Mark Allen's Top Ten for 2/10/03:
 

1. Hello
    ?
 

2. Mayor Bloomberg finally passing a law to get rid of those apocolyptically enraging and way too long "Don't forget to fasten your seat belt New York! See ya on Broadway folks!" full volume recordings that play (by law) ...no not play, SCREECH... out of the sound systems in taxis right as you are getting in and are trying to tell the driver where you wanna go
    Every once in a while when I would be out at a bar or having a conversation at a party or whatever... and the subject of these taxi seat belt recordings would come up... and I would hear someone say "You know... I LOVE those taxi recordings of Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Jackie Mason! I think they're fabulous!" their next words were usually ""Please kill me" spoken through bloody, smashed teeth - because after hearing them approve of those pre-recorded audio nightmares... I would drag them into the nearest bathroom, lock the door, and proceed to cruelly torture them for hours with a toilet brush. You know... to show them what I was feeling whenever I heard one of those electronic evolutionary mistakes that assaulted my soul every time I got into a cab.
    Apparently, a few years ago, some focus group somewhere decided that they REALLY needed to tell passengers in NYC taxis to fasten their seat belts - probably because the ridiculous lawsuits were piling up. I'm sure they racked their brains for quite a while until someone thought of a RECORDING that would automatically play out of interior speakers whenever the driver re-started the meter (meaning right when a new passenger got in). This was mistake #1. New York City is already filled with LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of VERY LOUD and ASSAULTIVE noise pollution to just make an executive decision to add another flute to the orchestra.
    It's like that really cruddy band you had in high school that only did Husker Du covers... and every one of your friends wanted to be in this Husker Du cover band - but they all only played guitar (crap-ily). So the band had like 8 guitarists at one point, one drummer, and one bassist (who was a girlfriend of one of the guys) - and they sounded awful. And your friend who's mom had just died a year ago asked if he can join the band and you didn't wanna say "no" because his mom died when he was only in the 10th grade and so you said to him "What instrument do you play?" and he said "Guitar!" all enthusiastically and you just kind of gulped really hard and looked down at the ground and put on a fake smile and say "Hop aboard!". Then when you played at the "Battle of the Bands" in the high school gym everyone threw sno cones. That's it in a nutshell. The band is the noise level in NYC, the guy who's mom died and enthusiastically wanted to join is the guy at the focus group meeting who wanted to add recordings of celebrities in taxis telling people to fasten their seat belts, you are the mayor or whoever who says "yes", and the fellow high school students who threw sno cones at you now even-worse Husker Du cover band are the citizens of New York City. All "Booooooooooooooooo!!!"
    Wait... where was I? Oh yea... now don't get me wrong... New Yorker's love their noise. It's just that all the deafening sound is in perfect harmony and balance... it's like noise feng shui. Adding something that doesn't fit into the puzzle is just going to throw that violent balance off and cause someone... somewhere to have "Back Seat Taxi RAGE!" I'm surprised it didn't happen more often.
    Now... OK the guys at the focus group decide to make the recordings happen when people get into cabs... then mistake #2 was coming up with the brilliant idea of having b-grade New York "celebrities" do the recordings... and include some of their "shtick" in the recording. You know when telephone answering machines first came out in the 80's ...and everyone was trying to out-do one another with clever and funny outgoing messages on their machines. Remember how funny some of those outgoing messages were the first time you heard them? Then you had to hear the same clever joke over and over and over every time you called and it was kind of annoying?
    Imagine these celebrity's agents pitching the idea to them; "You're gonna be heard in taxi's all over New York every day! It'll be great! Yea it will be the same recording over and over... but trust me, it'll be great! What's the sound system like in taxis? I don't know... I'm sure the speaker and volume controls are rock solid - like the sound system at Caroline's!" I would love to see a list of celebrities that were approached to do the recordings that said "No". That would be the list of celebrities that had brains.
    You know it really hurts your credibility as an entertainer when the sound of jackhammers and people getting stabbed and the sound of the World Trade Center twin towers falling sounds BETTER than your pre-recorded shtick coming out of scratchy, malfunctioning taxi speakers. When the recordings would finally end... the passengers would hear the sound of a million car alarms and fights breaking out and guns right outside the taxi and be all "Aaaaahhhhh! How peaceful!"
    So anyway... Mayor Bloomberg had a heavy-handed moment and decided to pass some law to wipe all those fucking recordings off the face of Manhattan and be banished to The Island of Unwanted Ideas. This is the first thing that I have ever really noticed Mayor Bloomberg doing. He's so QUIET compared to  Giuliani (who was always in the news making a loud big deal about something). Anyway... there you go. They're gone. The nightmare is over. Thanks Mayor Bloomberg.
 

(article below reprinted from the New York Daily News, www.nydailynews.com)
By MICHAEL SAUL
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
Originally published on February 8, 2003

*Mayor Bloomberg to Elmo: Get out!*

The ride is finally over for the furry red Muppet, the Rockettes and all those other grating voices that remind taxi passengers to buckle their seat belts.

Bloomberg said yesterday that he's booting the celebrity voices.

"We've been doing a study on people's like or dislike for the announcements in the back of taxicabs. We haven't found anybody that likes it. Everybody hates it," he said on his weekly radio show.

"They will be going away in the very near future."

According to a survey of roughly 4,000 cab passengers, 67% said the announcements urging riders to buckle up, take their belongings and get a receipt had no effect on their behavior. In fact, 12% said they were so irritated by the announcement that they purposely refused to use their seat belts.

The number of lost items in cabs hasn't changed since the program began in 1997.

Matthew Daus, who heads the Taxi and Limousine Commission, said the announcements could be out of all taxis by March or April, at the earliest.

He said the city will explore a number of ways to encourage taxi safety, including putting up more signs.

Over the years, riders have been captive to the voices of Jackie Mason, Dennis Franz, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Joe Torre, Judd Hirsch, Joan Rivers, Paul Sorvino, Isaac Hayes, Bernadette Peters, Chris Rock and Walt (Clyde) Frazier.

"It will be a piece of New York history," Daus said.

copywrite 2003, The New York Daily News

 
 
 

3. News of a new Madonna album
Due out in April... titled "American Life". This is exciting news to me. Go here for the Drudge-leaked, hype-y press release. Look at me!
 
 
 

4. Domenic moved back into my apartment
    Yep. Believe it or don't. It was done instantly - and on a whim (complete with a 'psychic' moment when we both called each other simultaneously to ask each other the same thing). Weird.  Although to be honest, I think Domenic had been dropping by occasionally to perhaps, subconsciously (even on his part) warm me up to the idea - perhaps sneaking knockout drops into my Diet Coke and then hypnotizing me in my sleep. He's brought all kinds of technological wonders with him... as well as power strips and extension cords and fancy soaps and body washes and his warped sense of humor ...as well as friends who work at Starbucks' and supply us with free coffee beans (thanks Cauliflower!) So he's back... there you go. Destiny? Common sense? Insanity? A mix of all three... the weird Mark and Domenic sitcom continues (a hybrid of early 'Three's Company' and 'Small Wonder' and 'Sigmund and the Sea Monster'). We've already talked about doing another "The Jar" - but how can we top it?
 
 
 

5. Should Domenic and I get a pet chicken?
    In case I haven't mentioned it before, there is a LIVE chicken mart around the corner from me. Yes... you heard me right... they sell LIVE chickens... all kinds. You can either have them slay it for you there - or - take it home live and do it yourself! Sometimes I think my neighborhood is a third world country. Sometimes IT IS! I love telling clients "Okay when you pass the live chicken mart... make the next left!" It's a colorful (and very, very smelly) addition to an already colorful neighborhood, and it's been here forever. So zany. I call it "The Zoo".
    So anyway... Domenic loves chickens. He has a thing about them... and he has always said that he wants to get a chicken at this store and keep it as a pet. He has this ingenious idea of keeping it in a cage right on the fire escape that is right outside his window. You know... letting it into the apartment every once in a while to be all hilarious and entertain us. Except I think it might get chicken poop everywhere. Maybe we can make it wear diapers. Domenic says he will feed it a steady diet of wild bird seed, dried fruit, wheat grass, corn chips and bugs (he claims traditional chicken feed seed is not good to feed them).
    Apparently Domenic HAD two chickens once... in NYC... in the mid 90's... on a second floor fire escape on Essex street (right next to the new McDonalds), in a wooden cage constructed around the fire escape (they weren't actually locked in -  they were free to get off the fire escape at any time - and the cage was just like a little dog house they could get under - and they chose to stay), which was lined with growing sod grass (growing out of carpet swatches) and always had bird seed on it. When I asked him if they crowed loudly when the sun rose every morning he said "Oh they crowed all the time! They never shut up!" Okay. AND to make matters more interesting... one time one chicken LEFT THE FIRE ESCAPE and Domenic thought he had lost it forever, that is UNTIL  about a month later when his roommate at the time FOUND it walking down the street in the Lower East Side... apparently surviving all that time on whatever it could eat and, being bigger than all the pigeons, it wasn't harassed by them (Domenic says it was a female game hen - that sort of looks like a bigger, lighter pigeon anyway - so I guess it kind of blended in). Then back onto the fire escape home it went! When I also asked him what eventually happened to them... he said he had to give them away to a friend when he moved.
    So anyway... I was passing the live chicken mart this week and I noticed the sign in the steamy window (above) advertising Japanese Silkie chickens (spelled wrong) for $6.99! Buy three and get one FREE! ...AND you could also get a White Rooster - three for $10.00 or five for $14.99! Wow! Whatta bargain! Silkie chickens are quite nice. There was a great episode of "Strangers With Candy" where Jerri Blank had a Silkie chicken named Suki that would, quote; "Eat eggs out of anywhere I put them!". Eventually Jerri's Silkie chicken baked herself to save Jerri's life because Jerri was becoming anorexic in this episode. Aren't Japanese Silkie chicken's smart? I want that one! The Silkie one that bakes itself for you to save your life one!
    Actually... I'm sure having a chicken in the house could have it's advantages. I mean it IS a food source! ...in several different ways. It lays eggs... and you can also eat it. I guess we could eat PART of it at a time and still keep it alive. Like eat only one thigh and give it little chicken crutches to walk around in it's chicken cage (or a little chicken wheelchair) while it re-grows another leg for us to eat. Actually chickens can't re-generate their own limbs (yet), although it seems that there is a legend claiming that Colonal Sanders had already figured out a way to do this before he died
    So maybe we should just keep it for "pet" reasons. Who could kill and eat a Silkie anyways? I mean... look at it!
    I think I could work a chicken into my massage somehow. I could advertise "Chicken Massage" and then have it walk all over the client's back while tossing miniature basket balls into miniature basketball hoops for corn chips. Or have a whole bunch of chicken's walk all over a client's back... Silkie ones! Oooohhh! That would feel good! Or how about a whole gaggle of baby Silkie chicks walking all over a client's back! Hey what a great idea*! I'm gonna clean up! I'm sure my clients won't mind the smell and other things that come with chickens one bit!
    So... we may get a pet chicken and we may not, but... as you can see as with the usual case in life... the possibilities are endless...
 
 
 

6. Domenic's photo of the old, abandoned Thunderbolt roller coaster at Coney Island - and his news to me that it was finally torn down in November of 2000 a week after he took this photo (and didn't even realize it until much later)
    I remember always seeing this abandoned roller coaster whenever I visited Coney Island ...about a half a mile from the rest of the hullabaloo of the amusement and beach area. A visit to Coney Island has always been more haunting that "fun" in my opinion. But this abandoned roller coaster always added a "Carnival of Souls"-ish vibe to a place that is already halfway there anyway.
    Built in 1926 and perhaps most famous from being featured in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" (it was the roller coaster that Woody's character's childhood home was apparently built under)... the Thunderbolt ran and ran much like it's sister coaster, the Cyclone, up until 1983 when it closed (due to ongoing damage started by a bad fire way back in 1977). After that it sat there in this overgrown field... away from everything... slowly creaking and rusting in the beach wind. It was always kind of darkly warm and centering to be around it. You could walk right up to it and just... stare. I wish now I had had the guts to crawl through one of the many holes in the flimsy security fence surrounding it (a beckoning?) and explore it's insides.
    I was informed by Domenic that he was shocked to learn it was finally torn down on November 17th, 2000 (Domenic just happened to take this photo on November 7th of 2000).
    Bye.
 
 

7. Opening of the official Coyle & Sharpe web site (CoyleandSharpe.com)
    Starting around 1963, Jim Coyle and Mal Sharpe were the first artist to use 20th century entertainment technology (radio. TV, etc...) to play sinister-ly humorous PRANKS on unsuspecting people on the streets. They lived in San Francisco and on it's sunny, winding streets - they daily, dressed in conservative business suits and haircuts, and with a portable tape recorder and microphone, they pounded the pavement looking for unsuspecting victims to accost and and propose things like (posing as scientists): "Would you be willing to surgically graft chicken wings onto your head... for us... in the interest of aviation research... you will be paid!" or (posing as entrepreneurs) "Would you quit your job and join us in a recreation of Hell traveling show... you will be the main player in a pit that has poisonous snakes and fire and smoke... all quite possibly deadly... and mentally imbalance prisoners as extras who may harm you... and we can only pay you a few dollars a day... and we have no insurance..." (the person agreed! because they thought it would be good to 'try new things in life'!) or (posing as detectives) "Would you help us rob a bank... with guns... for real... but to help us research a case?" (the first few said no but one eventually said '...well, okay!')
    Recording hundreds of hours of on-the-street hi-jinks... Coyle and Sharpe were at one point doing three hours of material, five days a week for station KGO in SF. These two guys were so totally ahead of their time... that they even seemed to almost get it backwards by pushing the envelope much further than the people who copied them years later, like Candid Camera, The David Letterman Show, etc... Truth be told though, there was a mocking, sinister, high-concept philosophical edge to what Coyle and Sharpe did that Candid Camera and Letterman would never go near. In one hilarious, jaw-dropping bit, C&S convince a middle aged man to go with them to a phone booth and make a call for them - when the man begins making what is obviously a ransom note call, he begins to politely inquire exactly what he is calling about; "Now ...what ...what exactly kind of call is this? Okay... no okay I don't mean to be rude, I know I agreed to do it - I was just asking. Okay... do you want me to start from the beginning again? Okay... Mr. and Mrs. Johnson... we have your son... please deposit ten thousand dollars in unmarked bills at..."
    I may have the wording wrong on those quotes... I only remember hearing the bits played on WFMU.org a few years or so ago... where I first heard of them.
    It's fascinating to listen to the victims react to C&S's pranks... and to listen to how quick and clever C&S were in the midst of what were obviously mostly improvised bits. They were able to get away with what they did because of the climate of the time. There was no real alternative culture... and people on the street were accommodating to their conceptual assaults simply because there was nothing like it that had ever been around at that point for them to suspect it of being similar to. Coyle and Sharpe were true renegades - in the true Dada/Surrealist spirit.
    There is a slowly accumulating appreciation of Coyle and Sharpe that is constantly growing (their work has been available on CD for years) ...and this will be helped along by the opening of this web site (CoyleandSharpe.com).
    The site was built with sublime simplicity by Mal Sharpe's daughter Jennifer Sharpe, an artist in her own right... I have been a quietly obsessive fan of Jennifer's brilliantly unique and highly recognized web site SharpeWorld.com, for years - and have been lucky enough to correspond with her via email a couple of times (bookmark her site - trust me, you'll be back)
    So go on over to CoyleandSharpe.com, and listen to some MP3s, browse around and read some articles about them (for a great career overview, I highly recommend this one by Kenneth Goldsmith), look at the pics, maybe even order a CD!
    Check it out. Fill your life full of sunshine and intrigue!
 
 
 

8. Camille Paglia's (semi)-return to Salon.com
    Interviewed by David Talbot about her opinions on the looming war with Iraq (and more)... reading it seemed like old times... like coming home to a raucous family. I remember when I used to feverishly check Salon.com for Camille's bi-weekly column... and when Camille unceremoniously left some time in 1999 amidst Salon's growing financial troubles - I felt like I had lost a friend. I've seriously considered subscribing to Interview magazine (in which she has a monthly column) just to read a regular dose of her.
    The Salon interview is a great read.
    Click here for the Salon.com interview link (you will be forced to watch a very brief flash ad to obtain a free one day pass to their pay site - a weird strategy to try and boost subscriptions to the ailing Salon).
    The entire article is also reprinted here (Thanks Bill W!)
    Or click here for the lively FreeRepublic.com political discussion site - with reader's comments following the article.
    I know one of Camille's favorite films is Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" (a film she wrote a very talked-about book on) - so I Tipper Hedron-ed her face into the classic shot (above). Doesn't she look knowingly at peace amongst all the carefully orchestrated chaos?
 
 
 

9. My new essay: "I Suffered Stendhal Syndrome At Universal Studios Hollywood!"  - which will debut on NPR (very short version) and here on my web site (very long version) very soon...
    I think it rivals my "Cyber Crush/Crutch" article - and much like it, is BASED ON A TRUE STORY. Coming soon...
 
 

10. Nothing*
    *Just like the first seven minutes of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" - which is a blank screen with some classical music playing (to set mood)
...I am ending my "Top Ten" with "nothing" - for dramatic effect.
 

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 2/3/03:

1. The spooky state of Texas and the United States as it stands in February, 2003
    Hey look at this photo I found of a Laurie Anderson concert!! Oh wait no, it's just The President.
    I have been kind of bored-edly struck, in a zombie-like way, at the general ennui surrounding the recent Columbia space shuttle disaster and the death of it's crew. It's a true tragedy, but I just find it incredibly ... surreal... the whole energy surrounding the whole event. Did you feel like you were just going through the (e)motions while watching the non-stop news coverage of the crash on TV the morning of February 1st? Is it because of September 11th that all national tragedies post seem like re-hashed story lines?
    Is this something that happens with age? As you get older... big events like this have less and less impact on your psyche? Are American citizens that are really old... were they all shitting their pants after the Hindenburg disaster and talking about it for months afterwards all "...oh the humanity..." and all crying in their sleep at the state of America and shit.... then... over lots of time and life...  decades later, when they heard the news about JFK being assassinated - their first thought was something like "I wonder if Thousand Island dressing would be good on a hamburger?" and they have NO IDEA where they were the moment they heard the news. By the time Sept. 11th rolled around they were like "Can you wipe my bottom please?" Does this just happen naturally? Do you become MORE and MORE desensitized as time marches forward in your life span? OR - have the events of Sept. 11th set a trendy standard in national tragedies that are going to take something like The Rapture to beat? To wake people up?
    Isn't it weird how Osama Bin Laden haunted the space shuttle crash this week? How all the news channels kept reporting that there was no evidence of it being a terrorist attack before they even really told you what happened? And then how Osama Bin Laden issued that creepy statement about this being God's retribution against America? Like he KNOWS that he still haunts our subconscious (he's dead right)?
    So I guess I'm in love once again with the already Heaven-like state of Texas. I love the idea of all the locals combing the endless, sun-drenched fields looking for anything that resembles wreckage from outer space... kids finding charred bones of one of the Columbia crew (or thinking they have) and poking it with a stick and then going to school the next day and bragging to everyone that they "saw a dead body in the creek"... people walking around the local Target wearing pieces of wreckage around their neck with a piece of string as a memorial jewelry or something like that... only to freak out later in an emergency room when they find out the wreckage is toxic and then being relieved when they discover it was just a piece of an old car brake pad. People must have a whole new attitude about road kill they see on the side of the road right now... examining it in a peculiar way. The desire to be on the news will intertwine with TALL TALES into a really romantic, sunset and bar-b-que-drenched world of creepy make believe. Kind of like downtown Manhattan weeks after Sept. 11th. Texas is so romantic. I love creepy Texas.
    So my contribution to the whole thing is to make this weird little collage above from pictures I found on the internet (above). It's like I'm like that dorky art class nerd in high school who made a collage out of pictures of a classmate who comitted suicide - snapshots from parties and maybe from the yearbook -  with tin foil hearts and friendship bracelets attached to it with safety pins with beads on them. I put the whole thing on my locker and am all "I thought this would really bring everyone together y'all..." with this really forlorn look on my face. Here ya'fucking go.
 
 

2. This computer generated piece of art
        In contrast to the the weird downer discussed in entry #1, it is refreshing to live in a world that spontaneously generates images like the one pictured directly above. Did a human make this? I found it on Goregasm.com with no name attached. Maybe a computer generated it of it's own will? You know I could see computers all over the world doing that on the day that they take over the human race... you know... putting lurid pictures on kid's computers and sending graphics like this one to church web sites.
    Isn't it sick and stupid? Why?
    Don't they look like Sims?
    I don't think a human made this... that super computer from "War Games" did.
    Is the fact that this randomly appeared on a website a sign of the coming overtaking by computers where they make humans their slaves?
 
 

3. Sharing my Dario Argento film collection with Jim
    Black gloved killers, serpentine plots, Dramamine camera movements, child-like(?) direction, dream logic, predators galore, local bums who know something that others don't - or witness something others might have liked to see, protagonists who end up being the sole witness of violent murders and become helplessly ensnared in a string of murders and the ongoing investigation, midgets, smashed teeth, shiny, big blades against red velvet, close-ups of throbbing brains, pulsating - relentlessly loud and howling soundtracks, childhood sing-song poems that play while people get decapitated with "noose-a-matics", people who saw something that "wasn't quite right" during a murder but can't remember "exactly" what (until the end!), murders that are always committed by "maniacs" or "madmen", parting red curtains, transsexual Italian actresses playing female parts with no fanfare, strange - disembodied dubbing, buildings with endless hidden layers and passageways, rain, lizards eating butterflies, cats being drowned in bags and then regenerating and taking revenge on the wrong character, machines that can take a photograph from the retina of a corpse that reveals the last thing the victim saw before being murdered, "luminous emptiness", weird rock music scores that seem inappropriate, guys that get shot in one eye and then try to still do whatever they are doing, sound-analysis machines that can't decode bird calls by birds with glass feathers, ballet academies that are actually witch covens that are actually modern and violent interpretations of Grimm's fairy tale logic (that was pretty violent in the first place), raging storms, uncertain allies, blind men attacked by their own seeing eye dogs in "Triumph of the Will"-esque town squares, psychodelic physical and mental breakdowns to beautiful art (which killers use to their advantage), boys raised as girls who grow up to be killers, lizards with pins in them, heads with maggots that scientifically reveal when the victim was killed, daughters of famous actors who have a psychic affinity with insects, ballet shoes for 50 marks, skipping Verdi records, elaborately lit elaborate set pieces that are in actuality elaborate skeleton structures for elaborately complex and intertwined story lines that are just elaborate excuses for elaborately stylish scenes that are filmed with a knock-out elaborate punch, ominous modern airports, jarring close-ups, cryptic legends written by mad architects about houses built for Three Mothers, killers who place rows of needles under people's eyelids to force them to keep their eyes open and watch them kill other people, fingers getting chopped off on moving trains, the embryonic beginning of Asia Argento's career, mis-interpreted children's poems that lead to killers killing people with musical instruments, toys that aren't really toys that are really dwarves that are really killers that are really animatronic dummies operated by tramps as decoys, perfect representations of "cosmic art", keys dropped in puddles of buildings that actually turn out to be vast underwater ballrooms, NYC Central Park vendors who run to save you when you are being eaten by rats in a pond - then suprisingly stab you to death, men trapped in lit entrances of art galleries like glass cages and watch helplessly as mentally imbalanced wives of gallery owners get stabbed (or do they?), dolls that can float, victims that write clues in steamy mirrors, gross plexiglass necklaces that have flies imbedded in them, guys who make weird paintings of murders and also eat cats, monkeys with switchblade knives (who use them), coffin trade shows, insomnia, killers' bullets that go right through peepholes - through heads - and explode telephones which were the other victims' sole means of escape, worship of opera, faulty memory, dogs chasing girls through lit parks and into killer's fantastic homes, plots set "a few years into the future", pervert line-ups that accidentally include transsexuals, Edward Hopper painting set pieces, animals, animals, animals, murder, murder, murder, screams, screams, screams and rain, rain, rain.
    It's enthusiastic to find someone who's actually slightly more than casually interested in Argento's films. Not that Jim has become a huge fan overnight... or even a casual fan. But he did ask to see two in a row in one night! Ahhhhhhh! We are running out of Argento films to watch and are starting to delve into other Italian horror and giallo territoty like Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Michele Soavi. But Argento's work is the d-r-e-a-m-i-e-s-t...

Want to help me convert all my Dario Argento VHS tapes to DVD? Cick here to find out how!
 
 

5. This email I got from Bryan
   Thanks for caring Bryan. Bryan of ChaosInAustin.com recently responded to last week's entry about me painting my apartment and calling my ex boyfriend (him) in the middle of the night while high as Hell on paint fumes:

From: Bryan Ockert <bryan@chaosinaustin.com>
To: Logan5@ix.netcom.com <Logan5@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Dear Ms. Hartman
Date: Sat, Jan 25, 2003, 10:31 AM

Dear Mary Hartman:

As an ex-boyfriend of yours, I feel that I can broach you on a delicate matter.

A group of us have got together, and decided that you might in fact have a problem. We would love to meet with you, via cam, for the very first Cyber Cam Intervention!

Perhaps Intervention is a strong word, but we want you to know that your friends are here for you, and that we support you in all things, regardless of how many times you blackout and wake-up in a pool of your own vomit and ping pong white paint.

We just know you can break this paint fume addiction with love, cyber hugs, and rainbow Unicorn stickers. (They're on the way!)

And if not, we will just Clonaid ya, and make a better one that is a less gassy. That jar of nail clippings will finally come in handy.

Please reconnect your camera at 8pm on Monday the 32nd for the Intervention.

We will all be there....waiting for you.

Bryan

PS. You were high?!?! hahahahahahahahahahaha. The funniest part...is..I didn't even notice! hahahahahahahahahahaz ~snifffffffffffffffff~

PS. Love you...ur the best.

 

4. This email I got from a guy named JimLA concerning last week's "Top Ten" entry regarding me painting my apartment and calling my ex boyfriend in the middle of the night while high as Hell on paint fumes:
    Concerning last week's "Top Ten" story about painting my apartment. I get a lot of emails... but this one just kind of hit me at the right time and struck me as profound at that particular moment.  It contains a brilliant story about Brigid Berlin (whom Jim and I are huge fans of) calling her parents as performance art. An interesting image to ponder:
 

From: Jim LA <Xxxxx@xxx.xxx.xxxxxx> Add to Address Book
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 23:39:47 -0800
To: "Allen, Mark" <logan5@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Pathologically grateful? What is that?

Remember Brigid Berlin?Ý From the Andy Wharhol days?Ý Chelsea Girls?Ý She kinda worked in his studio answering phones and stuff.Ý Stinking rich Connecticut WASP parents, her mother trashed he constantly, made her miserable ....blah blah.

Well, before anyone was calling it "performance art" she rents this theater, puts a love seat (she weighed like 450lbs) and a table with a phone on the stage.Ý The phone is hooked into the house sound system so the audience can hear who's on the other end of the call.Ý Brigid comes out, sits down and calls her mother (who has no idea anyone is listening) and her mother starts in on her.Ý 75 people sat there, mouths agape listening to this horrible woman trash her own daughter's sense of self worth for like an hour and a half.Ý People who were there called it brilliant.

Cause Art is about context.

There's this crazy 70 year old woman in my neighborhood who wears these awful paisley circa 1970's bell bottomed pants suits with platform shoes and a beehive hairdo.Ý She painted her nothing special two bedroom Spanish stucco tract home entirely in black years ago.Ý But, she's just crazy.

When you sit in your shiny white apartment and relate your humiliations to friends, its just your life.Ý When you rent a hall and charge 40 bucks a head, its art.

If you could guarantee you could shit glitter on a canvas, maybe you could get 60 bucks a head.....

I expect two comp tickets.
 

JimLA

 

9. Being interviewed this week by a full camera, light and sound crew on a crowded NYC subway car
   Have you ever farted on a crowded elevator car? You know that dynamic? The way people react to you? If you fart loudly in a crowded elevator... and it smells... there are two types of people that you will deal with: those who act as if nothing has happened - these are called givers, and those who openly react and react loudly... all "Eeewww!" - these people are called takers. And you at that moment that you farted in the elevator and caused this canon by which people's character could be so easily gagued are like... well, you're like God. A farting God. It's like a sociological experiment.
    This week I experienced a similar dynamic when I was being interviewed by the people at World of Wonder about "objectum sexuality" as exemplified by my cyber relationship with Bryan. No I DID NOT fart on the subway while they were interviewing me - that was an analogy.
    I thought they were going to interview me in my apartment surrounded by my technology, and so did they... until the last minute when they decided to start the day interviewing me in all these different locations in Manhattan and shooting B-role at every NYC landmark they could think of. I felt like Marlo Thomas at the beginning of "That Girl"! Pretty soon we ended up on the uptown 6 train... completely crowded with people starting to get off work.
    Now... you see a lot of things on NYC subways... but I must say I've never seen someone being interviewed with a full camera crew while the train rumbles and speeds along. It was a funny moment I will never forget... ever. Half the people (the givers) looked down at their books or whatever while it was happening like nothing out of the ordinary was going on - kind of like Woody Allen in that scene in "Bananas" when that old woman is getting robbed on the subway right next to him, and some of the people, even though they were looking at magazines - had really strained looks on their faces like Thelma Ritter in almost all of  "The Incident". The other half of the people (the takers) gawked and stared and listened to every word I (the farting God) said and wondered who I was like those people I mentioned before (that's the givers) secretly wanted to do.  The whole time I'm like "Oh blah...blah...blah what I have to say is so important... OBVIOUSLY." Lots of people... mostly Asian... ducked out of the camera's view for some reason, maybe they didn't have green cards - I don't know. I even ran into Domenic while the whole thing was happening!
    I snapped these two photos (above) while it was all happening... but they certainly don't capture the moment... as the people who had all gotten out of range of the camera suddenly ducked out of the range of my digital camera's flash.  Here - are - a - few  other pictures I took during the day, when I could breath.
    The crew and producer were all very cool and professional about the whole thing - like it was just a day's work, and the camera man told me later he tried to keep as many people off camera as possible because "people get weird about being filmed". It was quite a spectacle. I'll never forget the moment... you know in the movies when people die and they have that high-speed montage of all the memorable moments of the person's life flash before their eyes? This will be on my last-moments-before-death-list. Maybe I should spend some time figuring out why such an obviously shallow and ego-centric moment is a highlight... but what I might uncover sounds like it might be too frightful to water.
    Speaking of Domenic...
 

8. Domenic dropped by unexpectedly again
   Is Domenic dropping by occasionally and unexpectedly every six months or so because he is in cahoots with some local thieves and he is "casing" my apartment and habits? Am I too paranoid? Can you be too paranoid? Actually I wish Domenic would drop by MORE... like the upstairs neighbor on "The Bob Newhart Show".
    He also wanted to know what the hell was happening on the subway the other day.
    Well for all you Domenic fans... you will be thrilled to know that Domenic is on the way to becoming a teacher! Yep! A high school teacher! He's about to finish all the schooling and will move down south to become one.
    He's also going to go on a road trip soon with a friend - inspired by my recent jaunt around the entire USA (he's smart to take a friend - I did it alone).
    Domenic was full of wild stories... as he always is. I won't relay them here as I don't think they are the kind of thing he wants discussed... or discovered by the cops. Actually if I wrote about the night Domenic recently had here in Gotham... it would make a shocking-ly bananas story. But I'm nice. And I don't want Domenic arrested... again! It's hard to picture Domenic as a high school teacher. Really hard.
    So anyway I snapped these two pictures of him (above). Isn't he adorable?
 
 
 

6. Bill Murray
    I have this weird affinity for Bill Murray movies. Especially "Groundhog Day" and "What About Bob?" - these are two of my favorites. I find these two films to both be very underrated by Hollywood-haters. But mainly I think it's my weird sexual fixation with Bill Murray's comic characterizations that I think is to blame. God he's sexy. At least his characterizations are. Remember that father figure thing he did for the misfit kid in "Meatballs" (or was it 'Meatballs II'?). Oh baby... take me into your arms.
    I saw Bill Murray once in a dramatic role... I liked it... it wasn't bad at all, but I'll be honest and say it was something I tried to forget. Something wasn't right about it... like I was seeing some twisted warp in time in space from a "bad" alternate dimension. Like what if Vampira's role in "Plan 9 From Outer Space" had been played by oh... saaaaay... Grace Kelly.
    I mean... Bill's role in "Groundhog Day" was basically a dramatic role. There is just something about Bill Murray's personality in the characters he does when he is doing comedy that really turns me on... and all those early SNL clips are like seeing God to me. Can someone's personality... a fake personality... be a sexual turn on? And make a not-sexy actor have gobs of oozing sex appeal? I guess when Bill Murray acts all silly in front of the camera and does his thing, I get all "procreation-ally vibe-y" in the same way girls' nipples get hard and they wanna finger themselves when they see Brad Pitt's butt cleavage in "Fight Club" or guys pop a boner and wanna finger the girl next to them when they see Pamela Anderson gagging on Tommy Lee's giant cock in that stolen honeymoon bootleg videotape.
 
 

7. The latest issue of VICE magazine - the "Special" issue
    Vice magazine does it again. This issue... almost every section of it... is dedicated to or about or written by retarded people, people with CP, etc... even the fashion spread! Now when Vice magazine explores one of these subjects... they always just kind of brush the surface of it in the most obnoxiously honest way possible, and with a leave-you-speechless supreme indifference... with an occasional rare dip down into deep exploration. But 99% of it is all surface shock value. But just like nobody cares that Dario Argento's films are all "style over substance" because the style is so brilliant... nobody cares that the text inside Vice is basically just a bunch of random words because everything else they do has such apocalyptically testículos gigantes. If you don't live in a city where you can pick up this free uber-hip magazine... you can see all about it at www.viceland.com.
 

10. My recent Inspector Clouseau-like trip to The Wonder Bar where my glasses fogged up and I couldn't see a goddamn thing and started bumping into things and knocking over drinks and all the dancing gay kids laughed at me and called me an old man and all I wanted to do in the first place was to get in and out really fast and get copies of Next and HX magazine
    Okay this was really embarrassing. It's so embarrassing that I decided to draw a picture of it (above) instead of tell it... you know the way they make little kids who were molested draw pictures of how they feel in therapy?
    Okay. The other night... which happened to be a weekend night... I was riding my bike through the East Village, when suddenly I realized I needed copies of Next and HX magazine (those freebie gay rags they have in every city). As I was right at Avenue A and 6th street - I thought I would just lock my bike on the nearest parking sign post and walk into the fabulous Wonder Bar... where free copies of Next and HX would be awaiting my arrival in little racks a mere few yards from the front entrance. A piece of cake! In and out in 10 seconds flat! Right?
    Did I mention, by the way, that I hadn't bathed in like two days? And that it looked like I hadn't shaved in two WEEKS? And that I had on ripped-up sweat pants (navy blue) with even more ripped-up old sneakers on (gray - not the color, just filthy) that stank worse than my under arms? And I was wearing an old yellow T-shirt with an even older, thick denim shirt over that that smelled like paint thinner AND a cruddy, stretched-out gray turtleneck sweater that I found in my laundry room AND over that the most ugly black felt P-coat you could possibly imagine AND a disgusting knit hat with holes in it that had been soaking up two weeks worth of hair grease? AND on top of all that - I had on my GLASSES.
    Now... in case you don't know... I'm pretty blind without my glasses or contacts on. I mean REALLY blind. Now... did I also mention that it was VERY cold out that night... and windy. And that I had been riding my bike at high speeds all the way from midtown? With the f-r-e-e-z-i-n-g wind blowing against my thick glasses the whole way... chilling their plastic temperature down to ice cold? Do you know what this means is going to happen the second you walk into a crowded, sweaty, hot bar full of beautiful, primped and bathed young people who are all laughing and talking and dancing and smoking and drinking? That's right - your glasses will SERIOUSLY fog up and NO AMOUNT of wiping them off with your crusty, B.O.-ridden turtle neck sweater will make the fog go away. Did I mention how blind I am without my glasses on? I did? Okay.
    So I locked my bike up and whizzed past the cell-phone-talking throngs of beautiful people hanging out outside the entrance (there's no doorman - it's just a bar, but that should have been my first clue that the place was beyond mobbed). I noticed my reflection in the glass doors as I tried to swing one open... YEEAARRGGHH!!! Take a bath and shave and comb your hair why don't you Mark? You literally look like a homeless freak! Okay, okay... no biggie... I'll just slip in and out like a ninja and hope no one sees me.
    The second I walked in and the door shut behind me - FWOOOSH! - my glasses basically became like one of those frosted glass shower doors, and I realized that no amount of wiping them off would take care of the problem. I also realized that taking them off was NOT an option... as that meant I would just be twice as blind. I should have just turned around and walked out... but by the time I realized all this information I was already halfway in the place trying to dodge all the blurry shapes around me and fumbling my hands over people's breasts and into their drinks and stepping on people's feet as I fumbled for the free magazine rack - which was the whole reason I had entered this hip joint in the first place. Some people go out to cool places to see and be seen. I go to get free magazines. The music was REALLY loud... but not loud enough to drown out the occasional "Ow!" and "Jerk!" I heard as I knocked over yet another drink or grabbed someone's ass thinking it was a hand rail. I even heard the words "Homeless guy in here!" and "old man" that I THINK were being directed at me. I guess I did look pretty scruffy. And I stank. Popular gay bars in trendy neighborhoods on a weekend night are not meant for people in my state... especially people in my state who think they can slip in and out really fast but then, once entering, find themselves BLIND and bring as much attention to themselves as possible by pushing and bumping into every thing and everyone in the joint.
    I felt so old... and klutzy. People were all dancing to house music and looking like models and twirling around like they were in a Levi's TV ad and I'm all "I'm blind! Where's the free magazines! I smell!" God - I remember when I used to rule at places like that... actually at that particular place - since it's been there since the early 90's. I actually thought to myself at one point "I need to remember to buy prunes tomorrow."
    When I finally Hellen Keller-ed my way across the crowd and physically and aroma-ly offended about 60 people I FOUND the magazine rack. I reached for the mags... having to stoop down... and my smelly, hairy head landed right in the arm of some skinny fag who was dancing against the wall - knocking his drink a little (my glasses were still foggy). I could see from the flickering candle light that he wasn't very happy about it. Oops... I'd better get my blind ass outta here before I run into the DJ and cause the record to skip.
    It was about the time that I was lurching towards the exit in true Elephant Man style that I felt something wet against my coat... a drink had fallen against my back. A LOT of drink had fallen against my back. Whether I knocked it out of someone's hand and onto my coat... or whether it was thrown is unclear. I swear I heard someone's voice say "Jerk!" Maybe... maybe not. I don't know... I was in my own world. My own, blind, smelly, homeless freak world. They should make a game show out of that... walk into a crowded bar and retrieve something from the back of it... blindfolded... and dressed and smelling like someone who lives under a bridge. Trust me... it's hard! The prize could be dignity.
    When I got outside... finally... I unlocked my bike and also noticed that I could see again. The cold air had caused my glasses to un-fog up. I could see clearly now. I wonder what all those people in there thought of me? I took a deep breath... it was over. The whole thing had actually occurred in less than a minute. I had my magazines... I guess that was the point. Whew. As I climbed on my bike and started riding home... I noticed that there was more wet drink on the back of my coat than I had originally anticipated. I think it was a singapore sling. I don't even know what's in that drink... but it smells kind of nice. I picked up speed and rode home in the cold night air... the back wheel of my bike flinging the drops of singapore sling that were dripping down off of the back of my coat... flinging them high up and over my head and in front of me...  guiding me home like shooting stars...

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 1/20/03:
*WARNING: This was typed under the influence of highly toxic paint fumes
**NOTE: This phone call actually occurred

1: Painting my apartment

    Now comrades, with a chunky mixture of under-overexaggerated-humbleness and enormously and heroically subdued self-satisfaction, I am going to relay to you the story of how I made my surroundings more beautiful while also pondering the paths not taken in my life - and then ended that personal journey by calling my ex-boyfriend in the middle of the night while high as Hell on toxic paint fumes and rambling like a retarded muppet.

    Life is about choices.

    Did you know that there are hundreds of shades of white that you can choose from to paint the walls of your apartment in? When I picked out my paint I decided I wanted the most blinding white I could find. My color choice was "Ping Pong White". They should call it "Glaucoma-Inducing, Will-Make-You-See-Like-Helen-Keller White" because when the sun shines through the many windows in my apartment, it now looks like George Lucas' "THX-1138" or maybe that white, glowing Mike TeeVee room in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory".

    BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: mimicking the movies. I remember my friend Gregory once painted his entire apartment white and he disappeared into a "white void" for several days. He literally disappeared and Sammy and I didn't hear from him for days. He had systematically painted away every hint of shadow in his living space... covered up every place light could be absorbed into... the reverse of a black hole. Carl Sagan would have been stupefied and passed out from sheer shock. Talk about anal. Gregory called me a few days after he had disappeared into the white void that he created inside his apartment. His voice sounded real echo-y on the phone. He was actually calling me from the void! Then someone (thankfully) tracked some scuff marks on his newly painted floor and he magically appeared again. Sometimes doing a really good job at something can be dangerous... you can get swallowed up by a force that defies all we know about the laws of time and space. I remember thinking this during my very recent painting job on my apartment... when I started to count the molecules between the window sill and the actual glass... you know... using masking tape to make sure I got the line of new paint just right... getting all the details squared away perfectly. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: getting all the details right and leaving no loose ends.

    Wait... where was I? Oh yea... painting my apartment. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: staying on track. Picking a path and sticking to it all the way to the end. If a job is worth doing it's worth doing right.

    You know that text on the paint can that says "Warning: Use only in a WELL VENTILATED area only. Inhaling paint fumes can be dangerous to your health."? Well... Winters in New York city can be really rough, and we are having a record bitter cold Winter this year. So my idea of well ventilated was to crack one window. Just a crack. Speaking of crack... I think I now know what it's like to smoke it. Just leaving one window cracked and setting up a system of fans in your apartment to blow all the fumes around creates an interesting ventilation situation that allows your lungs to envelop and absorb toxic fumes very quickly and then efficiently absorb them into your blood stream and deliver them to your brain. Why take pills? Wow... I like that phrase; "ventilation situation" That could be a cool band name. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: coming up with great band names for bands you never form.

    I've always wanted to be a "breatharian". Just for the thrill of it. Do you know what a "breatharian" is? It's someone who doesn't need to eat food or take in fluids and believes that they can get everything they need to sustain themselves by the light, air and energy around them. I looked a breatharian web site and discovered that long-term breatharians, through a life-time of disciplined breatharianism, claim to have the ability to perform "bi-locationism" (or the ability to be in two places at once), materialize and dematerialize at will, fly through the air, maintain their body temperature while sitting in the snow, increasing and decrease their heartbeat at will, and so on. And do you know what? They are right! I could do all these things in a mere few hours of performing sealed-apartment-windows-painting breatharianism. Pretty soon painting your apartment hardly seems like work at all! That's thanks to my new-found breatharian techniques.

    BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: making work fun. And learning cool new stuff. And traveling to other dimensions. Who ever thought that a tedious back-breaking chore like painting your apartment could feel like spinning strands of glistening heavy metal in heavenly, sun-drenched clouds with nude cherubs or floating in a spaceship to the moon with talking panda bears made of glitter while gravity goes all nonsense? I think I saw Gregory's ghost in the white void... somewhere... or maybe his ghost was the white void itself and the real him was the doorway to that void which was actually the exit that let down my throat and into the universe that lives inside all of us... which is interconnected... by THE WHITE VOID! YES! You know Gregory was right to find that white void and take a journey AND I was correct to get so anal about the line between the window pane and the glass that I got out my microscope and started actually dividing by molecules. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: finding the connections in things and seeing how everything is interconnected. I guess the most anal people in the world are the ones who count the molecules. Does that make nanotechnologists the most anal people of all? They want to control the laws of molecules... which are the laws of time and space itself. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: finding out who's the most anal. You know who's pretty anal? My ex-cyber boyfriend Bryan.

    Okay I was drinking Diet Coke the whole time and I think I had a cheeseburger at one point. So I cheated. Breatharians are such phonies. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: finding and exposing phonies! I guess all paint-huffers are really breatharians at heart. I guess I'm not a breatharian after all... just a paint huffer with big dreams. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: having dreams.

    You know how they say you should never look directly at the flame of a blow torch without one of those very heavy goggle mask things? That's what the walls of my apartment are like now. Or starting to look like, since I haven't finished painting. Oh by the way... I took the wall down. It's so bright in here now I'll have to wear a welding mask just to make coffee in the morning in my brand new pristine apartment. Yep...  God it looks fucking great. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: looking good. Because if you look good... you FEEL good!

    Inhaling paint fumes for 12 straight hours while you're painting your apartment sure makes you feel good. It's actually highly productive too... you become so addicted to to the experience that you can't stop. I was just going to do some touch-ups... but due to my fume-induced speed-y euphoria I decided to paint EVERY WALL and EVERY CORNER and EVERY INCH OF CEILING... TWO COATS! Now I'm doing that whole molecule counting thing on all the edges that I discussed above. If you can turn hard work and a strong discipline into something as addictive as crack or heroin then it's win-win! BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: making pain your friend and ruling the world.

    It all started last Monday when the super finally delivered the paint I had ordered (they offered to paint it for free but I kind-of didn't like the idea so I said I would do it myself if they provided all the supplies). I begrudgingly began the chore with all widows in my apartment wide open. But "B-R-R-R-R-R!" So I decided it might be a good idea to paint while wearing a coat, gloves and a hat. But since I don't have any of those things that I don't want speckled with paint... so I decided that those warnings on those paint cans were pretty much just for show anyway (just like those warnings for nausea and heart failure on those TV ads for herpes medicine are) and I shut my windows... cranked up the heater... set up the fans... and got to work a painting the walls! Pretty soon I noticed that I had an amazing attention to detail... and a kind of euphoric sense, as well as increased energy. Not necessarily the kind of energy you get from good nutrition and being well rested... but the kind of "rush"-y, superficial, high-octane energy you get from over the counter diet medication. I noticed that my intent to do a very good job increased as did my intent to pierce the ether and uncover what the meaning of "what the meaning of" was. I've experimented with most recreational drugs... mostly in high school, college and then later in my warped, wild days of New York nightlife in the 1990's... so let's just say that I'm not a user... but I have the experience to make comparisons and highly educated guesses. I would say that an extreme paint fume high lies somewhere between mushrooms and speed. You feel hollow-ly energetic and focused, but also giddily delightful in noticing your surroundings - which can border on slight hallucination-y. Make sense? It did to me at the time. Of course all drugs make sense at the time you're doing them. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: making sense.

    Looking back on the experience... I realize that my experience gave me a little mini-vacation from my normal state of being... which allowed me to escape my usual mental system of checks and balances and allowed me to view my life from a totally FRESH and NEW perspective. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: getting perspective. As the paint fumes took their toll and I began to learn all sorts of new things about my body and my mind.. I began to think about my life.

    I've thought of writing a book called "A Guide To Uncomfortable Living" or "How To Live 100 Lies". I mean... where am I going with all this? My life I mean, not this rant. What is it all adding up to? I run my own massage therapy business... and I make enough to get by... but barely enough. Why am I not some super-sucessful freak like some of the trust-fund weirdoes I know in New York? Did you know that Jim and I are literally a hair's breath away from deciding to move to California? It's true. I mean what does New York have to offer me right now except frozen dog shit on the sidewalks?

    Do you know Jim has this friend that is just a few years older than us that makes paintings of panda bears painted out of glitter that he sells for $20,000 a piece and he sells A LOT of them? He sells so many of them that his accountant recently contacted his gallery and told him to stop selling so many because if he made any more money his taxes would go through the roof? Do you know this guy then took all his glitter-painted-panda-bear money and bought an old victorian style house on the top of some hill in upstate New York somewhere and decided it would be fun to paint every inch of the outside of it completely black... you know... as "art". It caused such a commotion in the town that cars literally line up for miles at the bottom of the hill to get a good look at it and take pictures and it was actually featured on the front page of The New York Times Style section a few months ago? Now they guy is going to sell the house as sculpture to some Japanese art collector... sell it as "art". FOR A MILLION DOLLARS! A M-I-L-L-I-O-N D-O-L-L-A-R-S! Did you know that this guy and his boyfriend's original apartment is just down the street from me? He's so rich now that he still keeps the old apartment! Just to have it! Maybe he'd let me paint it for him so I can get high off the fumes... it's all I have left. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: realizing what you have left and grabbing it.

    I mean this guy is already a successful painter and he decides to shift some of his funds around by buying a house upstate and then paints the whole thing black for fun and it becomes such a mind-blowing oddity that it ends up in The New York Times and he sells it for A MILLION DOLLARS! Meanwhile Jim and I are counting our pennies to buy one bottle of Guinness beer to share... for our dinner. God... I mean how do I get in on this random merry-go-round of luck? I'm so talented that recordings of my farts should be on the Billboard Top 40 but here I am not even able to afford to be able to get my computer out of the shop... again. I always tell Jim that I am so talented and full of money making potential that I wish some well-respected visionary would just contact me and say "I can see that you are full of ideas and are obviously lacking in funds to get these ideas off the ground... here's a check for $100,000. Thank you for your time." Jim usually responds by telling me to answer my cell phone because it's someone calling to schedule a massage session. God are my hands getting muscle-y from massaging so much. And for what? To pay all my bills and then be broke? Where's my painted-black victorian style house just for the Hell of it in The New York Times worth a million dollars? Hmmmmm?

    Actually, did you know I may write about the guy who makes glitter panda paintings and black victorian house sculptures for my first writing gig for Artforum magazine? Yep! A well-respected visionary from The New York Times, who likes my web site, recently contacted me and set up that gig for me. Did you know that I am so pathologically grateful to this well-respected visionary for doing this for me that I could shit glitter onto a canvas in the shape of a mammal? In fact, I'm so grateful to this guy that when he offered to take me to said magazine's Christmas party... I ended up getting the flu and having to cancel the day before! Isn't that nice of me? All the Eve Harringtons of the world and maybe even a few Phoebes were at that party networking their asses off and I'm at home with the flu in my newly-painted and paid for apartment being nursed back to health by a loved one (Jim) who cares deeply about me. I'm such a fucking loser. My first piece for Artforum should be in one of their Spring issues. I haven't even talked to the panda painting black million dollar house guy yet. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: writing about the other people who are doing the things you will never do.

    Speaking of people, actually Jim and I are trying to be more social. First, we cracked our inner Unabomber by crashing a going-away party (which was filled with real live people) for Jim's longtime friend and ex-Fagbash member Paul (aka: DJ Snax), who's moving to Berlin. It was fun. I've known Paul a long time too actually. I actually did pretty good talking to real live people. I was looking at some red haired guy who I thought was just another young, scrawny East Village type... and later I learned it was Jim Foetus. Which makes sense since Paul is now in his band. Oops, sorry I just dropped something. At one point I kind of flew into a mini panic when Jim left my side and went to get some vodka. I was in a swivel chair and when he walked away I literally started to turn and face the computer monitor in the room (which was turned off). BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT:  embracing automatic responses. But instead of talking to a blank computer monitor though, I got to meet Jim's other longtime friend Amy. Amy works at a lesbian-centric sex toy shop and is full of stories about the weirdoes that come in there sometimes. Within the first ten minutes of meeting her she shared a story about her "ass"-plorer adventures with her girlfriend and her fear of enemas even though she considers herself an "ass"-plorer (Jim, Paul and I were all 'huh?') and the time the super in her building talked his way into her apartment and proceeded to teach her how exactly to make crack (it turns out the process is very similar to making rock candy) which they then smoked and she got so freaked out that she gave him a nice guitar just to get him to leave. Amy is hilarious and wonderful. Amy is the kind of girl you want to introduce to mom. I mean for real... just to screw with them. She seems to know everyone in New York and is one of those people that seems plugged into every scene within a 50 mile radius. The following night she took Jim and I to some new electro-centric party in Brooklyn thrown by that guy Spencer Product. World (in)famous photographer Ryan McGinley was the DJ. Oops sorry I just dropped something again. It was fun. Since Amy knows everyone in the world she dashed off to mingle like the world was about to end and... do you know what Jim and I, the ones who are trying to be more social, did? First we counted out pennies so we could afford a bottle of Guinness beer to split. Then we sat in the corner away from the massive room filled with beautiful people who were all mingling like the world was on fire and we drank and French kissed. You know what looks funny? Jim and I in a corner of a dark room full of socializing people... sharing one beer and French kissing and not talking to anyone. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: spending time alone with loved ones.

    Did you know that a bunch of people from World of Wonder are coming all the way from Los Angeles to my apartment this Monday to interview me about my whole "objectum-sexuality" thing I had going on with my computer during my cyber relationship with my ex-boyfriend Bryan? I guess they are interested in the whole thing about not having to interact with real people and falling in love with your computer because it's the only thing you have "real" relationships with people through. You know... that's the whole thing I am trying to overcome with Jim. Anyways... I'm happy to crawl back into that cubby hole of non-reality to be on TV! BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: doing and saying anything just to be on television. Even digital cable. They are coming this Monday. Yep. It's for some digital cable show they produce, called "Paul Allen's Tech TV". I don't even have my real computer because I can't afford to get it out of the shop (again) so I have to make due with Jim's laptop and my cam... which I don't even know if it will work or not yet. That's gonna make me look like a real computer whiz during the interview. Maybe it will make me look like a genius for creating such a web site and everything with such small equipment. If I can get the cam working I'll turn it on and broadcast from my bed while they interview me. I hope it looks like Good Morning Fucking America in here. Maybe the lights will heat up the apartment. God we're having a cold winter.

    My next piece for NPR is literally sitting on the conveyor belt waiting to air during the Academy Award hype time. It's called "I Suffered Stendhal Syndrome At Universal Studios Hollywood!". As soon as it does air... the long version will go up on my site... just like this one did. Did you know that so many people keep changing positions at the position at NRP's "All Things Considered" that spotted me in the first place that I am very scared of getting "lost" by each new person?

    Why does every blessing I get have to come with a curse attached? Maybe everyone has curses attached to their blessings... maybe it's just that I blab about them too much... even to myself.

    I'm the type to let it all out... too much even. I mean, some people I know keep their asses so clean I swear they must wipe with Bounce anti-static cling dryer sheets.

    I'm the one that, when something embarrassing happens to me - no matter how pathologically humiliating - I immediately get right on the horn and tell everyone I know about it. Even then I usually exaggerate it to sound MORE hysterical. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: being a good storyteller. Over time I think I've built up a tolerance so I have to create more and more elaborate embarrassing life moments that get closer and closer to that "scary edge". No wonder I spend so much time hanging out at the twilight of the mind... or pretending to. Or pretending to pretend to.

    Of course I think all my flubs are hi-fucking-lareous (I wonder if anyone else does?) ...I think all my life's traumatic, slapstick mistakes should be hung in gold rococo frames and exhibited in the Louvre forever. They're art. Hard core art. Maybe I'm just compensating (overcompensating?) for all the parts of my life that I perceive (or feel that others perceive) as boring... the most unspeakable life mistake ever.

    So while the paint fumes were in full effect and I was literally floating like an X-men with a paint roller in hand thinking about all the things I just discussed above... and kind of getting hallucinagenically depressed about the state of my life... I decided to do the only logical thing: call my ex-boyfriend, Bryan, on the telephone!**

    BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: calling your ex-boyfriend on the telephone in the middle of the night while zonked out of your mind on massive amounts of paint fumes. Especially if you haven't spoken to him in about 8 months and are feeling vulnerable and self-conscious. Life can be so beautiful. He is my ex-boyfriend in a mostly cyber-relationship kind of way. Still... he is my ex, before Jim I suppose.

    You know that thing you do sometimes when you are dialing someone's phone number and then the phone is ringing on your end and you are waiting for them or their machine to pick up? You know how you can sometimes run through little rehearsals in your head about how the beginning of the phone conversation is going to go? You picture what the person on the other end is going to say and you kind of mini-rehearse what your responses will be? It usually all gets blown to Hell when the other person picks up. But if you're speeding out of your mind like a paint huffer then then the line that separates what's going on in your head and what's happening outside of it starts to get all scribbly.

    "Hello Mark Allen." Bryan said as he picked up the phone. Apparently he was doing some late-night shopping at Wallgreen's in Austin, Texas (his place of residence - Austin, not Wallgreen's itself).

    What happened next was kind of embarrassing. But I blame the paint fumes and the paint fumes only. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I THINK IT'S ALL ABOUT: placing blame on things that can't defend themselves... like paint fumes. You know that little rehearsal conversation I had in my head? The kind you are not supposed to speak out loud? Well I just kind of... ran down the list of possible conversation openers that I had collected in my head in the few moments it had taken me to dial the phone. Instead of just picking from one... I decided to just run down my list of responses to things that Bryan might ask me in the opening moments of our conversation. Keep in mind that Bryan has only said "Hello Mark Allen." at this point... and nothing else. And I am running down this list of polite things to say complete with overly polite vocal inflections... while Bryan is silent. So the conversation started like this:
 

Bryan: "Hello Mark Allen."

Mark: "Hi!" (friendly, loud tone),

Mark: "How are you!?" (completely different tone - loud again, and overly chirpily inquisitive - slightly feminine)

Mark: "Uh-huh! I'm fine!" (completely different tone - friendly serious, politely resigned - keep in mind that Bryan hasn't even asked me how I'm doing)

Mark: "Well I just decided to call y-y-y-o-o-o-u-u-u..." (completely different tone - still chirp-y but toned down a bit more)

Mark: "Oh... you know... the same old thing I guess... just kind of... living..." (completely different tone - a bit more serious but still mock-chirpy - becoming more aware of the fact that I have just blurted out about five responses to questions that my ex-boyfriend whom I decided to call in the middle of the night after not speaking for months while also completely high on paint fumes has not even asked me and how embarrassing a disaster this it is quickly turning into)

Bryan: "?" (stupefied silence)

    (more below...)

    I'll spare you the rest of the gruesome details. Trust me... watching an autopsy film would be more enjoyable. I proceeded to rattle off everything I could think of in my life that was classifiable as an accomplishment in my eyes, to Bryan... to which he responded with polite friendliness. I then compared to latest "Lord of the Rings" film to The History Channel, talked at length about $20,000 glitter panda paintings and $1,000,000 painted-black victorian-style houses in The New York Times, used the phrases "Luxor Hotel" and "sphincter" in the same sentence without laughing, talked a lot about how broke I was, and hinted about how rich I thought he probably was. I think the "low"light of the apocalyptic, high-as-a-kite phone call came when I actually blurted out... very loudly... "BRYAN, I DIDN'T CALL YOU TO TALK ABOUT MY NEW BOYFRIEND JIM!" for no reason.

    I didn't even bother to mention to Bryan that I was painting my apartment while I was talking to him. All the time I was doing my Mary Hartman impersonation for him... in the background all you heard was the "p-p-p-f-f-f-t-t-t-t! p-p-p-f-f-f-t-t-t-t! p-p-p-f-f-f-t-t-t-t!" of the paint roller rolling sticky paint against the wall and me huffing and puffing out of breath between embarrassing sentences because I kept climbing up and down and up and down the ladder because I was painting the ceiling at the time... in a frenzied drug rush. Plus I probably sounded even MORE breathy since I had the phone tucked under my ear as I needed both hands to paint with. He probably thought I was masturbating while on crack while talking to him. Though I must say, Bryan was very polite during the whole audio puppet show. Bryan's a nice guy.

    After I did my impersonation of Anna Nicole Smith/Sybil/Mary Hartman/Inspector Clouseau for a baffled Bryan I hung up the phone... threw up into my paint tray. Continued to paint anyway... then... somehow... lost consciousness.

    Life is about choices.

 

 
 

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 12/29/02:

=  ?
1: The weird white goo inside the pores on my nose that I can squeeze out
    What is that stuff? Boy does that white goo stuff that I can squeeze out of the pores on my nose freak me the fuck out. What is it? They look like itty bitty embryos saying "Doooon't kiiiillll meee!" every time I command them to appear with my two forefingers. Is this where they get Ramin noodles from? Does anyone know what they are?
 
 

2: The Christmas Snowstorm hurricane
    I spent a very warm and kooky and romantic Christmas with Jim in the Catskills. Like the rest of America, we were hit in the very early AM on Christmas with an "I am the Iceman and I cometh" blizzard. Since Jim and I were too poor to give each other presents (I was going to sell my hair so I could afford to buy him a gold chain for his watch, and he was going to sell his watch to buy me a golden comb for my hair) - we spent the morning walking out into the raging, great white expanse of "screaming quietness" - the best phrase I can think of to describe a snowstorm of that magnitude. I kept expecting Jack Nicolson to start chasing us with an ax. The inevitable "Wow... what if this was all cocaine!" was uttered at least once. I probably lost 5 pounds in tears alone (not faggy cry tears but searing wind tears). It was intense. We even saw a line of snow-covered deer splashing one by one accross a freezing stream! It was beautiful! It looked like a Coors Lite ad!
    When we got back to Jim's place we were so covered in snow that we looked like two giant walking egg white omlettes.
    Here - are - a - bunch - of - pictures I took that day and night.
 

3: Cross country skiing in the Catskill mountains

    *WHEEEE-hahahahahaha! *cough*cough*hack* hahahahaheeheehoho* WHEEEEEE!!!
    Okay... another goddamn thing I can check off that mutherfucking goddamn list of "The Things I Did In My Life". Hoo-fucking-ray! It was really interesting and I had a good time. I had always heard that cross country skiing was a lot harder and different than downhill skiing for obvious reasons. I had always assumed that the cool part of it was looking at the snow-covered landscape all around you as you zoomed along. I found this hard to do though because I kept having to look down at my ski's to make sure they didn't stray too far off the straight and narrow. But one benefit that DID deliver was the exercise. Afterwards I felt like I had been doing yoga for a week. The only all-body workout that I can think of that is that strenuous is swimming.
    We went along this old "rail trail" that cuts through the mountain landscape - so it wasn't completely uncharted territory. We were surrounded by a line of trees on both sides for some of the way... but a lot of times the trees broke and it was an expanse of crystalline wow.
    STYLE WISE: Jim and I were using ugly, poor-people, cheap-o ski's and boots (I rented mine) - the low-end of the suburban outdoor set (both our boots looked like they were left over from Olivia Newton John's leftovers  'Let's Get Physical' video), but they worked (and to be honest everyone else we saw on the trail had the same equipment).
    It was wild... whoosh-ing, roboticaly robust and exhausting. It was fun and hearty... and afterwards I felt mentally and physically drained but oddly refreshed and inspired... kind of like I had just been in a horribly violent car wreck or been viciously gang raped.
    It was a blast!
   Here - are - some - pictures I took along the way.
 
 

4: Huey Long
    I, like a lot of people of my generation, only remember Huey Long from various characitures referring to him in really old Warner Brothers' Bugs Bunny cartoons.  I just caught Ken Burns' film on Huey Long on PBS. What a hilarious character! Whoa! What an outrageous powerhouse goof ball! Yet another reason I love Southerners... Huey Long was everything that makes extreme Southern characters what they are and more. He rose to power in the state of Louisiana by sheer lung power and showmanship, all the while championing the rights of the working poor (this was just before the depression hit - which when it did only catapulted him further into mega-popularity) and he lied, cheated and stole (even had people kidnapped) to make sure he got his way as he fought for the underdog and rose to political power. His whole thing was the whole "share the wealth" thing... about taxing the rich 10% and redistributing the wealth around to the country's poor. This theory was, of course, full of loopholes, but to depression era America, his dramatic, full-lung-power, bring-the-house-down speeches in which he would cruelly mock the country's rich and famous by name sure sounded like gold spun from angels in heaven. He would stay up for days at a time (apparently on glasses of milk and handfuls of chocolates - and a little drinkie'poo or twelve) traveling around the country, making speech after speech to throngs that would gather to hear the man whom everybody was talking about speak. People would come from miles around either in support or to mock. As Huey shouted down the heavens, those in the front of the crowd would yell along "Give it to'em Huey!" while those in back shouted "Go to Hell!" ...all the while Huey's voice drowning out them all. It was kind of like a Courtney Love concert in the 1990's!
    He eventually rose to a Senate seat and, in truth - he really WAS fighting for the working poor throughout his completely wild political career (in his own erratic, wild, quasi hypocritical way)... it's just that the ego that drove him kept getting in his way and causing him to make bold blunders, which he never apologized for. In the end... his ego got the best of him and the good ole' reliable public-witch-hunt-gossip phenomenon (a phenomenon that Huey used to his advantage about a million times) took it's course and Huey Long was assassinated in 1935 by the 29-year-old son of a judge who was loosing his position thanks to Huey power mongering. Huey even predicted that he would be assassinated, and walked around with armed guards at all times... but it wasn't enough.
    Huey was trying to become President... and if he had, many claim that it might have been the first time a dictatorship established itself in the United States. He was loved and hated all through his career - but in the end many people in the country wanted him dead because of his escalating abuse of power and disregard for those that questioned his more-and-more desperate tactics. And it's probably this turn by Huey's public that would have prevented him from rising to President of the United States if he had escaped assassination. He was a near mythological example of the whole GOOD/EVIL duality thing.
    I've always loved outrageous Southerners like this, and loved the way it makes Northerners mad at the way I love them... or at least I like to pretend this is the case. Brainy, practical, preppie Northerners have no idea how to handle Southern hurricanes like Huey Long... and I always think it's kind of funny to watch them squirm, dour faced and silent, in the face of them. Many of Huey's opponents in Washington literally had no idea how to tame him and watched in imp-ish horror as he rose to greater and greater power (In the end though they got their way when Huey self-destructed). Of course... a LOT has changed since then. The tactics used by Huey to gain support have been warmed over so many times they are used today by the lamest corporations to sell the most boring products to consumers on the lowest end of the consumer scale. It's almost hard to imagine a time when Huey Long was cutting edge.
    It's a wild ride, full of hilarious Southern characters... and I recommend trying to check out Ken Burns' film on PBS if you get the chance (I'm sure they'll re-run it - they ALWAYS do). Or go punch "Huey Long" into Google.com to find out more about him.
 

5: The way the band Lightning Bolt begins a show
   Lightning Bolt hail from Providence, R.I.'s art/music scene - and are connected to this Fort Thunder art commune thing, which may be in Brooklyn, I'm not sure... it's confusing. Anyhows, the two members of Lightening Bolt, Brian Gibson (heavily effected electric bass guitar) and Brian Chippendale (drum kit, macramé'd head stockings, and contact microphones taped to his throat), use only said drums and bass... along with a *MOUNTAIN* of amps. They refuse to play on the stage at any venue, instead... they set up their massive outfit somewhere near the back of the venue... on the floor, and the crowd forms a circle around them when they begin playing. But the way they begin their shows is what's key. Even if they are opening for a band... they always play last on the set. As the lead band of the night is reaching the beginning of it's second encore... Lightning Bolt begin setting up their equipment near the back of the crowd, unbeknownst to most. As soon as the lead band has reached the last few notes of their last song, and before they can say "Goodnight!" or "Thanks you've been great!" - Lightning Bolt *R*I*P* into the opening power chords of one of their adrenaline anthems. Mini-chaos ensues. The lead band kinds of... stops playing (although most times they know it's going to occur - apparently sometimes they don't), the crowd all turns around to see what the explosion was, everyone's confused, and Lightning Bolt have begun their set - a set which very quickly accelerates into deafening, mock-violent, strobe-notic and skull-blasting mini riots (make sure you click on that), where the sound *O*B*L*I*T*E*R*A*T*E*S* people's eardrums and central cortexes, people fight like animals to get to the center, and the whole mad mash pulses and sweats and throbs like a pubescent boy's anxious, prone-to-violence boner. People get elbowed, too-loud amps burst ear drums, cymbal stands burst people's eyes... what a blast. There's probably less pushing and shoving at a Cannibal Corpse show held on a Japanese subway car at rush hour.
    Their CDs and vinyl are released on Load Records. As you may have guessed, they are a much more interesting live act than a digitally recorded one... something the band themselves will admit. Click here for an mp3 "Dracula Mountain" from their new album Wonderful Rainbow.
    I was lucky enough to catch these guys a few years ago at NYC's now defunct venue The Cooler. I don't even remember who the headlining act was (says a lot) but I DO remember when Lightning Bolt started their set... I remember I just backed up from the white core hole of blinding sound that burst from the back just as the headlining act started their second encore... everything was confused. The lead band I'm sure too were like "Huh?" as the whole crowd pounced on the back area like wildebeests on a lamb and everybody started flailing around like rag dolls in the dark to sound so loud you couldn't even hear it (if you can imagine that). It was really trippy and I remember all the people who worked at The Cooler were all stopping and holding onto stuff like "...ouch" I remember thinking the sound was so loud that it was WRONG. I actually felt really old... but I have to say the way they began their set really fucked with my map... and I liked it and never forgot it.

6: This photo of Brigitte Boisselier
    YAA! YAA! MMMM! POTATOES FOR YOU GOOD YAA!? YOU WANT BUY POTATOES YAA!? YAA?! KNISHES FOR YOU I MAKE-A YOU GOOD PRICE MMM!  MMM BEEF OR PORK OR ZA STRUDEL YA?! YA GOOOD PRICES ON YA LEATHER SKIRTS AN COATS AT MAH SISTERZ STORE AT ORCHARD STREET YA! YPU WANNA BUY AN YA PICKLE POTATOES YA?!

7: Dermot Mulroney's elaborately constructed fake receding hair-line mullet job in the film "About Schmidt"
    Yee-gads! Wow! I'm... uh... speechless. I don't think I've been so impressed with this elaborate a hair construction ...ever! I don't think this has anything to do with the mid-90's "mullet craze" as much as it has to do with admiring an actor I have always loved and thought to be very handsome agreeing to appear like this in an entire film. Talk about guts. Suddenly my respect for Mr. Mulroney... already at stalker-levels... has reached stellar-ly spastic proportions. I haven't even seen the film yet, but as soon as I saw promotional stills for the film - featuring Dermot's apocolyptically asymmetrical mullet, fake receding hair-line (done with spine-chilling accuracy) and perfectly and horribly uneven Scottish mustache-thingie - I got more excited about a movie than when I was eight years old and first saw the trailer for "Star Wars". I'm so psyched to see "About Schmidt" to see Dermot's hair that I couldn't give two silver shits about the rest of the film.
    Thanks to everyone who sent in pics.
 
 
 

8: Furie4Jesus.com
    One of the weirdest, most indescribable web sites I've ever seen. It's so inexplicably strange it's almost BORING.
 
 

9: This flyer I found on the subway 5 years ago
   I found this flyer in the subway about five years ago. Here is the front, and here is the back. I remember when I found it they were laying all over the seats of the whole car. It's been up on my wall for years... but I thought I would take it down and share it with you. I love shit like this.
 
 

10: The film "Copycat" (1995, director: Jon Amiel)
    I'm addicted to this film.
    Sigourney Weaver plays psychologist and author Dr. Helen Hudson, "the world's expert on serial killers". While giving a lecture on said killers at a local university, she thinks she sees the grinning face of Daryll Lee Cullem (a supposedly-in-prison serial killer who's in prison because Dr. Hudson's expert testimony at his trial help put him there) in the crowd silently taunting her. She blinks... and he's gone... and she chalks it up to a fear-based hallucination. After the lecture her bodyguards escort her for a trip to the ladies room... when the guards make sure the coast is clear... Dr. Hudson is left alone. Perhaps she should have trusted that fear-based hallucination after all. What commences in that bathroom leaves one bodyguard dead and makes Helen the near-victim of the unspeakable fate of the victims of serial killers that she has spent her entire career researching and theorizing on.
    Daryll Lee Cullem ends up back in prison... and Dr. Hudson ends up so emotionally scarred from the experience that she turns into a "pill-popping, juice head, agoraphobic asshole" (as Holly Hunter chirp-ily refers to her in the film after meeting her for the first time). Dr. Hudson is now a sever agoraphobic... whiling away her hours in a fantastically huge and mind-blowing-ly amazing apartment in San Francisco with a gay roommate Andy... connected to the internet and cable... popping pill after pill and downing drink after drink... useless to the world and herself - so scared of the outside world that she has to reach out the front door with a broom handle to get the morning paper.
    When a new serial killer starts off-ing women in San Francisco, Dr. Hudson begins calling drunken tips to the local police to try and help them solve the case. She calls anonymously so many times in fact that the cops trace the call. When they find out it's the world-renowned serial killer expert Dr. Hudson who's been leaving the weird tips... they pay her a visit and ask her to help them catch the killer. The rocky relationship between the brilliant but highly unstable Dr. Hudson and the two lead detectives (Holly Hunter and Dermot Mulroney) results in some Sigourney having some of the funniest lines since Bette Davis' drunken rampage in that famous party scene in "All About Eve".
    With Dr. Hudson's help they realize this new killer is copycat-ing murders by famous serial killers like Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz , Bianchi and Buono and Jeffrey Dhamer... down to the most obsessive details. He has a VERY big plan... and that that plan now involves Dr. Hudson. They try helplessly to guess the killer's moves... but he outsmarts them time after time with surprise after surprise, elaborate kill after elaborate kill... (he's obviously studied up on Dr. Hudson's books) leading up to what they all know will be a grizzly conclusion.
    I won't spoil the rest of the movie for you... but I will tell you that the plot stays complex all the way through. Not only does the film feature many of my favorite actors - Sigourney Weaver, Holly Hunter, Dermot Mulroney, William McNamara, Harry Connick Jr. - and  Diane Amos (The black lady from the Pine Sol commercial) but all the performers in the film do a bang-up job molding complex, 3-D believability around their characters... you care about them all and hence what happens to them. The film is also filled with all sorts of other odd sub-characters that were obviously given a lot of thought to. The plot is filled with loop-holes, of course, like any Hollywood film with money-making at it's root... but remains enjoyably intricate and interesting... and often very inventive. The direction, editing, sound, cinematography and sets (Dr. Hudson's apartment is great) are superb. And some of Sigourney's lines are hi-LAR-ee-us.
    The film also has a highly unique and queer, dark, sleek, technical look - not in a TV "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" way... but in an unsettling way... where smooth, dimly-lit hallways in modern campus buildings lead to claustrophobic encounters - and quiet, hyper-modern public rest rooms are backdrops used to tease your most unspeakable, nightmarish fears. And the camera, characters and story often linger on weird choices of technology - things like high-speed internet chess games, web browsers with video tape back-ups, mini-vacuum cleaners used to vacuum up live ants, strange automatic window blinds with remote controls, annoying jimmied car alarms, strange hand-held motion detectors, out-dated video cameras with post-it notes all over them, computer photo-editing programs used to make snuff videos and sperm banks where smiling murderers work like bees.
    The film also, by default, drops all kinds of interesting facts and information about serial killers, as the Dr. Hudson character's expertise on the subject spills all over the plot (including lots of theories about what makes serial killers tick - a knowledge Dr. Hudson uses to try and turn the tables on the killer at one point of capture, and which amazingly scrambles his mental map - temporarily).
    The only reason I'm putting this here is because I think you can judge how good a film is by how many times you've watched it (yes I know that's debatable). I, for some reason that I cannot remember, own a video copy of this film... and have watched it probably 20 times... over and over... more than I've watched "Fight Club" (but not as much as 'Rear Window' - a film you could interestingly compare and contrast this one to). I've literally come in from a night out and popped this tape in and fell asleep while it's playing. So if you're looking for a very interesting Hollywood thriller, that pays off with repeated viewings... check it out. You'll enjoy it.
    *SPOILERS*>>>> Jim liked this film a lot when I showed it to him, and thought Sigourney's character was a riot. If you've seen it, you know the scene where the three-sheets to the wind and whacked out on goof balls Dr. Hudson gets her black dress out of her closet and lays it on the bed, then goes and takes a shower, and when she stumbles back to the bed her RED dress (it's the one she wore during the horrible bathroom attack! GASP!) is laying on the bed in place of the black one? It's an eerie moment that she chalks up to drunkenness (but later is proven wrong). Jim and I thought it would have been funny if her gay roommate Andy suddenly walked out of the shadows wearing the black dress and was like "Hi honey I wanted to borrow this black dress tonight to go to the fag bar so I just took it and laid out your red one instead because I didn't want to bother you in the shower. Do you mind?" ALSO: Do you know Jim had a friend that worked on a film with Sigourney Weaver and even though he liked Sigourney a lot and said she was great he had a lot of time on his hands and too much time to think and so he started calling everyone in the cast the sickest name he could think of (in his head - I think) and his name for Sigourney Weaver was "Sick Horny Beaver"? It's true!

Mark Allen's Top Ten for 12/23/02

1: Stealing Baby Jesus from nativity scenes becoming so commonplace that it might be a good idea to work it into even the most conservative of holiday family acceptance and make it a holiday tradition that is eventually co-opted by commerce and consumerism and makes America stronger
    Let's face reality. These stories we hear every single year about some kids stealing the Baby Jesus statue from some local church or mall's nativity scene and how horrified and outraged the locals are are starting to loose their composure and how it's a reflection of "the world we live in today" and how "sad" it is that such "evil" people would do this and they just "can't understand how someone could be so mean" and how they "hope no kids see it" (the ones who did it in the first place) so their "Christmas spirit isn't crushed". It's because they happen so much that the local's interviewed on the news stories about the inevitably vandalized nativity scenes in every single town in America are starting to seem a little robotic in their concern. The story usually starts out or ends with the commentator saying; "These thieves have stolen Jesus - but not this community's holiday spirit." It has become a story so predictable every year on every local news channel that I think even it's starting to become filler for the networks. During Christmas news time the local news programming guys are all:

   Mr. News Programming Guy: "Okay run the woman stabbed in her apartment... then the President scandal... then the possible MTA strike... okay then... hmmmm... how about the Kwanza thing... um... we have some room to fill... and filler stories we can run? How about some stories about vandals stealing a baby Jesus from a church's local nativity scene. How many of THOSE storiesdo we have this this week Mr. News Programming Guy's Assistant?"
   News Programming Guy's Assistant: "347... oh wait no, another one just came in... 8... 348!"
    Mr. News Programming Guy: "Well pick one at random and run it! If there's time."

    Hey I have an idea! Make it a tradition! Like trick-or-treating on Halloween or watching football on Thanksgiving! Let's face it - Christianity can use all the help it can get as far as it's popularity with today's youth goes. Why not turn it into a wacky game of hide-and-seek the savior? Companies could market all kinds of sell-able products... like "Christmas Steal The Baby Jesus Nativity" kits for your lawn. Neighbors and friends could buy the kits and steal each other's as a holiday tradition - like exchanging gifts. Instead of cards people could exchange Christmas Baby Jesus ransom notes.. It could be fun! Companies would make money... kids would feel all "bad" and cool... parents would have something to do that is different... and everyone would be learning more and more about JESUS!
    Why not make it an official tradition?
    I mean... Americans... in a lot of ways, are such pansy wimps when it comes to fighting for their God. Muslim kids are practicing blowing up people for their God... and Christmas? Forget about it... they don't have the time! They're too busy plotting to make video of assassinated American journalists to help bring down Christmas-Baby-Jesus-nativity-scene-loving-cuddling-America. No wonder Muslims are on a firm track to obliterating us. Muslim youth's LOVE religion. They're all "Where does this wire go on the bomb?" while they haven't even slept for days and don't even complain - while our kids are like "I wanna play Nintendo Game Cube and then take ecstasy!" while they drive around in air-conditioned Lexus's.
    This is a way to get kids of today "excited" about Christianity - lets face it, that's what the Bush administration wants! And it will turn Christmas into a war zone (for training) where kids FIGHT FOR GOD. Let's make America PROUD again!
    Steal a Christmas nativity scene from your town today and show and help kick Bin Ladin's ass!!!
 

2: Matt Bell's new bleach job
    It looks totally great. You can read about Matt here (#24). Here is Matt as a brunette. So adorable. So, so, so adorable. I hope Jim doesn't read this.
 

3: Various solo guitar work CDs by Thurston Moore and friends