This, as DM pal, film-maker Alessandro Cima, writes: “might be the most beautiful film you will see all year.” It’s Derek Jarman’s Broken English, his superb interpretation of three tracks by Marianne Faithfull -  “Witches Song,” “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” and “Broken English”.

As Mr Cima writes:

The montage and superimposition going on in this film is simply stunning.  It’s full of dark pagan ritual, sex, violence, romance, adoration, and mystery.

 
Via Candlelight Stories
 

 
Almost 14 years after his death, William S Burroughs is on trial for corrupting Turkish morality. The Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into Burroughs’ novel The Soft Machine, which was recently translated and published by Sel Publishing House in January. Tukey’s English Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review reports:

The court referred to a report written by the Prime Ministry’s Council for Protecting Minors from Explicit Publications that accused the novel, The Soft Machine, of “incompliance with moral norms” and “hurting people’s moral feelings.” Sel Publishing issued a press release that included parts of their testimony in the court.

“It is impossible to understand the insistence in sending books written and published for adults to councils that specialize in minors. If we consider things from this perspective, then dozens of such reports could be written about TV channels, newscasts and thousands of books,” read the testimony given by the publishing house.

The testimony also argued that the Prime Ministry’s council had no credentials in literature, aesthetics or translation, thus causing what the representatives of the publishing house called a “freakish” decision by the council.

The council also accused the novel of “lacking unity in its subject matter,” “incompliance with narrative unity,” for “using slang and colloquial terms” and “the application of a fragmented narrative style,” while claiming that Burroughs’s book contained unrealistic interpretations that were neither personal nor objective by giving examples from the lifestyles of historical and mythological figures. None of the above, argued the publishing house, constitutes a criminal act.

The council went further and said, “The book does not constitute a literary piece of work in its current condition,” adding it would add nothing new to the reader’s reservoir of knowledge, and argued the book developed “attitudes that were permissive to crime by concentrating on the banal, vulgar and weak attributes of humanity.”

The representatives of the publishing house responded to these charges. “Just as no writer is under any special obligation to highlight humanity’s fair attributes under every circumstance, the measure of whether a book has any literary value or not, and the judge of what the book may add to the reader’s reservoir of knowledge, is not an official state institution, but the reader himself,” they said.

“Once again, societies comprised of modern, creative and inquisitive individuals are formed by reading and being exposed to literary texts and works of art that can be considered as the most extreme examples of their kind,” further asserted the defendants’ statement.

The testimony also invited members of the council to conduct “a simple Internet research” about the writer, and learn about the fact that Burroughs was one of the pioneers the “Beat Generation” that rebelled against the stagnant morality of the middle class in post-World War II America. The testimony also drew attention to the fact that the “cut-up” technique used in the book was once heralded as a great novelty among literary circles.

“Through this technique, Burroughs runs counter, not just to entrenched attitudes in people’s lifestyles but also in contradiction to [older] literary techniques. That being the case and since the aim of the book itself is to push boundaries, it is clearly absurd to search for criminal elements in the book by suggesting that the book does not conform with social norms,” further stated the press release.

“Moreover, it is also meaningless to expect William S. Burroughs, who was not raised in accordance with the National Education Law, or as an individual who ‘identifies with the national, moral, humanitarian, material and spiritual cultural values of Turkish society, and who always tries to exalt his family, country and nation,’ to have produced a text within this framework,” read the testimony. “It is clear and obvious that this case carries no weight nor any respectability outside of the borders of our country.”

“We demand an end to investigations that constrain our activities and the prosecution of books for any reason whatsoever,” concluded the statement.

Bonus: William Burroughs reads ‘Junky’ (abridged version)
 
With thanks to Steve Duffy
 

 
Cracked Actor captured David Bowie at “a fragile stage” in his life. His relationship with his wife, Angie, was beginning to falter, there was business problems looming, and he was addicted to cocaine, which caused “severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional problems.” Filmed during Bowie’s legendary “Diamond Dogs Tour” in 1974, Alan Yentob’s film revealed a man on the run, taking stock, even questioning his own ambitions:

‘I never wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star. I never, honest guv, I wasn’t even there. But I was, you see, I was there. That’s what happened.’

Revealing his difficulties with fame:

‘Do you know that feeling you get in a car when somebody’s accelerating very fast and you’re not driving? And you get that “Uhhh” thing in your chest when you’re being forced backwards and you think “Uhhh” and you’re not sure whether you like it or not? It’s that kind of feeling. That’s what success was like. The first thrust of being totally unknown to being what seemed to be very quickly known. It was very frightening for me and coping with it was something that I tried to do. And that’s what happened. That was me coping. Some of those albums were me coping, taking it all very seriously I was.’

And the singer’s paranoia, at the time of Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation:

‘There’s an underlying unease here, definitely. You can feel it in every avenue and it’s very calm. And it’s a kind of superficial calmness that they’ve developed to underplay the fact that it’s… there’s a lot of high pressure here as it’s a very big entertainment industry area. And you get this feeling of unease with everybody. The first time that it really came home to me what a kind of strange fascination it has is the… we… I came in on the train… on the earthquake, and the earthquake was actually taking place when the train came in. And the hotel that we were in was… just tremored every few minutes. I mean, it was just a revolting feeling. And ever since then I‘ve always been very aware of how dubious a position it is to stay here for any length of time.’

In a series of interviews, filmed in limousines, backstage and in hotel rooms, Cracked Actor reveals an uncertain, vulnerable, and at times incoherent Bowie; but in performance, he is magnificent.

Originally made for the BBC’s arts strand Omnibus, this is a brilliant, mesmeric, landmark documentary, even if Yentob is slightly disparaging of Bowie’s re-invention as “a soul singer.”

Footnote: when film director, Nicholas Roeg watched Cracked Actor, he decided to cast Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth.
 

 
A moving and intimate short film portrait of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: artist, musician, pandrogyne, by Kel O’Neill and Eline Jongsma.

“Because Genesis and Jaye were so obsessed with each other, they wanted to literally become each other. Plastic surgery seemed like the best way to accomplish this goal, but once Jaye passed on, their grand project was left unfinished. Still, Genesis’s body tells the tale of a love story that transcends gender and the limits of human flesh.”

 
Previously on DM

New QA with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

Thee Psychick Bible: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

 
With thanks to Robert Conroy
 

 
Modern Masters was a 4-part BBC Arts series first shown in 2010. In each program, Daily Telegraph art critic, Alastair Sooke examined the lives and work of one of the 20th century’s most important artists, Henri Matisse; Pablo Picasso; Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol.

Sooke set out to discover “why these artists are considered so great and how they still influence our lives today,” not exactly an original approach, but hey, it’s the BBC. The series kicked-off with his documentary on Andy Warhol, “the king of Pop Art”, which certainly had great access, and some very fine archive, and while I’m sure Mr. Warhol would have loved it, it is all a bit hit-and-miss and depends on how well you take to Sooke’s approach as a presenter. Andrew Billen in the London Times wrote of the program:

The Warhol era seems so distant that it was a happy surprise that in New York Sooke found so many of Warhol’s contemporaries to interview. In the Serendipity coffee shop where Warhol sold his first paintings, its owner recalled that his favourite drink was frozen ice chocolate and lemon ice box pie (I think he said it was a drink). The nice couple who employed him to design the logo for their leather business said that he always came with five new ideas for marketing campaigns and if they didn’t like them he would come back next day with another they did. Gerard Malagna, master of the Warhol silk screen, Warholed Sooke’s face into a screen print. Sooke said that he looked like a mouse with lipstick. Malagna agreed: it was just so perfect. Sooke even got an audience with a still well Dennis Hopper. Duchamp had said that the artist would end up just pointing his finger and declaring something art. Warhol pointed his finger at us, said Hopper.

Sooke’s answers to his question “What had Warhol ever done for us?” — predicted celebrity culture, found beauty in banality, toppled the idea of the artist as suffering mystic — were less interesting than his tiggerish approach and his willingness to follow Warhol into absurdity. A stylist apparently called Brix Smith-Start, herself a ringer for Warhol, dressed Sooke in an “Andy-suit” and wig. “Gee Brix! Golly!” exclaimed Sooke, pouting into a cheval. “Yes! You’ve so got it,” gasped Brix. And so he had: the whole thing.

 
The rest of ‘Modern Masters: Andy Warhol’, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Douglas Steindorff
 

 
Believed lost for fifty years, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s first film, La Cravate (aka Severed Heads) was found in an attic in Germany in 2006, and released on DVD in 2007. Adapted from Thomas Mann’s short story, “The Transposed Heads - A Legend of India in Paris”, La Cravate was made between 1953 and 1957 and starred Denise Brossot, Rolande Polya, Raymond Devos, Saul Gilbert and Jodorowsky.

The film tells of a young man’s desire to win the love of a woman. To do this, he visits a store which allows customers to switch their heads, and thus their personalities. The young man trades in his head for a variety of different models, and while his body continues to woo the woman of his dreams, the store’s proprietor, a young woman, takes a fancy to the man’s original head and takes it home. The moral is never to lose your head over unrequited love, but find someone who loves you as you are. It’s bizarre, amusing and charming, and an impressive first film.
 

 
 
Previously on DM
Exclusive Clip of Alejandro Jodorowsky for Dangerous MInds Readers
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Shamanic Funnies
 
 

 
Last year, Dangerous MInd writer, Bradley Novicoff posted a link to this excellent BBC documentary on William S. Burroughs. At the time it wasn’t possible to embed Arena: Burroughs onto our site, but now it is.

Burroughs was originally made in 1983 by Howard Brookner and Alan Yentob, as part of the BBC’s art strand Arena, and repeated after Burrough’s death in 1997. It is an exceptional documentary, one that gives an intimate and revealing portrait of Burroughs, as he revisits his childhood home; discusses his up-bringing with his brother, Mortimer; his friendship with Jack Kerouac, Allen Gisnberg, and Brion Gysin; and has a reunion with artist Francis Bacon, who Burroughs knew in Tangier. Other contributors include Terry Southern, Patti Smith, and James Grauerholz.

 
Abe Books has published part of a transcript from an interview with William S. Burroughs, conducted by Conrad Knickerbocker for the Paris Review on New Year’s Day, 1965. In it, Burroughs discussed “why the visions of art and the visions of drugs don’t mix.” Other interviews available at Abe Books include Ernest Hemingway and P.G. Wodehouse - now that’s a mix to get any Hogmanay party started. Have a great New Year.

INTERVIEWER: When and why did you start to write?

BURROUGHS: I started to write in about 1950; I was thirty-five at the time; there didn’t seem to be any strong motivation. I simply was endeavoring to put down in a more or less straightforward journalistic style something about my experiences with addiction and addicts.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you feel compelled to record these experiences?

BURROUGHS: I didn’t feel compelled. I had nothing else to do. Writing gave me something to do every day. I don’t feel the results were at all spectacular. Junky [sic] is not much of a book, actually. I knew very little about writing at that time.

INTERVIEWER: Where was this?

BURROUGHS: In Mexico City. I was living near Sears, Roebuck, right around the corner from the University of Mexico. I had been in the army four or five months and I was there on the GI Bill, studying native dialects. I went to Mexico partly because things were becoming so difficult with the drug situation in America. Getting drugs in Mexico was quite easy, so I didn’t have to rush around, and there wasn’t any pressure from the law.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you start taking drugs?

BURROUGHS: Well, I was just bored. I didn’t seem to have much interest in becoming a successful advertising executive or whatever, or living the kind of life Harvard designs for you. After I became addicted in New York in 1944, things began to happen. I got in some trouble with the law, got married, moved to New Orleans, and then went to Mexico.

INTERVIEWER: There seems to be a great deal of middle-class voyeurism in this country concerning addiction, and in the literary world, downright reverence for the addict. You apparently don’t share these points of view.

BURROUGHS: No, most of it is nonsense. I think drugs are interesting principally as chemical means of altering metabolism and thereby altering what we call reality, which I would define as a more or less constant scanning pattern.

INTERVIEWER: What do you think of the hallucinogens and the new psychedelic drugs - LSD-25?

BURROUGHS: I think they’re extremely dangerous, much more dangerous than heroin. They can produce overwhelming anxiety states. I’ve seen people try to throw themselves out of windows; whereas the heroin addict is mainly interested in staring at his own toe. Other than deprivation of the drug, the main threat to him is an overdose. I’ve tried most of the hallucinogens without an anxiety reaction, fortunately. LSD-25 produced results for me similar to mescaline. Like all hallucinogens, LSD gave me an increased awareness, more a hallucinated viewpoint than any actual hallucination. You might look at a doorknob and it will appear to revolve, although you are conscious that this is the result of the drug. Also, van Goghish colors, with all those swirls, and the crackle of the universe.

INTERVIEWER: Have you read Henri Michaux’s book on mescaline?

BURROUGHS: His idea was to go into his room and close the door and hold in the experiences. I had my most interesting experiences with mescaline when I got outdoors and walked around - colors, sunsets, gardens. It produces a terrible hangover, though, nasty stuff. It makes one ill and interferes with coordination. I’ve had all the interesting effects I need, and I don’t want any repetition of those extremely unpleasant physical reactions.

INTERVIEWER: The visions of drugs and the visions of art don’t mix?

BURROUGHS: Never. The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts, and feelings. They are painkillers, pure and simple. They are absolutely contraindicated for creative work, and I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizers - the whole spectrum of sedative drugs. As for visions and heroin, I had a hallucinatory period at the very beginning of addiction, for instance, a sense of moving at high speed through space. But as soon as addiction was established, I had no visions - vision - at all and very few dreams.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you stop taking drugs?

BURROUGHS: I was living in Tangier in 1957, and I had spent a month in a tiny room in the Casbah staring at the toe of my foot. The room had filled up with empty Eukodol cartons; I suddenly realized I was not doing anything. I was dying. I was just apt to be finished. So I flew to London and turned myself over to Dr. John Yerbury Dent for treatment. I’ve heard of his success with apomorphine treatment. Apomorphine is simply morphine boiled in hydrochloric acid; it’s nonaddictive. What the apomorphine did was to regulate my metabolism. It’s a metabolic regulator. It cured me physiologically. I’d already taken the cure once at Lexington, and although I was off drugs when I got out, there was a physiological residue. Apomorphine eliminated that. I’ve been trying to get people in this country interested in it, but without much luck. The vast majority - social workers, doctors - have the cop’s mentality toward addiction. A probation officer in California wrote me recently to inquire about the apomorphine treatment. I’ll answer him at length. I always answer letters like that.

INTERVIEWER: Have you had any relapses?

BURROUGHS: Yes, a couple. Short. Both were straightened out with apomorphine, and now heroin is no temptation for me. I’m just not interested. I’ve seen a lot of it around. I know people who are addicts. I don’t have to use any willpower. Dr. Dent always said there is no such thing as willpower. You’ve got to reach a state of mind in which you don’t want it or need it.

INTERVIEWER: You regard addiction as an illness but also a central human fact, a drama?

BURROUGHS: Both, absolutely. It’s as simple as the way in which anyone happens to become an alcoholic. They start drinking, that’s all. They like it, and they drink, and then they become alcoholic. I was exposed to heroin in New York - that is, I was going around with people who were using it; I took it; the effects were pleasant. I went on using it and became addicted. Remember that if it can be readily obtained, you will have any number of addicts. The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It’s as psychological as malaria. It’s a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them. In Iran, for instance, opium was sold in shops until quite recently, and they had three million addicts in a population of twenty million. There are also all forms of spiritual addiction. Anything that can be done chemically can be done in other ways, that is, if we have sufficient knowledge of the processes involved. Many policemen and narcotics agents are precisely addicted to power, to exercising a certain nasty kind of power over people who are helpless. The nasty sort of power: white junk, I call it - rightness; they’re right, right right - and if they lost that power, they would suffer excruciating withdrawal symptoms. The picture we get of the whole Russian bureaucracy, people who are exclusively preoccupied with power and advantage, this must be an addiction. Suppose they lose it? Well, it’s been their whole life.

 
Previously on DM

William S. Burroughs ‘The Junky’s Christmas

 
Via Abe Books
 

 
Like Mr. Cocker, I hope one day this song will become obsolete. But until then…
 
With thanks to Suzanne Moore
 

 
John Lennon 24 Hours is a “rarely seen” BBC documentary following John and Yoko over five days in early December 1969. It’s an intimate and interesting film with some very fine moments - a few you may have seen before, but even so it’s well worth watching.

There’s a spooky moment for Lennon-philes at around 1 minute 20 seconds in part 3 (below), when Lennon reads out a letter from a concerned fan who wrote:

Dear Mr Lennon, From information I received whilst using ouija board I believe there will be an attempt to assassinate you. The spirit who gave me this information was Brian Epstein.

Enjoy!
 
John Lennon 24 Hours - Part 1
 

 
It’s the Kennedy moment for a generation, who know where they were, and what they were doing when they heard about John Lennon’s murder thirty years ago today.

I was woken from sleep, and half-awake, half asleep, the news was dreamlike, “John Lennon’s dead. He was shot.” It didn’t make sense, and three decades on, still doesn’t.

Lennon’s loss is immeasurable, for we are left with unfulfilled expectations. That said, Lennon’s creative work as a solo artist, but more importantly with The Beatles changed everything. John, Paul, George and Ringo were the most revolutionary and influential quartet since Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

To celebrate their revolutionary drive, here is “Revolution” deconstructed.

Lennon started writing “Revolution” in early 1968, when off on retreat with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Arguably, it was the first real political song The Beatles produced, and was a considered move away from the lovable mop-top image, as Lennon explained:

“I thought it was about time we spoke about it [revolution], the same as I thought it was about time we stopped not answering about the Vietnamese war. I had been thinking about it up in the hills in India.”

1968: the Vietnam War, My Lai Massacre, Grosvenor Square demonstration, student riots in Paris, Rome and Brazil, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin start a bombing campaign, Russia crushes the Prague Spring revolt in Czechoslovakia, Martin Luther King assassinated, Bobby Kennedy assassinated. It was a hell of a year.

In May The Beatles recorded Take 1 of “Revolution”, a slow almost Blues-like number with Lennon singing his vocal while lying on the floor. During this recording Lennon included the word “in” at the end of the line “You can count me out” as he was undecided about supporting violent revolution. Even so, Lennon was keen to have this version released as the next Beatles’ single. McCartney, however, was against causing any controversy, and argued, along with Harrison, that the track was far too slow to be a hit. It was eventually released, with lots of overdubs, on the White Album

A longer version (Take 20), lasting over 10 minutes was recorded and begins with Lennon shouting “Take your knickers off and let’s go.” Yoko Ono can be heard on this track, saying “Maybe it’s not that,” to which Harrison replies, “It is that.” Parts of this were later incorporated into “Revolution No. 9”.

Lennon was still adamant about releasing a version of “Revolution” and a faster, more up-tempo version was recorded on 9 July. It begins with “a startling machine-gun fuzz guitar riff,” with Lennon’s and Harrison’s guitars prominent throughout. Their distinct fuzzy sound was achieved by plugging the guitars directly into the recording console, and then routing the signal through two microphone preamplifiers, almost causing the channel to overload. Lennon overdubbed the opening scream, and double-tracked some of the words “so roughly that its careless spontaneity becomes a point in itself.” This version of “Revolution” was released as the B-side to “Hey, Jude” in August 1968. Highly controversial at the time, dividing both Left and Right, “Revolution” is now regarded as one of the “greatest, most furious rockers” with “challenging, fiery lyrics” where the listener’s “heart immediately starts pounding before Lennon goes into the first verse.” Rock critic Dave Marsh included “Revolution” in his 1989 book of 1001 greatest singles, describing it as a “gem” with a “ferocious fuzztone rock and roll attack” and a “snarling” Lennon vocal. Who can disagree?
 
John Lennon - Vocals
 

 
More tracks plus bonus clips of The Beatles after the jump…
 

 
Today, we celebrate the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democracy leader and human rights activist who has spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest. Suu Kyi’s release has been welcomed across the world, and it is hoped that this is the first step towards democracy within Burma (aka The Republic of the Union of Myanmar).

Suu Kyi’s political career started in August 1988, after a mass uprising against Burma’s military junta left thousands dead, Suu Kyi gave a speech, in front of 500,00 supporters, calling for an end to military rule and a new democratic government.

The following month, Suu Kyi co-founded the National League for Democracy (NLD) and became the party’s general secretary. The pro-democracy movement quickly gained support across the country, which led the junta to place Suu Kyi under house arrest for the first time in July 1989.

In May 1990, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won a landslide election victory, but the ruling junta refused to recognize the results. The following year, Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:

for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.

...Suu Kyi’s struggle is one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades. She has become an important symbol in the struggle against oppression…

...In awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honour this woman for her unflagging efforts and to show its support for the many people throughout the world who are striving to attain democracy, human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means.

In 1995, Suu Kyi was temporarily released from house arrest, but her movements were restricted. She was offered the opportunity to return to her family in the UK, but Suu Kyi opted to stay an continue the fight for democratic freedom.

These photographs from her family’s collection, reveal Suu Kyi’s life before she returned to Burma. Married to academic, Michael Aris in 1972, the couple had two children, Alexander and Kim, who are now grown men, one with a family of his own. Suu Kyi’s campaign for the greater good has come at great personal cost, her husband Michael died of prostate cancer in 1999, but he accepted what Suu Kyi saw as her destiny, as before they were married she told Aris:

“I only ask one thing, that should my people need me, you would help me to do my duty by them.”

When Aung San Suu Kyi was released today, she addressed thousands of well-wishers, saying:

“There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk. People must work in unison. Only then can we achieve our goal.”

It can only be hoped that Suu Kyi’s release is the first step towards achieving the goal of democracy within Burma.
 

 
More rare photographs of Aung San Suu Kyi after the jump
 

Heroes returns to NBC tonight for its fourth series and I am ashamed to admit I’ll probably I’m going to watch it.

The first series was great but the second and third seasons really sucked. And the writing… wow was the writing shit last season. AND the one before it. None of it makes any fucking sense, it’s unashamedly repetitive and confused. Hell, Heroes even rips itself off!

The Heroes story bible probably doesn’t even exist. It often feels like the writers themselves have no idea what happened the week before or will happen the week after. Killed off the guy who could paint the future, when this would have come in handy to resolve something plot-wise? MAKE ANOTHER CHARACTER ABLE TO DO IT!

AND WHY DOESN’T ANYONE EVER DIE ON THIS SHOW?!?!? Claire’s powers are the ultimate “Get Out of Jail Free Card” for the writers, one they never seem to tire of whipping out…Even if you apply comic book logic—or simply go with it—they’ve pulled the “he’s dead, no he’s alive again” trick way, way too many times—like when Peter briefly had Claire’s regenerative powers, conveniently right before he blew up; when Nathan came back alive and when Ali Larter returns as the twin sister of her offed character—ENOUGH WITH THIS! Puh-leeze. It’s like they hired a new crop of writers who never even watched—or asked any questions about—the first season before they wrote series two and three. If they even had writers at all for the last two seasons. Maybe they fired them all. Now it all makes sense!

So why do I keep watching Heroes you ask? I’m not altogether sure I can answer this question. Not to you, not to my wife, not to myself. It’s like a friend of mine once said to me about a Yoo-Hoo soda. I’d never had one before and I asked “Are these any good?” He dryly replied “You won’t like it, but you will drink it all anyway.” I guess that’s why I watch Heroes, if that makes ANY sense whatsoever. I started watching it, then I just… um… kept watching it.

Is it loyalty? Am I expecting it to get any better?

Not really, no.

But it does have a great cast. I think that’s why it’s so watchable in the final analysis, it has a great ensemble cast. The chemistry, the charisma and all of the things the actors bring to the show haven’t changed since the first series, it’s the writers and show runner Tim Kring who have let the actors down.

So I plan to tune in tonight and even if it is bad—which I half expect—I will probably still watch it next week and the week after that to see if it gets any better. Before you know, I’ll have drunk the whole Yoo-Hoo.

PS Tara and I saw Heroes hottie Hayden Panettiere at the West Hollywood branch of the Pleasure Chest. She and her girlfriend were laughing their asses off at the “novelty items” for sale there. Sadly, we left before we saw what she bought. I kept expecting this to show up on Perez Hilton or TMZ but it never did.

Responses to the Pentecostal jibber-jabberings of preacher and plagiarist Kenneth Hagin typically range from snickers to eye-rolling, but cast aside (out?) your preconceptions for a moment.  Strip away the possible, okay, PROBABLE cynicism lurking behind Hagin’s curtain, and what are we left with?  A group of people in a room HUNGRY FOR A WAY OUT—transcendence, beyond the limitations of mind, flesh, or state.  Seen in this (admittedly stripped-down) light, how much do Hagin’s communal fumblings towards ecstasy really differ from those of, say, Beck and Malina’s 60s-era Living Theatre?

LOST Season 5 might have gone out with its usual bang, but that doesn’t mean the summer ahead can’t still be long and hot.  When you’re done combing through Lostpedia’s The Incident theory page (it’s endless, I know), you might want to dip a toe, or something, into the wacky alt waters of Lost slash (fan) fiction.  A 3-way between Ben, Locke and Richard…sure, why not?  Desmond choosing Sayid over Penny…yeah, I can see that!  What I find fascinating about these HIGHLY detailed reconfigurings, of course, is not the nature of the participants or their transgressions, but how they expose that nagging, near-universal hunger to see our hopes, dreams, fantasies—whatever they may be—projected through the prism of popular culture.  Then again, maybe there’s just a LOT of people out there who wanna see Jack and Sawyer feeding each other mangos!

Lost Slash Fiction

Lost Slash Fiction (XXX)