Nifty Merchandise

This is just the best shit ever. Anyone want to buy me an Xmas gift?

Biology Lesson

Also! I have a new story in the current issue of "Handjobs" magazine, called "Biology Lesson." Here's the description from the HJ website:

The boys are wondering why their biology teacher, Mr. Christianson has shut and locked the classroom door. And why are the girls out of the class? "I've locked the door because this is a private lesson, and I want all of you to feel absolutely comfortable," Mr. Christianson explains. "This is our time, a safe space for us to explore and question and study. Feel free to ask or try anything that interests you, no matter how 'out there' it seems," the teacher says.

Dad Takes a Fishing Trip trailer

The porn film I co-wrote with director Joe Gage, "Dad Takes a Fishing Trip," will be released soon (I think), and you can view the trailer here. I've seen the completed film and it's got some pretty great stuff. More info as it happens.

close to home

Ford Unveils New Car For Cash-Strapped Buyers: The 1993 Taurus

Comics Read

I recently read some new comics.

Spent by Joe Matt

Joe Matt writes autobiographical comics that lay starkly bare his less desirable personality traits. Nothing much happens in Spent: Joe Matt masturbates, goes out to dinner with friends, buys porn, masturbates some more - but I ripped right through it nonetheless, I guess because the psychology behind the whole project is fascinating. You can't help but feel bad for the guy, even when he's making himself look really pathetic and assholish, and maybe it's because you suspect he's being quite deliberate in what he shows. Or maybe its because he draws himself as sort of, well, cute (but, sorry to say, the author photo tells a different story). There are long stretches in the comic where its the Joe Matt character just talking to himself, describing what goes on his head as he edits his porn or jacks off, which is kind of a ridiculous device, but it works for what he's after. And it gets really interesting when, a few pages later, you see Joe Matt at his drawing board having a crisis of confidence and brutally criticizing the scenes you've just read before erasing them, then re-drawing them. Poor guy.

Interesting fact: When I Googled Joe Matt it took me to his MySpace site, where there was a video, and when I clicked on the video my browser tried to download a virus, and that seemed appropriate, somehow. Anyway I found the video on YouTube and Joe Matt looked better there than he did in the author photo.

What It Is by Lynda Barry

I've never read much Lynda Barry because the style of her art never appealed to me. But a few years back she had an autobiographical piece in McSweeney's where she talked about the hazards of making art and self-criticism. That piece is reprinted in this book, which is really like nothing I've ever read or seen. It's sort of a text book for the creative process, with many pages of collages, questions, more autobiography, and finally writing exercises. This is the kind of book you instantly want to own. It would be too much to read it straight through from cover to cover. You peruse it, live with it. I still found the autobiographical stuff to be the most interesting, but there is some great commentary on making art and writing here, stuff that's definitely stuck in my head and has influenced what I do. I put it up there with Stephen King's On Writing in terms of providing sane, down-to-earth inspiration. Highly recommended.

Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse

Howard Cruse is a sort of legendary figure in gay comics, and this is the first work of his I've ever read. It's a highly personal account of the early-60s civil rights movement in the south. At the same time, the narrator is dealing with his sexuality, and you get a really great picture of gay/black culture at that time. This book is a wonder, really, for both its art and its narrative. The art is so detailed and dense that you could spend an hour on each page just soaking it in. And the narrative is effortless in the way it jumps forward and backward in time. Great characters, too - I read the whole thing thinking that it must have been autobiography, or based on an autobiography, but turns out it was fiction, though based on the author's and other's experiences. It seemed very authentic. I couldn't put it down.

Harold Edgerton

Today, many of Dr. Harold Edgerton’s amazing stroboscopic photographs have achieved pop art status. But this unassuming electrical engineer from Nebraska never set out to make art. He simply wanted to satisfy his own curiosity.
"Don't make me out to be an artist," Edgerton once said. "I am after the facts, only the facts."
The National Geographic Society lists Edgerton as one of the fifteen most influential inventors of the twentieth century. Yet his iconic photographs are exhibited in prestigious art museums and exclusive galleries worldwide. Few trained artists, let alone scientists, achieve that level of artistic success.

--from bad banana blog

bullet through flame

atomic bomb

Fun with Paranormal Activity

The guy in it was hot. The chick had these humongous knockers.

So I saw the horror film "Paranormal Activity" last night. I liked it, with reservations. But first, some outside opinions:

A.O. Scott, NYTimes:

...at home on DVD, the creakiness of the film would be much more glaring, and its lack of subtext and visual polish would mute its modest, fleeting pleasures.

Jim Emerson, Scanners:

When DreamWorks bought the rights it reportedly intended to...release the original only on DVD. [It] might arguably have been even more effective. Imagine letting this thing into your own house at night, the sounds and the video seeping into your own environment...

A.O. Scott, NYTimes:

The acting occasionally rises to the level of adequacy.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times:

...of Katie Featherston's performance it's enough to say it is flawless for the purposes of this film. We're not talking Meryl Streep here, we're talking about a young woman who looks and talks absolutely like she might be an ordinary college student who has just moved in with her boyfriend. There's not a second of "acting."

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times:

For extended periods here, nothing at all is happening, and believe me, you won't be bored.

Justine Elias, Boston Globe:

Despite some unsettling nighttime scenes ... “Paranormal Activity’’ lets the mood of domestic dread slip away...

Justine Elias, Boston Globe:

...until its whammo final scene.

Jim Emerson, Scanners:

Finally "Paranormal Activity" does, in fact, go for the money shot, and it turns out to be a fairly predictable one... If the movie had ended at its most frightening moment (an off-screen scream that abruptly goes silent) the audience would probably have felt cheated.

I don't think I've ever read such blatantly contradictory film reviews before. It's almost like the film changes according to who is watching it...spooky!

And so it was with my own experience. I saw it with my boyfriend: he hated it and was bored, I liked it and was entertained. But it should be said that this film preyed on my most primal, ingrained fear: that of being watched or disturbed while sleeping.

We had a lively discussion about the movie afterward. We're both horror fans, but my bf needs horror that is based in "reality," i.e., slasher/torture films. I'm more open. I think the key to a good scare for me is that it's based in some sort of psychological reality. Supernatural elements work for me if they are based on those primal fears - like The Shining. There's something chilling to me about being the only people in a huge, empty place... For my bf, it's the film "Open Water" - all of that unseen space underneath you... (One of the strangest, out-of-left-field scares I've ever had was watching the Roman Polanski film "The Tenant" (highly recommended), in which a character (having recently moved into an apartment that was vacated when the previous resident killed herself) finds a hole in a wall behind a dresser, reaches inside and finds...a tooth.)

There were moments in "Paranormal Activity" that scared me as much as anything I've ever seen, but there were places that lost it for me: those shots of supernatural activity that were apparent and unhidden. The film provides a good counterpoint to "The Blair Witch Project," which is pretty much a flawless horror film in my estimation ("Blair Witch" caught a lot of backlash in the years after it was released, but seems to be gaining a better reputation lately). Almost nothing supernatural was seen in "Blair Witch," it was all suggested. "Paranormal Activity" could have done without a few scenes that were so blatant, they killed the mood.

Public Service Announcement

"Troll 2" is on Hulu for the next week or so. It is worth your time, more or less.

New Story Alert!

Check it out: Tight Club