www.buymyshitpile.com

If you’re a halfway sentient and rational human being keeping tabs on the most recent political/financial upheaval in the United States, you’re probably pretty spectacularly depressed right now. I know I am. Thankfully, we’re not quite at this point yet; we can still laugh through our tears. It may be the sick, hopeless laughter of the damned, but hey… whatever gets us through the night.

Fellow gallows bird Kelly Sue just directed me to buymyshitpile.com. The site’s premise is simple:

With our economy in crisis, the US Government is scrambling to rescue our banks by purchasing their “distressed assets”, i.e., assets that no one else wants to buy from them. We figured that instead of protesting this plan, we’d give regular Americans the same opportunity to sell their bad assets to the government. We need your help and you need the Government’s help!

Use the form below to submit bad assets you’d like the government to take off your hands. And remember, when estimating the value of your 1997 limited edition Hanson single CD “MMMbop”, it’s not what you can sell these items for that matters, it’s what you think they are worth. The fact that you think they are worth more than anyone will buy them for is what makes them bad assets.

Recent listing on buymyshitpile.com. “You can own my cat Brent’s furry little balls for $512.87! He isn’t so thrilled about the transaction, but fuel prices have driven cat food’s sky high.”

Notable items listed include “WaMu: $0.01”, “My Liberal Arts Bachelor’s Degree: $20.000”, “The ET Atari 2600 Game: $88.000”, “Nancy Pelosi: $0.75” and “My Dignity: $4,500,00.00”. Truly, this is fiscal responsibility of the highest caliber.

In the coming weeks, whenever I feel like I’m about to crumble under the weight of my own despair, I’ll definitely be visiting/adding to the site, and hopefully selling off my complete run of Hot Dog! children’s magazine for the price it deserves ($156,940.81) in the process.

Good morning, rude boys and girls. Just a wee bit o’ Madness to help you start your week off on the right foot…then the left foot… then the right foot…all the way to school:

I’d actually never seen this extra silly extended version of the “One Step Beyond” video before stumbling across it on YouTube recently. Now I’m reveling in a full-on personal 2 Tone revival. Must. Stop. Skankin‘. (I’ve already kicked the cat twice.)

Join me in looking like a right fookin’ idiot getting that sluggish blood pumping with an assortment of rocksteady beats beyond the jump. Oi!

Author/sorceror Alan Moore. Photo by Jose Villarubia, via Swindle Magazine.

A remarkably candid  interview with the grand magus of comics writing, Alan Moore, went up today over at the LA Times, discussing, among other things, Moore’s utter contempt for various Hollywood film adaptations of his body of work. Now, I know a lot of folks are really excited to see the new Watchmen movie (based on Moore’s seminal graphic novel, illustrated by Dave Gibbons), and while I’m sorry to piss on the parade, I must admit I’m in complete agreement with Moore that this book in particular (arguably his most influential work to date) is “inherently unfilmable.” I’m glad to see him speaking up. Quoting from the interview:

I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying… It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The Watchmen film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can’t we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change.

Yes.

I’m fairly convinced that no matter how hard director Zack Snyder tries –and undoubtedly the good man is trying very hard– his adaptation will pale in comparison to the scope, depth and resonance of the original work, just as every other movie based on Moore’s books has failed to measure up. (Sure, V For Vendetta was, well, watchable. Is that really saying much?)

This is not to imply that flicks adapted from other formats are without merit (hell, sometimes they even surpass the original work; Blade Runner, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Excorcist, The Godfather, and The Shining all spring to mind), only that Moore, being a undisputed master of his chosen format, has proved time and time again that one can achieve a sublime kind of storytelling through sequential art that cannot, WILL not be conveyed through in any other medium.

We’ve entered an era ruled by scavengers. We are starving for substance. Obviously, we can’t look to Hollywood schlockbusters to nourish us. Still, the platform of narrative movie making has its own profound and distinctive magic. Here’s hoping that somehow, thanks to the increasing accessibility of equipment and relative price decrease in digital film and editing software, more and more storytellers standing beyond the gates of the sausage factory will be goaded, either by hunger or the pure urgency of inspiration, into making their own moving pictures. Otherwise, we can all just look forward to endless helpings of the same insubstantial, derivative slurry, ad nauseum.

Speaking of substance… I was lucky enough to acquire a copy of The Mindscape of Alan Moore a few months ago. The directorial debut of DeZ Vylenz, Mindscape is the only feature film production on which Moore has collaborated, and given personal permission to use his stories. I can’t begin to tell you what an enjoyable and fascinating documentary it is. It will be officially released on DVD on September 30th.

Alan Moore’s not just one of most important writers in comics; he’s one of the most important writers, period. So really, whether you’re a longtime comics reader or you’ve never delved further than the first issue of Gaiman’s Sandman, the Northhampton Wizard of Words’ body of work cannot be recommended highly enough.

Author David Foster Wallace is dead. The self-effacing, hilarious, bitter genius behind Infinite Jest as well as Girl With Curious Hair and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men hanged himself at his home in Claremont, CA. His wife found his body late last night. He was 46 years old.

Here’s an excerpt of Wallace discussing Infinite Jest and what drove him to write it during an interview with Valerie Stivers in the late 90s. It’s as resonant a statement today as it was then, and far more heartbreaking:

I wanted to do something sad. I think it’s a very sad time in America and it has something to do with entertainment. It’s not TV’s fault, It’s not [Hollywood’s] fault and it’s not the Net’s fault. It’s our fault. We’re choosing this. We are choosing to spend more time sneering at hype machines, [while still] being enmeshed in them, than we are living.

[My] secret pretension…I mean, every writer wants his book to change the world, but I guess I would like to know if the book moved people. I assume that the future the book talks about, while it might be amusing, wouldn’t be a fun future to live in. I think it would be nice if the book could maybe make people think about some of the choices we are making, about what we pay attention to and give power to, so maybe the future won’t be quite that…glittery but cold.

Mission accomplished, man. Wish you could’ve stuck around. The future still needed your help.

Photo via GETTY.

Oh, Artichoke and La Machine, how do we love thee? Let us count the ways. First, you brought the Sultan’s Elephant and the Little Girl Giant to London. And at this very moment, to the delight and terror of all, you’ve set a 50 foot-high, 37 ton mechanical spider rampaging through the streets of Liverpool. Incredible.

Despite being mortally afraid of arachnids, I wish more than anything that I could be there right now to see “La Princesse” coming to life. I’m sure many of you do as well. Is any of our UK readership getting a chance to witness this? Please, drop us a line!

Photo by Exacta2a via their wonderful Flickrstream.

Autumn is upon us, so I’m busting out all of my favorite fall records. First up: anything and everything Jill Tracy has ever touched with her long, thin, alabaster hands.

As can be plainly seen from this gorgeous music video for “Haunted by the Thought of You”, Madame Tracy is one classy dame. Cool as a cucumber. Who else do I know who could maintain such an unflappable air of poise and elegance as reanimated hearts, levitating chairs, creepy humanoid automata, and even the arse of Satan himself loom directly behind her? No one!

Jill Tracy performing live in NYC. Photo by Don Spiro.

I’ve been swooning over the Victorian parlor pianist/netherworld chanteuse ever since a video for her seminal song “The Fine Art of Poisoning” was released a few years back, but she’s been casting her Ghostly Gloom Glam Queen spell for well over a decade (since long before this latest incarnation of the “dark cabaret” movement picked up speed), always with unparalleled grace and sincerity.

The songs collected on her latest album The Bittersweet Constrain (two in particular: “Sell My Soul” and “Torture”) do indeed invoke a delicious sort of pleasure/pain, not unlike the burn of real wormwood absinthe trickling down the gullet; unsettling and exhilarating as receiving a languorous tongue bath from a black cat at midnight on some foggy, windswept moor. Highly recommended.

Also see:

• Kurt Weill: September Songs
• Jacques Brel: “Ne Me Quitte Pas”
• Nico: “No One is There”
• Edith Piaf: “No, je ne regrette rien”
• Tiger Lillies: “Bully Boys”
• Dresden Dolls: “Sing” (alternate cut)
• Reverend Glasseye: “Seventeen Lashes”
• Nicki Jaine: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
  
• 2007 Edwardian Ball (Rosin Coven, Vau de Vire)
• Vermillion Lies: “No Good” live
  
• The Ditty Bops: “Wishful Thinking”
  
• World Inferno Friendship Society: “Tattoos Fade” live
• HUMANWINE: “Wake Up” live
• Sepiachord Magazine: “Music of a Past that Never Was”
  

“Androgyny” by Rasha XO. (Via Genderfork.)

Earlier this summer, Warren Ellis (yes, that one guy we reference every ten minutes on COILHOUSE, shaddup) posted some cogent thoughts on what he describes as the end of “The Patchwork Years” on the internet: “Nobody needs another linkblog… There are already thousands of them. The job of curation is being taken care of. Look ahead.” He’s right. I’m as guilty of rehashing as the next blogger, but yeah. Generally speaking, we could do with far less circle-jerk turd-polishing online.

Paraphrasing the feisty theater renegade Maya Gurantz, those of us in any position to create new media should be baking new bread instead of quibbling over stale crumbs. At the very least, we existing curators should be doing helluva lot more cogitating instead of regurgitating the same tired old ones and zeros. (“Hey dood, check out this awesome link via BoingBoing via Fark via Digg via Shlomo McFluffernutter’s Livejournal feed. Cut, paste, click.”)

More on internet culture’s addiction to shorthand tastemaking at some later date.

Meanwhile, even in these postulated-out, post-patchwork years, it’s still very possible to be galvanized by some vital new curator. Fellow bay area sasspot Whitney Moses emailed me a while back about a blog called Genderfork, run by Sarah Dopp.

Shave by Madame Raro. (Via Genderfork.)

Genderfork is an exploration of androgyny and gender variance through artistic photography and personal essays. Dopp has two personal goals for the project:

To compile all of the genderforking resources, imagery, and ideas that I come across on the web into one beautiful repository. I want to experience a sense of cohesion with these concepts — they all too often feel scattered and disparate.
To encourage a conversation around the grey areas of gender with friends, with strangers, and with strangers who need to become friends.
…because I think we can all agree: Gender is a loaded word.

Loaded, and how. That’s why complex arguments revolving around gay marriage and partnership rights can become so volatile so quickly, and why debate rages endlessly on between gender-abolitionist feminists and their less radical sisters. It’s why surprisingly empathetic reportage on 20/20 examining the lives of transgender children feels like a huge victory, and why my co-editors and I fought tooth and nail to find a way to publish Siege’s Neogender piece in Coilhouse Issue 01, if only in a limited capacity.

It’s the feeling that you don’t necessarily fit within your own time. You’re drawn to the past in ways you can’t quite understand… Jared Joslin

Two of Jared Joslin’s recent oil paintings, The Panther and the Zebra and Moonlit Starlet

My admiration for the visionary Joslin posse knows no bounds. If there were any way for me to make the reception for Jared’s solo exhibition in Beverly Hills tomorrow night (August 14th), I’d be there with bells on (as well as a pair of schmancy silk stockings with seams up the back, and possibly one of those vintage, beaded cloche hats). Alas, in a strange twist of fate, I’ll be in the Joslin’s own city of Chicago, no doubt weeping disconsolately into a plastic cup of draft beer in the corner of some rock club. So glamorous.

Metropolis by Jared Joslin (2008)

I urge our readers in Southern California to attend the reception in my stead. Don’t miss the opportunity to bask in the breathtaking elegance, mystery and nostalgia of Jared’s recent work, a collection of oil paintings entitled Shadow of the Silver Moon. Quoting the press release:

In the Shadow of the Silver Moon, a spectrum of intriguing characters spring to life. There is a Dietrich-esque emcee, striking her silver-tipped cane against the parquet floor. An alluring chanteuse beckons with her sparkling eyes and an elaborately costumed fan dancer strikes an elegant, sinuous pose.

Performers and patrons are caught in the swirl of the evening, yet remain lost in their own private reveries. Under the Shadow of the Silver Moon, while the band is playing, mysteries hidden behind the eyes linger in the air, like fireflies in the night.

The exhibition runs through September 13, 2008 at the Yarger/Strauss Fine Art.

First, headlines screaming about giant flying inflatable turds descending on innocent children… and now, word that Werner Herzog and David Lynch are joining forces to make a slasher film?! Comrades, this is either the beginning of the end, or The Best Day Ever. Let’s dance!

Herzog + Sophocles + Lynch = EPIC WIN

The two reigning iconoclasts of modern cinema announced at Cannes that they’ll be teaming up to make a digitally shot, guerilla-style murder drama called My Son sometime early next year. Based on a true story, My Son will tell the grisly tale of a “San Diego man who acts out a Sophocles play in his mind and kills his mother with a sword” with the narrative jumping between the murder scene and direct accounts from the matricidal maniac.

Lynch has also announced plans to collaborate with Jodorowsky on an NC-17 “metaphysical gangster movie” starring Nick Nolte, and featuring Marilyn Manson as a 300-year old pope.

What next? Matthew Barney and the Mekas Brothers unite to reinterpret the Ramayana starring Soupy Sales as Hanuman? A pristine print of Welles’ original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons is found under a rock in a Brazilian rain forest? Jerry Lewis finally consents to release The Day the Clown Cried? GIT ‘ER DONE, COSMOS.

(Yeah, we know. This is already yesterday’s poos. Don’t care. Must blog for sake of prost… er… posterity.)

Via the Nainamo Daily News (and ten gazillion other websites): “A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.”

OH SHIT! Photo via LiveNews, Australia.

A strong gust of wind carried the gargantuan pile of crap several hundred yards from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it touched down again on the grounds of a children’s home, where it broke a window. No word yet on whether or not the home’s inhabitants have been traumatized for life. Museum director Juri Steiner claims the piece of art has a safety system which normally makes the cacadoody deflate during stormy weather, but something went wrong.

Vaguely related items of possible interest:

• The Adventures of Algie (Pink Floyd’s havoc-wreaking inflatable pig)
• George Bush poop flags
• Ed the Happy Clown (man’s anus becomes inter-dimensional poo portal)
• “Weiner Poopie”
• Student Says Vomiting on Art was Artistic Act