The icy October wind lashed at Sue’s cheeks as she made her way across the parking lot to her car. An unseasonably cold evening in which was planted the spore of an unseasonably hot romance. She had caught a glimpse of him from the coffee shop and tried to go out to him, but by the time she’d reached the threshold, he was already gone – evaporated into the gloaming.
In the brief magnetic instant that she’d seen him, he appeared loping purposefully down the sidewalk, his head turning slightly from side to side as he observed everything. His eyes were concealed behind a big black pair of sunglasses, but she imagined them to be green and intense. The collar was turned up on his leather bomber. The swing of his arms was a counterrhythm to his long stride. She could see even from a distance that he had a tattoo on his right hand.
She felt her heart crumple as she stepped out into the crisp afternoon air and craned her neck in vain to catch a glimpse of this man. She’d been harpooned with the most powerful of feelings, like this man would write the next chapter in her life, could shape her sadness into something towering and worthwhile. He was gone, though – slipped away like the lifesaving rope from a doomed mountaineer.
--
Ch. 2
All the heartbreak of years past came galloping, trampling back all of a sudden. Sue’s mouth turned down like a baby’s does when it’s about to wail. She could not prevent the single hard sob that escaped her throat. A terrible wave of loss settled through her body like poison.
She bumbled heavily back to her chair and gripped the paper cappuccino cup for support. That man in the sunglasses was receding ever further from the possibility of togetherness, and dragging, unravelling along behind him a feeble thread of her hope. She could feel it pulling out of her, like the stringy guts of a bee after it’s stung you.
Sue sat in the chair for another half-hour, bruised. Then she forced herself to get up and leave the coffee shop, moping on down the street in her car, back to her apartment. She flopped onto her huge couch and stared at her blank computer screen on the coffee table. She didn’t move for two hours. Then, the leaden blanket of sleep slipped over her. It was a fitful slumber. (6,551)
Desert Bloom Phoenix 1 : the first shot fired in the war against squareness
At the tail end of the year 2009, after turning 30, buying my first house, and with a daughter on the way, the realization that life gallops past at a thoroughbred pace dawned violently on me. I'd spent that year and several before it highly focused on earning money, developing new skills, and pursuing social goals, but only doing my true and lifelong passion, music, in erratic spurts. That needed remedy, so I promised my soul that I would make up for that neglect, and then some. I declared to myself and whoever was listening on Twitter that 2010 was to be the "Year of Music."
So, after a brief exchange on Twitter, I wrote an frenzied email to Gangplank jefe Derek Neighbors with a raw flurry of ideas about how music could be integrated into the electric hive that is GP. Some of the twisted suggestions I proffered included John Zorn-esque musical "games," collaborative recording sessions, and a multi-act live showcase that Neighbors dubbed a 'musical Ignite.'
The root of my ideas about where music fits in with Gangplank is that I want to provide a conduit for those who burn with artistic talent, but whose creativity has been shunted to the side, ignored, or suppressed by the quotidian demands of life. Over the past year, I'd met dozens of people who, like me, had subjugated their passions due to work or social pressures. These people are busting at the seams with creativity and just needed a clean shot at self-expression in a supportive environment. Partially inspired by the Phoenix Design Community movement, I wanted to connect all these people with each other so that they could vibe with, encourage, and learn from each other, cross-pollinating different styles and media.
To my simultaneous gratification and mortification, Neighbors posted the email, complete with heinous fat-fingered misspellings, as the opening thread on the new Gangplank Studios Basecamp workgroup. A bunch of super rad folks joined the group. Not long afterward, a tour of the secret new Gangplank compound was arranged, and Brandon Franklin, Greg Taylor, and I showed up. When we saw that new expanse of space, we flipped our wigs and started babbling like howler monkeys about the possibilities. A few days later, we had a high-powered vegetarian passion lunch and ambitiously set the date for the first big GP music event, which we decided should be a variant on the live-showcase 'musical Ignite,' but without slides. Short, impactful live sets from a wide variety of artists, not enough time with any one artist for the audience to get bored. Humming with excitement, we set about recruiting acts. I reached out to a bunch of Phoenix Design Community folks who I knew were music freaks, Greg Taylor roped in Johnny Dudley.
Shortly afterward, the frighteningly rad Brandon Mason joined our committee, and agreed to head up the inclusion of visual art into the event. This was a major plus, as at an earlier meeting we'd discussed our desire to add art to the event but were afraid that we'd not have time to properly wrangle it. Mason is a high-powered art pokemon with enviable organizational skills, and we knew that he was th' one who could bring that part of the vision into the realm of reality.
The goals of Desert Bloom Phoenix #1 were as follows : 1) Expose the hithertofore unpublicized or partially-concealed musical and artistic talents of folks in the creative / tech community 2) Create an environment where these creatives can meet, talk, and hopefully spark conversations that will lead to collaboration and cross-pollination. As we termed it, a crucible for astounding original music and art collaboration. 3) Have an bodacious time
Jason Ayers, who is not only a brilliant designer and technologist, but also a gifted digital composer, graciously donated an immense 2000-watt sound system for Desert Bloom. We set it up at the Hacknight before the event, and from the first sound check, we knew that this thing was going to be a shack-shaker. Our favorite hardware hackers HeatSync Labs hooked us up with the halogen lights used to illuminate the art space.
Ward Andrews designed the DB logo and also had a secret ace up his sleeve -- he performed as mysterious iPad-wielding techno boombraperator Mister Shape.
Through the entire planning process, the Gangplank core crew and Neighbors in particular were totally supportive and did whatever was needed to make Desert Bloom a reality. Gangplank is the reason that Desert Bloom happened; it's like the only fertile soil in a vast expanse of desert, from which a vibrant bloom erupts and so changes the landscape.
On the day of the event, I was flipping out on a loopy adrenaline high and the sequence of happenings just unfolded like a Transformer. The irrepressible Brandon Franklin, who is our de facto captain, and Brandon Mason, who adroitly handled the visual art aspect, both took the day off work to prep Gangplank for the event. I came in at about 4pm, not long before Greg, and soon after, the entire Gangplank posse started helping us clear all the work tables and other stuff from the room. Good thing, too, because we'd grossly underestimated how long it would take to break down and stow all the tables and computers used by Forty and Integrum. With the assistance of all those cats, we got the place cleared just ahead of the 6pm time when we'd instructed the artists to show up.
Mason arranged a bunch of tables over where the arcade games usually sit and covered them, the walls, and every damn thing with this cool black fabric that he found at SAS. This was a stroke of brilliance that made it a lot easier to view the art without distraction.
Preston Lee of Sonic Binge Records / Whiskey Three arrived to help set up the live and recorded sound. His help, along with Ayers', was an amazingly generous boon to Desert Bloom -- none of the organizers know diddley about live audio engineering, and their combined efforts really ensured that the proverbial plane didn't crash into the mountain.
Hors-d'oeuvres sponsors 24 Carrots arrived with a grip of freshly-made hummus and strawberry lemonade to refresh the participants and audience. 24 Carrots owner Sasha brought along several volunteers to help distribute the goodies and promote their delightful take on herbivore cuisine. Having these folks donate food was a definite mutual coup, as everybody seemed to enjoy the tasty snax and 24 Carrots got exposed to over 100 cool new prospective customers.
We'd also surreptitiously picked up 150 mini cupcakes from Butter and Me to fete the birthday of a person who I can only describe as the soul of entrepreneurship in Phoenix, Francine Hardaway. Butter and Me went beyond their customary outstanding level of quality and service by inscribing these with "Happy Birthday Francine" and delivering them to Gangplank free of charge.
The visual artists started trickling in, and Mason deftly wrangled their works onto the display stage. The final effect was arresting, with colorful paintings and illustrations from Shannon Elizabeth Harden, Tony Deschiney, and myself, along with a video installation by Alex Clauss, as a backdrop for fascinating metal sculptures by Eric Krogh, Heather Kozan, and Mason with his collaborator Kyle Wagner. Ward Andrews mounted his intriguing 'Maze' piece across the room.
Our incredible ticket-taking volunteer Eileen Kane arrived and posted up by the door, ready to take tickets and keep track of how many folks actually showed up. We'd sold out of the initial 125-ticket release in less than a week, so we'd made an additional 50 or so tickets available. Out of something like 140 tickets 'sold,' 100-some-odd ticketholders showed over the course of the evening, along with a couple dozen folks who didn't have tickets (but we let them in anyway).
After a fevered couple of hours getting the place set up, "Mister Shape" made the walls ripple with this unique boom-bop-bleep techno music. Then, opening DJ Roger "Halfacat" Williams took to the decks to spin for an hour as people started filtering in and hobnobbing. A bunch of people I talked to who knew Williams well hadn't known he had skills on the wheels of steel, which flabbergasted me, because I'd seen him back in December with his outstanding taste in drum-n-bass and great beatmatching skills. His set at DB ranged from DnB through dubstep and then into classic industrial dance, including one of my very favorite songs by "My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult".
After Williams wrapped, Brandon Franklin and I introduced the lovely and talented Niki Voyatzis, who mesmerized the crowd with her enveloping rendition of Debussy's "Reverie." A beautiful and hypnotic way to ring in the inaugural Desert Bloom event.
Next on stage were the sharp-dressed Tonia Bartz and Noah Dyer, a couple of Phoenix tech pros together known as "Bad as Pink and Plaid." They played a delightful set with songs showcasing both of their voices along with an energetic cover of Elton John and Kiki Dee's "Don't Go Breaking My Heart."
In between sets, Franklin and I attempted to play and create tracks from our industrial-cyberpunk duo project, forcedFuture, but were dogged by technical problems and equipment crap-outs. After a few less-than-satisfying tries, we handed the inter-act dead air to expert soul DJ Jason "Molotrash" Garcia.
Northwest Coast transplant Johnny Dudley came up next and slayed the crowd with his exceptionally good rock 'n' roll singing and guitar playing, backed by his pal Jay. I'd never heard Dudley before, and I reckon that few in the crowd had, either. His powerful tenor voice and strong stage presence were pretty captivating, even for those who don't really go in for that alternative rock stuff.
After Dudley's set was complete, there was a brief intermission followed by an open jam session. We'd hoped to get people from the audience to pick up instruments and join the jam, but they were too shy. This is something that we really hope to improve at the next several Desert Bloom events -- we want the audience to interact more, uh, actively. We plan to design the next installments with more compelling incentive for mass participation.
Revving back into the meat of the program, redPear honchos Brandon Willey and Krystofer James Van Slyke took the stage as Chump Express. Pumping out a high-energy, rhythm-driven music they called 'Urban Folk," they astounded the audience with their live-sampling and beatboxing skills, reaching a crescendo with their fleet-paced educational rap "The Alphabet Song." This performance was definitely one of the highlights for me.
There were little kids dancing to the music through a lot of the first hours of the event, which was rad and enhanced the atmosphere. If little kids think it's groovy, it probably is in fact groovy. Their energy is contagious.
The party began to spill out the front door. At times, it seemed like half the crowd was hanging out at the big improvised tailgate where beers were swilled and guitars strummed. I wished that they'd be inside listening to the acts and viewing the art, but everybody was having such a good time and meeting new people, so I guess that it fit in with the whole Desert Bloom vision.
While I shakily manned the soundboard, Preston Lee and John Bielo, backed by Willey on percussion, cranked out a tuneful set of 90s-style rock. Bielo is a great lead guitar player, and Lee's shimmering Stratocaster guitar tone is very distinctive; these factors along with Preston's blond wig drew the audience into their sound-world. It was really nice to hear these tunes with percussion, as Whiskey Three has been only two humans for some time.
Preston returned after his set to rescue me from the sound duty, and another jam happened. Jams, when kept to a audaciously short length, are mega fun; there's something about improvised expression that's just not duplicable elsewhere.
Throughout the event, the awesome Brett Walker of Phoenix Productions filmed everything with his super fancy video camera while Greg Taylor, Chanelle Richardson, and Devon Adams documented with still cameras.
Jason Ayers AKA Consumer then began his mind-bending set of original electronic music. He debuted a brand-new composition which he'd written just for Desert Bloom, a dubby funk piece called "Sunnyslope." Ayers also played live guitar samples on his peerlessly hip seafoam-green Fender. Then, he strode into the audience, sat down on the couch that was front-and-center, and proceeded to control his music via iPad while chilling with audience members on the sofa. People watched intently as Ayers manipulated the faders. We'd wanted to demolish the barrier between performer and audience at Desert Bloom, and Ayers made that intent concrete.
Hip-hopper Andrew "Courdek" Coppola with DJ Les followed to close out the live music portion of the evening, and golly, they sure rocked the joint. The crowd had unfortunately thinned out by about 50% by the time they got on stage, but Courdek's crowd-moving skills created an intense and participatory experience for those smart enough to stick around. He actually had the group of Gangplanker close to the stage waving their #*%^$*#^@*ing hands in the air as if they just didn't care. It was an electrifying experience. Dj Les also incited what Mark Dudlik aptly described as a "very very very very very white boy dance competition" with his stone-solid beats and Q-Bert-esque scratching. Courdek and Les unquestionably brought the energy of Desert Bloom to an intense peak.
Jason "DJ Molotrash" Garcia wrapped up the night with a schmoove soul / funk / R+B set that really put the perfect finish on a wild evening. Much to my chagrin, though, the crowd really started to disperse after Courdek's set, so only around 30 people got to hear Molotrash on the decks.
Some drums were played along with the R+B tunes; after Garcia decided to stop spinning, another impromptu jam broke out, which rocked late into the night. Ayers masterfully sampled snippets of the jam and built cool aural constructs out of them, much to everyone's surprise and pleasure. Brandon Franklin went bananas on the cajon, which was itself a pretty awesome thing. Finally, random folks from the audience started to join in, taking the microphone or hitting drums. In some ways, for me, this was the coolest part of the whole event. All the curiosity, connection, and emotion that had built up over the past 5 hours kind of erupted into a spontaneous musical happening.
Everybody was pretty well spent by about 1:00am, so we called it an night. James Archer, who evidently has either an inexhaustible reservoir of energy or a nuclear power pack, kindly stayed until after 2am to help us put the Gangplank tables back roughly in their correct neighborhoods. Sunny Thaper reappeared to help as well. Sometime after 2am, the Brandons and I were collapsed into the lobby chairs, and the adrenaline of awesomeness was finally starting to wear off.
We learned a lot of important lessons from DBP1 and are getting a lot of really valuable feedback from the audience and participants about how we can make the next events in the series much better. People were clamoring for more visual art, so that will figure even more heavily into upcoming DBs. Some of the featured artists at DB1 sold works on the spot or made connections with potential patrons, which is outstanding and the sort of result we want to see more in future.
The experience was really a powerful one for me, and, I venture to guess, for many of the participants and attendees. The event and the energy it created testified to what can be accomplished when a large group of passionate people, supported by an institution like GP, give maximally of themselves to make something amazing occur. I know from post-DBP conversations that it was a catalyst for some pretty significant life decisions, projects, and connections amongst those who attended and participated. It had a transformative feeling, like something powerful had really happened to the Phoenix creative community, and was happening, something galvanizing and irreversible. (7,458)
Two whole years of harshness, volatility, and gripping content that is simply not to be found elsewhere. And that's for good reason. When we started the Latewire, a multi-author, pan-topic, uncensored stream-of-unconsciousness antiblog seemed like a pretty bad idea. We did it anyway. Two years later, it seems unconscionable, but you're still reading it -- in fact, more of you get lit up by the Wire every month, your strange legion now well in the thousands.
"The truth is mixing with the lies to create some potent new reality." - Josh Kornbluth in "Haiku Tunnel"
Latewire has been on top of some pretty vital issues, earlystyles. This is nearly incredible for a totally unorganized collective of deeply bizzarre posthumans. Organizing against bank bailouts? LW was there first. Emo capri pants on males? LW enthographers spotted them in the field. Exclusive interview with Ken Lunde? Only on Latewire. Realization that not all reggae music sucks? That epiphany brought to you right here.
Different readers use Latewire in different ways. To some, it's the place to go for Austrian-style economics analysis infused with black humor. To others, it's a reliable source of morose comedown prose and doomed poetry. Still others look to LW for an image reservoir and original* graphic art that bests the most popular imageboards on the intarweebs. Some come to Latewire for radical and reasoned thinking on eating and growing food. And some look forward to articles by particular writers : the terrifying clarity of Dr Roe; certifiable voice-of-the-damned 1m1w; the graphic arts genius of DeadcowX; the stark insight of Bill. See, LW is like a jar of mayonnaise. What you do with it is your business. We don't want to know**. Just keep coming back and we'll keep serving it up, even with the end of the world coming up and all.
Latewire. Fortunately for everyone, there's nothing else like it.
"Mens insana in corpore sano"
-Hank 04-01-2010
*Provided that your definition of "original" includes stealing images from other sites, messing with them, and then writing "LATEWIRE" across them
**Actually, we kind of do want to know. In fact, send me an email to Hank [at] Latewire (diddot) com about why you Latewire in 500 words or less. Please include aphorisms. The author of the one we like best wins a free Latewire Latewear T-shirt of their choice (see link at sidebar). (11,638)
OK, serial novella, LW-style. Finish this one up for me, cro-mags.
__
I had a horrible toothache, so I made an appointment to see the dentist. The rest of my work day was a living hell, as I tried to keep my face from screwing up into a mask of agony during meetings and snapped inappropriately at people on the phone. I heard that the boss was mad about my behavior but managed to sneak out of the office before he could chew my face off. My drive home was pockmarked with near-misses and roiling road rage as the tooth beagle kept gnawing away at my nerve. When I got home, my wife gave me a kiss on the cheek which sent swords of pain through my jaw and into my cranium. I took a bunch of Ibuprofen, cursed the fact that I hadn't saved any Vicodin that I had left over from my foot operation, and headed to to bed. Of course, sleep was impossible until sheer exhaustion overtook the machete sensation and I passed out.
When I woke up I was starving, but I forewent my customary bowl of "Kashi" brand cereal due to the blinding pain in my head. At this point, I was totally unfit to drive and couldn't even really speak, so my wife took the morning off from her job and drove me to the dentist. I signed my pathetic name on the sign-in sheet and sat twitching in the waiting room until the nurse called me.
I walked into the white room and sat down on a dentist chair so high-tech that I'm surprised it was declassified. Even through the pain I could tell it was really cool and was barely able to suppress an urge to bark Picard-style space commands. The nurse came back in and took my blood pressure, which I thought was odd for a tooth extraction, but whatever. The nurse looked pretty hot; her "Spongebob" scrubs were about a size too small and her short hair was tinted a kinky purple. This didn't really help ease my blinding discomfort, however.
The doctor came in, looking very much like a thinner Gene Hackman. He had a big bluish birthmark on the side of his cheek and I remember that he smelled like Tabasco.
"Hi, I'm Doctor Cartwright. Looks like you're in some pain, huh?"
I nodded gingerly.
"OK, Hank, you just hang in there. We're going to get you all fixed up. Edie, let's get Hank set up -- administer the anesthetic and get him secured."
The nurse, Edie, said "You'll feel a pinch" and inserted an IV of clear fluid into my arm and began to manipulate some apparatus behind my chair. Within a few seconds, the murderous pain had dulled to a throb and I was feeling more relaxed. Edie swivelled some metal pieces out from behind the chair and snapped them in place at the side of my head, locking it in place.
"Hey!" I drawled.
"Don't worry, Hank," Edie said with a wink. "This is just to immobilize your head so it doesn't move while we're working." In my peripheral vision, I could see that she was doing something with the IV.
Shortly thereafter, I felt a metallic chill and started to hear things in a weird, crunchy, amplified way, like as if I was listening to the world through a paper cup.
The doctor popped back into my frame of vision. He looked different. He said, "How we doing, Hank?" and his mouth curled in a sickening, inhuman smile. Behind his eyes I could see a bonfire of hate, and I would have screamed. But in fact, I couldn't speak at all.
"Heat" is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Brimful not of Asha but of pointless shots, horrific acting, and flaccid stabs at emotional depth, this three-hour unintentional parody of the crime thriller drama is almost as criminal as "Magnolia."
It never achieves the "so bad it's brilliant" effect of "Point Break," but instead just wallows along in its own smelly muck of "serious adult themes" all the long way until its groanworthy ending.
How did this forced, clunking script attract actors like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, and Jon Voight? Simple : those actors need money to feed their coke / stripper habits. Each turns in a wrenchingly bad performance, choking out some of the most leaden, unnatural dialogue ever heard in a major flick. Pacino especially -- he was good in "Godfather" and great in "Scarface," but his pseudo-hard-boiled persona is so stupid and fake that he makes gangsta rap look like a "NOVA" documentary. Kilmer looks like a complete idiot reject elf nazi or something. He should have called it quits at "Tombstone."
Here's something : De Niro's mopey love interest is played by some woman with a bobo look and immense shag of curly hair, and as soon as I saw here, I was like "Hey look, it's Edie Brickell!" Well wouldn't you know it? De Niro's next line was "What's your name?" to which flopmop replies "Eady." !!!!! I'm not kidding, and there is no way this was a coincidence. She's not aware of too many things, including the fact that the movie in which she's supporting actress is a rank stack of fetid herring bowels.
There are some scenes in here that are particularly worthy of mention for their very risibility. Chief among these is the big shootout scene -- you know, the one that directly inspired the real-life 1997 "North Hollywood Shootout" wherein a couple of guys with assault rifles went ape after a bank robbery and injured ten cops. Those guys got shot a whole heck of a lot. In the world of "Heat," however, a few guys with AR-15s can take on about two dozen cars full of well-armed cops, and not only live to tell the tale, but win! As we saw in 1997, there is no @#$%ing way that a few guys could hold off, much less defeat, dozens of cops, but I guess it helps that De Niro and Co. only have to reload their rifles every 500 rounds or so. There's this ludicrous shot toward the scene's end of all these bullet-riddled cop cars (some with what look like shell holes in them) and incapacitated cops lying about as De Niro saunters out the side of the frame through a parking lot with Kilmer in tow. Unbelievable. Equally noisome during that scene is where Pacino takes a shot that no cop would ever take : from an unsupported shoulder position and with his assault rifle, he shoots junkie swine Tom Sizemore in the cabeza while Sizemore is holding up a toddler in his arms. I don't @#$%ing think so. You'd think that it would be impossible to make a huge machine gun battle boring, but these clowns somehow manage it -- I kept getting distracted and had to rewind a bunch of times to see how they "escaped." Heinous.
Another scene that's dumber than a bag of dead snakes is where the cops lay a trap for Kilmer at his wife's place. Kilmer pulls up in his car, wifey goes out on the balcony to lure him into the trap at the behest of coppers. She warns Kilmer away with a facial expression and he gets back in his product-placement Camaro and starts to leave. Wifey says to copper "It wasn't him." Copper radios his buddy downstairs to stop Kilmer and check him out; Kilmer produces a fake ID. Cop buddy radios back saying "Oh, this isn't Kilmer, it's G. Phil Wizzleteats! Says here on his license. And the car's plates are clear and registered to a totally different person! Everything looks kosher." Copeer radios back "OK, let him go." WHAT THE @#$% I'm so sure that cops on a manhunt haven't, say, looked at a photo of th' guy for whom they're lying in wait! Complete and utter unmitigated BAD WRITING.
In summation, "Heat" is hot garbage. I suffered through it so that you don't have to.
New rule of wrist : if any movie shows up as being longer than 2 hours when you pull it up in Netflix instant, TURN IT OFF RIGHT AWAY. You can save yourself a lot of heartbreak. (11,947)
Share
