Archive for December 1999

Tomorrow, I go to New York, NY, then to Boston, MA, then to Washington, DC. This is what I looked like this morning.

Area Man Finally Finds Time to Update Webpage

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA–After several days of inactivity, long-time net resident Michael Stillwell, 23, finally added more content to his site a little after 9pm last night.

“It had been, like, three days without an update and shit,” Stillwell said, soon after he unveiled the new material. “I’ve been really busy with other things, but, yeah, I know that’s really no excuse. I just hope no-one’s deleted me from their bookmarks yet.”

This, it transpires, is one of Stillwell’s greatest fears. Though his site is relatively small, he believes it has “upwards of ten” fans. “These people, they’re going to, like, remove my site from their bookmarks if I don’t produce quality new material every couple of days. It’s a really fucked up situation.”

“There’s this constant pressure to stay up-vibe and interesting, to say funny things,” he complained. “It’s causing me all kinds of grief and shit.”

According to Professor Helen Pargeter, an expert in internet-related stress disorders, this kind of stress is a relatively common phenomenon. “Many people consider the popularity of their websites to be a measure of their self-worth. The more hits they get, the better they feel about themselves. Unfortunately, it is those whose sites have little or no traffic to speak of who are the most susceptible to this malady.”

That Harmony Korine, he sure is a mixed up kid.

The December Harper’s has an extract from an interview with Korine (who famously wrote “Kids” at eighteen) in which he describes his attempt to make “Fight”, a Buster Keaton-styled comedy about big guys beating up little guys. He eventually abandoned the project because he was “getting really hurt and arrested and weird shit started happening”.

The thing is, in “Fight”, the part of the little guy is played by Korine, and the fights are real. This strategy has led to several serious injuries, including a broken left ankle, sustained when a “fucking bouncer from Stringfellow’s” stomped on in it.

Pretty full-on movie-making that.

[I typed in part of the article.]

Tears were shed this night–I was in the sort of mood that could only be improved (or, failing that, soothed) by a good serve of Pearl Jam’s “Nothingman”–but the damn CD was no-where to be found. “Ten”, “No Code”, “Yield”: these were uncovered quickly enough, but “Vitalogy” could not be found … and so the frustration increased until the only thing left to do was sit down and cry. Which I did for a short while, until I remembered where the CD was. Whereupon the CD player was set to play “Nothingman” both repeatedly and loud, and the frustration was lifted.

The ad: “‘Sleepy Hollow’ has got to be the most gorgeous, sumptuous, painterly movie ever made …”

The full sentence: “‘Sleepy Hollow’ has got to be the most gorgeous, sumptuous painterly movie ever made about multiple decapitations.”

(From Mickey Kaus’s kausfiles.)

Words read in the last week that I didn’t know the meanings of:

anodyne, aleatoric, scrofulous, febrile, paroxysmic, tropism, suzerainty, imbricated, triptych, sapience, propinquity, synecdoche.

(Still feeling somewhat dark.)

The “genius” magnetic poetry kit contains over 240 magnetic words.

It takes about ten minutes to break the words apart, and ten more to apply them to a suitable metal surface.

Once done, one may find oneself strangely disappointed with the results.

“they will spurn a viscious pariah / but only you can eschew a faux priapism”–huh?! What?! Is that really the best you can do?

Yesterday was one of those days whose every detail seemed to magnify the difference between the happiness fondly remembered from one’s past, and the misery felt now.

It has been one of those weeks where sleep comes with difficulty, smiling hurts, and food is chewed far beyond the physiologically-necessary point, because one simply forgets to swallow. A week where every brittle object cried out to be violently broken–cups, plates, bottles to be hurled against walls, roads, trees.

But I am too pragmatic to break crockery in anger. What would it achieve? There have been two victims of this crime, but no perpetrators.

I need to stop this wallowing.

And now, a review of Tina Brown’s new magazine Talk by someone who hasn’t read it:

The problem with Talk is that its binding sucks. It’s one big magazine, larger than letter (or A4) size, and almost 250 pages long. But it’s held together with staples. Staples! Staples are completely inadequate for a magazine of this heft!

Most magazines do their utmost to stand tall and proud when displayed in a magazine rack. But not Talk, no not Talk. Talk slouches, its back bent and corners crumpled–a magazine that doesn’t want to be touched, let alone read. I want a magazine that’s proud of its appearance, dammit, not some lousy lay-about.

The New Yorker (Tina Brown’s last magazine) was a beautiful thing–refined, elegant. I always laid it flat on a desk to read, and turned the pages carefully, even though I was usually reading a library copy. Talk, on the other hand, does nothing to inspire this sort of respect.

And so I don’t buy it.

On this day Michael defeated his Inbox. The final score: Michael 1, Inbox 0.