remember eXistenZ?

The Cronenberg joint from the late 90s about thrills, chills, and escapades in the seedy underbelly (and bioported gamepods) of a not-so-distant future, starring international sensation Jennifer Jason Leigh and a relatively unknown British chap named Jude Law?

I was a pretty big fan of that movie. And that part where Jude Law/Ted Pikul licked ol' JJL's infected bioport in game.

If that sentence sounds like code to you while simultaneously turning you on, do yourself a favor and give this flicker a watch. Even though it's ridiculous, if you equate gamepods to iPhones it will chill you with its on-pointitude about the fetishistic addiciton people have to their personal technology. And if the chills don't impress you, Willem Defoe as (shock!) a madman will at least make you laugh.

DP: And that light is just...right. Thanks for standing in, John!
JUDE: It's Jude.
DP: Thanks Jude! Just think, one of these days this could be you starring and you'll have your own stand-in.
JUDE: I'm actually the actor. I'm not a stand in.
DP: That's the spirit, Jim!

joe tracz is a really great writer

If you ever get a chance to see one of his plays, do it. This is a little snip from one he wrote set at various dance parties in outer space:

Unable to go home, Error began carefully measuring out his remaining jumps, traveling to points of historic interest in the past and future, absorbing art and culture wherever he could, and taking advantage of the unique educational opportunities his situation afforded.

At least he started to do that.

And then he became a teenager.

And then he met a girl.

At a masked ball, at the bottom of the ocean.

A ball we happened to be throwing.

And then he lost her.

He did something stupid and he lost her.

And ever since then…


I feel bad for the guy.

I know how it feels to keep looking for something.

I have an actual goddamned time machine, I am not kidding

If I said to you, "I want to return to 1940 and have a big coupe with big running boards and drive it drunkenly and carefully along dirt roads never causing harm except for frightening chickens out of the road, and I want you standing out there on the running board saying Slow down, or Let me in, and laughing, but I don't stop, because of course you don't mean it, you think as I do that big 1940s coupe and careful drunken driving and one party outside the car and one inside and both laughing and chickens spraying unhurt into ditches is what life was then, is what life was about before it became ruined by us and all our crap," and if I said to you, "I have an actual goddamned time machine, I am not kidding, we can get in the coupe inside thirty seconds if we take off our clothes and push the red button underneath that computer over there, come on, strip, get ready""--would you get ready to go with me, and go? Would you ask a lot of questions? Or would you just say, "Shut up and push the button"?

--Padgett Powell via Ben Platt's facebook page

since prince was on appollonia

I've been working on a dream project pretty much nonstop for the past few months. It's an idea I've nursed in some fashion for the past five or so years. We're finally shooting the first episode and then some this weekend.


Of course, all this dedication has meant I've abandoned a bunch of littler projects for awhile. That and had a lot of late nights listening to Bruce Springsteen and Passion Pit at my kitchen table. So *snaps* to some cool stuff that I didn't write that has been keeping my creative brain full in between bites of Snap and Akon and Emon and Springsteen and dance jams and teaching the children and watching The Office and The Guild and all that.

first snaps to Jonathan Goldstein's Ladies & Gentlemen, The Bible!, . It is a book my pal Lindsey is reading, and from this story alone it sounds absolutely wonderful. This is one part:

In the Beginning, when Adam was first created, he spent whole days rubbing his face in the grass. He picked his ear until it bled, tried to fit his fist in his mouth, and yanked out tufts of his own hair. At one point he tried to pinch his own eyes out, in order to examine them, and God had to step in.

Looking down at Adam, God must have felt a bit weird about the whole thing. It must have been something like eating at a cafeteria table all by yourself when a stranger suddenly sits down opposite you. But it's a stranger who you have created. And he is eating a macaroni salad that you have also created. And you have been sitting at the table all by yourself for over a hundred billion years. And yet still, you have nothing to talk about. It was pitiful the way Adam looked up into the sky and squinted. Before He created Adam, God must have been lonely. Now he was still lonely, and so was Adam.

Then came Eve. Since the Garden of Eden was the very first village and since every village needs a mayor as well as a village idiot, it broke down in this way. Eve: mayor. Adam: village idiot. And that is the way it was from the very beginning. Sometimes when Adam would start to speak, Eve would get all hopeful that he was about to impart something important and smart, but he would only say stuff like, "Little things are really great, because you can put them in your hand as well as in your mouth."

Eve would ponder how one minute she was not there, or anywhere, and now she was. Adam would ponder nothing. In her dreams, Eve danced in the tops of trees. Her beautiful thoughts flew out of her ears and lit up the sky like fireflies, and there were all kinds of people to talk to and hug. And then she would hear snoring. She would wake up, and there would be Adam, his yokel face pressed right against hers, his dog-food breath blowing right up her nostrils. Eve stared up at the sky. Adam draped his arm across her chest and brought his knee up onto her stomach. God, watching in Heaven, feared for Adam's broken heart as though the whole universe depended on it.

Adam was close to the animals and spent all day talking to them. Except for God, Eve had no one. She would complain to the Lord any chance she got. "Adam is a nimrod," she would say and the Lord would remain silent. God was the best and all that, and she loved the hell out of Him, but when it came to trash-talk, He was of no use.

Adam was constantly trying to impress her. "Look what I have made," he said one bright morning, his hands cupped together. Eve looked into his hands. She pulled away and shrieked. Adam was holding giraffe feces. "I've sculpted it!" said Adam. "It is for the Lord." He opened his hands wide to reveal to her a tiny little giraffe with a crooked neck.

On some days, Adam galloped about, exploring. His hair was wiry and when it got sweaty, it hung down in his eyes. Adam was cute this way. On one such day, he saw a snake. Adam made the snake's acquaintance by accidentally stepping on his back.

"Wow, that smarts!" said the snake through gritted teeth. Their eyes locked and in that very moment, the snake concluded that, indeed, Adam was a lummox and as King of the Earth, his reign would very soon end. There was a new sheriff in town, and it was he. It was no longer the story of Adam, but the story of the snake. He could tell all of this just by simply looking into his idiot eyes.

"I've seen you around with another one like you," he said to Adam. "But instead of the dead legless snake between the legs, she has chaos there."

"That's Eve!" said Adam, all animated. "I named her that myself. God made her from out of my rib." He showed the snake the scar on his side. The snake looked at Adam in silence. The idea of Adam, Adam the schlemiel, Adam the fool, being God's favorite was enough to give the snake a migraine.

"You aren't at all like I imagined," the snake said. "I thought you'd be closer to the ground. More pliant. Greener. I tried to explain to God that to make you balanced up on your hind legs was architecturally unsound. I don't know why I bother."

Adam sat and listened, wide-eyed. Eve hadn't the patience to sit and chat like this. So when the snake suggested that they get into the habit of meeting every once in a while to talk, Adam was very excited to do so. As they lazed on their backs, staring up at the sky, the snake would brag about how he was older than the whole world and how he used to pal around with God in the dark, back before Creation. He said that in the darkness, it was a truer freer time, that in the darkness was the good ol' days. He told Adam that back in the very beginning, he had all kinds of thoughts on how to make the Garden of Eden a better place -- but God was just too stubborn to listen to reason. "Make the earth out of sugar, I told Him. Instead of stingers, give bees lips they can kiss you with."

Adam didn't always agree with the snake. In fact, a lot of what the snake said went straight over his head. But there was still something about him that made him get into a very particular mood. He made the world feel bigger. Sometimes when Adam was with Eve, sitting there in icy silence, he would think to himself: "I sure could go for a good dose of snake."

You would think after all the time they spent together, the snake would finally find it within himself to like Adam, just a little bit. But instead, he only grew to hate him more. He took to comforting himself with thoughts of Adam's wife, Eve. From what he heard from Adam, she was hot and smart. Often he would imagine running into her, and the instant synergy they would have. "Adam neglected to tell me how leggy you are," he would say, wrapping himself around her calf.

The snake had no idea what he looked like. He was hairless, bucktoothed, four inches tall, and he spoke with a lisp. Adam had the IQ of a coconut husk. But he was still human. The snake, in his arrogance, was unable to grasp this, and so he daydreamed. "Sometimes, I'd think you were watching me," the snake imagined saying to Eve. "Because I felt like there were ribbons wrapped around me. Ribbons made of raw pork intestines. I would turn around to catch you sneaking a peek at me from behind a tree, but all I would see were the hedgehogs who mocked me. Come, my dear. Let us eat from the Tree of Knowledge."

On Eve's very first day, Adam had explained to her the rules of the Garden, just the way God had explained them to him. He had lifted his head up and had made his back stiff. He had spoken the way a radio broadcaster from the 1940's would. Another kind of woman, someone softer than Eve, might have found this charming. He explained that except for the Tree of Knowledge, every tree in the Garden was theirs to eat from.

"I am a fan of the pear," Adam said. "It is not unlike an apple, whose head craves God."

"Tell me more about this Tree of Knowledge," said Eve. She enjoyed the sound of it. The Tree of Knowledge. It sounded very poetic.

"There's not much to tell," said Adam. "If we eat from it, we will die."

From then on, Eve talked about the Tree of Knowledge all the time. It was Tree of Knowledge this and Tree of Knowledge that. It was like it wasn't a tree at all, but a moviestar. Sometimes she would just stand by the Tree and stare at it. It was on such an occasion that she met the snake.
When Eve first caught sight of him, she brought her hand to her mouth and gasped. She had seen some repulsive animals in her day. A boobie that percolated her vomit just below her tonsils. A dingo that instilled in her a sublime sense of nature's cruelty. And a deathwatch beetle that filled her with existential dread. But still, there was something about the snake that made her realize in a flash that the world was anywhere from 60 to 80 percent oilier than she would have ever imagined.

"Hi!" said the snake. "In the mood for some Fruit of Knowledge? It's fruity!"

"We were told not to eat from that tree, or else we would die," said Eve.

"Die? What an ignorant thing to say," said the snake, all chewing on a blade of grass in the side of his mouth. "If there's an escape hatch from Paradise, then it isn't really paradise, is it?"

The snake made interesting points. That appealed to Eve. He could see that he was making an impression.

"All I'm saying is to give it a try. Many things will be made immediately clear to you once you partake. I could talk about it all day and you still won't get it. You have a right to at least try it, right? I'm not saying go out and eat an entire fruit. Have a nibble. A nibble isn't really eating, is it?"

Eve found arguing semantics exhilarating. She looked at the Tree. The way the sun shined through its leaves was beautiful. Everything seemed to point to: nibble the fruit. Then the snake said, "Think about it. Does God want companions who can think for themselves or does he want a bunch of lackeys and yes-men? Wouldn't God want a few surprises? It would seem to me that God telling you not to eat from the fruit was just a test to see if you could think for yourselves, to see if you could exist as equals to God. The day you taste the fruit is the day God will no longer be lonely. At least give it a lick."

Eve looked at the fruit and then she looked at the snake. Then, slowly, she parted her lips and pushed out her tongue, all wet and warm and uncertain. She ran its tip along the smooth flesh of the fruit. The snake smiled. "Has anyone died?" he asked. "Now take a tiny little nibble. Just a speck, just to see."

The fruit was squishy and tart. She smooshed it around in her mouth. She squinted her eyes. It was a bit like trying on new glasses. It was a bit like an amal nitrate popper. It was a bit like a big wet kiss on the lips right at first when you weren't sure whether you wanted to be kissed or not. She felt a thousand little feet kicking at her uterus.

The idea of her own nudity, as well as Adam's, had always felt like a Nordic co-ed health spa thing. Now with the Fruit of Knowledge, it felt more like a Rio de Janeiro carnival thing. Her breasts felt like water balloons filled with blueberry jam and birds. Her nipples were like lit matchsticks. Her thighs, the way they swished against each other, were like scissors cutting through velour. With her lips still glistening in Tree of Knowledge fruit juice, she ran off to find Adam. The snake watched her as he chewed on his slimy blade of grass. And as she receded into the distance, he thought something along the lines of "Now that's what I'm talking about."

"Kiss me, Adam," said Eve. "Taste my lips."

Adam, like any lummox truly worth his salt, could smell the minutest trace of knowledge coming his way, and thus he knew how to avoid it like the plague. But yet, there was also this. Eve had never sought him out in the middle of the day before just to kiss him. It felt like a very lucky thing. When he took her in his arms, he told her that he loved her with his whole entire heart. He closed his eyes tightly and brought his lips to hers. Then he squinted. Then it started to rain and Eve began to cry.

During the darkest days ahead, with the fratricides and whatnot, Adam would often think back to his brief time in Eden. As he became an old man, he would talk about the Garden more and more. A couple of times, he had even tried to find his way back there, but he very soon became lost. He didn't try too hard anyway. He didn't want to bother God any more than he already had.

When Adam met someone that he really liked, he would say, "I so wish you could have been there." It didn't seem fair to him that he was the one who got to be in Eden. "This sunset isn't bad," he'd say, "but the sunsets in Eden, they burned your nosehairs. They made your ears bleed." He couldn't even explain it right. "When you ate the fruit in Eden, it was like eating God," he would say. "And God was delicious! When you wanted Him, you just grabbed Him." Now when he ate fruit, he could only taste what was not there. But it wasn't all bad. After Eden, Eve became much gentler with Adam. After getting them both cast out, she decided to try as hard as she could to give Adam her love. She knew it was the very least she could do. She sometimes even wondered if that was why God had sent the snake to her in the first place.

Adam would tell his grandkids, his great-grandkids, and his great-great-grandkids about how he and Nana Eve had spent their earliest days in a beautiful garden, naked and frolicking, and the kids would say, "Ew!" The children would swarm into the house like a carpet of ants. The youngest ones would head straight for Adam, lifting his shirt to examine his belly for the umpteenth time. They smoothed their hands across his flesh and marveled. "Where's Grandpa's bellybutton?" they all asked. He stared at the children. They were all his children. And as they slid their little hands across his blank stomach, he wondered what it was like to be a kid.

Second snaps to The Legend Of Neil. It is an absolutely hilarious and ridiculous webshow about a dopey guy who falls into a live-action Legend of Zelda after pleasuring/auto-asphyxiating himself while playing the game. It's written by Zaboo from The Guild, yo!



Snippy snaps to DC Pierson, writer of books, solver of mysteries, maker of Sword Clubs. Order this joint now. Or go see his movie, Mystery Team, in theaters (it's in Pheonix now, at somplace called Valley Art). And don't be one of those f*cks who envies someone for "making it". Get of your ass and get on yr grind like this kid. Or rub salt in the wound when I tell you he even DREW THE PICTURES on the cover of his book!



Snaps to Joe Avella, one of my fave people/comedians/fellow Ian McShane enthusiasts. He's one of the Snap writers, and his short Wheelchair Werewolf just took a fancypants prize at a film fest in Wales. Things that win in Wales win with me.


Second round of snaps to Lacy Campbell, badass at large, and her own short stories. I mean for real? What can't this chick do?!?!?! One of my favorites from a perhaps-defunct site: http://thecollectivelens.blogspot.com/

Fernando by Lacy Campbell

We lived so close to the border that THE thing to do, if you were a total badass, was to sneak out in the middle of the night and go to this tiny little town in Mexico, Sangre de Cristo. And once you made it there, you had to get your picture taken in the cantina with Fernando.

Everyone knew who Fernando was – they had all seen his picture and heard stories about him. He had dark eyes that had sunken back into his skull, a wide lipless smile, and a skinny face like a horse. He was a legend. Everyone who came back from Sangre de Cristo had a Fernando story and a photo to go with it.

And, of course, everyone had a story about who he really was. He was a CIA operative. He was a former revolutionary. He was a rapist and a murderer, he was a drug lord, he was the guy who originally wrote La Bamba.

No one talked about the other possibility: that Fernando was some guy who drank at the local bar every night, hoping for one of those nights when a gaggle of giddy, elated American teenagers would swagger in, breathless with their own stupidity and daring, their pockets bulging with beer money and disposable cameras.

Snaps to my new favorite video on the planet. No joke. Love it. I love it so much I don't even have anything witty to say about it.


And snaps to Juliana, and her mom, and all the people I know and don't know pulling for someone amazing. Pull for her too:
http://www.forjuliana.com/

Vikings! Holy Shit!

Lacy Katherine Campbell is your hero.
You may not know this yet, but it's true.

She's an actress/writer/wonder-person, and I first got to know her when she played a twentysomething public-radio-personality frankenstein in a tv pilot I made with some other insanely talented friends. One time I felt famous because she quoted my blog on her blog. And I just got back from her latest + greatest artistic contribution to the world: Beowulf v Grendel (with Barbies.)

Don't mistake this for your auntie's performance art, Beowulf v. Grendel is the REAL DEAL when it comes to awesome things you've got to see. (Sorry, performance art aunties.) For one, that IS a garland of dead strung across the front of the Barbie/Beowulf stage. For two, it's like a play within a play within a fever dream of someone's supersmart, brazenly goofy mind. For three: vikings, dude. VIKINGS.

One of the less-fortunate viking's heads landed near my sis and I during the show:


Seeing B v G was a blast, and reminded me that some of the best, coolest things in life would never happen if the people behind them didn't ride full-throttle into the unknown and the silly. There's really no hard and fast reason to try anything above-and-beyond in this day and age. There are enough workaday things to worry about and achieve, and its devastatingly easy to lose faith in yourself and the phantom viking barbie plays in your mind while you're caught up in the routine. But you don't need hard and fast reasons. You need hot glue and gumption and mad energy to make something that makes people think, and laugh, and generally be happy to be alive.


psst! read Lacy's heroic blog here: http://alifetimeofdubioussuccess.blogspot.com/

converg'd.

Let me start by being real: I've never read anything by Flannery O'Connor in my life. Well, aside from the first few chapters of Wiseblood, which I kept way too long and have yet to pay overdue fines on. I do hope to one day finish it. Crazy preachers and the stories that unfurl around them always interest me - but that's beside the point.

The point is that I learned of the title "Everything that Rises Must Converge" the same way everyone else who's never read anything by Flannery O'Connor did: from an episode of LOST. I'm not sure what the title means in the context of the book. Perhaps it's something bleak or sinister, but what it seemed to mean in reference to that LOST episode and for me, now, is that Shit is Connected Hardcore. And you don't always see how shit's connected, and even if it isn't explicity connected it's almost always thematically connected, and because theme is another name for meaning and observation there is some meaning to find and meaningful observation to be made about pretty much Everything we go through individually or as one big honking cast of sprawlingly-storylined-characters. AKA people.

I've been having an everything rising & converging kind of a time lately. Concepts I've been dwelling on alone, events I've been following in the news, TV shows I've been watching, books I've been reading, realizations I've come to about myself, life, others, life, myself are expressing what seems to be a badass synergy through events personal and global. I know many people criticize the ol' People See Meaning In Meaningless Events In Order To Deal With What They Can't Understand argument for a lot of reasons, but I pretty much like the whole finding-meaning-in-things-and-learning-from-things response. Though it can and has blown up in some faces, I think it's one of the greatest things about being alive and sentient. There's a world we live in. There's stuff we and others do. Sometimes it's pointless and harmful, sometimes it's great; there are realizations waiting to be won and made to make individual and group life better, stronger, fuller - and more willingly connected.

One of the smaller, art-related things that done rised & converged for me recently was discovering the work of Felicia Day, a young writer/actress/filmmaker/webmistress who made a web series called The Guild and was the love interest in Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Maybe you were expecting me to launch into my feelings on health care reform or at least something headier than web tv, and I'll just say: trust that those feelings are there and deal with my expressing powerful beliefs through appreciation of pop culture & its makers.

Felicia Day is a badass, and it isn't because she's a really cute redhead with a sense of humor and wickedly funny friends. It's because she was/is a trembling ball of neuroses that gave herself the benefit of the doubt, worked hard to make something great, and tries to share her thoughts on getting out of neuroses-balls with others. Neuroses-balls. Gross. You get what I'm saying.

Below is an excerpt from Felicia Day's blog about what got her writing. It really rings my bell: way up in the sky with all the other bells, you know?



A lot of people ask me about writing The Guild, but I realize I don’t often say WHY I wrote it. The reason: Because I was tired of doing nothing.

It takes a very brave person to express themselves creatively. I know the paralyzing fear of being bad very well; it’s one of my greatest weaknesses. For years I had a voice inside me telling I “should” do this and I “should” do that, but I couldn’t overcome the possibility of being horrible to actually risk doing something about it. So I did nothing. And I loathed myself for my weakness.

Finally I had a strange realization that time passes whether you’re doing something with it or not. It would be easy to let every day go by easily with no risk and then, at the end of the day (my life), I would look back and realize that fear ruled me: At that point there would be nothing I could do about it. So, I got off my butt! It wasn’t easy and I had a lot of lapses (I still do) but the experience of being ruthless with myself was an amazing lesson to learn.

I don’t want this to be a self-help entry (although it already kinda is, LOL), but I wanted to share a few of the resources that I used to overcome my fear and be willing to suck and start DOING stuff.

-The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron: This is a 12-week program that helps you “discover your creativity.” It is seriously self-help-y and has a large spiritual element to it (an aspect I skimmed over personally), but it does force a lot of introspection, exploring what you enjoy doing, what drives you etc. It also makes you to write every day for the 12-weeks, which was one of the most invaluable aspects.

-If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland: This book was written in 1938, which I find amazing as this authors voice is as fresh as if it were written yesterday. If The Artist’s Way is touchy feely, this book is nothing but pragmatic. The greatest thing I took away from this is the spirit that you can’t care what other people think, you have to create for yourself and no one else. It brings out the fighter in you. It’s geared towards writing but the lessons apply to anything really. This book is a kick in the pants and big warm hug all at once.

-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. This is the best writing book I’ve ever read. The overwhelming idea of sitting down and “writing the whole thing” sets up expectations that are WAY too high! So much pressure This book makes it manageable, and is an enjoyable and frank look at writing by a wonderful author. Actually, I need to reread this as I’m experiencing this right now, LOL.

-Daily 5 Minute Writing Exercises by CM Mayo. After I finished “The Artists Way” I did these writing exercises every day for a year. I love having my notebooks full of these exercises to look back on! Creating the pattern of behavior of writing in the morning really helped me uncensor myself. I’ve lapsed a lot last year, but just started again and it’s amazing, doing the same exercises, how different my entries are.

- Lifehacker.com, zenhabits.net, 43 Folders and lifehack.org helped me get organized and prioritize. I am no saint but subscribing to these sites reminds me to get my act together when I go on a videogame or mystery novel bender.

-Sharing goals with friends. This entry doesn’t have a link, but it could, because your friends can be offline or online. It’s invaluable to share your goals with others so you can see that we all struggle together to make things happen. I had a weekly group I went to that helped me kick my WOW addiction and re-prioritize. I wouldn’t be here without that group of lovely people. We all share the same human weaknesses, but working in a vaccuum makes you lose that perspective. Having people in your life to use as a touchstone is important to get you through the hard days.

If you have any tips or links to resources that get you going, organized and creating, feel free to share!


You can watch The Guild at http://www.watchtheguild.com !

the hard part

WIRE.


Kids love it, and grownups love to give it to them to make stuff.

We're making 3D sculpture/puppets in camp, and entering what I call The Hard Part: frame-making. After withstanding roughly half a million dubious stares after telling the class to simplify their puppet's skeletons, I am pleased to say things paid off big when we got to said Hard Part.

3 times today I sat amidst a sea of smaller-than-mes, warning them that wire is awesome, but fairly frustrating and sharp. Ten minutes after the warning they were banging out asymmetrical circles with the best of them, light dancing in their mad-scientist eyes. I wanted to take those moments and throw them up like a smoke signal to the world. Shit is hard, then it is a cool hand puppet version of a trash can with felt garbage popping out of it. Or a talking cupcake. Or a sock puppet that isn't made out of a sock but looks like it's made out of a sock.

Pretty amped on kids right now. And pretty amped on skeletons.

nervy.

If you took the base of someone's spine mid-electrocution and hotwired it with a really fussy game of OPERATION!, then drenched the mess in Diet Dr Pepper, that is how jumpy I am right now.

Mostly because I have been hitting the DDP sauce pretty hard today.

And also because I'm lucky enough to be in a moment in life where I'm "getting it", pretty hard. Not that way. This way: being really happy, making a go at the things I really want to be making a go at, mostly succeeding, and learning a lot from when I don't. Also: about to move into an apartment with two of my favorite people on the planet. People I know are doing well. Feeling good. Getting theirs. Also, also: the weather's getting nicer, and I'm feeling downright saucy.

All this stuff makes up one giant good feeling, sheathing a bunch of smaller good feelings. Knives of possibility poised to be thrown at moving targets: bright patches of color dancing in the dark, just asking for connection.

It's enough to make your nerves shake if you pause to think about it.

Hitting PLAY!

And now a word from Neil Gaiman.

I first came into contact with this poem about a year ago. I was lucky enough to be at a Neil Gaiman event at New York Comic Con, and he read it to the audience- directly after Bill Hader introduced him, and before he read the best chapter from the Graveyard Book.

The end of it really caught me the first time I heard it. It is strange to think a 40some British man who has mostly known success in his life also knows exactly how it feels to wait for a phone call you don't have much business hoping will come. Strange, and comforting.

The poem is called The Day the Saucers Came, and it's just great.

* * * * *
That Day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and
stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed, to find out what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn’t notice because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-men’s nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold,
and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling-gods
day the floodgates broke
And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true
brave hearts and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across
the land and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day, the zombie day
The Ragnarok and fairies day,
the day the great winds came
And snows and the cities turned to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
Computers turned, the screens telling
us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes and arrival of
the Time Machine day,
You didn’t notice any of this because
you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.

this is the shit.

http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/05/comedy-central.html?xid=rss-popwatch-Comedy+Central+takes+%27Sex+Show%27+to+TV%3A+It+isn%27t+near+as+filthy+as+it+sounds

And I am so happy & proud to be part of it.

Please keep every body part you have crossed for this/us/MTSS!

"For a second I thought he was gonna bust out some RENT action."

My sister, a friend, and I saw the Springsteen show at the United Center last night. My sister astutely observed how awesome, dramatic, and more than a little ridiculous Bruce's stage antics were in that title sentence. I am still processing it, and will probably write more later, but for now know that there were definitely points where you could swear Bruce was going to break out in "525,600 Minutes" AND Jay Weinberg should be called The Dentist cuz that boy knows how to fill!

best comic video about men's fashion of the day

link stolen from my friend Lacy's blog. Apparently she knows these people. AMAZING!

sugar bowl

In the corner of everyone's mind sits Shirley Jackson, quietly tidying a desk and speaking plainly your deepest fears and keenest observations in a calm voice, like water running or the sound of cabinets opening and closing, chairs being pulled out across a hardwood floor, footsteps falling softly overhead when you thought you were home alone.


She's a beaut.

mtss prom episode tomorrow.

I'm excited!

And a redhead.

city on the edge of forever

My sister got us matching little wishbone charm necklaces this weekend, and they look not unlike the Starfleet Insignia.

Two birds, one wishbone.

It's Blow-Your-Mind Friday

To start, Neil Gaiman as a teenager.

To finish, Ian McShane is Al Swearengen on Deadwood.

...And Mr. Bobinsky in Coraline.

every day I'm tumbl'n

yeah yeah tumbl this piece rightchurr!

all-skate

gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous

Some of the concept art behind Henry Selick & Neil Gaiman's CORALINE:




You can view more here.

the myth of sisyphus in the key of geekdom

But whether it’s Feig’s personality or the tortured nature of any creative business, his experience of success is as comically and painfully unsatisfying as it might be for the type of characters he tends to draw. He writes about geeks being rejected, a subject that causes his ideas to be rejected by “cool” studio executives. The rejection causes Feig to feel like a geek, which causes him to approach life like a geek, which causes him to pitch stories about geeks, which causes his projects to be rejected again, thereby setting the whole cycle in motion again — unto perpetuity. It’s the myth of Sisyphus in the key of geekdom.

- from NYTIMES

Paul Feig.

The shit.

but that's irrational, isn't it? to be scared of buttons...