and a terrible idea to do this intricate rock & roll music with people who’d never picked up the instruments before. But maybe that’s why it worked: Because it was a ridiculous idea.<br><br>
And we put a lot of love into it, spent a long time learning how to play the stuff, and arranging the songs. And we didn’t do them ~ if you’ll excuse the pun ~ <i>faithfully</i>; we did them in our own style. Like “Open Arms,” this classic ballad in three-quarters time. It just didn’t sound good. If you don’t know your instruments, you don’t wanna play a slow song, because it accentuates all your mistakes. So we decided to put it into 4/4 time, sped it up, I was thumping on the bass, and it sounded <i>great</i>. The arrangement was completely different, but it somehow worked. And I’ve always been into covers and fucking with originals and putting accents on different things, so that was perfect. And Caroline got really good at drums really fast, she nailed it in a short time. And that’s what we needed, because she was the glue that held us together.<br><br>
For a while we’d just play houseparties and stuff, friends would invite us to jam. But I could see, from the very first show … you know how, when you’re doing something, you don’t know how it’s going? You might be good or you might be terrible, but you can’t tell because you’re too deep into it. But you can gauge how you’re doing by <i>other people’s reactions</i>. And people were having a great time, they were smiling and dancing. I still don’t know exactly what it was ~ the chemistry, the fact that it was Journey songs when it was still a little bit uncool ~ I don’t know, maybe it <i>still</i> is uncool ~ but maybe it was that point at which something uncool was starting to <i>feel</i> cool?<br><br>
And the crowds kept getting bigger and bigger. And then we brought my sister along, because we were getting good at it and we wanted to add a little more sound to our sound, so she played on a couple of songs with us ~ on violin. And violin, yeah, that’s totally un-Journey. But it sounded great. And then we did a Journey tribute night at the Alamo and the place was sold out … and things kept growing, and we got more gigs that made money, and word was spreading. And Caroline knew a trombone player, and he came along.<br><br>
And, again, I mean a <i>violin</i> player and a <i>trombone</i> player in a Journey cover band? But it sounded great, and we had this full sound with five people in the band.<br><br>
And we just played and played and played. And at a certain point, we just got tired of it. After a couple years, we couldn’t put as much energy into it. And then Caroline moved to L.A., and that was the final nail in the coffin of the whole thing.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: Ah, people are always moving to L.A. or Chicago or somewhere, aren’t they?<br>But you just bought a house.<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: Yeah, I’m not going anywhere.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: And you’ve been here for a while, right? Since the early ’90s?<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: Well, I was <i>born</i> in Austin, in 1968. I spent my first 12 years here, went to Bryker Woods Elementary, O. Henry Junior High. And then my parents moved to New York. But first they moved to Dallas, so I lived there for a year, then spent my high school years in New York City, in the Bronx, for four years. And then I went to college in Pennsylvania, lived in San Francisco for a couple of years, and moved back to Austin in ’93 for graduate school.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: Why’d your parents move to New York?<br><br>
<b>Erler</b>: Well, my mother, to her credit, got her act together at the age of 40 ~ my parents were living a sort of slacker lifestyle here in Austin ~ but she hunkered down and finished her Ph.D. and started applying for jobs as a professor and got one in NYC. It was great for her, but no fun for us who had to be uprooted. We <i>loved</i> Austin. And we spent this weird, purgatory year in Dallas. I can’t even explain what the rationale was behind that, because we knew we were moving to NYC, but my dad had a job in Dallas. So Mom went to New York while we went and lived with Dad in Dallas for a year. And Dallas after Austin, it was ~ you know, it was terrible.<br /><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: And then New York, Pennsylvania, San Francisco, and grad school here.<br>And then, of course, there’s no way in hell you could leave, right?<br /><br>
<b>Erler</b>: As it turned out. But Austin wasn’t really my first choice of grad school ~ I would’ve rather stayed in the Bay Area. But, well … God had a plan. <b>[laughs]</b> I’m not religious, but I just saw <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059742/">The Sound of Music</a></i> 40 times in a row ~ because we’re making fun of it ~ and they keep saying “If God wills it” and “God’s plan,” y’know?<br><br>So the universe wanted me to come back here and, yup, I never left.<br><br><br>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-42995659471393055442012-04-03T10:00:00.000-05:002012-04-03T10:00:12.482-05:00LAUREN LEVY makes Intricate Sculpturesout of Wire & Buttons & Fabric & Generally BringsUncommon Beauty to Life's Enriched Pageant<br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The first time I saw <b>Lauren Levy</b>'s work, it was part of a group show at <a href="http://www.dbermangallery.com/">D Berman Gallery</a> back in 2001. I don’t recall what else was in the show ~ and there must have been much good stuff ~ but those objects, those small dresses and houses built from layer after layer of colorful buttons and wire, have never left my mind.<br><br>
In 2001, I was still married to the playwright <a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Molly-Rice/1022372819?sk=info">Molly Rice</a> ~ which I mention because she was with me at the show and she’s got fierce aesthetic sensibilities ~ and she was also stunned by Levy’s work. We looked at the sculptures, then looked at each other, and our thoughts were somewhere along the lines of: “Wow, these buttony creations are as deeply evocative as they are well-crafted and visually beautiful; this is important work by an accomplished artist.”<br><br>
Well, <i>accomplished</i>, certainly.<br>But by no means, contrary to what we’d assumed, <i>established</i>.<br><br>
“I was part of a group show at <a href="http://www.womenandtheirwork.org/">Women & Their Work</a> in 2000,” says Levy. “I just applied. The woman who worked there as the assistant director encouraged me, and I think she was largely responsible for me getting in. So I was in this show, and it was like the biggest thing in my life. And David Berman immediately asked me, because it was also the first night for his gallery, and he called me the next day and asked if I wanted to be in his gallery. And I said, uh, I don’t know from galleries. And he said, well, neither do I. And it was perfect, we just kind of went along together.”<br><br><br>
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This was followed, over the years, by more shows at D Berman, and several shows ~ alone or as part of a group ~ in other Texas venues. Culminating, at least buttonwise, in the 2009 “Beneath the Palm of My Hand” solo show at D Berman, in which Levy’s sculptural work morphed from 3-D into more 2-D arrangements of buttons on fields and lengths of fabric: No less intricate or compelling than those dresses, those houses, those horns.<br><br>
But also, rather suddenly, uh-oh, 86 the buttons.<br><br>
“I got sick of doing buttons,” says Levy. “People called me The Button Lady, and I hate that. It sounds so kountry-krafty, so hot-gluey. I don’t like it when people can’t see beyond the material.”<br><br>
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<b>Brenner</b>: Well, sure. But, hold on ~ how’d you get started with buttons in the first place?<br><br>
<b>Levy</b>: I went to art school at UT in the late 80s, and I had absolutely nothing to say. It was a time, generally, where all the painting was more or less abstract. The figure hadn’t really come back into artwork yet, so the painting at school was abstract, the art ~ not all of it, but a lot of it ~ was very conceptual. And being kind of a process-oriented person, I couldn’t connect with anything that was going on there. At the time there was this big difference between craft and art. And, y’know, I was a cool person, I didn’t really want to be associated with the pot-makers and the turquoise-ring-makers, so I went into nursing school almost as soon as I graduated. And then, when I was in Portland, I found my voice doing metalsmithing. I was making not so much jewelry as small objects, and I just became possessed by it. I finally felt like I Have Something To Say, and it was just <i>electrifying</i>.<br><br>
And when I came back to Austin, I was seven months pregnant and it was a really depressing time. Because I was just burning up inside with stuff to say and things to make, but when you have a baby, you’re kind of in prison. I’d had real unreasonable expectations of what babies were like: I figured they just slept all the time. But, no, they don’t.<br><br>
And I was an avid knitter at the time, and I’d collected all these buttons. And I guess I started with wire ~ wire that didn’t need to be soldered, that I could just bend it all around and make what I wanted. And somehow I got the idea of stacking the buttons up one by one, as an equivalent to stitches … so I started making little articles of clothing out of wire and buttons, in lieu of the knitted things I was making.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: What fascinates me is that a million people could do that,<br>but what <i>they</i> did would look like crap.<br><br>
<b>Levy</b>: Really?<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: I don’t know about wire and buttons, specifically, but when people take typical crafting materials, they tend to do stuff that looks like, if not crap, then like what somebody’s non-artistic grandma did when she had spare time between issues of <i>Reader’s Digest</i>. Kitschy craft or crafty kitsch, or whatever. But then somebody, one in a million or whatever it is ~ <i>you</i>, in this case ~ can use the same sort of materials, and it results in, well, it looks like some of the finest art there is.<br><br><br>
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<b>Levy</b>: It’s a fine line sometimes, isn’t it?<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: Well, I’d say that it’s more obvious sometimes, that ~<br><br>
<b>Levy</b>: Well, not about myself so much, but, yeah, I guess you can immediately tell ~ like with abstract painting, for example. Everybody looks at it, like at a Franz Kline, and a lot of people would think “What’s the point? My <i>kid</i> could paint that.” But it’s really the most difficult, thoughtful, not-process-oriented painting.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: So you started out by using buttons to make these articles of clothing, dresses and shirts. How did that transform over time?<br><br>
<b>Levy</b>: Now that I think about it, they kind of transformed from the inside out. They were shirts, and then I started filling them with things, to express something else, and then the thing that was being expressed through the garments was the thing that I was making.<br><br>
So the shirts and dresses started disappearing and the narrative dropped away. There came an end to the stories ~ I wasn’t really interested in the stories anymore. And that was kind of a weird moment, when the narrative fell away and I just started making things and <i>then</i> the story would come. It was so exciting to make something without trying to define it, to just give in to the original impulse ~ <i>make it</i> ~ and then it became obvious that of <i>course</i> there was a story there.<br><br>
So narrative became secondary. And I guess that’s the immediate starting point of how I ended up making the stuff I’m making now.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: And for a while you completely stopped using buttons?<br><br>
<b>Levy</b>: Yeah, I packed all the buttons up, stuck them in my various storerooms, cleaned them out of my studio altogether. I had to leave myself open to the possibility that that was <i>done</i>. Because I wanted to start over, to go back to making art in a thrashing-around, searching way. To allow myself to be <i>bad</i>. It was nice to be <i>bad</i>. To make stuff that kind of <i>sucked</i>. But then I’d make stuff out of non-button materials … and I didn’t <i>like</i> any of it. It was <i>depressing</i>.<br><br><br>
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<b>Brenner</b>: And is that where the drawings came from, those back-of-the-head braids?<br>Don’t tell me you just recently picked up a pencil for the first time and ...?<br><br>
<b>Levy</b>: Well, it seems like, when I was really young, I was that person in class where somebody was always saying, “Draw <i>this</i> for me, draw <i>that</i> for me,” y’know? And somewhere along the way, like most people, I decided I Can’t Draw. Like, <i>I just couldn’t do it</i>.<br><br>
So I quit drawing altogether. I didn’t draw in high school, and I <i>especially</i> didn’t draw in college ~ I didn’t <i>take</i> drawing, even though I got an art degree. Because I was so petrified of it. And I decided, at some point, that I was a fraud. Like, “I’ve been hiding this <i>deficit</i>, this <i>inability</i> from the world.” So I decided that I would take a year off and just draw.<br><br>
This was around the end of 2006, right after that D Berman show. I was kind of burned out ~ putting that show together took a lot of time. And I wanted to give myself the opportunity to have one of those exciting kind of moments where you realize “This is it: This is where I take off, and now I look for the boundaries within <i>this</i>.” And I drew all the time, I drew and drew and drew. And I <i>read</i>, and I looked at drawings. I’d get stacks of books on drawing and I’d <i>stare</i> at drawings. And I got really educated about drawing in general. And nothing ever came of it, really, although I have <i>suitcases</i> full of drawings.<br><br>
And then I was walking my dogs in the neighborhood, and it was Big Garbage Day. And I walked by a house where this person had just put something out. And it was an old 19th century box, like a shipping box from some sort of military suppliers, and in it was this family’s photographic history going all the way back, from the 1800s, from the first era of studio photographers, going up to the 1960s, and it was <i>stuffed</i> full of these photographs. And there were several other boxes and suitcases, and I had all four of my dogs. And one dog is terrified, and one dog hates the other dog, and one dog is like “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”<br><br>
So I was standing in the middle of the street with all these dogs, and somebody came up and helped me out and took the stuff home. I still haven’t gone all the way through it. But what I did look at, there were these really candid photographs that were obviously family members of the photographer, because they were very animated, not at all like the photographs he took in his studio: They were really spontaneous.<br><br>
And one of them was the back of this woman’s hair, with this elaborate Victorian hairdo. And I went, “<i>This</i> is what I’m gonna draw.” And I drew it in ink, and in pencil, and the hairdo kept getting bigger and bigger, up to the point where the person wasn’t in the drawing at all. Then it became just a big ball of hair.<br><br>
And I was posting the drawings on Facebook, when I was first getting into Facebook and reconnecting with people. And I had this sense of time, like how, even though some of these people and I had nothing in common, we had this connection that had lasted through all this time. And so the drawings, the hair, became a kind of metaphor for time. Well, not even a <i>metaphor</i>, it kind of ~ it <i>is</i> time. Isn’t it? Can you say that?<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: Well, it’s ~ as much time as anything else is.<br><br>
<b>Levy</b>: Well, it <i>embodies</i> time. So that’s what these pieces are: Time and work. And so I’d started drawing again, and I’d made myself ready for the impulse, for whenever it would come. And when I found what I wanted to draw, the skills were there. And I looked back at all my older drawings, and they’re obviously like student work ~ but it’s nice to see the struggle.<br><br>
And what I’d regarded as a lack of drawing talent … well, talent’s overrated, really. It’s just <i>work</i>. If you <i>work</i> at something, and it may take a <i>lot</i> of work, yeah, but even people with talent really have to work at it. Because, if you don’t, it just goes to waste. So I worked hard, and in the end I made drawings that I liked, that I felt were more than the sum of their parts.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: But you’ve also gone back to using buttons again?<br><br><br>
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<b>Levy</b>: As I was doing those drawings, I realized “This is where the sculptures are going.” So I started making long vertical pieces ~ like long twisted braids made with buttons ~ and I <i>love</i> them. The ones I’m making now, it’s really strange: I’ll get a piece of cable ~ industrial, galvanized cable ~ and pull it out, cut it when it feels like the absolutely perfect length, and <i>they’re always as tall as me</i>. They’re always my exact height. Isn’t that weird?<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: That’s kinda weird.<br><br>
<b>Levy</b>: It’s really weird. It happens every single time, and I’m not even pulling the cable out vertically. But I’m gonna do them even bigger, gigantic, and they’re not going to rust. That was the thing about the wire ~ it rusted and drove me crazy.<br><br>
But, yeah, here I am again, using buttons, and I know I’m running the risk of being The Button Lady, but, y’know, that’s just where it is. And there are drawings to go with it, too, these really obsessive, process-oriented drawings. So I’m back to time-consuming, obsessive-compulsive kind of stuff.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: Obsessive-compulsive ~ or maybe just really giving a damn<br>about what you’re doing.<br><br>
<b>Levy</b>: Yeah, maybe.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: You don’t think so?<br><br>
<b>Levy</b>: Well, I don’t know.<br><br>
<b>Brenner</b>: Is it a thing that, when you do it, you feel like you’ve finally scratched an itch?<br><br>
<b>Levy</b>: Kind of … but it’s also nice to go on automatic, you know? Which is something that knitting taught me, through the process of just doing something over and over and over.<br><br>
I can remember one time when I was in metal-smithing class, and I made something that was really time-consuming, and I went, “Oh, I’ll never do <i>that</i> again.” And the woman I was taking the class from said: “Why? Make a <i>ton</i> of them.” <br><br>
And I realized, yeah, that’s just kind of what you do.<br><br><br>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-48147894949075701072012-04-02T10:00:00.000-05:002012-04-07T13:56:06.954-05:00FORGET MAKING YOUR BEDby <a href="http://www.facebook.com/abelouiseyoung">Abe Louise Young</a><br><br>
(for Emily Joan)<br><br>
Forget making your bed. Make your desk instead.<br>
Let your bed sheets lie rumpled on the floor<br>
with pillows underneath them<br>
like elephants in the bellies of snakes,<br>
with stuffed animals and a water glass<br>
tipped over on top.<br><br>
Forget the bed. Put the pages of your desk in order.<br>
Line up the sheets from head to foot.<br>
Smack the dust and grit off. Shelve the books.<br>
Make your bet that what you’ve got to write might crack a boulder<br>
like a light bulb, that a cone of butterflies will stream out,<br>
that you could make a person you’ve never met<br>
want to give birth through her eye sockets.<br><br>
See those piles of old textbooks,<br>
post-it notes, envelopes<br>
with little plastic windows, job application folders,<br>
nests of screws and nails and grommets,<br>
empty condom packets, coupons for bulk soy milk?<br>
Take it all and throw it out.<br>
Would you sleep in that?<br>
No.<br><br>
Dream at your desk, then work your mind<br>
through its torque. Mime the regular simplicity<br>
of milking a goat. Every day, twice.<br>
Morning and night.<br>
A squirt of hot goat’s milk<br>
puddles in a metal pail with each gentle tweak<br>
of your mind’s nipples.<br>
If you don’t, the goat will cry.<br>
Have you seen mastitis?<br><br>
So milk the stream down, thin as silky thread.<br>
Stir the cream slowly so it turns to butter,<br>
then heat it to cheese,<br>
add those herbs you’ve spent years growing<br>
in cracked pots on the windowsill.<br>
Memory sits down gratefully<br>
like an old farmer<br>
and takes off its weathered, sweaty cap.<br>
Out of the sun, off the fields,<br>
in your company. Put out a loaf of bread.<br><br>
Put your head where your feet should be.<br>
Hug the pillows to your chest.<br>
Pretend you hold a body, soft, trusting,<br>
someone who’s not going to leave at morning light.<br>
These are your readers,<br>
the ones you need, the ones you are lonely,<br>
brittle, adrift without, the other mammals<br>
full of feathers, like you,<br>
who miss their mothers, like you,<br>
are ringed round with zippers, like you,<br>
indented and passive, like you. But not tonight.<br><br>
The night is big and empty on your desk.<br>
Touch blank paper with your fingertips.<br>
The paper used to be trees; seed,<br>
soil, water and sun, which used to be<br>
your ancestors’ voices and breath<br>
buried in light without a box.<br>
They will lead you to your readers.<br>
You might never know them,<br>
you might die before they’re born.<br>
But tonight, hold them tight.<br>
Make the desk sprout leaves and sing.<br>
Make it feel like a sapling.<br><br>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-23435332542439281842012-03-31T11:55:00.000-05:002012-04-02T09:44:34.017-05:00NOISE POP'S COVERS:Songs in the Key of Food<br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
In a single week, near the beginning of the month just passed,<br />
I had two of the most amazing dining experiences of my life.<br />
<br />
But I'm going to mention the first one only in this paragraph, by way of a tip-o-the-hat to artist <a href="http://blog.tatroux.com/">Jeff Scott</a> and the <i>Austin Chronicle</i>'s food editor <a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/authors/virginia-b-wood/">Virginia Wood</a> and the fine folks at <a href="http://fndaustin.com/new/http://fndaustin.com/new/">Foreign & Domestic</a> who feted our fortunate table with one of almost everything from that night's diverse menu.<br />
<br />
<i>But I'll return to Scott and F&D in these pages again, to be sure</i>.<br />
<br />
I'm also hoping to return to whatever next thing the tastemaking music-and-food impresarios of San Francisco's <a href="http://www.noisepop.com/">Noise Pop</a> and <a href="http://www.graffeats.com/">graffEats</a> projects do locally.<br />
<br />
Because that's the other dining experience that recently dazzled my sensorium.<br />
To the point where I actually write things like "dazzled my sensorium" with a straight face.<br />
<br />
Listen: Noise Pop has this series they've been doing for years in California's Bay Area. It's called "Covers," and it's where graffEats chef <b>Blair Warsham</b> composes a multi-course meal based on the signature dishes of acclaimed chefs from around the nation.<br />
<br />
Like covering a <i>song</i>, see?<br />
<br />
Like how the <b>Dum Dum Girls</b> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96vb3S4DwEo">covered</a> <b>Morrissey</b>'s "There Is a Light that Never Goes Out," kind of, except that of course it's the tastes and textures, the whole culinary gestalt, of <i>food</i> that's being covered here.<br />
<br />
Sound good?<br />
<br />
Well, what sounds even better ~ literally ~ is that the whole glorious meal is accompanied by musical covers chosen to complement each course. Not just obvious choices based on wordplay ~ not somebody covering Chubby Checker's "Peppermint Twist" if there's a peppermint twist, say ~ although your hosts <i>might</i> be that endearingly goofy every now & again ~ but more subtle pairings of eclectic sonic goodness with what you're eating.<br />
<br />
Yeah, it <i>does</i> sound good, doesn't it?<br />
<br />
And to that, add <i>this</i>: Wine pairings provided by <a href="http://www.wentevineyards.com/">Wente Vineyards</a><br />
for each course, too, if you're so inclined.<br />
<br />
Perhaps, at this point, you're considering salivating?<br />
Perhaps, at this point, you're already considering attending the next "Covers" iteration?<br />
<br />
Let's take a closer look at this most recent one, first;<br />
this one that Noise Pop brought to Austin in time for SXSW<br />
and which they unveiled at the <b>Swoop House</b>.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
Yes: That's the place near East Seventh that's run by <b>Stephen Shallcross</b><br />
and the savants of <a href="http://www.2dine4.com/index2.php">2 Dine 4 Catering</a>.<br />
<br />
Yes: That's the place that hosts those incredible <a href="http://supperfriends.com/index2.php#/home/">Supper Friends</a> dinners.<br />
<br />
The sound designer and Foley artist <a href="http://www.facebook.com/buzzmoran?sk=info">Buzz Moran</a> accompanied me on this gustatory adventure, because we're both into food, as the saying goes, and because we never really have a chance to sit down & just chat although we're often involved in the same or overlapping projects. Also, the man looks good in a suit. Tall, thin, well-groomed. Dapper, like. You want some snazzy arm candy that's male, you call for Buzz Moran.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> OH, THAT BUZZ MORAN!</span><br />
<br />
<br />
You call for Buzz Moran and you drive over to the Eastside and park at the curb bordering the small, tidy lawn that fronts the clean and modern lines of Swoop House, a building that sits as pretty as a tilt-shift photo there on Gonzales Street where the blocks of houses continue to struggle against relatively water-rich Austin's version of foliage and forest. You walk up to the front porch, pause to decide between the choice of a vodka-based or tequila-based cocktail to start things off, to delight your palate and moisten your epiglottis and lubricate the ensuing conversation. Tequila, of course: This is Texas, goddamnit, and your residence here (in what is arguably the only worthwhile big city in the entire state) was hardwon, and you'll be damned if you don't choose a drink that derives its potency from <a href="http://www.drinkoftheweek.com/images/random/blue_agave.jpg">something like a cactus</a>.<br />
<br />
Never mind that the agave isn't even <i>related</i> to a cactus. The facts can go fuck themselves, because agave <i>looks</i> like a cactus, and there's a couple of agave plants right down the street you just drove on, and, anyway, Christ, this cocktail feels as good as it tastes, going down all cool and smooth, ice clinking against the glass as you enter the Swoop House and are greeted by Noise Pop's <b>Dawson Ludwig</b>, who kindly invited you to this fancy shindig in the first place.<br />
<br />
Ludwig's tall and bearded and charming. The interior of the house is as crisp and clean as its outside, with enough natural wood and simple-yet-elegant appointments that it'd make your ligneophile wife swoon. There are three separate dining rooms to this Swoop structure, each room centered with a white-cloth-covered table, place settings casting a silver gleam along the edges of each table and surrounding the rustic metal lanterns glowing along the table's midsection.<br />
<br />
<i>Gotta win that <a href="http://www.txlottery.org/export/sites/lottery/index.html">Lotto</a> thing</i>, you tell yourself for what won't be the last time this night.<br />
<br />
You wander outside now, you and Buzz, sipping your drinks, roaming the grounds around Swoop House, taking in the scenery, the bits of garden still extant and the wide flat areas covered with tarp and being prepared, you assume, for the next season's array of homegrown vegetables. You linger while passing a vintage, subtly finned and turquoise-colored station wagon, then stand at the far edge of the back yard, near a patch of what might be broccoli or might be kale but in any case is enormous and looks like it'd be delicious all stir-fried and served up with a little roasted garlic and balsamic vinegar.<br />
<br />
"It's a <i>circle</i>," says Buzz, pointing at what lies between you and the house.<br />
"The lawn's a goddam <i>circle</i>."<br />
<br />
Yes: The back yard's single expanse of lawn is a perfectly <i>circular</i> expanse, held in check by a thin band of iron; you're halfway around the wide dirt path that surrounds this grassy circle; everything's all horticultured and lovely, the whole area <i>outside</i> the Swoop House is making you have those lottery thoughts again. Also, that station wagon in the gravelly drive. <i>Is it turquoise, precisely</i>, you wonder, finishing your cocktail … <i>or is it the pale and liquid blue that's at the heart of every agave plant?</i><br />
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<br />
<br />
You munch a bit from the tiny foil bag of barbecue-flavored popcorn you were handed before you left the building. The spices on the popcorn are complex and intriguing. But the popcorn itself …<br />
<br />
"This popcorn," says Buzz, chewing. "It's not really the freshest popcorn I've ever had. But the spices ~ oh, man. That's," he says, smiling, chewing, "that's some good stuff."<br />
<br />
Yes: Doesn't the popcorn seem slightly … stale?<br />
An <i>amuse-bouche</i> that's not so … <i>amusing</i>?<br />
<br />
Mark that, make a note of it: You'll need to remember this mild disappointment: <i>It will provide the only low point, the sole negative contrast, in an evening of wonders</i>.<br />
<br />
Which wonders await as you walk back past the agave-heart-blue Chevy wagon and navigate through the gathering celebrants to re-enter the Swoop House and find ~<br />
<br />
Ah, but let's pause here for a moment; this blogpost is already so much longer than it's supposed to be.<br />
<br />
Let's break it into two pieces, shall we? The way a pair of friends ~ a writer and a reader, say ~ might break a warm baguette into two shorter pieces for ease of sharing.<br />
<br />
Maybe even pour yourself a glass of wine before <a href="http://minervaswreck.blogspot.com/2012/03/sharing-covers.html">clicking here</a> to continue …<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-66253222856309208622012-03-31T11:12:00.003-05:002012-04-03T09:52:42.070-05:00SHARING THE "COVERS"<br><br><br>
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Inside the <b>Swoop House</b>, the elegant tables are filled with excited diners. There are local people, folks in from beyond Texas to attend SXSW, all manner of foodies and media types.<br><br>
We're sitting, we're waiting, we can <i>smell</i> a delicious aroma in the air.<br><br>
(This post, this event, had <a href="http://minervaswreck.blogspot.com/2012/03/noise-pops-covers-songs-in-key-of-food.html">a prelude</a>.<br>
We'll still be waiting, if you missed it & want to get the backstory first.)<br><br>
<b>Dawson Ludwig</b>, standing nearby, calls for our attention, tells us what we can expect this night. Tells us about the history of the "<a href="http://covers.noisepop.com/">Covers</a>" events from Noise Pop and graffEats, about the musical covers chosen to complement this night's gourmet offerings, about the wines from <a href="http://www.wentevineyards.com/">Wente Vineyards</a> that will be accompanying all of it. He smiles, raises a glass.<br><br>
The diners raise theirs in response.<br>
Huzzah! Slainte! Cheers! Prosit!<br><br>
<i>And so it begins</i>.<br><br><br><br>
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Remember that each course will be a cover: GraffEats chef <b>Blair Warsham</b> recreating signature dishes from the country's top chefs.<br><br>Know that it starts local, with inspiration from the ATX's sushi wunderkind: The appetizer is from <a href=" http://www.uchiaustin.com/">Uchi</a>: <b>Tyson Cole</b>'s <b>Uchiveche Salmon</b> (with striped bass, tomato, bell pepper, garlic, and cilantro). Perfectly presented, cold, sharp, melt-in-your-lucky-mouth bits of fish sending your tastebuds directly to paradise without the need for jihad or a life of deprivation. The accompanying music is "an interplay between Japanese and American culture." Yes, it is: Takeshi Terauchi covering the Beach Boys' "Surfer Girl;" the 5.6.7.8's doing the Ikettes' "I'm Blue;" The Knack's "My Sharona" covered by Saijo Hideki.<br><br>You're chewing, you're tasting, you're listening, you're looking at your date for the evening – Buzz Moran, seated next to you near the head of the main table – and he's smiling as big as you must be smiling. Hell, <i>everyone's</i> smiling ~ smiling and eating. The room is lousy with grins and the sounds of happy mastication.<br><br><br><br>
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Next up is what you're going to recall as the single best part of this superlative parade of food: <b>Hot Potato/Cold Potato</b>, a dish by <b>Grant Achatz</b> of Chicago's <a href=" http://www.alinea-restaurant.com/">Alinea</a>. It's a hot, like, potato <i>kebab</i> ~ like some kind of elongated indie Tater Tot on a wooden skewer. Damned tasty, with just enough crunch to the outside, and warm spicy goodness inside. But. What it's <i>sitting</i> in? The cold potato soup? What <i>is</i> this? How does a fucking tuber come out of the ground and wind up conjuring such sensual glory in a human mouth? Smooth, creamy, yadda yadda, those words mean <i>nothing</i>, those words are inadequate to describe … Oh, sweet gibbering Brillat-Savarin, what a dish!<br><br>You try to steady yourself in the present, grab hold of something concrete so you don't evaporate away to a gourmand's Nirvana. You try to remember the staleness of the evening's pre-prandial popcorn snack, but you can't do it. Nothing exists except the soup, <i>this</i> soup, this <i>soup</i>, oh my god.<br><br>Music: The xx, covering Aaliyah's "Hot Like Fire;" Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" interpreted by Hot Chip; White Hinterland having a go at Justin Timberlake's "My Love."<br><br>
Then there's a course of <b>Fuji Apple Salad Kimchi</b> (with smoked jowl and maple labne) from <b>David Chang</b>'s <a href=" http://www.momofuku.com/">Momofuku</a>, and the combo of sweet and savory, of tart and smoky, almost has your teeth jockeying for position closest to the action. Munch, munch, munch. Yes, yes, yes.<br><br>Music: Amy Milan covering Death Cab For Cutie's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark;" Grizzly Bear's version of "He Hit Me" by The Crystals; and The Zombies' "Tell her No" modernized by Tennis.<br><br>
[I should mention here that, all the while, our glasses are being filled with those Wente wines. Chardonnay, pinot noir, all that sort of thing, constantly being refreshed during and between courses, the waiters and hosts as attentive and generous as flight attendants in the first-class section of a British Airways flight to Saudi Arabia. I'm not a wine drinker, but Buzz (who is) seems pleased, and all around our table and in the other two rooms I see people sipping or swigging from that bounty of the grape, telling each other "Mmmm, <i>hey</i>" and "Oh yes, <i>this</i> will <i>do</i>" about what's in their hands.]<br><br><br><br>
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Which brings us to the <b>Roasted Cauliflower</b> (with grapes and almonds and curry) a la <b>Daniel Humm</b> of NYC's <a href=" http://www.elevenmadisonpark.com/">Eleven Madison Park</a>. Why, it's like a weird mirror-image of that Fuji Apple plate and downright <i>scrumptious</i>, a fine herald to what (we see it on the little menus that have been provided each diner) comes next: <i>The main course of meat</i>.<br><br>Which, as the three different interpretations of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" ~ by Broken Social Scene and Nouvelle Vague and Calexico(!) ~ fade away, arrives:<br><br><br><br>
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<b>Berber Spice Roasted Lamb Haunch</b>, as interpreted in San Francisco's <a href="http://aziza-sf.com/">Aziza</a> by <b>Mourad Lahlou</b>, with carrot marmalade, brown butter couscous, and harissa emulsion. Serge Jorge covering David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" begins to play as we tuck into the lamb. Gotan Project's remix of "Whatever Lola Wants" (Nina Simone) segues in as we explore the plate further. By now the conversation in the room has reached a level where it's nearly drowning out the music, but you can still hear sounds of gustatory satisfaction rising from the (by now slightly tipsy) diners. The lamb, so tender and sharply spiced, its accompaniments, so righteously complementary … You look over at Buzz. He's chewing, he's raising his glass of wine in salutation; behind the lenses of his black horn-rims, his eyes are rolling back in his head with the pleasure of it all.<br><br>Amadou & Mariam's cover of "Hope" by Fat Freddy's Drop competes for attention above the diners' motley oratorio.<br><br>
<i>And now we're on to the dessert</i>.<br><br><br><br>
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Everybody's gabbing at top volume. The sound system in the Swoop's coveted interior plays the White Stripes doing Dolly Parton's "Jolene," Nirvana reprising Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World," and Jose Gonzales doing his thing with The Knife's "Heartbeats."<br><br>The dessert plates descend on polite hands. It's from <b>Boris Portnoy</b>'s <a href=" http://www.borisportnoy.com/site/?section=archive&tag=meadowood">Meadowood</a> venture in California. It's a <b>Caramelized Brioche</b> (with vanilla, citrus marmalade, tarragon, and crème fraîche). It's like a cross between French Toast and Crème Brûlée, is what it is. It's delicate and crunchy and … <i>wow</i>, you know? It's <i>wow</i>.<br><br><br><br>
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"Hey, uh," says Buzz to our affable chef who's walking around & checking to make sure all is as it should be. "Hey," says Buzz, "this … crème fraîche? There's ~ what is that? Is there salt right <i>in</i> it? I'm getting a salty taste – it's <i>delicious</i>, yeah! – but <i>how</i> … ?"<br><br>
And Warsham describes the original recipe and his particular methods as we continue munching, as the last sweet bites vanish down our gullets, as glasses are drained and three tables of very satisfied guests prepare to call it a night.<br><br>
A night of eclectic culinary and musical curation, of a gourmet <i>anthology</i><br>from the talented professionals of Noise Pop and graffEats and Swoop House.<br><br><br><br>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-45792091944607122302012-03-29T13:18:00.000-05:002012-03-29T13:18:23.017-05:00MO DAVIAU:On the Death of the Novel<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> THE AUTHOR HERSELF</span><br />
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It is good that I did not leave my home to learn about writing novels during wagon-train times. News of the novel's death would not have reached me until after I'd packed my few earthly belongings into my wagon and traveled to Michigan, knowing I would never see my friends back in Texas ever again. Upon my arrival, I would be told that the novel was dead, and after I was done weeping and cursing my very existence, I'd have to choose between prostitution or marrying the widowed butcher, who was looking for a strong-backed woman to take care of his bratty, bereaved children. He'd smell like raw meat when he'd lay me on the bed to do his business and I'd have to take up religion just so I could pray that he would kindly not beat me. Nowadays, at least I can fly home for the weekend for a visit, and if the novel is dead, we have the Internet to lament its demise. Or we can revive the novel. Blessed be the future!<br />
~ <a href="http:">Monique Daviau</a><br><br><br>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-9916882998235140842012-03-27T13:21:00.001-05:002012-03-27T13:21:26.284-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsXMomuvFdAiH-n5m3hPb0GCAX_Vm-nJzvyvUiKj7rviyK-u2WuUmzCD0lp3eyWoEesD-oD5GRk5CXp3vd-Y4gFgJwXC0yd9atU9-AMpfa3WKUfOGr2b1V7YmvLzoCoe7XWTRsFwRVUlI/s1600/AAA.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="323" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsXMomuvFdAiH-n5m3hPb0GCAX_Vm-nJzvyvUiKj7rviyK-u2WuUmzCD0lp3eyWoEesD-oD5GRk5CXp3vd-Y4gFgJwXC0yd9atU9-AMpfa3WKUfOGr2b1V7YmvLzoCoe7XWTRsFwRVUlI/s400/AAA.png" /></a></div>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-18753743958928443672011-05-27T14:53:00.002-05:002011-05-27T14:53:41.097-05:00EVERY MOMENT IS SACREDWayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-88620465130400576502011-05-17T17:22:00.003-05:002011-05-17T17:26:26.158-05:00Sequel Harangue for the Literary Farang<br><br />
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<br />
<b>1</b>. Right now I'm halfway through reading <a href="http://www.john-burdett.com/">John Burdett</a>'s <i><b>The Godfather of Kathmandu</b></i>, the fourth in his series of vivid Bangkok-set crime novels featuring <b>Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep</b>; I've already read the first three.<br />
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<b>2</b>. You know the whole thing about sequels, right? The conventional wisdom, whether it's regarding movies or books or whatever? How the sequel's never as good and possibly much worse? Well, check two cases in point: <br />
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(1) <b>William Goldman</b>'s 1974 novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Marathon-Man-William-Goldman/dp/0345439724"><b><i>Marathon Man</i></b></a> was made into <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074860/">a terrific movie</a> in 1976, but, as if amazingly, the original book was even better.<br />
<br />
Remember? What a richly textured, character-thick narrative for all that it was a popcult thriller, right? <i>What an excellent read</i>.<br />
<br />
But then there was the sequel, <i><b>Brothers</b></i>. Which was like Goldman <i>revisiting</i> those characters while he's goofing around on vacation somewhere and visiting <i>upon</i> those characters the mere framework of a farfetched plot in a story containing barely any of the textures and depths of the original.<br />
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A disappointment, to be sure.<br />
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(2) Same thing, IMHO, same damnable progression, same <i>devolution</i> following from <b>Erica Jong</b>'s excellent 1973 bestseller <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Flying-Erica-Jong/dp/0451185560"><b><i>Fear of Flying</i></b></a>. <br />
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Well, sure, I completely skipped <i>FoF</i>'s immediate sequel, <i><b>How To Save Your Own Life</b></i>. But, by the time <i><b>Parachutes and Kisses</b></i>, the third in the series about Isadora Wing, was available and I'd given it a try ... all I could <i>do</i> was give it was a try.<br />
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Again: It was as if the author had decided, <i>Well, okay, I put enough work into the first novel, and never mind reveling in the depths of character, let's just streamline this one so it requires less effort for me to write and for the average reader to consume</i>.<br />
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Sad, y'know?<br />
<br />
<b>[</b> Listen: If we wanted to read Teflon-coated Lite fiction, we'd already be doing that (we already <i>do</i> do that, occasionally) with the wide variety of options available and constantly renewed everywhere else. We don't need, from deeply capable writers, Lite scribblings that so many others can crank out. We need the heavier stuff that only they can provide. Stuff, say, in the diverse <b>Atwood/Mieville/Mantel/Lethem</b>-inhabited range between <i><b>Harry Potter</b></i> and <i><b>Ulysses</b></i>. Yes? <b>]</b><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>3</b>. And so, sweet suffering Buddha, how weird to discover <br />
<i>what seems to be the opposite of the lame progression noted above</i>. <br />
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John Burdette's Bangkok series was a delight from the get-go, the briskly paced police procedurals made more flavorful and exotic by their Thai setting and the engaging, near snarky philosophical musings of the half-Anglo protagonist, Det. Jitpleecheep. The novels weren't the most strictly nutritious literary meals around, sure, to wrack a metaphor; but neither were they merely Asian-flavored paperback potato chips. But now here's the fourth one halfway down my reader's judgmental gullet ... and <i>damned if Burdett isn't reversing the sequel curse</i>. <br />
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<i><b>The Godfather of Kathmandu</b></i> is both spatially thicker than its precursors and more deeply written than them, regardless that the thrill & mystery of the story remains undiluted (and is, I'd insist, enhanced) by the more complex textures of character and philosophy woven therein. I have no idea how it's going to end, and I don't really care: I'm caught up in the story <i>around</i> the plot, and in Jitpleecheep's ongoing, conflicted, journey-of-self megillah; and when the book's over, okay, where's the next one, please.<br />
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About that: Burdett's fifth in the series, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vulture-Peak-Sonchai-Jitpleecheep-Burdett/dp/0307272672"><b><i>Vulture Peak</i></b></a>, is due out from <b>Knopf</b> in January 2012. I've already bugged the <i><a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/">Austin Chronicle</a></i>'s books editor about letting me review it when it's available, as soon as the advance copies are released. Hell, yes.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHg26__2mpecQxU7XIn7jrvVEMyCPnmGnA_2UwgOdCaFi7rFN_Zygih8vYapErKVNWP7D5jA7hBtkA5C9hOvLk9sOeVPfFQRsPcfKJsSJEcEuhAVrbuq0g84O7nMbJxlvMVWlILhfTkBo/s1600/Wallander.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHg26__2mpecQxU7XIn7jrvVEMyCPnmGnA_2UwgOdCaFi7rFN_Zygih8vYapErKVNWP7D5jA7hBtkA5C9hOvLk9sOeVPfFQRsPcfKJsSJEcEuhAVrbuq0g84O7nMbJxlvMVWlILhfTkBo/s320/Wallander.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<b>4</b>. What I <i>haven't</i> mentioned in this extended harangue is the urge ... the faint but incessant urge ... to write some sort of fanfic wherein Det. Jitpleecheep teams up with <b>Henning Mankell</b>'s <a href="http://www.henningmankell.com/Books/Wallander"><b>Kurt Wallander</b></a> to solve an international series of murders stretching from Thailand to Sweden. <br />
<br />
And I won't, goddamnit. <br />
<br />
I <i>won't</i> mention that urge.<br><br>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-84792705985231186412011-04-27T15:02:00.005-05:002011-04-27T15:29:06.642-05:00Lend Them Your Fears<br><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6pM7pxMyj94DoycDmQ34bcRYm48SgjJqavOaUFiVOrvFW2VdgUW2e9No255Aa0twTqLXSJGKssMdWwrgmQUNRNjYipRDmhtaWTdXZyZqg8TN6GE_U4TM0FB9G7DF1aeCEGTbZI_L64hQ/s1600/WHC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6pM7pxMyj94DoycDmQ34bcRYm48SgjJqavOaUFiVOrvFW2VdgUW2e9No255Aa0twTqLXSJGKssMdWwrgmQUNRNjYipRDmhtaWTdXZyZqg8TN6GE_U4TM0FB9G7DF1aeCEGTbZI_L64hQ/s320/WHC.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
Authors <b><a href="http://www.natesouthard.com/">Nate Southard</a></b> and <b><a href="http://www.leethomasauthor.com/">Lee Thomas</a></b> are the co-chairs of this year's <a href=" http://whc2011.org/">World Horror Convention</a> ~ unveiling itself (in other than stygian darkness) over four days in the urban paradise of Austin, Texas. I recently interviewed them for the <i>Austin Chronicle</i> ~ you can see that much longer transcript <a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/blogs/books/2011-04-27/things-not-to-fear-1-the-reaper-2-the-world-horror-convention-in-austin/">right here</a> – and these are some of the highlights of our palaver at Quack's Bakery on 43rd:<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Why does someone go to a horror convention, much less <br />
the World Horror Convention, in the first place?<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: People can’t always talk about this stuff at work or with their families. A lot of times people just don’t <i>get</i> it. But you go to the con and suddenly it’s like you’ve got four hundred of your best friends sitting around talking about horror, y’know?<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: For a lot of us, it’s the one weekend a year where we can sort of function as a society, where we’re not all the quiet people standing in the corner wondering how to start a conversation. We can actually figure that out in this circle.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: The wallflowers become a weed species.<br />
<br />
<b>[Brenner makes a note: This Thomas guy, he's fierce with the soundbites.]</b><br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: So both of you guys write?<br />
<br />
<b>Southard and Thomas</b>: Yes.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: And when did you get started on that? How old were you <br />
when you thought, “Oooh, I’m gonna write some fuckin’ <i>horror</i>.” <br />
Although, ah, you might not have phrased it quite like that.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: I was in third grade, but I don’t think that counts. I was basically breaking copyright on the universal classics. And I just wrote as a hobby. That’s what I did when my friends were playing video games or going out to the movies and whatnot. I didn’t even try to start publishing until about ten years ago.<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: Pretty much the same story for me, but I’d gone about it from a different angle. In middle school and high school, I always wanted to write comic books for a living. And through high school and college, that morphed into wanting to be a screenwriter. And I came down here and went to RTF at UT. Very odd, getting a screenwriting degree from a <i>documentary</i> school. But, by the time I graduated, mostly by reading and picking up on some authors that I hadn’t really heard of before, I found this new fascination with prose. And I’ve really been trying to focus on prose for about seven years now.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: What drew you guys to horror as opposed to the literary-fiction genre or sword & sorcery or something like that?<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: It’s just what I’ve always liked to read. Some of the first prose I remember was <b>Stephen King</b>’s collection <i>Night Shift</i>. And for the longest time I couldn’t actually read his novels, because they just took so long to get going, but maybe that’s because I was just a smart-ass little kid. But his short stories always fascinated me.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: I read anything I could get my hands on when I was a kid, and when I was nine or ten I picked up a copy of <i>The Exorcist</i>, because my parents had it in the house. I picked it up and read it and I was just ...it was stuff I understood at that age. And I remember that I put down the book, and I was walking out of my bedroom, and my mother was standing at the end of the hall. And just the way the light hit, she was in silhouette, and I … I <i>freaked</i>. I mean, it was just this terrifying moment. And yet, on some level, I <i>dug</i> it. So I just kept reading, trying to find something like that again.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Are there obscure horror writers – not new ones who are just starting out, but classic writers – who you would recommend to people who might not have heard of them?<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: I think the big one for me would be <b><a href="http://www.jackketchum.net/">Jack Ketchum</a></b>. In some circles, he’s pretty well known. But he hasn’t really had a huge break-out, he hasn’t really crossed over yet.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: And he’s our grandmaster for the convention. He’s a phenomenal writer. He’s very much from a literary background, but he deals with things that are so unpleasant, so difficult for people, that I think they take the warning seriously when someone says “You may not want to read this, because blah-blah-blah.” It’s difficult work for people to get their heads around, it’s extreme stuff. But with Ketchum it’s so well done.<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: He wrote my favorite book, but it’s a book I can’t read a second time.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: What book is that?<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: <i>The Girl Next Door</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: They made a movie out of that about three years ago. <br />
And it’s very disturbing stuff.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Do y’all make a living solely from your writing these days?<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: I do not, no. <b>[He sighs.]</b> I’m still working a day job.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: I am. I can’t say it’s a <i>terrific</i> living, but, yeah. <br />
I’ve been doing that for about six years now.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Have you done that with just books, or have you had things optioned for movies as well?<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: I’ve not made that jump yet. I’ve had producers who, well, they contact you every time you have a positive <i>Publisher’s Weekly</i> review, and then you never hear from them again. Or they want to talk to your film agent, so you send them to your film agent, and <i>then</i> you never hear from them again.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Are there sub-genres of horror that y’all are particularly drawn to, like splatterpunk or ghost stories or true crime?<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: I find most of the best horror coming out right now to be marketed as more of the crime genre. <b><a href="http://gillian-flynn.com/">Gillian Flynn</a></b>’s two books, <b><a href="http://www.kenbruen.com/">Ken Bruen</a></b>’s <i>American Skin</i>, those are – you find them in the <i>mystery</i> section, but they’re horror.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: I prefer the supernatural work – except in the case of Jack Ketchum, which is all real-world based – it’s more fun for me when I’m writing, and when I’m reading it’s more enjoyable to see somebody bring something new to it.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: What do you guys think of the – not intentionally, necessarily, by any one organization – but the mass marketing of, the pop-culture <i>force</i> that is <b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZAoLnn4LF0">HP Lovecraft</a></b>,<br />
these days?<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: I think it’s great, in a lot of ways. Because he was overlooked, but now people are starting to get it. And I think a lot of it has to do with where we’re at culturally, now. A lot of people are feeling pressed-in by these indifferent forces. Whether it's the government or their jobs or whatever, there’s a lot of that in our society right now. But I think people also realize, on some level, “It’s not just about me,” so they get into this idea that all of these forces that they can’t control are affecting them. And Lovecraft was all about that. The Elder Gods are wreaking havoc, but we don’t know it. We either don’t <i>know</i> it, or we come to realize that they don’t <i>care</i> about us: They’re not here to hurt us or do anything with us in particular, they’re just <i>walking through</i>, and we’re getting stomped on. And I think that’s coming out in fiction right now, a lot of great writers like <b><a href="http://www.lairdbarron.net/">Laird Barron</a></b> and <b><a href="http://sesqua.net/">Wilum Pugmire</a></b>.<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: Some <b><a href="http://jplangan.livejournal.com/">John Langan</a></b> stuff.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: There’s this whole undercurrent – many of them are British – none of the three we just mentioned are – but there’s this whole British movement, a very strong current of that, just waiting to break out. So maybe that’s what will follow the zombie trend, I don't know.<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: Just … no more mash-ups.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Mash-ups?<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: Like <i>Pride and Prejudice and Zombies</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: A classic novel, with some horror thing thrown on top of it.<br />
<br />
<b>Southard</b>: <i>Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: Yeah, we really want all that to go away.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: <i>Candide and Cthulhu</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>Thomas</b>: There you go, that’ll be the next one. Dibs on the title.<br />
<br />
<b>[laughs]</b><br />
<br />
<br><br>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-67292907100298738762011-04-14T15:39:00.001-05:002011-04-14T15:55:54.015-05:00The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCl8RGRWI2GRKf_mB9O3A1C7sXCS4UYrq-eWOmG5E45h7bDq2FsoSTnkXUDTPIwtezTJ1lW44hx9mVLPMUGkQQG0-WtdI_13cL7ea5WALMO6-tIM6d8DliIO5wzoBjHEjIPNot8Cb49xQ/s1600/books_readings1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCl8RGRWI2GRKf_mB9O3A1C7sXCS4UYrq-eWOmG5E45h7bDq2FsoSTnkXUDTPIwtezTJ1lW44hx9mVLPMUGkQQG0-WtdI_13cL7ea5WALMO6-tIM6d8DliIO5wzoBjHEjIPNot8Cb49xQ/s400/books_readings1.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
[<b>Edited by Jeff Martin and C. Max Magee<br />
Soft Skull Press, 192 pp., $14.95 (paper)</b>]<br />
<br />
So <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Late-American-Novel-Writers-Future/dp/1593764049">here's an anthology</a> of writing about how long-form writing and reading, in the omni-connected, ever-distracting Internet age, is (possibly) threatened with extinction or is (more likely) changing to survive. <i>The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books</i> is neatly summed by a back-cover blurb from <a href="http://www.johnwray.net/">John Wray</a>: "I sat down to read it expecting a coroner's report and found a manifesto instead."<br />
<br />
Fuck yeah, <b>John Wray</b>, you're not kidding: What a refreshing surprise in these days of lit-scene doom and gloom. Editors <b>Jeff Martin</b> and <b>C. Max Magee</b> have gathered essays and vignettes and such from a bright segment of modern scribes – a few of the names recognizable from <i>The New Yorker</i>'s recent best "20 Under 40" issue, hey – who weigh in with author's-eye views in their engaging styles and do much to dispel the more funereal prognostication going on at the corporate level of booksmithery.<br />
<br />
<b>Rivka Galchen</b> starts off the post-introduction considerations, her surreal "The Future of Paper" a palate-cleansing abstraction before the less fantastical responses are served. <b>David Shields</b> isn't among the lettered company in this volume, but his <a href="http://minervaswreck.blogspot.com/2010/04/response-to-reality-hunger.html">Reality Hunger: A Manifesto</a> functions as a sort of welcome touchstone for several of the writers, especially for <b>David Gates</b> and <b>Jonathan Lethem</b>, whose back-and-forth emails (originally seen in <i>PEN America 12: Correspondences</i>) are as relevant to the subject at hand as they are cleverly revelatory in general. <i>Treme</i> writer <b>Tom Piazza</b> briefly interviews himself about the future of books. <b><a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/blogs/books/2009-05-12/781150/">Reif Larsen</a></b>, of <i><a href="http://tsspivet.com/">T.S. Spivet</a></i> fame, tackles the more hardware-oriented, structural side of things with his graphics-embellished "The Crying of Page 45." <b>Kyle Beachy</b>, aside from dissing the abovementioned Shields as "an asshole" who "doesn't believe in communion," offers a plaintive assertion along the lines of novels (that he finds important) being important because, <i>c'mon</i>, guys, you can <i>feel</i> how important they are. <b>Emily St. John Mandel</b>, on the other hand, thoughtfully welcomes our new e-book overlords: "The conveniences of the digital age are inarguable," says the staff writer for editor Magee's <a href="http://www.themillions.com/">The Millions</a> website.<br />
<br />
Indeed: How did you access this very review, friend? <br />
<i>And how will it please you to encounter the contents of this recommended book?</i>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-4484629939556226272011-03-23T16:37:00.002-05:002011-03-23T16:56:22.962-05:00You Can Dance If You Want To<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS_pZCyoTLARcTwegb256NfMKFHL4Ek5LFF8YQaCXV6Ej8Cd1xeuYP1z2-XxBAWbu5Z2KtXxrXrT_HsX9OjSiZqBgXh9EL-N81IPIajHN_Y9zzik3V4k051YAT150PmP9yQovikq6ifbY/s1600/MenWithoutHats0.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="333" width="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS_pZCyoTLARcTwegb256NfMKFHL4Ek5LFF8YQaCXV6Ej8Cd1xeuYP1z2-XxBAWbu5Z2KtXxrXrT_HsX9OjSiZqBgXh9EL-N81IPIajHN_Y9zzik3V4k051YAT150PmP9yQovikq6ifbY/s400/MenWithoutHats0.png" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
So, right, Duran Duran played SXSW this year, <br />
and oh the nostalgia that burned like a quicksilver fever <br />
through certain demographics that used to wear legwarmers. <br />
<br />
Was there swooning? <br />
Was there squealing? <br />
Good bleeding Christ.<br />
<br />
For me, though: <i>Whatevs</i>. <br />
<br />
Partly because <i>my</i> memories (and appreciation of New Wave in general) <br />
were tweaked by the sweeter knowledge that <b>Men Without Hats</b> <br />
were also playing the festival, in preparation for their upcoming tour.<br />
<br />
Men Without Hats!<br />
<br />
I mean, "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjPau5QYtYs SD">Safety Dance</a>," right? <br />
I mean, "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNOlk_7FfFA ANT">Antarctica</a>."<br />
<br />
<br />
(And I don't mean much else, because Men Without Hats <br />
are a bit too poppy for me after that, a bit too ... cute, maybe? <br />
Or: The songs lack a certain something <br />
that I'd rather they not lack? Yeah, clear as mud.)<br />
<br />
(But: Oh, those two songs!)<br />
<br />
I wound up not seeing them anyway ~ with or without hats.<br />
Because I don't really <i>do</i> live music, almost spitefully,<br />
unless it's part of a theatrical show or the players are friends of mine.<br />
<br />
Hey, we all have our things.<br />
<br />
But I jumped ~ literally <i>sprang from my chair</i>, anyway <br />
as I'm sure R. Hernandez or A. Schroeder will corroborate ~ <br />
at the chance to interview MWH's creative epicenter Ivan Doroschuk. <br />
<br />
And so I <i>did</i> interview him, via phone <br />
~ an actual landline, goddam ~<br />
before he & the newest bandmembers arrived in Austin.<br />
<br />
And the <i>Chronicle</i> published an even more truncated version <br />
of the already truncated version of the transcript I'd made <br />
of our brief but pleasant conversation. <br />
<br />
But never mind that.<br />
<br />
Here's the ~ longer and (I reckon) better ~ version of the interview: <br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Disregarding any idea of nostalgia, and even what a fucking terrific song “Safety Dance” is, what’s it like having created such a powerful cultural touchstone?<br />
<br />
<b>Doroschuk</b>: I’m constantly amazed at what goes on with that song. My all-time favorite was the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgugo4wS6sw">Beavis & Butt-Head thing</a>. Check that one out, it’s really funny. The punchline was something like, “This guy keeps saying he can dance, <i>but he can’t dance</i>.”<br />
<br />
<b>[Maybe at this point Brenner attempted to mimic the Butt-Head laugh, <br />
which attempt may have been met with polite silence.]</b><br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: So, uh ... why did you choose to set the song’s video where you did, with the Morris dancing and the maypole and all?<br />
<br />
<b>Doroschuk</b>: Well, we were originally signed to an English label called Statik Records, and they had bands like The Slits and The Chameleons UK, bands like that. It was a really small label, and their people put the video together. It was Tim Pope who did that, who also did most of the Cure videos. <br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: If you don’t mind me talking about all your old songs, which are the ones I know … although, actually, what about the new ones? Are they available anywhere yet?<br />
<br />
<b>Doroschuk</b>: No, we haven’t released anything yet. We’re going to be trying out new stuff on the tour. That’s the beauty of the industry today: You don’t even have to put together a whole CD. If you have a good song, you can put it out there, and people are used to it. It’s a lot more immediate, these days. It must be really fun to be a new band today, to be somebody just starting off? There’s just so much out there, so many possibilities, so many possible connections.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Has the Internet helped your music sales in general?<br />
<br />
<b>Doroschuk</b>: Oh yeah, I think it’s helped <i>everything</i>. I’ve discovered so much music myself, that I would’ve never known about. Even music from my generation – I’m constantly discovering bands from the Seventies that were just awesome bands but they went by unnoticed. The Internet’s an awesome, <i>awesome</i> tool for everybody, y’know?<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: If one of the new songs really connects with an audience and it’s one that you guys like, too, is there a possibility you’d make a video for it?<br />
<br />
<b>Doroschuk</b>: Oh, I’m sure.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: What can you tell me about “Treblinka,” which I’d guess is the darkest-sounding song you’ve written?<br />
<br />
<b>Doroschuk</b>: I don’t think that was officially released. That was off a demo tape that never really saw the light of day.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: I heard it on <i>The Silver Collection</i>?<br />
<br />
<b>Doroschuk</b>: Yeah, that’s an unofficial kind of thing. That whole album was put out by, ah, I had nothing to do with that, basically.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Ha, how things can get <i>away</i> from you – Jesus!<br />
<br />
<b>Doroschuk</b>: Yeah, I have a very unscrupulous <i>ex</i>-manager.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Thank god for the “ex” part. And, ah, hey, do you ~ <br />
do you read Metafilter online?<br />
<br />
<b>Doroschuk</b>: Metafilter, yup.<br />
<br />
<b>Brenner</b>: Because I followed a link from there last night, and wound up looking at these absolutely gorgeous photos of Antarctica, <a href="http://www.sciencefriday.com/blog/2011/02/best-of-the-ice-caves-mt-erebus-antarctica/">all these ice caves and stuff</a>. And I was wondering what inspired you to write your song that references that place … ?<br />
<br />
<b>Doroschuk</b>: Just the whole new wave movement, with the cold wave stuff, y’know? There was this sort of icy, robotic feel to the whole scene. That was basically the inspiration for it.<br><br>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-14810152188401288152011-03-15T18:24:00.002-05:002011-03-15T19:38:41.693-05:00WHAT IS STEAMPUNK?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqJbRXN5TvnTczKByETZubQUUuJhsMHg9NGcIwiFWWnWCslXAttVNJpt5LQx4a4t9Qi4JTNecqic7JazCzblBlhBU8WFK3Z-PMkysD7Aa5M4ZdHttNt4xScR0RigOXQ5HQmxvXzijvxHE/s1600/steampunkLaptop2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="399" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqJbRXN5TvnTczKByETZubQUUuJhsMHg9NGcIwiFWWnWCslXAttVNJpt5LQx4a4t9Qi4JTNecqic7JazCzblBlhBU8WFK3Z-PMkysD7Aa5M4ZdHttNt4xScR0RigOXQ5HQmxvXzijvxHE/s400/steampunkLaptop2.jpg" /></a></div><br />
"We're <i>living</i> in science fiction," people like to say. <br />
<br />
They wave a hand at the array of laptop computers crowding shaky tables in a downtown coffeehouse; they nod toward a passing citizen with some telephonish gizmo <a href="http://www.mobilewhack.com/motorola-h12-bluetooth-headset.jpg">clamped along an ear's fungiform cartilage</a>; their fingers stroke the sides of a tomato genetically modified with the DNA of distant jellyfish; their LASIK-enhanced eyes track, in the night sky, the glimmer of <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/space-ship-two.jpg">a private spaceship</a> plying its tourist trade against the vault, the vault, the vault of heaven.<br />
<br />
"The future's <i>already here</i>," people like to say. <br />
<br />
Because we've been prepared for it for so many years. Because its coming has been heralded throughout our cultures since homo sapiens learned to bind time and gaze beyond the moment. And the times change, and with that change have always come new visions of the future. Only now, the problem is, our vigorous science and technologies have begun to advance at such a pace that what we're creating for ourselves is close to matching the most popular predictions of our recent history. <br />
<br />
Oh shit: <i>We're catching up</i>.<br />
<br />
This makes further extrapolation more difficult, for one thing. Who can properly conjure a tomorrow that innovation might render obsolete before the light, perhaps bioluminescent, can dawn on that new day? Who can focus a sense of wonder on a realm that relentless industry has shattered into a fractal clusterfuck of shifting possibilities? Also, isn't everything going to hell around us? Aren't we headed, after all, for some final disaster ~ military, environmental, planetary, celestial ~ that our machines and ingenuity can't save us from and which makes the idea of any future highly unlikely at best? What the hell do we do with a situation like this?<br />
<br />
We go, as the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Backwards-Into-Future-Recorded-Firesign/dp/1593930437/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300231166&sr=1-1">Firesign Theatre</a> asserted in another context, forward into the past.<br />
<br />
Deep into the past: To a simpler, more elegant time before ubiquitous electricity and the internal combustion engine warped a wider vulgarity into the tapestries of our lives. To a time before, especially, plastic. Victorian, in a word. But ~ and here's the neat trick ~ in harking back (in fiction, in visual art, in fashion and other modes of expression), we bring our favorite modern technologies with us.<br />
<br />
Ladies and gentlemen, madames et messrs, inhabitants of this brave new world ~ welcome to steampunk.<br />
<br />
Gentleman-tinkerers of the late nineteenth century inventing clockwork-driven automatons that would put Honda's Asimo to shame; analytical engines, the bastard brainchildren of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, performing computation beyond human reckoning; the more personal bits of today's polyvinyl-chloride technology now reconfigured in brass and wood and leather. Nothing virtual here: It's all hardware: Machine culture you can pry apart and modify with elbow grease and scientific know-how. And, dash it all, don't those frock coats and goggles look simply smashing!<br />
<br />
The writer K. W. Jeter suggested the term steampunk back in 1987, as a label for the sort of narrative created in his 1979 novel <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0857661000/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B002N7XLTU&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0QM2HQ3M5Q8GDH3REM3S">Morlock Night</a></i> ~ a sort of twisted sequel to H. G. Wells' <i>The Time Machine</i> ~ and in the fiction of Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and others. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's 1990 novel <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Difference-Engine-Spectra-special-editions/dp/055329461X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300230723&sr=1-1">The Difference Engine</a></i> brought the nascent sub-genre to a higher resolution and a much wider audience. Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's comic book series <i>The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen</i> (which debuted in 1999 and which please don't confuse with the abomination later desecrating neighborhood cinemas) gathered the creations of steampunk inspirators ~ the aforementioned Wells, Jules Verne, et al. ~ into one magnificent and vividly depicted amalgam of romance and adventure. Katsuhiro Otomo's 2004 feature-length anime <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Steamboy-Novel-Steam-Boy-Ani-Manga/dp/1421501457/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300230892&sr=1-1">Steamboy</a></i> fueled the engines of cultural saturation with swashbuckling period details and astonishing visuals. And now here's the <i>New York Times</i>, the Old Gray Lady with the New Digital Gown, covering <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/fashion/08PUNK.html">the burgeoning steampunk style of DIY fashion and industrial design</a> undertaken by the fiction's more talented acolytes. And, hell, that was back in 2008.<br />
<br />
If the future's already here and what may follow it is fraught with anxiety, of course we're retreating to the past. If the present seems uncertain and tawdry when compared with some abandoned Golden Age our forebears knew, why not take our favorite toys and go (if only metaphorically, via speculative fiction or material trappings) home again? <br />
<br />
The steampunk abode in which we'll abide won't be bedecked by the likes of Ethan Allen or Karim Rashid but by ourselves, more likely, with a little tutelage from <a href="http://www.steampunkworkshop.com">Sean Slattery</a> or <a href="http://www.datamancer.net">Richard Nagy</a>; and it'll boast a library of books like Jay Lake's <i>Mainspring</i> and China Mieville's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Perdido-Street-Station-China-Mieville/dp/0345459407/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300230634&sr=1-1-spell">Perdido Street Station</a></i> and that <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Steampunk-Ann-VanderMeer/dp/1892391759">themed anthology from Ann and Jeff VanderMeer</a>; and we'll listen, while lounging in our taffeta gowns and riveted trousers and fingerless gloves, to Rasputina and the Decemberists and Abney Park and, oh, probably anything featuring a homemade theremin.<br />
<br />
"The street finds it own uses for technology," as William Gibson famously put it, glossing his cyberpunk opus <i>Neuromancer</i>. In the case of steampunk, that street's likely paved with cobblestones and lined by brass-chased gaslamps; and those lamps glimmer in the dark, lighting the way toward a Temple of Exquisite Anachronism where the future's expertly retrofitted with the past and the best of all possible times can provide a bright refuge from the worst of this world's fleeting present.Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-63096619787110252122011-03-11T11:59:00.002-06:002011-03-15T20:58:25.613-05:00Nethermind's Taco of BlissHere's an appropriate, I think, follow-up to the last (Valentine's Day) post, <br />
from right here in the middle of the start of <a href="http://sxsw.com/">SXSW Interactive</a>, <br />
the city of Austin flooded with tech geeks & scenesters & celebrities <br />
& media flacks of all kinds.<br />
<br />
It's romantic as hell, this true slice of life.<br />
<b>It's about going from online friends to meatspace marriage.</b><br />
It's pretty damned heartwarming, and I'll assume that anyone who has a heart<br />
likes to have it warmed every now & then ... ?<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmNWYr_H-tS-uDthl8TAWgHELzUg3qlu0JT8VPFoFLLaqqEIPFuEWFpEO2nA1QDTeXkQZKVG-IwVTU9yt4o14Uy72uKfA3hHNswmxQ4j_hY5aidbSQagdd5VM3lMP75UDLQwUf95lgnAQ/s1600/5449_558650523183_47210726_33661507_2725892_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmNWYr_H-tS-uDthl8TAWgHELzUg3qlu0JT8VPFoFLLaqqEIPFuEWFpEO2nA1QDTeXkQZKVG-IwVTU9yt4o14Uy72uKfA3hHNswmxQ4j_hY5aidbSQagdd5VM3lMP75UDLQwUf95lgnAQ/s400/5449_558650523183_47210726_33661507_2725892_n.jpg" /></a></div><br />
“Neither of us joined <b><a href="http://secondlife.com/">Second Life</a></b> looking to find love,” says <b>Elle Waters</b> from the home she shares with her husband <b>Charles Callistro</b> in Louisville, Kentucky. “Besides exploring a new virtual space, it was more about, as it is for a lot of people, seeking a connection with people you can have intelligent discourse with.”<br />
<br />
And none of those people, during those first months in Linden Lab’s virtual world, was Charles Callistro.<br />
<br />
“I was part of the Digital Cultures discussion group in SL,” says Waters. “We’d have these very philosophical conversations, about the impact of the Internet, about the communities that develop online and how they translate to real life.” This was a professional area of interest for the woman who works as Web accessibility coordinator for Humana, exploring issues of better online access for people with disabilities.<br />
<br />
“We knew some of the same people in SL,” says Callistro, IT operations manager for a small California company. “We hung out in a couple of crowds that sometimes overlapped, so maybe we said hi to each other at <a href="http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=74140">a party or event</a>, but we never really got together.”<br />
<br />
“And then we met in real life in 2006,” says Waters.<br />
<br />
“There was a Second Life meet-up in San Francisco, where Linden Lab is based,” says Callistro.<br />
<br />
“I was involved in running that, and flew out for the weekend, and Charles and I got to know each other there,” says Waters. “And then, back in SL, there was his radio station.”<br />
<br />
“I was running <b>Phreak Radio</b>,” says Callistro. “The station was broadcast through SL and the Net in general. And Nether [<b>Nethermind Bliss</b>: Waters’ avatar name] had been DJing for a while, doing private parties, so we brought her on board.”<br />
<br />
“We had this ongoing joke of how Phreak Radio was a charmed environment,” says Waters, “with 12 of the 14 DJs eventually becoming couples with each other.”<br />
<br />
“And then Elle came back to San Francisco,” says Callistro.<br />
<br />
“I was invited by Linden Lab,” says Waters, “as an Influential SL Resident, to take part in discussions about how to improve the in-world experience. So they flew me out to San Francisco. And that was how Charles and I had our first actual date.”<br />
<br />
“But I couldn’t attend the discussions – or the party afterward,” says Callistro.<br />
<br />
“He was persona non grata at Linden Lab at the time,” explains Waters.<br />
“Taco the troublemaker!”<br />
<br />
Callistro [avatar name: <b>Taco Rubio</b>] laughs.<br />
<br />
After that, the two went into <b>World of Warcraft</b>, they and some other SL friends, levelling up characters and going on raids and generally socializing in that MMORPG as Second Life devolved into more of a kludgy, virtual shopping mall. And Waters and Callistro dated elsewhere online, hanging out on Skype for hours, watching shows together on Hulu as they chatted. And every three or four months they’d get together offline, sometimes in San Francisco, sometimes in Louisville, sometimes at a halfway point. And – eventually –<br />
<br />
“We decided to take the plunge,” says Waters. She couldn’t leave Louisville, having shared custody of a daughter with her ex-husband; so Callistro would be the one to budge; and he turned in his resignation at his job, but the company countered with a telecommuting offer, allowing the IT manager to work from Louisville. FTW, as they say online.<br />
<br />
“We got an apartment for Charles a few blocks away, so we weren’t just throwing ourselves together,” says Waters. “I think it’s important to have a transitional period for this sort of thing, especially if there’s a child involved, for people to get used to each other, to the constancy of being in the same space and sharing the everyday life.”<br />
<br />
“And that worked great,” says Callistro.<br />
<br />
“So a year later, we found a house to move into together,” says Waters,<br />
“and five months after that, we got married.”<br />
<br />
And their time online now?<br />
<br />
“Well, except for our jobs, not so much anymore,” says Waters. “I go into SL maybe once every couple of months, to attend a friend’s event or whatever, but that’s about it.<br />
<br />
“We keep in touch with old friends via Skype,” says Callistro, “and various online forums.”<br />
<br />
“We play so many games together as a family – video games, board games – and we have so many other things going on IRL,” says Waters. “My entertainment these days is our daughter, my husband, and our 80-pound puppy. We’re never lacking for amusement, or for intelligent discourse on any number of subjects.” She pauses, and her smile is almost audible over the phone lines. <br />
<br />
“That’s what happens," she says, "<a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3161/2955430710_34b84eb301.jpg">when you marry your best friend</a>."<br><br>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-72534047221575182572011-02-09T16:58:00.009-06:002011-02-09T17:26:01.699-06:00Wings for a Paper Saint: Valentine<h1 style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"></span></h1><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Love is in the air like a brace of <i>lepidoptera</i>, iridescent membranes flapping like the beat of a thousand paper-thin hearts. What'd they morph from, these insects d'amour, and who's to disparage their larval stage in favor of the flighted form, to shun the worm yet woo the wings?</span> </span></span><br />
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br />
</span><br />
All things change, of course, and love no less than others and more than most. A time of infatuation may be the only hour that never stretches, the emotions shifting swiftly along a course less straight than that of Cupid's drunkest arrow toward some far terminus of romance. And the day that celebrates this multihued passion, the day named in honor of St. Valentine? What are its origins? </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div>February 14, fast approaching here, was originally the feast day of Juno Februata, the Roman Goddess of the Fever of Love. In celebrating this goddess, whose day fell within the festival of Lupercus, a box was provided from which single men could draw a small piece of paper that was inscribed with a woman's name. The couple thus formed would participate in the erotic games that followed, would remain partners for the subsequent 12 months, and would sometimes even get married. This is what passed for reality programming in pagan times ... </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Jump ahead to the advent, so to speak, of Christianity, and to the repression of all things erotic. Juno's <i>rantum-scantum</i> lottery couldn't cut the ecclesiastical mustard, and something had to be done. One something was: replacing the women's names with the names of saints or with short sermons. Young men and women were expected to emulate the life of the saint whose name was on the billet they'd drawn; you can imagine what a box of chuckles that turned out to be. So, to assist those of the partying public who still preferred forming the two-person tortoise to sitting around in a hairshirt, the church decided a little revisionism would be just the thing: Out with the old gods and in with the new. Juno, man, she was yesterday's news, and quicker'n you could say <i>Quod erat demonstrandum</i>, all mention of her or of Lupercus was repressed. The happenin' kid on the block was a saint, went the official word. A saint, <i>um,</i> let's see now ... Valentine? Yeah, that's the ticket: St. Valentine! One of <i>ours</i>! And, listen, old Val is why all this celebrating started in the first place, <i>capisce</i>? </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">His day was officially set as February 14 by Pope Gelasius I in 494 C.E. </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But ... wait just one fucking minute. Was this saint the Bishop of Interamna who was martyred circa 271 C.E.? Or was he the priest that Emperor Claudius had executed for marrying couples in secret? Or was he a different priest who'd been subjected to much chin music and a little beheading for having dissed Jupiter and Mercury in the still-mostly-pagan days? </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One source claims there were as many as seven different Valentines. </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It didn't really matter: The papal instrumentality simply threw together a fake bio and set their propaganda loose and their soldiers onward and extinguished the public spark of Juno for good. However, the human spirit being resilient and love conquering all & so on, people eventually returned to using women's names instead of saints. At least there was that. And soon thereafter ~ well, in the 14th century ~ the custom of sending love letters on St. Valentine's Day began in England and France. By the 17th century, it was handmade cards; followed, in the 18th century, by commercially made cards. </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Decades passed, and the celebration grew increasingly secular; </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">the festival was finally dropped from the 1969 Roman Church Calendar. </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">These days, it's a largely Hallmark time for many of us, and heart-bedecked cards lie in piles ~ for the lucky ones ~ like so many paper butterflies resting their polychrome wings. But you know that even the blue morpho's got a flightless past, and you know those cards began life as nothing more than points of affection worming their way deep into the hearts of your loved ones. And you know that the transformation's not complete, nor will it ever be, and that over time what we call love may move from the fragility of a swallowtail's wing to a strength beyond the history of insects on this world. </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, yes, that sort of love does require a bit of work. </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It's just a little easier than flying.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;">... </span></span>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-65400749598872206312011-01-20T14:47:00.001-06:002011-01-20T22:17:40.258-06:00Who is Merricat? <br />
"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenent, and <i>Amanita phalloides</i>, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead."<br />
<br />
<b>~ Shirley Jackson's <i>We Have Always Lived in the Castle </i></b>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519163170145003675.post-70982330129127620692011-01-20T11:43:00.006-06:002011-01-20T22:17:07.954-06:00The Lover's Dictionary<div class="bigbody" id="story"><a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/binary/5c10/books_readings2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://www.austinchronicle.com/binary/5c10/books_readings2.jpg" style="margin-top: 0pt;" width="150" /></a><b>by David Levithan</b><br />
<b>Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 224 pp., $18</b></div><div class="bigbody" id="story"><br />
There's a Venn diagram somewhere ~ just like there's a true love out there for you somewhere, sure, because abstractions are as ubiquitous as they are unattainable ~ and in one circle of this diagram are the sort of relationships experienced by people who aren't self-reflective, who are only mildly neurotic and also sort of boring, and in the other circle are the sort of relationships experienced by people who think perhaps too much about themselves and others and are also, on some emotional or psychological level or other, fucking apeshit crazy. And then, of course, there's the overlap. In this diagram, the overlap is where parts of pretty much anyone's relationships can be seen. This is the area covered by David Levithan – author, most famously, of <i>Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist</i> – in his new book, <i>The Lover's Dictionary</i>.<br />
<br />
Levithan's unnamed narrator uses a lens of words to reveal the particulars of his two-year (so far) relationship with his girlfriend: words, a few of them for each letter of the alphabet, which serve to mark the short passages he constructs after every one. This gambit's effective as a format for exploration by the author, and, for the reader, it renders the text into easily parsed pieces rarely longer than a Facebook update. It's effective as <i>The Lover's Dictionary</i> because Levithan has been through an emotional wringer or two, or has somehow grokked what it's like, and still dares (or is helpless) to hope that another journey through another wringer could end up elsewhere than in a sodden pile of regret on the cold, hard floor in some laundry room of love.<br />
<br />
To some extent, you've been this narrator, I've been this narrator, we've all been this narrator. That's a compliment to Levithan's skill at making the personal work universally and vice versa; he's just telling one man's story ~ well, one-man-and-one-woman-together's story, from the man's point of view ~ and yet it's so damned familiar. What else it is, thankfully, is not overly or merely or more than occasionally clever or maudlin ~ a relief, as this <i>Dictionary</i> is clearly written by A Sensitive Guy. And of course here it is, in its fine and smallish hardcover package, just waiting to be the perfect Valentine's Day gift for, what's the term, that special someone? Or just for yourself. Because, c'mon, aren't you just as special?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/review?oid=oid%3A1136804"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">This review also appears in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The Austin Chronicle</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, for which scrappy altweekly it was originally written.</span></a></div></div>Wayne Alan Brennerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09745615813448175266noreply@blogger.com0