Irene in Time (2009)

For people wondering why I hate L.A., and most of all the West Side...

the exclusive images of an oxygen masked head on a stretcher at a UCLA hospital, the mechanically explosive popularity of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, paparazzi masses climbing for astral affection...

feeding me Lucky Stars on an early seventies September Saturday morning, how I lived for summer's end, the new cartoon season beginning...

Stop! the love you save may be your own!
Darling, take it slow
Or some day you'll be all alone.
You'd better stop the love you save may be your own!
Darling, look both ways before you cross me
You're headed for the danger zone.

The Misfits (1961)

On a warm day in the summer of '79 a skinny 14 year old boy sits in a folding chair on a Wisconsin beach. A small pebble hits his shoulder. A few minutes later comes another, and another. The pebbles become larger, become rocks. They hit arms, legs, back, head.

Boys and girls giggle behind him. Stubbornly, he refuses to face them. Every child knows that the victor never caves. The tears are felt, but they don't arrive.

Cocktail dress, wedding gown, handkerchief, dishrag--whatever you need me to be.

And the ulceretic grinding, rope severing foal neck--the prescription will dull the dust stirring spectacle, extending the capacity to love till death.

Bus Stop (1956)

Ah, the 1950s, when men were men and women were cattle. For the ranch hand, the female body displaces real desire, bestial love--washing down raw beef with milk from a jug. Only secondarily does brutality toward the feminine satisfy:

"So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain! Everything's built on that! That's all we got, boy, fuckin' all. So I hope you know that, even if you don't never know the rest! You count the damn few times we have been together in nearly twenty years and you measure the short fucking leash you keep me on - and then you ask me about Mexico and tell me you'll kill me for needing somethin' I don't hardly never get. You have no idea how bad it gets! I'm not you... I can't make it on a coupla high-altitude fucks once or twice a year! You are too much for me Ennis, you sonofawhoreson bitch! I wish I knew how to quit you."

24 city (2008)

After dumping the idea of Zinc, which had moved to West 3rd and doubled their cover to ten,
after paying a dollar at the Cake Shop and having ears blasted out, deciding to leave before bands began playing,
after dodging endless row of Lower East Side hipster cigarette smoke along Houston,
after searching loudly and finally finding pigeon people on Pilgrim Hill,
after eating matzo ball soup at Sable's on 2nd ave,
after rushing through NYPL Webster branch basement bookstore,
after eating organic tricolor beet salad in Tribeca Cafe,
before seeing Elliot Sharp through Eric Mingus shout "USA out of NYC" at 92YTribeca,
before doing yoga in Penn Station,
before skipping through the Puerto Rican Day Parade,
before entering an argument about wealth creation with a Dow Jones Financial columnist sitting down in the final room of the Francis Bacon exhibit at the Met,
before performing Jonathan Richman in the Times Square subway station,
while meditating in front of the Hudson, just north of Battery Park City, I overhear this conversation:
"What a beautiful Husky."
"Thanks."
"Doesn't he get hot during the summer?"
"Oh we're not here. We go to Colorado. He loves it there."

The Hole (1998)

Reach up the fizzy light.

Don't let the plaster disaster bring you down.
Know that the man above pees in the sink to care for you.

Drops of vomit from drunken space massage oil to your temples.
Marlboro ashes, rose pedal rice, lift your toes dry.

Baptismal bottle water breaks through despairing duct tape bandage blessing wound.

And, don't cry shop-boy. Don't cry.
You've got mail from Grace Chang/ 葛蘭.

我...
我!!!
我要...
我要!!!
我要你...
我要你!!!
我要你的...
我要你的!!!
我要你的愛...
我要你的愛!!!

Veronika Voss (1982)

California proposes canceling CalGrants, CalWorks, Healthy Families: the ghost of Howard Jarvis grins.

Atlanta demolishes Bowen public housing project, a "breeding ground for poverty, drugs, crime": over 20,000 live on ATL streets.

Addiction afflicts 85% of New York prison inmates: drug infractors get years in solitary while waiting for treatment.

Sybille Schmitz speaks her first words on film dubbing Dreyer's formerly silent Vampyr: Könnte Ich doch sterben?

Bloodsucking's twenty-first century echo: Neoliberalism.

Pierrot le fou (1965)

"If you're going to be engaged in a world conflict such as we are, such as the global war on terrorism, if you don't have a place where you can hold these people, your only other option is to kill them."
--Dick Cheney, June 1, 2009, The National Press Club

Au fond je m'en fiche, mais ce lui comprend même pas.
Je m'en fiche des livres.
Je m'en fiche des disques.
Je m'en fiche des tous.

If you wrap a red dress round the head of an unshaven man, a handsome man, a ladykiller, and with a showerhead you drench the dress, little red riding hood over the face, water choking the mouth and nose, oh and a pistol points to the neck...

Ma ligne de chanc-e!
Ma ligne de chanc-e!
Dis moi cheri
qu'est-ce
que
t'en
penses.

Ma ligne de chanc-e!
Ma ligne de chanc-e!
Dis moi cheri
qu'est-ce
que
t'en
penses.