Bring. The. Noise.

Virtually every track contains repeated shrill noises that are both irritating and riveting; its agit-rap sound communicates as much rebellion as the lyrics.

"Most people were saying that rap music was noise," says producer Hank Shocklee, "and we decided, 'If they think it's noise, then let's show them noise! But we're also gonna give them something to think about.'"

Alan Moore Is Right And Everyone Else Is Wrong

(Who did this poster?

I would gladly credit & linkback.

Located it here at Achtung Baby!)

I honestly got obsessed with the whole Watchmen thing yesterday. Couldn't help it, had deadlines (which I still have, since I spent hours becoming a Watchmen Prequel Scholar by default).

The Daryl Cooke ones look like they will be good, kind of by accident, almost like just casting a perfect actor for a role instead of teaching someone what the role is about.

The others will likely just embody all the stupid xeroxing of "grim comics" that we have seen for the last zillion years. Grim, gritty Archie & Veronica etc etc.

Moore might be a curmudgeon, but he & Gibbons created something special and for that, I don't care what DC or anyone's legal rights are, they should just make some new comics and leave Watchmen alone as Something Good. (tm).

I kind of love Moore's Swamp Thing & Superman more. Swampy in particular had more of a freewheeling character to it. The ones where he's exiled into space and meets Adam Strange and has his own plant life Green Lantern adventure are just perfect.

God, he pretty much issued the perfect critique to the 80's Byrne Superman IN ADVANCE by doing those last 2 Silver Age Supermans. For that alone, DC & all of Warner "Communications" should do whatever he wants forever.

Fuck it all, the history of comics is the history of people getting to do weird stuff when no one's looking.

The Hernanadez Bros were right to get indie & stay indie.

That is all.

Nolo Contendere

Thank you Comrade Nixon for Our Glorious Childhood.

Walking on the beach. In a suit.

What style.

Lead Lined Box

JIMMY!

"Poor Dishwashing Has Always Been My Achilles Heel"

Oh, Splendor, Harvey.

Your shirt, your record collection. The basement. Your refusal to be a substitute teachers me.

If we remember who are are when we forget who we are if we remember that way by tearing out magazine photos of our heroes and pushpinning them until the walls of our Zeno cave are just PLASTERED and all we do is remember who we are, over and over and over until we forget again...

Still the salami minded vegetarian Heart Of Harvey.

Protest

Oh fuck it, now it's either bloom late or not at all.

Dead Animals

Really, Issac Bashevis Singer is right and everyone else is wrong.

They Think They Paid For It And Can Do Whatever They Want With It Now But They Forgot To Have You Sign A Piece of Paper

Really, I think we need to follow Lester Bangs' edict like it's our Morning Prayers

Like the Original Surfer who dons tefillin & then just starts talking about The Divine before he gets on his exercise bike.

What part of BLOW IT UP AND START OVER AGAIN don't you understand?

I tell you, if you hired me to do a job, even if you tired of me doing that very same job, I won't stop until I do at least half of it.

Walk Softly And Carry A Giant Backpack Filled With Bullshit

"Doesn't that mean you have to carry a lot of GEAR?!" she asked.

I know.

"I think you might be allergic to coffee."

(sigh)

"You say I'm crazy but you live every day like it's a heart attack!"

just. watch. me.

Drink This

Oh to be a mad scientist in an abandoned Con Ed building.

Broken Windows Theory

No to giving in, no to the easy way, no to the exquisitely gently worn coat of all of these shitty habits murdering time, life and Lakein HIMSELF. No to the radiator.

No to the zillion little deaths of clicking open and novacaining out. No, no, no.

No to keeping up.

No to delivering on time. (Ah, finally a promise I can keep, Marvelite. Face Front.)

No to perfection.

Open that fucking window, willya?

Death to reference material.

Goodbye research.

We don't need no stinking upgrades.

Maturity.

"Young I drank beer & vomited green bile

Older drank wine vomited blood red

Now I vomit air"

Maturity Allen Ginsberg

Quotes To Take Seriously. (Internet = Death)

People commonly use the word "procrastination" to describe what they do on the Internet. It seems to me too mild to describe what's happening as merely not-doing-work. We don't call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of working
Paul Graham

It’s hard not to think “death drive” every time I go on the internet. Opening Safari is an actively destructive decision. I am asking that consciousness be taken away from me. Like the lost time between leaving a party drunk and materializing somehow at your front door, the internet robs you of a day you can visit recursively or even remember.
Alice Gregory

I dont generally go in for hysterical visions of technology, but when you start to think about it, the ubiquity of screens, the incessant escape from one place into another, the secret passageway of iPhones and BlackBerries, the glazed, ubiquitous expression, I-am-here-but-I-am-not-here, is a little unseemly. Say your train of thought, as you are reading to your baby, goes something like this: Goodnight moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon. J.Crew summer sale 20% off, can you turn in the piece by Friday? Apologies, xx, should we meet at 6:00 at your place? Goodnight bears. Goodnight chairs. This moment suddenly seems to contain within it the entire decline and fall of civilisation...
Katie Roiphe

Myself, I’ve set up a second computer, devoid of internet, for my fiction-writing. That’s to say, I took an expensive Mac and turned it back into a typewriter. (You should imagine my computer set-up guy’s consternation when I insisted he drag the internet function out of the thing entirely. “I can just hide it from you,” he said. “No,” I told him, “I don’t want to know it’s in there somewhere.”)
Jonathan Lethem

"What you have to do," he explained, "is you plug in an Ethernet cable with superglue, and then you saw the little head off it."
Jonathan Franzen

If you forget what you’re doing with your mind, almost inevitably you also forget what you’re doing with your body.
Sakyong Mipham

BILLY RUANE

The impulse to recount Billy stories was/is widespread. Initial responses below.

It's a more ordinary, appropriate, boring world now. But less so since he made a huge positive contribution to so many lives, mine included.

Sad news. What a fun, sweet, complicated guy. Unique dance moves..! RT @SamSifton Billy Ruane died last night, 52. http://t.co/o3FRFdo

I remember when I was leaving Boston he showed up at Ginza after hours to give me a fistful of Roger Miller CDs.

I have a desert island list of films he recommended--all melancholy arthouse. This he scrawled out after some wild punk show of course.

I remember Billy Ruane showing up onstage at Helldorado, early days, having just seen Cocksucker Blues and regaling us with his cover version

I remember him eating whole meals during matinees at Brattle in the 80's. #BillyRuane

#BillyRuane That DANCE MOVE. I remember when audience was sittting on the floor like hippies. Only he was dancing. Trenchcoat. Beer Bottle.

#BillyRuane Fuck. No one expected that guy to live forever when he was in his 30's but he looked great as a 50 yr old guy so just perhaps..

Billy Ruane invades this video halfway through. DISRUPTIVE. ENTHUSIAST. http://bit.ly /c4lukw

This Blog Has Officially Gone Fishing

Tweeted this today:

Going on a social media break til after 5771/Rosh Hashanah. Reach out to me via email/ /www.stevensolo.com

Of course, I haven't used this blog in months. Social media killed it. The whole notion of documenting my responses to art and life here seemed so long-winded and archaic--and the immediacy of Twitter seemed to enbolden me to carry on in some less artificial voice. At first, at least.

This blog is a pretty solid archive/catalogue of my obsessive interests. Perhaps in 5771, post Rosh Hashanah it will make sense to continue it in this or another form.

For now, there's more than enough to last through the end of 5770.

Here's one of my first entries to go out on:

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Rant on Rebuilding my Studio

I want to be like Hokusai, who changed his name & moved to a fresh new studio & took up a new artistic identity at the same time. Instead I would buy cats (if I weren't so allergic) so that the police could find something living in my apt. among the newspaper clippings when I die here.

I am engaged in a project I call "rebuilding my studio". Once I named it, the physical difficulties all seemed to make sense. I am supposedly purging my supplies, reference material, decoration and equipment. Each category of CRAP has its own box with a LARGE BLACK MARKERED description so I can wrap my head around it. Like "DRAWING MATERIALS" "BIKE STUFF".

Considering that after 8 years of living here, I can't find the kind of erasers I use in a shelf containing boxes of bicycle supplies that I fantasized using, mixed with a kind ofpaint I used for a project 5 years ago this is probably a good idea.

Most of what I need I can fit into a decent sized backpack. What IS all this STUFF?

Anyway the "desired outcome" is "A functional studio workspace I enjoy working in with adequate and clear storage for supplies I need, archive completed work, accessible storage for related and front burner work-in-progress." (My mission statement on this motherfucker.)

This is all a delusion. At some point I will just get fed up with interior decorating my soul and just flail out and make new stuff again until I find myself backed up against the wall of all the old crap (some of which is the stuff I have been making) and, gasping for air, begin to repeat the whole activity again.

Last Night A Tshirt Vendor Saved My Life

America's Most Beloved Silkscreen Fiend modelling a shirt we did in less than 24 hrs. It was my uniform for the "black tie" event at Lincoln Center thrown by Coca Cola, Delta Airlines, The Visa Company and Purveyors of Gourmet Frozen Pizza.

I had some great Moscofilero and (absolutely sincerely) the greatest tuna sandwiches I have ever had in my life.

Someone took a picture of me wearing this under a suit walking a red carpet. With my Santo mask.
------------------------------------------
Yeah, I mean it. Those "quality of life" moves that you hear about which thin the herd of street vendors could easily have left us with a fireball on 42nd St on a Saturday night. As Jane Jacobs said in another context: "keep your eyes on the street".

PHOTO: MICHELLE STRAUSS OHNSTAD

"Organizationally, we were committed to to a few basic principles: Treat everyone with as much respect as he deserves (and no more), Avoid people who appeal to our vanity or ambition (they always have an angle), Operate as much as possible apart from the "music scene" (which was never our stomping ground), and Take no shit from anyone in the process."

-Albini

Should I Drive An XKE or a Tractor?

No good links to The Young Adults "It's A Complex World". Anyway, an utterly obscure reference. YouTube has this.

Bukowski Stealth Tribute Header

I think Buk wd like the idea of a tribute page in a bar. Whether Terroir|Tribeca is too fancy to have earned his appreciation we will never know. We do know that when he died, the last bar at which he was a regular cancelled/reduced their riesling order since it was his constant consumption of the stuff that kept inventory moving.

RIP MALCOLM