Our first true horror show! The Ring, the pathology of reproduction, and a call from Special Guest Star Dr. Jenny Worley.

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Law & Order in Russian! Narcissism and queerness! Book reports on books we haven’t read! And this time, Wickie finds small breasts un-American.

Anastasia gives us the rundown on Russia's equivalent of Law & Order. Highlights:
• The poor man's Olivia Benson mixes with Criminal Intent Russian doppelgangers all in one police department.
• The budgets are so low, the cop station so like a lame dorm room, that they prompt a debate about which is more real—the contrivedness of the Russian version, or the diegetic seamlessness of our homegrown L&O?
• Wickie mostly notices the flat-breastedness and finds it very un-American.
• Anastasia points out that Russians find very un-Russian: (1) the presence of women among the cops; (2) the lack of marriage proposals between male and female cops; and above all (3) "if two detectives have been hanging out that long, how come they haven't had a spiritually redeeming conversation between the two of them?"
• Wickie thinks this all proves communism has failed somehow.
• Jed wishes we had redemption of soul on all our shows.

At this point Wickie "reviews" a few books she swears she plans to read. She also wants to watch the film Live Freaky! Die, Freaky!

Wickie deftly employs "incurvatus in se" to get us back to last time's discussion of narcissism in the Law & Order: CI episode "Prisoner." Why does Corbin Bernsen pull a crucifixion pose? Are narcissism and the "I'm long-suffering" thing always related, or is this a typical sociopathic pity play? Is Stockholm Syndrome just "codependency with extenuating circumstances?" Pity, mercy and suffering are all central to Christianity.

Medical narcissism, Belgian giants and trans surgery: is it a good or bad thing that genius male surgeons are creating more men in their own image? Is everything Jesus?

Also, is the dandy/punky preoccupation with fashion and dress actual narcissism, or the need to look inward to define yourself when the social context gives you no self to express? Narcissism, if you look at it, can mean childish/female/artist/any non-dominant community. In fact, who is really fascinated with himself and must see himself everywhere? The straight white guy. Maybe every person, people, and cultural entity must engage in some narcissism to be healthy—maybe it's a good and necessary part of the process of constructing the self.

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Anastasia Kayiatos joins Head Wound! “The stalking won me over,” she explains. Today we have two psych disorders (at least): narcissism and Stockholm Syndrome. Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by grandiosity, seductive charm, a great ease with exploiting other people, and a tendency to appear in today’s discussion of Law & Order Criminal Intent—the episode is “Prisoner” with Corbin Bernsen. Why the connection between queerness, dandyism, and self-oriented love? Does narcissism put the “homo” in the mo, and even in the tranny?

Stockholm Syndrome, meanwhile, is just so ’70s. (See a fascinating re-telling of the original Stockholm incident in the reader response here.) Anastasia wonders how long it takes for the syndrome to stick, or even to become something that’s a real attachment—somehow Dog Day Afternoon comes to mind. Newborn babies all fall under a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. Jed explains that we know we’re talking about old shows, and we’re doing it on purpose.

The episode is impressively complex and thought-demanding, which Wickie finds wholly un-American. She also figures Goren is a narcissist—and that maybe you can’t have two narcissists sit in one plot. We debate the true cheese content of the “Pyramid of My Potential” as Anastasia shows a devastating grasp for plot that she attributes to reading lots of Russian crime novels. Plus fake feminism, pandering police, and Eames borrows some clothes that fit and some Gorenese condescension since poor Jenny Hendry (the great Elizabeth Marvel) is occupying the puppet role this time.

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Captain’s Log: supplemental. Some strange news to tide you over: a woman advertises on Craigslist for a freelance hitman; Lord Byron died of bloodletting, so watch the indy health care; thirsty migrating snakes are becoming a problem in downtown Australia City. Wickie is reminded of her past in the segregated South. The government warns: “Keep your grass well cut, wear adequate clothing and stout shoes.”

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Enrico “The food is made of people!” Colantoni and his CBS show Flashpoint are today’s subject. We talk in depth about the show’s premiere episode, which involves your usual macho skinhead cops who are nevertheless Canadianly made charming by virtue of (a) having feelings and (b) singing Gilbert & Sullivan. No personality disorders today, but we learn that killing somebody, anybody, is traumatic for the killer.

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Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important
They don't mean to do harm
But the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.

T. S. Eliot

Nice! "But the harm does not interest them." Thanks, Narcissism 101.

Borderline is the personality disorder of the day. People with BPD get attached super-quickly, find rejection unbearable, and constantly find themselves as characters on Law & Order. We discuss L&O Criminal Intent episode “Semi-Detached”—does the title refer to Bobby Goren’s unintended intimacy with Nelda, who likes to use human hair in gifts for the men in her life? Is BPD on TV only for women and girls? Plus, check-cashing corpses and milkshake-slurping snakes!

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Histrionic personality disorder is today’s special. Histrionics express their problems through sickness, seduction and drama. We check in on the Hollywood writers’ strike. Jed loves The Wire and got to meet Bunk’s brother! Jed also loves Oliver Stone; deal with it. Wickie just doesn’t care for Women’s Murder Club. If there isn’t a movement into depth, it’s coming off the TiVo. Wickie and the nation of Italy continue to watch CSI: Miami, and David Caruso continues to stand sideways too much. Also, in Japan, people who turn into vending machines.

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Head Wound acquires a second microphone. We use it to talk about sleep disorders—specifically “sleep sex,” and The Family That Couldn’t Sleep. Ostriches fight back against humans. Wickie goes to sleep to murder, crime-show-wise: she finds she must fortify her diet with at least eight murders a day. Plus, the new Bionic Woman sucks and Magenta the Tarantula doesn’t like change.

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The word “crepuscular,” megalomania, and why the shrink on Law & Order: SVU is ruining America. Trained armies of psychic chickens go after China’s locusts. Also, Jed says “people” a lot.

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Now that we've got 10 WHOLE EPISODES of our podcast Head Wound available on iTunes, we are going to post show notes for all the eps. We'll also be gathering all notes and eps onto our Head Wound page shortly.

Here's #1, a quick 30-second intro.

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Woo hoo! Ten episodes! This one includes fancy Special Guest Star Dr. Jenny Worley, and a discussion of the scary movie "The Ring" and the pathology of human reproduction.

Get it here on iTunes!

PS: If you know how to change "artist" names on one's podcast in iTunes, please drop me a line—I've spent days trying to get our co-host Anastasia Kayiatos added to the credits with no luck!

I just got a tattoo of a spider. There was a tangled web of motivations behind this decision. The hallucination was primary. Methadrine-induced and 30 years in my past, that hallucination or vision - I can never discern the difference – stuck in my head. Hallucinations tend to stick with a person. Especially if they are of very large SUPER creepy spiders that show up while you're flirting with your college advisor. I am not an actor, but I can guarantee you, carrying on a conversation as though everything is normal while a three-foot arachnid leers at you from over your lust-interest's shoulder, demands a command performance. I think I handled the situation rather well. My Southern training in manners, which insists that no matter what, you remain genteel, occasionally pays off like that.

My shaman–yes, I see spiders and shamans but no dead people as far as I know–thinks the spider was trying to tell me something. "Sure," I said. "Run! motherfucker, run like the wind!" We both laugh.

My second inspiration for my tattoo was murder: I killed way too many wolf spiders as a child. Good God Almighty, those things that cruised through my Southern childhood home were about 4 inches wide and COULD JUMP! Second only to the previously mentioned gargantuan hallucinatory beast, hairy pole-vaulting things scare the be Jesus out of me. So crush, crunch and squash I did. I wreaked karmic spider hell on myself. Thus Veronica—the name of my spider tattoo.

I should have probably named my newest skin art Louise since it was the 30-foot high spider iron sculptures of Louise Bourgeois that I used as a prototype for Veronica. I was particularly charmed by her spidey sculpture that is down by the waterfront here in San Francisco. Entitled Crouching Spider, it is the only thing that will get me to venture into the foreign territory of SF’s financial district (that and when my boyfriend begs me to pick him up for any work he may snag down there).

So there you have it. The tale of my tattoo, my shaman and the odd hallucinations I suffer from.

Well, I am at it again reading China Mieville. I'd stopped reading Perdido Station, but I could not get the dark brain-sucking flying things out of my head. So I found it buried beneath the easily-two-hundred unread books in my kitchen. Yes, my kitchen as I ran out of space in my hallway, my bedroom as well as in my meditation room. I also picked up Mieville's newest book The City and The City as began reading that too. I lost them book in my bed-also filled with at least twenty unread/half-read books, articles and 'zines. What is the fucking need to bury myself alive with books. Christ, I just had an ephiphany. I am buried alive. And forgot. Now I am remembering. I was in a library when it collapsed. And there I still lie. I am under the pressure of a thousand books all of various genres. I keep buying books and recreating the stress in the hopes that I will jog myself out of my daze, wake up and try to get out from under the paper tomb I am in. I suddenly feel relieved because I am merely trapped under a collapsed library. I'd prefer that to the reality that I actually have to READ all the books, newspapers and magazines I keep buying.

I really like this first cartoon—lovely connection to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," charming and funny.

This is my favorite commentary on Michael Jackson's death, from the Ill Doctrine's Jay Smooth. Hat Tip to Jesse Thorn of Maximum Fun.

SURFACE : A film from underneath from tu on Vimeo.

Cribbed from Andrew Sullivan, who is also the most fun person to read when Sarah Palin is acting up.

This week I decided I need to take my brain to couples counseling.
"NOOOOOOOOO!!!!," it screamed banging itself so hard up against my skull that I wonder if I might not have suffered a contracoup injury (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_contrecoup_injury).
"Sorry, we're going," I said. I affected detached attitude. I knew better than to engage with my brain. It is a resentful adolescent with a borderline personality disorder. There is no reasoning with it. You set the limit and just sit through the hell that breaks loose. It did.
"You suck," it said picking up my manuscript and heaving it across the room. I was surprised at this gesture as it is an armless thing. I think it actually hissed at me too. I refrained myself from reacting, something I've done for years. Because it always wins.
"Couples," I reiterated, picking up my manuscript.
"You don't even know what reiterated means. And anyway,I'm going to Berlin." This was a standard tactic of my brain. Threatening to leave me. Wishful thinking on my part. I wanted to say "fine go, good riddance," but I'm supposed to be a practicing Buddhist which means I'm committed to well, at least being civil. I don't roll with compassion. So rather that swear at it, I just shrugged my shoulder.
"I have the checkbook," I said looking over my chronically bent cheap-ass Walgreens wire rims. "And the debit card. And anyway you don't even have a name, much less a passport." Okay, so I barely roll with civility.
"I knew it, you hate me." It sat down in my chair (or rather squished down as it is just a brain. and it has no legs.)
"I do too," it said.
"Do what?" I was confused.
"Have legs." It started to cry which is a major feat for a disembodied brain.
Like I said. Couples therapy is clearly in order here.

Forwarded by the multitalented Jen Wainz and her partner Deb:

Hey, Head Wound episode 8 is now up on iTunes! Check out our first episode with awesome new co-host Anastasia Kayiatos. Click here to subscribe.

Has anyone said in the last five minutes what a heroic genius we have in Stephen Colbert? Undoubtedly. It's not just the great writing; it is, most of all, the crazed prophetic certainty in his eye. I adore this.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Enemy Swine: A Pigcalypse Now
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor First 100 Days

I saw this in person last night in Union Square, SF. The best thing was watching the reactions of everyone who came by. Foreign tourists, local shoppers, the urban underclass, you name it. Everybody who came by didn't notice at first, then did, then stopped and stared and commented in awe. I had immediate conversations with otherwise-aloof strangers about our takes on the comparative enthusiasm of each creature. One couple felt the cat was getting the rawest deal. Best comment, and typical: "Now that's something you don't see every day." This is the kind of thing that really makes your week.

I seem to post on a completely different area of life every time...so be it. Walt Whitman and so on. Here's the deal. I have found the perfect new iPhone game. It's called DoodleJump and it looks like this:



It's about jumping. It's super fun to play. It's 99¢. Kinda like Q-bert, from back in the day, but upside down, I think. Let's take a close-up look at that little feller, shall we?



If you are a person who plays games on an iPhone or an iPod Touch you can get it here and you should!

There's a lot of awesome going around, despite the grim clouds rolling around. Here's one: Jacqueline Novogratz was talking about her Acumen Fund on the equally awesome Diane Rehm Show podcast the other day. I ain't an expert, but setting up systems in Africa, India, and Pakistan to employ thousands of local people in doing stuff like providing cheap clean water to their neighbors for the first time—sounds pretty excellent to me. Her set-up is a bit like Kiva in that it allows us first-worlders to invest in the enterprises of people in desperately poor areas. Novogratz has a new book out called The Blue Sweater, referring to a piece of clothing from her own adolescence that she had put in her family's GoodWill pile one day and that turned up, decades later, worn by a random boy she ran into in the streets of Rwanda (I think). She said she grabbed him and checked the inside collar of the sweater—her name was still sewn in there.

Because if not, I don't understand why these earplugs won't fit in my right ear anymore. They come out all squiggly, having jammed part-way in. Three in a row. "Compare to Flent's" it says on the Walgreens container—as if I wasn't having a Kafaesque enough day as it was.

Ah! After being vomited out of Blackstring Hell a few weeks ago, I've spent the following time in some foggy recess of my mind. Grisly business this thing within which we exist.
During this time which spread into months (it could have been longer as Blackstring is a non-linear place), I've had many obsessions that the Blackstringers either cursed with or, like a rock climber beginning to fall, I perhaps grabbed onto whatever would hold me. As I stare back, volition remains elusive. TV, crime shows in particular, kept my mind silent. I'd even wake up into the night and immediately turn on the TV. Although a true rarity, I think I have finally gorged myself so badly on the Law and Order shows that like when I ate Lima beans with salt, pepper and butter for three years (of course while in front of the TV watching old Sherlock Holmes movies) I would almost retch if I even saw a box of frozen Limas. This retch-response lasted for about 10 years. I am afraid. Will I have to "Be Here Now" as old Baba Ram Dass insisted in his book "Be Here Now"?

Not yet as two newer shows (as well as new episodes of CSI and The Closer have saved me from myself—Fringe and Eleventh Hour. I am now obsessed with scientist on Fringe. Plus Fringe has cool illness and maladies often accompanied by even cooler special effects. I also find the mad scientist's relationship with his son of some interest. But Eleventh Hour has better plots. I say this as Fringe has that conspiracy theory thing going on. I hated it in X Files; my resentment of it as a backstory/frontstory has not tempered.

Musically, Matthew Schultz's new album Division as well as his website, have also keep me sane (or as close to it as I ever float.)

There have been other things—cool clothes from friends who moved as well as a skeleton closet that looks like it is straight out of a legit funky New Orleans Voodoo shop. And of course, my cadre of friends as well as my brilliant partner in crime...

It's about time, but it is now up–Head Wound podcast #6. In this podcast we discuss the TV pilot episode of Flashpoint, a SWAT-team style show. Flashpoint is set and shot in Canada and stars Enrico Colantoni as the head of the Strategic Response Unit (SRU). Despite being filled with a few too many buff boys, we both agree that Flashpoint has some real surprises that make it a show to keep an eye on. We further discussed the chatter that Flashpoint, written by Canadian authors, may have emerged in response to last falls US Writers Guild strike. Given the success of this first episode (8.23 million viewers in the U.S. and 1.11 million in Canada), CBS is lurking around looking for more imported shows. Yet more outsourcing and potential union-busting tactics? For more information on Flashpoint:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniper_(TV_series); IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059475/; IMBd News: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059475/news#ni0264599.

These guys crack me the hell up! (Hat tip to Chris Ereneta.)

Uh oh. She's in the medical section at the bookstore.

Along with Wickie and some friends, I am in the process of instituting a fixed time each day to work on "onerous tasks." For me, this particularly includes my creative work, which I'd rather chew my arm off than do when I don't have an external threat/impending deadline/whatevra. I especially rarely want to work on creative projects alone, without constraints, something most filmmakers I know dream of doing 24/7. Anyhow, I am getting together with one or more fellow sufferers for an hour each morning to get cracking on these human-company-required-or-it-ain't-gonna-happen types of tasks. Today I storyboarded the SHIT out of a music video I am working on. Did the whole thing! One hour is so much more productive than four.