Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence!

So like did Russ Meyer get into a fist fight with Johnny Rotten in 1977 or what?
I think Russ Meyer is a paradigm. For what? Well, I'm not exactly sure how to phrase it, but I think it's how I want to live my life, at least inside the Hotboxed Jetta.

Just what is it about Russ Meyer that's so captivating? For one thing, his hedonism has a psychological depth and avant-saviness that really distinguishes it from the rest of the dredge. Some have called him the Fellini of the sex-industry. I don't think that's too far off. Let's examine some facts and statements. "I love big-breasted women with wasp waists. I love them with big cleavages," says Meyer. "I always had a tremendous interest in big tits." And, "I'd rather play cards if I can't have a lady with big tits." In an interview with the NY Times, Meyer claimed that while he was working as an army photographer in France during WWII Ernest Hemingway took him on his first visit to a whorehouse. During the same war, Meyer photographed the regiment of British soldiers sent on a suicide mission which became the premise of The Dirty Dozen (yeah Lee Marvin), and some of his wartime footage can be seen in Patton. In the 70s, Meyer was supposed to direct a film scripted by Rogert Ebert and starring the Sex Pistols, called Who Killed Bambi?, but production ended on the first day when he couldn't pay the electric bill.

Okay, so what the hell am I getting at? Sure, it's well and good to say that Meyer is the oversexed version of Fellini, being as all his films are dreams visions. Wet dream visions. But there's something more. Meyer is also the oversexed version of Forrest Gump, with a sick oeuvre to back up his case. He rode the wave of history, thru war, love, and counterculture, and metamorphosed all the time. His fingerprint is on the Paris avant-garde, the documentation of WWII, 60s sexual lib, and more.



What's more? Meyer's celluloid wet dreams are at the vanguard of postmodern kitsch. In Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, his narrative and visual reference points embrace roadshow sexploitation, psychodrama, crime drama, noir, and Steinbeck. But his appropriation isn't homage in the sense of the neo-noir contemporary to his work. Nor is it completely ironic in the sense of parody. What could he parody? The settings of the film aren't of the past, where he could dish on the outdatedness of say Dwain Esper or Fritz Lang. No, they're entirely contemporary. Faster, Pussycat! isn't about opium dens or midnight diners, it's rooted in go-go crazy-bop mid-60s So-Cal.

I mean, Jon Waters is ironic kitsch parody. His films appropriate a style owing to a time and place, but they condescend to that world and palette. For something more verite, we have to go back earlier than Jon Waters. And that's Russ Meyer, who appropriates, or rather accepts what is already appropriated, and believes that this is the scope of the real world around him.

So Meyer is essentially addressing how people who act socially prescribed roles (go-go dancers cum gangster molls, or anyone in the Modern Era) self-consciously but automatically invest their lives in cultural tropes received through the contemporary sociohistorical milieu. It's reflexivity without the act of ironic comment. Basically Meyer is depicting the Postmodern Era, wherein everyone subscribes to their social role but realizes that it's just a role but is incapable of imagining a cast of characters or cultural vocabulary other than this. It's really post-Sartre. It's not irony, because there's no distance between the comment and what's being commented on, the point of reference is the frame of reference. So what is it? That's the genius of Russ Meyer.

~Chez

Whoa!

This new set-up is so post-eatapebble/false visualizer theories.

weak city

its gettin l8 in the summer, bout the time i start gettin anxious bout the dwindlin time, so im real particular now the way i spend my nights and shit. yo chez, you remember that guy mickey orourke who went to st bede, like a year ahead of us? well my gurl ashley is roommates with his girl, so we kinda been spendin offhand evenings with them and there friends. like a bunch of goofy alt indie kids or whatever. so early tonite ashley and i are just chillin in this dank apartment in oakland (seriously dank, we h-boxed the shit out of that joint tonite, only chill part of the occasion, right) with this weird guy and his crew of freaky chicks, and the they all decide they wanna watch "something sexy." these r the kinda kids who git there cocks and cunts tinglin whenevr some bud growin in their veins, like there vas deferns just cant hold there cum for a second even once they get on. okay, whatever. im like, fire up yer laptop and dl some bangbros. this kid mickey just laughs, thinks im sarcastic. he starts goin threw this stack of dvds and finds one and starts squealin wit delight like some dicked up cummin ho. (in case u cant tell, i dont like this bro.) girls corroborate his sentiment. he pops it in, tells us its called "Slaves in Bondage," "some campy 30s sexploitation film." aight. so we start viewin the film, and its just a buncha flabby cunts wit saggin tits and thunder thighs. maybe a dress slips off a little or a naked back is shown, but its so tame, even for the 30s. but mickey and his girls are lovin it. "it's so deco chic!" say Mickey. the girl hes fingerin is like, "These women are really Rubenesque. SO beautiful." neway the girls were high as shit and got real hot and starting feelin each other up and eventually went to hook up in the other room. so me and ashley just went into the bathroom and fucked doggie.

like whatever, judge me. but i aint wastin another night before i gotta go back and hit the accounting books at IUP. fuck you, its the life my dad wants for me.

Testimonia Mia

Whatever, Snail. I didn't write a term paper on the proto-deconstructionist framework of The Gay Science not to push that text on customers at the shop. If people don't want their minds blown, then they should probably hang out more often at your Kappa Delta parties to get their wieners blown. JK, Snail. You know where my loyalties lie. I honestly thought we were close enough bros that you wouldn't immediately defend some crank super senior who thinks it's fly to roll up in a pledge's place of employment and freak him out of his wits because he knows he's into Nietzsche. Like, what did you want me to do, say, Yeah! The Birth of Tragedy is great! Why don't you pick up that clearance-bin Norton anthology over there and read Mont Blanc while you're at it! Fuck that. You should beat Nutmunchen's ass for trying to groove on that weak second-hand Kantian idealism. I mean, Nietzsche has the benefit of incorporating the Tao into his notion of the Dionysian, but so does Winnie the Pooh, so who gives a flying fuck? I mean, if the Tao were anything more than flatulence or a nocturnal emission, then maybe I'd respect it a bit more.

Anyway, I'm not some bookworm version of Seaweed who's going to impose his culture on the proverbial Amanda Bines, so I figured I'd do best just to freak Nutmunchen's shit out of the store. That right there was totally your style of allusion, Snail, totally contemporary, but totally on. Despite how much I effing hate you right now for being a hard ass, I have to give you that. Anyway, I'm not going to let your threats waste any more of my time, so I'll just go and listen to Schumann's cello concerto right now. WQED is sweet. Peace.

~Chez

P.S. Yeah, Nietzsche's all right, but people shouldn't mistake his cue and start deconstructing the TAO and meshing it with pop culture. I think Nutmunchen has this poster up in his room at the ΚΔ house, doesn't he? So jejune.

Idiom (Part Two)

To Boldly Go

Should Captain Kirk have said
"to boldly go" or
"to go boldly" ?

Arnold Zwicky pointed out
(Not to or To Not, 86)
a good example

The cartoon in The New Yorker,
18 April 05, p. 14
get fat

The wider scope:
“I’m moving to France,”
instead of a few complicated ones

Because it isn't done in Latin
as forcing modern residents of England
to wear laurels and togas

An isolating language
building meaning around
many simple words

On a somewhat tangential note,
The lack of those two letters (u and i)
can be considered a special dialect?

There is nothing so plonkingly dull.
I really shouldn’t have to do this.
The origin of life is the origin of the English language.

No one has ever heard a language change.
Children would not understand their parents;
civilization would collapse.

So there's no one who saw it happen,
(I’m not making this up),
then these cretins come along.

Fucking hell!
The Mesopotamians did it before the Chinese…
That, and there are at least three ways to say anything.

These are the voyages
to seek out new life and new civilizations,
to boldly go where no man has gone before.

whoa bros

Whoa, way to change the subject, Harper. Just totally trying to give Bob Novak his due props, and you're all about sticking Crabcake's rusty tampon up your grundle and fucking ranting about Tom "Modern Baudelaireian Dandy, My Sike" Wolfe, a satirist I totally couldn't even get it up for even if that hot chick in Disturbia had her pinkie up my crack. Bob Novak, that's a true bro's controversial journalist. None of this "Mauing-Mauing American Hypocrisy" shit. That's so New York Times Book Review. Weaksauce. Break some rules, cuss out some wishy-washy moralistic PC post-Gore/Lieberman types, write from the balls. Anyway, the point is Harper, stick to the topic at hand, and Chez, you're still on probation with the brothers until you explain your fucked-up gimmick.

And now what I originally wanted to write.

For dudes only:

Get educated. Check out No. 13.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=grundle&defid=0&page=2

Snail Squeals

Alright Snail, here's one for you. I know you're into Wolfe (you're so Radical Chic) and that proves how out of touch you are with Cheswick and myself. We're trying to elevate the cultural and literary discourse and you're too busy jacking off to the sex scenes in I Am Charlotte Simmons in your bedroom with the music turned up so your parents can't hear. According to Wikipedia, Wolfe is also an atheist. I don't know why that's relevant--I mean I can get hip to Richard Dawkins and Bertrand Russell and I'm totally lapsed--but you probably have some sophomoric fetish for atheists in white suits. Who said, "This isn't literature, this is entertainment?" Well, it was John Updike and he said that about The Bonfire of the Vanities. How 'bout 'dem pigeon feathers?

One for Harper: "making the liberals squeal"

"The whole new Democratic Party is the old Republican Party. We have a whole bunch of elephants running around in donkey's clothes. "

Sike on Weimar Classicism

Dude, Chez, your kind of a faggot, that was my Kappa Delt bro Greg Nutmunchen. And I don't think any of Nietzche's idea are that relevant anyway; it's just his grand-scale transformation of the art of philosophical writing that continues to amaze, you know what I mean? I mean if I want ideas to REALLY whittle my cock down I turn to Kant and Hegel no fucking question. That's the real, unaffected shit. I mean, you're right about The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzche himself said it was "saccharine to the point of effeminacy"), but Nutmunchen's the kind of classics-minor Corny Collins who would queer on that stank pretty hardcore, so let him do his thing. Don't jizz out your judgement, recycled from tidbits of knowledge overheard while sucking poststructuralist prof. dick all afternoon at office hours in the Cathedral, on a curious bro just trying to open up his mind. Anyone can dank, you know what I'm saying? I look for that spirit of investigative curiosity in my fucking prospective pledges, you know, and Chez, that shit was what I thought you had. Not "curious" like how you're thinking, Chez, but if you're gonna be pulling this shit on a straight-ahead Fox Chapel bro like Nutmunchen, I don't know if I can be pulling for you with the other Kappa Delts come hazing. I feel pretty let down, Chez; I didn't know you the kind of post-Townshend Books Craig Street cuntrag who has a stiffy for The Gay Science, Umberto Eco and tries to get on girls at Kiva Han by chugging a shot in the dark and saying the most beautiful shit in the world is Bartok's fifth string quartet. I know those kind of pussies, but I didn't think you were the type. What's the deal, bro?

Snail

Notes from the Underground

Harpo, you're going to love this story to death.

So I'm working at Caliban Books this afternoon, and with all the summer bumpkins strolling along the Craig Street promenade, it's like a quiet but steady flow of traffic into the place. At some point this total beefneck clyde rolls in, looks at me sideways beneath his backward Kappa Delta baseball hat, and asks me, "Hey, bro, do you guys have any books by Frederick Neetchee?" And I say, "Yeah, in the philosophy section, fifth row, alphabetical by author," like right off the top of my head because I'm just that good. Then I watch him stare at the spines for about five minutes, and then he lumbers back up to the counter with four or five books in his hand. "Hey, I found a couple. This one is an anthology of his writings, which might be cool, like a sampler, ya know? This one is called The Gay Science, which must be like an indie experimental work, and I'd prefer something major. The Birth of Tragedy, now this one kind of strikes my interest. Do you have any suggestions, dude?" And I just flip my shit at the guy. I practically scream, "The Birth of Tragedy??? Are you serious? Nietzsche's Romanticism in that book was obsolete even when it was first published! He spent the rest of his life trying to subvert the philosophical assumptions underlying that work! No one should read this!" And I grabbed it and tossed it on the clearance rack. The guy was pretty flustered at first, but then became really pissed, and was like, "It's because of asshole snobs like you that people don't get interested in philosophy and literature," and then bolted out the door and probably went home to watch the NFL network, haha.

~Chez

Idiom

What follows is the first selection from my current work in progress, Idiom.

These are prefabricated texts. Total exoterica. The knowledge of humankind cross-referenced in infinitely complex patterns. The logic of nonsense is unlimited freedom of articulation that ultimately reveals itself in deceptively circular movements. The Internet's recycling plant. A rhetorical orgy.

Morning

The Non-Expert
handles all subjects and
is updated on Fridays. Panama Canal
expelled from the body of its mother.
In my family we like to tell
your birth story
the night
before your birthday. Join the Misery Boutique
mailing list. A successful box-office production
by Stanley Kramer and director Fred Zinnemann.
Noon Yachts SA,
luxury & beauty yachts manufacturer in Poland.
Caroline, that is a beautiful dress you are wearing.
An unsurpassed accomplishment or statistic.
The body of archaeological evidence.
Many fans suspect Bonds may have used
steroids
to power that record.
The chances of your private health
Information being used for something
you would disapprove of are: 50%.
Inscrybe
has got the entire healthcare industry
talking. Click
to download the 3M Coding
White Paper. Hallelujah.
What are the communities of practice?
Remember me will store a cookie on your computer.
abnormal electrical activity
in the brain
causes involuntary change
in body movement
and awareness.
2.7 million Americans.
Combating stigmatization
defined the aim of
evaluation.
Any sexually active person can be infected with gonorrhea.
Serious complications that cause irreversible damage.
Abstain from sex (i.e., oral, vaginal, or anal sex).
Though male latex condoms are highly effective,
slippage rates are usually more costly.
Irate when she discovers
the author has killed a celebrity.
You've got to write my obituary, you know.
Infertility can occur silently.

Come on Chez!

Please Chez, Marx is, at best, a perversion of Hegelian dialectics. Sure, I can get hip to your thesis-antithesis-synthesis analysis, but you need to remember that Marxism features materialistic dialectics whereas Hegel was an objective idealist. I mean, do you really think that Marx and Engels chubbed up when they read Phenomenology of Spirit? Perhaps, but you still don't know jack shit about the Zeitgeist, my dear sir. Go study some Luckacs and Horkheimer, and leave Hegel to the men.

nuff said lol go stillers

shut the fuck up

yo wats all this blabber on social revolution and the poor from a bunch of rich white plato wannabes?? just forget it u dont get it aight? i went to st bede on the east end with this creep cheswick and i finna tell u a little story. he used to be real afraid of little tight bitches in school and one time in seventh grade he was in coed gym class, we was playin bball in the gym and he defending this really little honie with a round bouncin ass and the friction was all he could handle for god's green acre and she rubbin and rubbin on his zone and all a sudden he busts a load like involuntary emission all over his filas hahaha. so next time this raggedy ass fool tell you he got the answer thatll solve all the world problems, just stare at him cockeyed and beat his gonads in for all i care, ya damn pussy.

***Bobby "NutCracker" Mcnutt***

A Private Letter to Harper de la Kierkegaard

Harper, i'm pretty elated to hear so much about you. It sounds like you must really know your stuff. How's Boston this time of year? Cool coffee shop scene? I imagine just loafing around Harvard Square and maybe draining a pint at a pub and really surrounding an issue with other really grounded students. And when i say students, i mean students of the world, and of truth. Not students of "what's going to get me into the international relations graduate program at Johns Hopkins??," or any kind of empty ambition like that. i'd really like to meet you and toss ideas back&forth with you, Harper. Maybe i'll drop into Beantown sometime this month, catch the Sox and get to know your mind or whatever.

i'm so stoked to meet you because you're into Hegel!! Even though you trashed me on basing my political values on Marx, i think this is a disagreement that's easily resolvable, Harper. i mean, Marx was SO heavily indebted to Hegel as the basis of his dialectical system, man! You got to remember that. Capitalism, the business elite, and the bourgeois middle class are the thesis in the West, Harper, whether you want to believe it or not. Not like i'm going to write my thesis on capitalism, but it's the dominant trend, you know? Anyway, it's got us clutched at the throat. Then the proletariat and social revolution, BOTTOM UP, are the antithesis. In our times, with utter ridiculous media saturation, the revolution WILL be televised, probably on YouTube, haha. The synthesis is a classless society, i.e. civilization sans social hierarchies. Not like i need to give you a crasher on Marxist ideology, Harper, but a point is to be stressed. Marx is the natural outgrowth of Hegel in the world of economics, IMO.

This gives me a really cool idea for a political cartoon. Two American intellectuals are arguing Hegel against Marx in a coffee shop, a real Socratic dialectical dialogue, maybe the one man is rich and the other is poor, then they come to a sudden agreement, SYNTHESIS!!, and the bomb crisis is averted, and they just throw back a couple of draughts in that bar from Cheers. Beantown, you know, right Harper?

Catch you again real soon, in another setting, hopefully.

~Chez

The Curiculum Vitae of Harper de le Beauregard

I certainly don't want to co-opt Chez, but I certainly do want to introduce myself as well. My full name is Harper Leland Maximillian de le Beauregard and I live in Cohasset, MA with my parents. My father works as a corporate lawyer in Boston and my mother works as a whore at the docks and as a homemaker (love you mom, thanks for making the sacrifice). I attend BU or as my dad calls it--and I think Ian Snail will like this--BJew (sooooo many). I'm an Anthro major but I have some serious interests in theology, philosophy, literature and science and political science and sociology and botany and daguerretypes. I'm basically a reincarnation of Thomas Jefferson except I don't believe in Buddhist teachings because I'm a hardcore deist. Another fun fact, I'm all about Hegel and I just posted that stuff about Kierkegaard way back when for ironic effects. I'm bisexual but not just like I'm kinda of gay bisexual--I'm totally serious about it. Well, I won't preach anymore so here are some more facts about me:

--My favorite book on the Dutch Golden Age is An Embarrassment of Riches by Simon Schama

--My girlfriend is bisexual too (kindred spirits)

--Marx is flawed Chez, too many glaring errors in his philosophy

--My favorite contemporary journalist is Robert Novak

--My favorite author is Joyce Carol Oates

--I once ate a duck raw (don't ask)

--Finally, Lorence T. Blumpkin sux

Just call me Chez

i realize that i haven't ever really introduced myself. furthermore, my friend ian snail seems to misperceive my character and even chooses to slander me at times. so, i'm going to spell things out with deliberate clarity here, folks. my name is Cheswick Dudley Crabcake, but just call me Chez. i live in Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania, and i'm a political science and philosophy double major at the University of Pittsburgh. if you want a sample of my thoughts, take this for instance: i capitalize proper nouns but absolutely never the first-person pronoun, because i don't favor the imperial cult of the ego. Western consciousness has its high marks, like The Birth of Tragedy, but just like that work, i try to capture the Tao in everything i'm about. i was raised Presbyterian, but now i practice Zen sitting meditation for spiritual depth. Wait, i need to outline this. i can't just give this whatever impressionistic account of myself. i need to structure my thoughts. Here we go. Ten Things You Need to Know about Cheswick Dudley Crabcake:

1) Just call me Chez.

2) i'm a poli sci/philosophy double major at Pitt.

3) i intern at Bank of America; i'm a marketing consultant. basically, when any client or investor contacts the firm, i check up on their credentials and let the managers know about their investment history and stuff like that. this job is a little more corporate than i would like; i'm more of a theory-wonk, and i'd rather be working on my latest manifesto right now, but i need the work-related experience. really, a comrade has to infiltrate the cogs of the machinery to have an effect. i'm heavy into Marx, especially the 1834 manuscripts, but to be honest i consider myself a rigorous Trotskyite. still, i'm not a weirdo. i want to effect change in society, and i'm not opposed to working amidst evil to dispel evil, basically.

4) i'm hardcore straight-edge (sXe).

5) Let's see...Really all i watch now is PBS art history programs and Stan Brakhage films (Pittsburgh Trilogy is sick).

6) i moonlight at Caliban books (Craig Street, Oakland) on the weekends and at the Waterworks Tommy Bahama on summer weeknights. Come hang out with me some night if you want to enjoy some really deep discussion. at either place i'm the guy who plays Minor Threat, really early Dylan (i.e. live at the Gaslight), and Joy Division on the store speakers.

7) During the semester i work for the 2008 Presidential campaign of Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

8) i write a political cartoon serial for the Pitt Chronicle called "Calamity Sam," about the harebrained trials and tribulations of a neocon quasi-Fascist medical supplies salesman who sells Americans devices to be implanted in their chest cavity supposedly to cure heartburn but that actually work like self-detonating atomic weapons of obvious global consequence. i also write obituaries for the City Paper.

9) My girlfriend's name is Maggie. She goes to Mercyhurst and is working at Whole Foods right now.

10) My dad is Hymen Radcliffe, but i don't write poetry.

Well, that's about it for now. If you want to know anything else about me, just hit me up. Peace.

~Chez

wistful wayward wanderings

dude i ran into a pretty chill guy i went to kinsky prep with down at the carousel at schenley plaza today and i was like sup bro and he just said not much enjoying the freedom of summer and i was like right on it's so whitmanesque isn't it and he was all well i guess you would know about that touche touche and i ask him what's new in his life and he was like bro i dropped out of art school and i just laughed and was like yer a JOKE haha.

~chez d.

The Lament of Edipo Re

On visiting the otherness of time
locale is a different sensation in the south
and I, but I, if I, or I
as long as the peasant queen is the vixen whore

who becomes my Jocasta
with the saline addition of knowledge
like a ray of light, your prophecy
O decrepit Tiresias, captured from your native epoch

Imprisoned in this past-future duality
near your fear and trembling
--Speak up, you godly lout!
I collapse in Etruscan rage

Ripe, erotic, rare, cum-guzzling baby,
hang it all but not yourself because I'm hung up on you
Kopasetic Sibylline oracle of mean Apollo,
my Delphine nightmare is a wet dream so past Freud

but loaded with Jungian imagery of the id
The abyss is in me, said the gone Son of Fortune,
Sent him there, I want to go there, I am forever lost there,
Banging it in whence I was born, Life ends where it has begun

Fate is a howling bitch in heat
and I would drown the desert in tears to conquer it
Alienation of the poor from the source and product of their labor
Elijah's cherubim forfeit life for a vague god and damnable country

Time and place conspire against our lives,
god and man against our love
As a little babe, chained to a wilderness of totem fear
must overcome my father in my darkest pre-conscious dreams

Where is the pride of those down-stricken by destiny?
frivolous bourgeois military rape of purity
synapse flash jump cut historical discontinuity to pre-wasted Thebes,
O Sphinx-faced mother, if I could escape death without dying?

A Liberty Avenue of the Mind

fuuuuck, dudes. i'm so hungover on sex. you know the feeling? like you blew your load on a chick three times in the night after getting her on such a fucking soaker and now you're waking up in really really wet sheets, haha. kind of disgusting, but kind of fucking sweet at the same time. damn, my body feels like a corpse and my head feels like donkey balls. shit, that's so baudelaire, like paris spleen or some shit, even though i shouldn't rag on that work because it's like some of the most legitimately crafted prose poems ever. fuck, whatever, poetry is for soft cunts anyway, haha, psyche. except eliot like isn't even poetry if you think about it, none of that gay Romantic spiel about how hard my dick is for nature and guys. i mean, he totally subverts that percy shelley business about annihilating yourself in nature and all of that negative capability crap. whoa, i'm so divergent from my main point right now. i hope harper doesn't give me a D on this paper, haha. psyche, you can lick my nuts, douche. anyway, back to eliot. he's like the modern seer who's bringing together the myths of all ages, or like that tight-ass pastor who gives really dry sermons at your presby church, haha. shit, my girl's waking up and her foot is totally soft-pedaling on my meat. whoa! bros, i've got to answer the call, haha. don't wait up on me.

arghefduuuuthyrgnrbnroqrughrvnjfe;ghrugfhrjgnclerwtkut!!