Heads Will Roll Blog

Southern Syncope

2010-06-29T10:01:00.000-07:00

Some things stick in my memory. Maybe that is what memory is - a stickiness with time where certain events float through one's consciousness. Like flotsam, but with people drifting in its midst. The 1959 Bethlehem Steel strike is one such piece of detritus. Involving a dozen steel mills across the US, it was a strike that lasted six months. My stepfather was one of those strikers. I remember him and my mother living in a housing project near the children's home me and my siblings were in. My mother and stepfather lived off of the union's strike fund, a coffer that grew slim as each month ticked by. I was flipping through Ghostly Ruins: America's Forgotten Architecture (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781568986159-0) looking at photos of abandoned buildings. I am soothed by black and photographs of things from my past and earlier - cars from the '50's, prisons, mental institutions. Maybe it is because I am of that era; perhaps it is due my being a Southern. A malady in and of itself, my sense of time lopes along at a pace that is out of synch with other parts of the US. I think this is the Southern illness. Born and raised there, it was not in synch with the rest of the country. It is as though it has a stuttering relationship with time preferring to dwell in its own past. It was in that book that I stumbled across photos of Bethlehem Steel. It was then that I fell into my rabbit hole of memory.

There's more to be said on this syncopated sense of time that is so much the my experience of being from the South. But, for now, I thought I might just give you a link to the photography of the Southern author Eudora Welty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_Welty) and leave it at that (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781604732320-0).

Dark Moon Days Off for Vagueness Maniac

2010-03-13T08:01:00.000-08:00

As a means of unionizing against my over-working, vague-about-when-i-am-working-or-not self , i am basing my work patterns, my obsessing about work, as well as the days i close my biz on the lunar phases. Currently, we are in the dark moon aka new moon phase. The actual day is monday although like some cults, cultures, covens, spiritual practices etc., i am noting the dark moon phase as including 2-3 days before the actual event. "Hush crazy mind, hush," i'm telling myself. "No work, no thinking about work. Just hush."

Head Wound #10

2009-11-03T22:06:00.000-08:00

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

Head Wound 10
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Head Wound #9

2009-11-03T21:06:00.000-08:00

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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Head Wound #8

2009-11-03T20:06:00.000-08:00

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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Head Wound #7

2009-11-03T19:06:00.000-08:00

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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Head Wound #6

2009-11-03T18:06:00.000-08:00

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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Narcissism 101 with T. S. Eliot

2009-11-03T17:08:00.000-08:00

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.

Head Wound #5

2009-11-03T17:06:00.000-08:00

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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Head Wound #4

2009-11-03T16:05:00.000-08:00

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 #3

2009-11-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

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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Head Wound #2

2009-11-02T18:01:00.000-08:00

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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Head Wound #1

2009-11-02T17:54:00.000-08:00

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.

Head Wound 01
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Head Wound #10 is UP!

2009-11-02T16:42:00.000-08:00

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!

On Spiders, Shaman-girls and Louise Bourgeois

2009-08-24T11:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Buried Under a Heap of Literature

2009-08-17T16:08:00.000-07:00

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.

Stranded on a desert island

2009-08-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

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

Love, cameras, and microphones: What Michael Jackson means

2009-07-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

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.

Pretty

2009-07-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

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.

Legless Maniacs in Need of Couples Therapy

2009-07-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

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.

Really so much better than anything else.

2009-06-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

Forwarded by the multitalented Jen Wainz and her partner Deb:

New Head Wound!

2009-05-31T22:57:00.000-07:00

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.

Swine Flu

2009-05-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

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

Fer Real: a rat on a cat on a dog

2009-04-22T21:19:00.000-07:00

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.

Posting for polymaths

2009-04-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

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!