one night, a rhythmic shaking awoke me. It was my main man Billy Ray in my bed doing it w/ a girl I once did it w/. What th? What did I ever do to them? W/o a good night's sleep, my fever would never go down. Billy Ray said, "Now I'm going to scoop you," and th girl said,
"Now, baby, scoop me now."
Den he put his cock in her ass, and she kept saying, "Oh, God, Billy," and he kept saying,
"Scoop, scoop a doo, scoop a doo, scoop a doo-bay doo-bay doo."
Feigning sleep, I heard every word. Suddenly, she was saying Billy Ray's name faster and in a feral way: "Billy, Billy, Billy Rrrray." Had I ever made her come like this? As they climaxed together, th girl said,
"Uh-oh, my period." And den she peeled th condom off of him and drank his come and licked her own blood from her lips. I fell back asleep. When I woke up again, they were gone, and it was summer's hottest night in New York City. My windowless bedroom had a fever. I crawled in front of th electric fan and let it blow warm air in my face. I stepped out into th living room -- which also had a fever -- where Kevin Shields greeted me angrily.
"There's no escaping it, dogface," he said. "Inside, outside, asleep, awake -- th fever follows us."
"Little cat-brain," I said, "a fever that doesn't kill you is doing you a favour."
+ + +
Kevin and I are alive and uncomfortable in Brooklyn. I'm in love w/ a genius, jobless, and chronically shirtless. Kevin wishes his kind could be shirtless, stares longingly @ th door, and pees in secret places. He didn't piss, shit, or eat for 24 hours after our arrival, but he did crawl into bed w/ me that first night, muttering curses. "You're all I've got. What a fucking nightmare!" A subway train passes 20 feet from our living room window, and it took him a whole day to figure out that th big dragon is always approaching but is never going to enter our apartment. I'm edging towards broke and mustn't apologize for being socially avoidant. Our giant loft apartment is a real social butterfly, though, accepting a constant stream of visitors who are unanimously impressed by its length, high ceilings, and complete lack of silence. One wall is decorated w/ clocks devoted to different time zones: Oslo, Rome, Ghent, Cairo, Manila, Queens. That's what it's like to cross from one end our apartment to th other. Miraculously, little kids can cover th epic distance in under one second.
Dangerous Drew Ailes of Fuck You Crew fame came a-visiting from th wilds of Minnesota and fell a little in love w/ th big city. We took a long, romantic walk along th beach in Long Beach and talked about how we're both recalcitrant fuckups. Whenever Drew and I get in a conversation, what it mostly boils down to is interviewing each other about how to get happiness and what it means to be happy in th first place. I get th impression that Drew gets th impression that less than 10% of people are happy, and more than 90% of people are miserable; therefore, it is necessary to completely ignore what @ least 90% of people do to get happy.
If you are one of th less than 10%, and you are reading this, would you like to drink a beer w/ me and Dangerous Drew Ailes in th future?
"Life is crazy good," Rome Petersson said to me this a.m. I said,
"Emphasis on crazy. I never woulda guessed two months ago that I would be verb verb adjective to proper noun, a noun I only just verb."
"Yeah, homie, that's crazy. High five! Obviously, I'm not good at giving people the don't-do-that-crazy-thing advice."
"I just wish I could write on th Internet."
"What is it, like writer's block?"
"I guess so. It's probably because I never update while I'm on vacation, and this whole place is giving me an optical illusion that I'm still on vacation."
"I know what you can do to fix that vacation feeling."
"..."
"Work!"
"Thanks, yeah."
"Maybe work would feel even more like a vacation, though. That's how I feel sometimes. Like not working is normal, and when I work it's a weird-ass vacation from not-work."
"Yes, it felt good working on those film shoots last week, but mebbe all work feels good when you're not working w/ assholes. This will sound cuckoo, too, but my real job is updating. When I don't update, I am like only half a man. I mean, writing is th reason people like me in th first place, so when I don't do it ..."
"Is it weird that you haven't been writing, but a few people still like you?"
"... or do they!?"
I've been going around taking pictures of shapes of light for God only knows what reason. I hate Flickr, I hate F-bk, I hate Tumblr, and el jay is too dead to hate. I hate el jay! My pictures of shapes of light pile up in my inbox, and th more there are, th more greedy I get. I could make a whole album of beefcake pictures of Rome; a whole picture post of me, John A., and Andy demolishing th furniture in my old apartment in Hicksville using nothing but a hammer, scissors, screwdrivers, and an axe.
There's something about freezing these moments, though, that resists any of my neuroses about sharing/not-sharing, good art/bad art, and documenting/forgetting, just as there's something un-neurotic about just sitting down and writing, independent of whether anyone will like me for it. It's v. nice just to do it and not think about where it's going or what it's for. I saw a staircase in th reptile house @ th Bronx Zoo that was notable in no way that I could discern except that it happened to be in front of me, and I happened to be looking @ it.
In th same way, I have been doing my best simply to enjoy th company of th extraordinary people who surround me. I need my roommates in order to be able to afford to live here, and I moved here essentially to be closer to them and make movies together and publish a magazine together -- big, complicated projects whose success can be easily measured by longevity and popularity -- but th feeling of being around people who know me well and who love me and whose jokes always make sense to me cannot be measured. Samantha and I drove out to th beach; we ate a popsicle, took camphone shots of th popsicle, and got a little sunburnt; and that was th extent of our outing. My favourite day this month failed to advance th plot in any way.
I'm reminded of another conversation Rome and I had on th rooftop of his previous apartment.
"I used to want people to love me for who I was, not for what I did, but that was totally stupid. They're the same thing."
"I agree! -- which is why no lawyer would ever want to date me and my broke ass."
"New York City is no place for sissies," Natalie says. I say it is also no place for people who insist that others "love them for who they are". On every block, this city hits you w/ a cold, hard, green reality check -- everybody hustling to make a buck off everybody else. You drive across a bridge, you pay too much. You drink vitaminwater, you pay too much. If you're a paying customer, if you're selling something I want, I love you. If you don't know whether you're walking north or south, den why are you walking?
"Jean-Luc Godard," I tell Samantha, "made a film about th May-December romance between Jean Genet (played by my dead roommate Gordon) and a lady named 'Caro' (played by you) -- a stand-in for Anna Karina, obviously -- in which Godard argues against th coupling by showing Genet/Gordon to be a bumbling, neurotic, Woody-Allen-esque fool who is unable to complete everyday administrative tasks such as renewing his expired driver's license. Th film takes place entirely inside a circular DMV building, inside which various queues snake in every direction w/ no apparent rhyme or reason. In his quest to locate th correct queue for license renewal, Genet/Gordon is handicapped by having to wear rollerskates he doesn't know how to control. 'Caro' (again, that's you) is beautiful, graceful, and wearing a black outfit accented in red. Do you recognize that part?"
"The black outfit?"
"Accented in red!"
"No, I don't."
"Th third time I met you, you were wearing a black outfit and red shoes."
"Oh! You made fun of those shoes."
"I didn't mean it. I love them. Anyway, in th movie, I am either an extra or holding th camera or watching th finished movie later in a theater. Gordon, who is also my grandfather, dies in th movie; but I leave th movie theater and go to his funeral in real life."
"This is starting to be a little sad."
"Very sad. Except I don't know how to be sad. I'm sitting there @ th funeral fully comprehending that I should be crying right now. And den my friend Raul shows up @ th funeral, too, and he whips out his violin and starts playing th original Star Trek theme in a way that reveals a tremendous amount of secret pathos in th piece. I notice that th strings of Raul's violin are made of strips of film taken from th cutting room floor of Godard's movie, and I cry and cry."
"..."
"Th end."
"Mario, my dreams aren't anything like your dreams."
"That's all right, everybody's different. Weird thing is, I don't know why Raul's in there. I mean, we're friends, I like him, but I never hang out w/ th dude. He's th token black character of my dream."
"So he's a black man, and he teaches you how to get in touch with your emotions ..."
"Ohmygod, you're right! I dreamed a Magick Negro movie."
Lately, whatever I have dreamed and whatever I have written down has come true. After I dreamed about working on a crew for a Godard film w/ a handicapped protagonist, I worked on an actual film crew for an ice cream commercial in which th lead actor wore a giant ice cream cone suit that made him effectively blind. Not long after I writ about President Coolidge's extraordinary extraterrestrial wife, I met her in person. Luckily, Coolidge's wife was single. All I have to do to get a job in New York City is write down
Give me
something to do, New York City in a large font size and really mean it.
What shall it be, and won't my whole heart listen closely to th greater forces @ work and tell me what happens next? Walk th dogs, operate th booms, file th files, cast th spells, shoot th shit, and write th great Internet novels? What would it be like to write stories for a living like Los Bros Hernandez, David Lynch, or Sparky Schulz? Which came first, th job or th vacation? My and Sascha's handsome book's release date has been pushed back to 25 September. We won't see much money from it; but I want it to do well, anyhow, because if it does well, mebbe somebody will let me do another one.
Guy Raz interviewed us about it for NPR's All Things Considered. I'd prepared a statement th day before th interview --
from Th MZA
to John A_____ <*******@npr.org>
date Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 3:44 PM
subject Re: 44 Presidents contact
John,
Idea for tomorrow's interview: the 44 Presidents project is rooted in "Internet culture". It was created by two bloggers working remotely from opposite sides of the country. Most of its "facts" were lifted directly from Wikipedia without reference to primary sources. The voice used for the presidents was inspired by Facebook's (now obsolete) third-person status updates. The web version of 44 Presidents "went viral" when it was linked by somebody on Metafilter. Not coincidentally, the book's cover features the first U.S. president who understands the difference between Youtube and TV. Given the absurdity and instantaneousness (and attendant disposability) of Internet culture, is it possible to make a work of art that is slow, thoughtful, and wholehearted, but still worships the Internet? That was the unspoken challenge behind the making of this book.
I hope this helps you form your questions.
regards
mario.
-- but Guy Raz was a real pro and kept me off balance th whole time, and of course we ended up talking about what he wanted to talk about, stuff that was more entertaining for radio.
"I see here at one point in the book that Calvin Coolidge claims his skin is silver. How did you come across this information?"
"Wikipedia was having a really crazy day that day, Guy."
In th end, NPR balked @ using only our noms de plume on th air (and on their web site), and @ th last minute -- after having already edited our piece -- they killed it. This photograph is th only evidence that it happened:
My first month in New York has suggested that I am happy as fuck doing nothing but also h.a.f. being busy and engaging in activities that are new to me. In a nutshell, my cheeks are on fire, and being happy is easy. We're animals, and we know how to please ourselves. We're also superheroes, which is unfortunate because superheroes are never happy pleasing only themselves. If we knew how to make other people happy or how not to give a shit if other people were happy, we would be happy all th time; and we would not be Spider-Man. It's hard to disagree when you're enveloped by 8 million other people in skintight stupid costumes.
+ + +
TH COUNTDOWN:
( 33-25 )
24. TEENAGE FANCLUB "Broken" (7.3 MB) -- Some of my favourite songs are simple phrases repeated over and over. I like this one whether I'm feeling weak or strong.
Bonus track that is opposite in mood, similar in repetition, but a question instead of a statement:
D'ANGELO "Untitled (How Does It Feel?)" (9.9 MB) |
hy p e r
