Things I Learned Today By Staying on an Old College Listserver

• The correct plural form of the word "ho" (as in prostitute) is "hos" despite the awkward appearance of the word. "Hoes" refers to gardening instruments, so check your spelling carefully lest you throughly confuse your friends by calling their mothers "implement[s] with a thin flat blade on a long handle used especially for cultivating, weeding, or loosening the earth." (Merriam-Webster)

And...

• Prostitutes frequently used pubic wigs, called "merkins", to cover their danger zones if they had shaved off their pubes (which was believed to have been a cure for crabs and syphilis.) I assumed that merkins were archaic reminders of medical idiocy, but for some reason (be it for functional or entertainment pusposes) they can still be had. Go to http://www.merkinworld.com and click on "take a look" [the pictures aren't actual photos of said items in use, so consider this site PG-13.] Click on "history" to read up on past and present usage. Leave it to the Brits to try and market something to the general public that has no right to exist outside of the escort industry of the Victorian era.

Just thought everyone should know.

Muse

I am a terrible procrastinator. I'm one of those people who wrote all his papers the night before they were due, who lets dishes sit in the sink for a day or so, who will put off responsibilities at work that aren't pressing. Why? To quote Peter Gibbons again, "You see, Bob... it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care." Except for me, it's not a question of motivation, but of inspiration. I expect that eventually I will feel inspired to do things, even those things that I don't really want to do. Sometimes this works, often it doesn't. But I've had a few sparks of inspiration recently that have allowed to get some things done.

INSPIRATION: Get a bike that is rideable, and get rid of the old one in a responsible manner.

I don't know if I've bitched about it on this blog, but the bike I got when I first moved to New York had been giving me problems for a couple of months. It was an old Schwinn road bike, appropriately sized for someone over six feet tall. Being an inch or two shy of that, this bike and I were bound to have a tumultuous relationship... and we certainly did. One of the cranks kept falling off (and it's pretty difficult [i.e. impossible] to pedal a bike with only one crank), the tubes wouldn't hold air, and the brakes were terribly out of whack. So I would carry around a hammer (to bang the crank back on), a pump (to continually reinflate the tires), and I detached the brake cables. Oh, by the way, I wouldn't recommend riding a bike without brakes. Anyway, I finally got fed up with this bike and I dropped it off at Recycle-A-Bicycle in DUMBO. Fortunately, I now have a replacement, which fits me properly, and thus far, has not fallen apart. Where'd I get that? Craigslist, of course.

INSPIRATION: Do something with that huge piece of plywood sitting in my room.

Last spring I picked up a full sheet of plywood that someone was getting rid of, with the intention of doing something fun with it, such as doing a sequel to the drilled self-portrait, or playing Beirut. Of course, this thing has been sitting in my room untouched for the past six months. I was about to put it back out on the street, but my roommate convinced me that it was a waste. So now I'm in the process of covering it with gesso, to make a nice surface for a big-ass charcoal drawing.

INSPIRATION: Start messing around with video again

The last videos I made for my own projects were put together about a year ago, when I still had access to all the nice equipment at school. The video studio was all Mac-based, so I taught myself the ins and outs of Final Cut Pro. Fast forward to NYC, and when I start working on video again, I'm doing it on a PC, because my friend uses Avid. I don't know Avid, thusly I don't like Avid, and when I try running it on my PC at home, it can't handle it, so I hate Avid. So I stick with compositing and he does all the editing. That project wrapped up a while ago, but we're still in the busy season at work, so I haven't had time to start another one of my own. Hopefully that will change soon though, so I bought a used G4 Tower so Final Cut and I can become reacquainted... I'm sure my PC will be jealous, but he'll have to deal. Source of said G4? Craigslist.

Craigslist is one of those things that makes you think, "How did I ever manage without the internet?" I think everyone who lives in a Craigslist-covered city and has used the site for some purpose should keep a list of how their life has changed as a result. For me, it helped me find an apartment (indirectly), a functional bike, and a cheap Mac. How about you? Post a comment and let me know, I'm curious.

please note that Craigslist had absolutely no role in helping me find a job although I scanned the posts almost daily

Extreme

I think it's a credit to Fruit Chan that this relatively innocuous image still make me sick to my stomach. I am compelled to write about this film because it's somehow still unresolved in my mind. On Monday, All Hallow's Eve, I saw Three Extremes, a horror film triptych of sorts... it consists three short films by three different accomplished Asian directors (one Chinese, one Korean, and one Japanese.) The still above is from the first if the three films, "Dumplings". On the one hand, none of the films resort to traditional scare tactics used by many horror movies, but they also manage to skirt psychological terror (the other sub-genre of horror), and move into the realm of the semi-surreal. Yet the situations of the film are so grounded in real life tragedy, that one couldn't classify them as purely surreal.

I can't say much about the events of "Dumplings" (obviously the Chinese one, directed by Fruit Chan) without simultaneously giving away the whole premise and making myself retch. This film really bothered me... a lot. It definitely smashes political correctness in the face, which I fully support, but I fear it begins to trivialize two really sensitive subjects (which, again, I can't mention.) This is the type of movie that would be instantly banned, were it legal to do so. That said, it succeeds in being incredibly creepy, and genuinely horrifying. However, if you are the type of person that enjoys a good scare, it will not give you that satisfaction you get from making it through a good frightfest.


The second one, "Cut" (the Korean one, directed by Chan-Woo Park) is visually interesting and uncomfortably funny, in a "I-know-this-is-a-tragic-and-frightening-situation-yet-I-can't-help-but-laugh" kind of way. This was my favorite of the three, although I still don't exactly understand what happened in the last few minutes. Although, walking out of the theater, I said I never wanted to see these again... I think I may want to give this one another try to see if I can figure out what happened. Check out the picture though, and although you won't know exactly what's going on, you can definitely feel the tension, and see the visual attraction.

And then there's Miike's "Box". Oh, Takashi... you've let me down. Don't get me wrong, your film is really good. Perhaps a bit too muddled and unnecessarily cryptic, with an overdose of dream sequences and metaphors, but so was Memento, and that got nominated for all sorts of awards. But what happened to the kitsch and the gore. There's no dismemberment with the classic blood powerwashing, there's no random choreographed singing, and there's no gratuitous death sequences. Instead you invoke real-life issues such as sibling rivalry and child abuse. wtf, man? I feel let down. Fine, grumble mumble, you attempted artsy film with respectable results... you're the f-ing man, now bring back the kitsch.