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"Method of this work:
literary montage.
I have nothing to say only to show."
(Passagenwerk (1927 - 1940) - Walter Benjamin)

2005, Feb 27; 19:24 ::: Underground index

The mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground. - Frank Zappa

By medium: underground film - underground press (books, etc...) - underground music

Related: alternative - banned - censorship - clandestine - counterculture - crime - economy - forbidden - hidden - illegal - illicit - independent - mainstream - overground - prohibition - resistance - subculture - subversive - taboo - transgressive


Underground mining station, image sourced here.

2005, Feb 27; 18:19 ::: Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of America's Romance With Illegal Drugs (1996) - Jill Jonnes

Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of America's Romance With Illegal Drugs (1996) - Jill Jonnes [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

First sentence:
"In 1821 the obscure and impecunious English writer Thomas De Quincey created a minor sensation with his Confessions of an English Opium Eater..."

Amazon.com
Jill Jonnes provides a highly detailed and enormously readable history of American drug use in the 20th century, making the important point that narcotics were a problem long before their naive glorification in the 1960s. Without ever sounding preachy, she calls for re-stigmatizing illegal drugs. "The societal costs of widely available drugs clearly outweigh whatever pleasure and insight they provide to those who can handle them," she concludes. "Just Say No" may have seemed corny, but there was something to it.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
At the turn of the century, Jonnes estimates, one American in 200 was a drug addict?and most of these were genteel middle-class women taking cocaine or nostrums laced with opiates. This sweeping, highly colorful, riveting narrative resurrects a largely forgotten history of drug use and abuse in the U.S. Jonnes, who researched this topic extensively while completing her Ph.D. in American history from Johns Hopkins, strongly opposes today's illegal drug culture, arguing that marijuana, hallucinogens, cocaine and heroin are far more dangerous than alcohol and engender crime, violence, personal tragedy and a culture of irresponsibility and instant gratification. Beginning with Chinese opium dens, patent medicines and early, ostensibly antidrug Hollywood movies portraying druggies as glamorous hedonistic rebels, she moves on to jazz-age Harlem, 1950s Beat hipsters and then to the 1960s counterculture, whose gurus, like Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg, helped spread drug use to the broad middle class. Her entertaining chronicle includes side trips to 1930s Paris, the N.Y.C. mob underworld, Marseille's Corsican, CIA-abetted drug network of the 1950s and '60s and today's Colombian cocaine cartels. It culminates with a compelling argument against legalization or decriminalization, charging that privileged baby boomers forget the financial and educational advantages that allowed them to emerge from 1960s drug use relatively unscathed. --Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. via Amazon.com

2005, Feb 27; 18:03 ::: Social sciences

anthropology - communication - economics - folklore - linguistics - memetics - political science - psychology - sociobiology - sociology

2005, Feb 27; 17:34 ::: Underground economy, black markets and free markets

The underground economy consists of all trade that occurs without government permission or effectual intervention (in the form of taxation or price regulation). This market includes not only trade in legally-prohibited goods and services (such as drugs and prostitution), but trade in legal goods and services when income is not reported and consequently taxation is avoided. The term underground economy typically is not used to refer to trade in stolen goods or other coercive activities, which may more appropriately fall under the definition of the "black market." Underground economy transactions are typically cash transactions to avoid traceability by governments.

Estimates of the size of the United States portion alone of the underground economy range from $500 billion to $1 trillion.

The underground economy, when trading decisions are not the result of coercion, is arguably a free market, since, by definition, it lacks government intervention. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_economy [Feb 2005]

Black market
The black market is the sector of economic activity involving illegal economic dealings, typically the buying and selling of merchandise illegally. The goods may be themselves illegal, such as the sale of prohibited weapons or the illegal drug trade; the merchandise may be stolen; or the merchandise may be otherwise legal goods sold illicitly to avoid tax payments or licensing requirements, such as cigarettes or unregistered firearms. It is so called because "black economy" or "black market" affairs are conducted outside the law, and so are necessarily conducted "in the dark", out of the sight of the law.

Black markets are said to develop when the state places restrictions on the production or provision of goods and services that come into conflict with market demands. These markets prosper, then, when state restrictions are heavy, such as during prohibition or rationing. However, black markets are normally present in any given economy. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_market [Feb 2005]

Free market
A free market is an idealized market, where all economic decisions and actions by individuals regarding transfer of money, goods, and services are voluntary, and are therefore devoid of coercion and theft (some definitions of "coercion" are inclusive of "theft"). Colloquially and loosely, a free market economy is an economy where the market is relatively free, as in an economy overseen by a government that practices a laissez-faire, rather than either a mixed or statist economic policy. Within economics the more usual term is simply "the market", or "the market mechanism", to mean the allocation of production through supply and demand.

Free markets are advocated by proponents of economic liberalism. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market [Feb 2005]

See also: economy, free, underground

2005, Feb 27; 16:22 ::: Christiane F. Wir Kinder [Original Soundtrack] (1981) - David Bowie

Christiane F. (1981) - Uli Edel [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

1. V-2 Schneider
2. TVC 15
3. Heroes/Helden
4. Boys Keep Swinging
5. Sense Of Doubt
6. Station To Station
7. Look Back In Anger
8. Stay
9. Warzawa

see also: David Bowie

2005, Feb 27; 16:19 ::: Christiane F. (1981) - Uli Edel

Christiane F. (1981) - Uli Edel [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Description

Christiane F. (Christiane Vera Felscherinow) was a drug addict in Berlin/Germany. As of 2004, she has overcome her addiction.

Her story is well known in Germany, because Kai Herrmann and Horst Rieck, two Stern journalists, ran a series of articles about her life and her addiction which eventually led to the book and its success. The report chronicles her years 1975-1978, when she was aged 12-15.

Eventually, the series was printed as a paperback book, titled Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. In 1981, the story was made into a film by Bernd Eichinger and Uli Edel.

Christiane F. (full name Christiane Vera Felscherinow), was born in West Berlin, Germany on May 20, 1962. Christiane is infamous for her fight with drugs, especially that of heroin. When she was 13 years old, she was a junkie and a prostitue. At 12, she took hashish; at 13 heroin and at 14 she got into the Bahnhof Zoo scene, a famous partying drug crowd from Berlin. Christiane tried to get and stay clean, but didn’t become totally clean until the birth of her son in 1996. Today, with her little son, Jan-Niklas she lives in a small apartment in Neukölln.

The German magazine, Stern, published the series ‘Wir kinder von Bahnhof Zoo’ (We, children from Bahnhof Zoo), and it became a best-seller, selling millions of copies all around the world. The book was written by ghostwritters, with the help of Christiane F. herself. Following the success of her autobiography, she filmed the screenplay about her life, in which she worked as an advisor. The film became a success as well, making millions, even though Christiane F. never actually appeared in the film about her life and addiction. Her story was directed by Ulrich Edel (aka Uli Edel), in Germany. Produced by Bernd Eichinger and Hans Weth, the film itself was derived from the screenplay by H. Weigal. The cast was carefully chosen, and the young women picked to play Christiane F. (Natja Brunkhorst), won numerous awards for her convincing role at the tender age of 14. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_F. [Feb 2004]

2005, Feb 27; 16:22 ::: Heroin: cultural influences

Due to both the dramatic effects of the drug on the consumer's life and the widespread use of heroin amongst artists, heroin consumption and addiction has been featured in numerous works of art, ranging from songs and films to novels. Amongst these are:

  • Novels
    • Man With the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren
    • Junky by William S. Burroughs
    • Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
    • Junk by Melvin Burgess
    • The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll
    • Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
    • Cain's Book by Alexander Trocchi
    • Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby
  • Factual accounts
    • The Heroin User's Handbook by Dr. Francis Moraes
    • Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (life story of Christiane F. a teenage German addict)
    • Permanent Midnight by Jerry Stahl
    • The Survival of the Coolest by William Pryor
  • Films
    • Bad Lieutenant directed by Abel Ferrara
    • Naked Lunch directed by David Cronenberg
    • Permanent Midnight directed by David Veloz
    • Pulp Fiction directed by Quentin Tarantino
    • Ray directed by Taylor Hackford
    • Requiem for a Dream directed by Darren Aronofsky
    • The Salton Sea directed by D.J. Caruso
    • Sid and Nancy directed by Alex Cox
    • Trainspotting directed by Danny Boyle
    • Wasted directed by Stephen T. Kay
  • Songs
    • "Comfortably Numb", by Pink Floyd
    • "I'm Waiting for the Man", "Heroin" and "Sister Ray" by The Velvet Underground
    • "Perfect Day" by Lou Reed
    • "Space Oddity", "The Bewlay Brothers" and "China Girl" by David Bowie
    • "Dead Flowers", "Sister Morphine" and "Monkey Man" by The Rolling Stones
    • "Black Balloon" by the Goo Goo Dolls
    • "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers
    • "Signed D.C." by Love
    • "Aux enfants de la chance" and "My Lady Heroine" by Serge Gainsbourg
    • "Chinese Rocks" by Johnny Thunders and Dee Dee Ramone
    • "Needle in the Hay" and "The White Lady Loves You More" by Elliott Smith
    • "Under the Bridge" by Red Hot Chili Peppers
    • "Cold Turkey" by John Lennon
    • "China Girl" by Iggy Pop
    • "The Needle and the Damage Done" by Neil Young
    • "I Believe in You" by Talk Talk
    • "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth (Heroin Is So Passe)" by The Dandy Warhols
    • "Mr. Brownstone" by Guns N' Roses
    • "Junkhead" and "Real Thing" by Alice in Chains
    • "Aneurysm" by Nirvana
    • "Jesus Shootin' Heroin" by The Flaming Lips
    • "Surfin' on Heroin" by Forgotten Rebels
    • "The Needle and the Spoon" and "That Smell" by Lynyrd Skynyrd
    • "Just One Fix" by Ministry
    • "Pool Shark" by Sublime
    • "Times of Trouble" by Temple of the Dog
    • "Carmelita" by Warren Zevon
    • "Bad" and "Running to Stand Still" by U2
    • "Hand Of Doom" by Black Sabbath
    • "Master Of Puppets" by Metallica
    • "Billy" by Bad Religion
    • "Perfect Blue Buildings" by Counting Crows
    • "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin#Cultural_influences [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 27; 13:21 ::: The Maids (1974) Christopher Miles

The Maids (1974) Christopher Miles [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

The Maids is the name of a claustrophobic 1974 film starring Glenda Jackson, Susannah York, Vivien Merchant, and Mark Burns. It is based on the play of the same name by Jean Genet and was directed by Christopher Miles.

Before it was filmed by the American Film Theatre, it ran at the Greenwich Theatre, London, with the same principal cast later used for the film version. Genet based his play on the infamous Papin sisters, Lea and Christine, who brutally murdered their employer and her daughter in Le Mans, France, in 1933.

The story can be read as an absurdist exposition on the intricate power dynamic that exists between unequals. Glenda Jackson and Suzannah York play Solange and Claire, two housemaids who construct elaborate sadomasochistic rituals when Madame (Vivien Merchant) is away. The focus of their Theatre is the murder of Madame and they take turns portraying either side of the power divide. The deliberate pace and devotion to detail guarantees that they always fail to actualize their fantasies by ceremoniously "killing" Madame at the ritual's denouement.

The Maids was filmed by cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, who deliberately implemented many of Genet's theatrical devices for the film. The camera was often static, the settings lush and extravagant. Genet's dialog is spit by Jackson in derisive fury at Madame's insouciance. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Maids [Feb 2005]

Denouement
Denouement, in literature, is the end effect of a character's earlier actions. Denouement occurs after the climax. There is a "turning point" between the climax and the denouement, termed "peripeteia".

The term is borrowed into English from the French. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denouement [Feb 2005]

Maid
A maidservant or in current usage maid is a female employed in domestic service. Once part of an elaborate hierachy in great houses, today the maid may be the only domestic worker that middle and even upper-income households can afford. In the West, comparatively few households can afford live-in domestic help, usually compromising on periodic cleaners. In less developed nations, fewer educated women and limited opportunities for working women ensures a labour source for domestic work.

Maids perform typical domestic chores such as cooking, ironing, washing, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, walking the family dog, and taking care of children. In some countries, maids take on the role of a nurse in taking care of the elderly and people with disabilities. Maids are often expected to work at least fifteen hours per day. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maid [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 27; 10:46 ::: The Art of Discipline (1996) - A K S Books

The Art of Discipline: A Pictorial History of the Smacked Bottom: v. 1 (1996) - A K S Books [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Book Description
Nearly 600 exquisite images from the golden age of disciplinary illustration—including more than 60 from Louis Malteste, over 40 from G. Topfer and more than 30 from Jim Black—plus dozens of drawings by Beloti, Dagy, Hegener, Herric, Milewski, Soulier, Wigead, and many other artists.

Entire classic collections such as ‘Three Painful Years’, ‘Frenzies’, ‘Flora en Pension’, ‘A Dominant Mistress’, ‘Récits Piquants’, etc. Hundreds of unattributed drawings covering subjects such as School, Domestic Discipline, Postures, The Weaker Sex, Judicial Punishments, and many others. --via Amazon.co.uk

See also: The Alice Kerr-Sutherland Society, spanking, discipline, punishment

2005, Feb 27; 10:30 ::: Decadence: Japanese Erotic Art (2004) - Carol Gnojewski

Decadence: Japanese Erotic Art (2004) - Carol Gnojewski [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Product Description:
This is a lush coffee table art book comprising a survey of Ukiyo-e poster art, which was a genre of Japanese wood block prints of the ancient Edo period (1600-1867) that continue to inspire and inform creators of Japanese manga and anime. Decadence focuses on shunga prints, or Japanese erotica. Shunga was designed to titillate, depicting a range of traditional themes such as exotic Asian beauties in intimate, pin-up poses and dramatic couplings with fierce warriors wielding enormous "swords," macabre supernatural lovers, and bestial animals and monsters.

Many of the most historically and aesthetically significant artists of the genre are represented, including Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Kachoyojo Azumagenji, Toyohara Kunichika, Yoshiiku, and Hokusai, among others.

Modern artists through the 1990s who have been influenced or inspired by Ukiyo-e imagery are also represented, such as the Japanese underground cartoonist Suehiro Maruo, who in 1988 recreated Ukiyo-e theatre posters about a kubuki drama called 28 Murders in a manga format using current famous murderers; the tattoo artist Horiyoshi the Third; the contemporary pin-up photographer Nobuyushi Aruki; Ultraman creator Eiji Usuburaya, whose B-movie scenarios are reminiscent of kabuki plots and Ukiyo-e images; Nagisa Oshima's film In the Realm of the Senses; and others.

The color and black-and-white Ukiyo-e images may surprise Western eyes, with their highly decorative realism, attention to detail, exaggerated sexual genitalia, and almost Cubist (before Cubism) multiple perspectives, giving them a surreal, vivid, and disorienting quality. Proving the universality of fetishism and sexual fantasies, this erotic guide serves to bridge the ancient and the modern, providing a glimpse into by-gone pleasures and pleasure districts and their influences on contemporary Japanese popular culture and erotic literature. --Amazon.com

2005, Feb 27; 10:20 ::: Le Ministère de la Marine (1865) - Charles Meryon

Le Ministère de la Marine (1865) - Charles Meryon

2005, Feb 26; 11:53 ::: Wikipedia:What links here

The what links here facility [on Wikipedia] can be used to see which other articles contain links to one you are interested in. To see this information, choose the what links here link while looking at any page.

The list of links to an article is useful in a number of ways:

  • It gives a very rough indication of how popular a page is. Pages with many links are likely to be viewed often and should therefore be of the very best quality. Pages with few or no links may not be very popular.
  • Where the subject material of an article is unclear, the list of articles linking to it might provide useful context. For instance when presented with a stub about John Smith that gives only his date of birth and death, the viewing the list of links to the article might reveal that he won a gold medal in the Olympics.

This facility works also for a page that does not exist (there may be links to it, which makes it extra useful to create it). -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_links_here [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 26; 10:40 ::: Choice (2004) - Various Artists, Mixed by X-Press 2

Choice (2004) - Various Artists, Mixed by X-Press 2[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Disc: 1
1. James Brown - There Was A Time 2. Jellybean - Spillin The Beans (Les Bean Mix) 3. Incognito - Jacobs Ladder - Maw Nu Yorican Dub 4. Patti Smith - Piss Factory 5. Quartz - Beyond The Clouds 6. The Cure - Pictures Of You (Strange Remix) 7. Elkin And Nelson - Jibaro (Enrolle Long Version) 8. Jean Luc Ponty - In The Fast Lane 9. David Byrne - Big Business 10. David Astri - Dancing Digits 11. Jine - Take It To The House 12. Eric And The Good Good Feeling - Higher Than Heaven

Disc: 2
1. Hi Voltage - Lets Get Horny 2. Open House Feat Placid Angels - Aquatic 3. Pacific Blue - You Gotta Dance 4. Brian Briggs - Aeo Parts 1 And 2 5. Art Of Noise - Beatbox Div 1 6. Malcolm McClaren - First Couple Out 7. Natural Experience - Dont Leave Me 8. Carl Craig - At Les 9. The Rolling Stones - Too Much Blood 10. Voices Of East Harlem - Cashing In 11. Badder Than Evil - Hot Wheels 12. The Specials - A Message To You Rudy

see also: Azuli records

2005, Feb 26; 10:38 ::: Trax Records 20th Anniversary Collection [BOX SET] (2004) - Various Artists

Trax Records 20th Anniversary Collection [BOX SET] (2004) - Various Artist [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Disc: 1
1. Bring Down the Walls - Robert Owens 2. No Way Back [Vocal Mix] - Adonis 3. Can You Feel It [Alternate Mix] - Mr. Fingers 4. House This House - Mr. Lee 5. Jack the Bass 6. This Is Acid [Radio Mix] 7. House Nation 8. You Used to Hold Me [Kenny Jason Mix] - Xaviera Gold 9. House Music Anthem: Move Your Body - Marshall Jefferson 10. Washing Machine - Mr. Fingers 11. Acid Tracks - Phuture 12. I Can't Forget - Mr. Lee 13. Fantasy - Screamin' Rachael 14. Aw Shucks [Long Version] 15. Girls Out on the Floor 16. I've Lost Control 17. In a Vision - Virgo Four 18. I'll Never Let You Go 19. Can't Get Enough [Remix] - Liz Torres 20. Dub Love [Full Version] - Master C & J 21. Your Love - Frankie Knuckles

Disc: 2
1. Children of the Night [Radio Mix] - Kevin Irving 2. As Always [Full Vocal Version Mix] - Ricky Dillard 3. Fun With Bad Boys - Screamin' Rachael 4. Jungle [Full A-Side Version] - Jungle Wonz 5. I'll Make You Dance [Full Version] - Kool Rock Steady 6. Do It Properly [Adonis Full Version] - Adonis 7. Bird in a Gilded Cage [Full A-Side Version] - Jungle Wonz 8. 7 Ways to Jack [Full Version] - Hercules 9. Slam [Radio Mix] 10. House Beat Box 11. You Got the Love [Long Version] - Rebecca Jones 12. Baby Wants to Ride - Frankie Knuckles 13. We Live This Life [Long Version] - Paul Johnson

Disc: 3
1. Move Your Body - Marshall Jefferson 2. No Way Back [Vocal Mix] - Adonis 3. Can You Feel It [Alternate Mix] - Mr. Fingers 4. Jungle [Full A-Side Version] - Jungle Wonz 5. Dub Love [Full Version] - Master C & J 6. You Used to Hold Me [Kenny Jason Mix] - Xaviera Gold 7. Baby Wants to Ride - Frankie Knuckles 8. Children of the Night [Radio Mix] - Kevin Irving 9. As Always [Full Vocal Version Mix] - Ricky Dillard 10. You Got the Love [Long Version] - Rebecca Jones 11. Fantasy - Screamin' Rachael 12. This Is Acid [Radio Mix]

see also: trax records

2005, Feb 25; 10:42 ::: Mystery fiction

Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1941) - Edgar Allan Poe

Tales of Mystery and Imagination () - Edgar Allan Poe, Gary Kelley (Illustrator) [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Amazon.com
Award-winning fantasy illustrator Gary Kelley writes, "I have selected three of Edgar Allan Poe's best short stories.... I chose 'The Fall of the House of Usher' for its classic Gothic images and its dark, melancholic central characters, including the house itself. 'The Black Cat' is ... appealing to me for its use of mystery and foreboding that takes us to a horrifying climax. 'The Cask of Amontillado' ... my personal favorite, [is] a simple narrative of revenge set in the contrasting worlds of carnival and catacomb." Click on the book's cover for a closer look, but the reproduction doesn't really do justice to the richness of color in Kelley's shadowy, atmospheric paintings. (The cat's eye is green, and its tongue is pink.) This gorgeous edition has 20 full- and double-page paintings, including a melancholy portrait of Poe; each page of text is surrounded by subtle decorative frames. The images of Roderick and Madeleine Usher are especially effective.

Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction is a distinct subgenre of detective fiction that entails the occurrence of an unknown event which requires the protagonist to make known (or solve). It is similar to the whodunit in that the clues may often be given to the reader by subtle means. Though it is often confused with detective fiction, it does not require a crime to have occurred or the involvement of law enforcement.

Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction that centres upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. It is closely related to mystery fiction but generally contains more of a puzzle element that must be solved, generally by a single protagonist, either male or female.

A common feature of detective fiction is an investigator who is unmarried, with some source of income other than a regular job, and who generally has some pleasing eccentricities or striking characteristics. He or she frequently has a less intelligent assistant, or foil, who is asked to make apparently irrelevant inquiries, and who acts as an audience surrogate for the explanation of the mystery at the end of the story. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detective_fiction [Feb 2005]

Early archetypes of these stories were the three Auguste Dupin tales by Edgar Allan Poe: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, and The Purloined Letter. Poe's detective stories have been described as ratiocinative tales. In stories such as these, the primary concern of the plot is ascertaining truth, and the usual means of obtaining the truth is through a complex and mysterious process combining intuitive logic, astute observation, and perspicacious inference. As a consequence, the crime itself sometimes becomes secondary to the efforts taken to solve it. The Mystery of Marie Rogêt is particularly interesting, as it is a barely fictionalized analysis of the circumstances of the real-life discovery of the body of a young woman named Mary Rogers, in which Poe expounds his theory of what actually happened. The style of the analysis, with its attention to forensic detail, makes it a precursor of the stories about the most famous of all fictional detectives, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, who in turn set the style for many others in later years, including Holmesian pastiches such as August Derleth's Solar Pons.--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detective_fiction [Feb 2005]

Crime fiction
Crime fiction is a genre of fiction that deals with crimes, their detection, criminals, and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred. It has several sub-genres, including detective fiction (including the whodunnit), legal thriller, courtroom drama, and hard-boiled fiction. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_fiction [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 25; 10:06 ::: Psychogeography, flânerie and the dérive

The history of psychogeography is bound up with certain walking practices, notably flânerie and the dérive, which are not to be confused. Flânerie tended to be solitary, relatively leisurely, and bound up with commodities (window-shopping, second-hand books, prostitutes) on familiar ground. The dérive ignored commodities, was often communal and could be gruelling. Chtcheglov saw the dérive as potentially a kind of ambulant free-association: The dérive (with its flow of acts, its gestures, its strolls, its encounters) was to the totality exactly what psychoanalysis (in the best sense) is to language. Let yourself go with the flow of the words, says the analyst'...Chtcheglov, 'Letters from Afar', Internationale Situationniste, 9 (August 1964), p. 38 (fragment in Situationist International Anthology, ed. Ken Knabb, p. 372). Chtcheglov wrote this from an asylum, possibly La Borde, where he is often said to have been a patient of Felix Guttari. The dérive has subsequently found echoes in Lyotard, 'Driftworks' (Dérive et partir de Marx et Freud, Paris, 1973), and Deleuze and Guattari (nomadism passim, 'the schizo's stroll' in 'Anti-Oedipus'). --Phil Baker, Secret City: Psychogeography and the End of London via http://www.camdennet.org.uk/groups/soundevents/articles/item?item_id=14891 [Feb 2005]

In Guy Debord's words: "ONE OF THE BASIC situationist practices is the dérive [literally: “drifting”], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll."

The idea here is that exploring space in this way will open one up to its unseen 'psychogeographical contours', particularly in urban areas, which are all about psychogeography. This is in contrast to the usual movements of urban doyens, who move along the same paths (work - home, home - club) again and again without exploring their environments. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%E9rive [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 24; 22:51 ::: The flâneur of Charles Baudelaire’s Paris

A recent topic for fascination in architectural theory has been Walter Benjamin’s work on the flâneur of Charles Baudelaire’s Paris. This figure, more than just a wanderer, shopper or tourist, characterises one aspect of the modern city-dweller’s condition, as found in the Parisian arcades. This meandering, aimless ‘Man Without Qualities’ so informs how we understand the city, for example, as a prototype for both the cinematic subject and audience. Flânerie also has its uses as a thinking tool. City-based artistic movements in the 20th century, from the Dada and Surrealists through to Fluxus and the Situationists have all exploited similar modes of distracted attention in traversing the city. This trajectory takes us to the Situationist International in particular, who engaged with the city in a fashion analogous to the paper support for a drawing, equip us with new ways of understanding the experience of the city. As a part of my general inquiry into the role of drawing and notation in creative practice, the graphic representation of the city forms a case-study of particular interest. How do these alternatives to the traditional tools of architecture and urbanism aid or reconfigure our understandings of cities? This final section shall outline some of my own working practices. Drawn from the tradition of the architectural fantasy, which traces its history from Piranesi through Ferriss and Constant to Tschumi, Koolhaas and MVRDV. By considering architecture as a practice of representation as well as of space- and place-making, the architectural fantasy or paper project offers distinctive possibilities beyond what is commonly assumed to be simply an ‘unbuilt’ or ‘unbuildable’ project. As such, I place my reflections upon Tokyo into this tradition – I will explore the process I have worked through in re-presenting a journey taken through Shinjuku station. -- Raymond Lucas Inscribing the city: a flâneur in Tokyo via http://www.anthropologymatters.com/journal/2004-1/lucas_2004_inscribing.htm Feb [2005]

2005, Feb 24; 21:13 ::: As Nasty As They Wanna Be (1989) - 2 Live Crew

As Nasty As They Wanna Be (1989) - 2 Live Crew [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

2 Live Crew is one of the most controversial rap groups ever, largely due to the sexual themes of one album, As Nasty As They Wanna Be (1989).

As Nasty As They Wanna Be (1989) became the group's biggest hit, largely because of the single Me So Horny, which was popular in spite of little radio play. The song was based on a quote from a Vietnamese prostitute in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.

The American Family Association, a conservative group, did not think the presence of a "Parental Advisory" sticker was enough to adequately warn listeners of what was inside the case. A lawyer affiliated with the AFA, Jack Thompson, met with Florida Governor Bob Martinez and convinced him to look in the album to see if it met the legal classification of "obscene." It was decided in 1990 that action should be taken at the local level and Nick Navarro, Broward County sheriff received a ruling from Judge Mel Grossman that probable cause for obscenity violations existed. Navarro warned record store owners that selling the album may be prosecutable. 2 Live Crew filed a suit against Navarro. That June, Judge Jose Gonzalez ruled against the album, declaring it obscene and illegal to sell. Charles Freeman, a local retailer, was arrested two days later after selling a copy to an undercover police officers, followed by the arrest of three members of 2 Live Crew after they performed some material from the album at a performance. They were acquitted soon after.

As a result of the controversy, As Nasty As They Wanna Be sold over two million copies. A few other retailers were later arrested for selling it as well. The publicity then continued when George Lucas, owner of the Star Wars universe, sued Luke Skyywalker for appropriating the name from his franchise. Skyywalker changed his name to Luke and then released an extremely political solo album Banned in the USA, legally securing the rights to Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA.

In 1991, 2 Live Crew released the very first live rap album, Live in Concert, and Sports Weekend, a full-length studio original. Neither lived up to the sales that they experienced with As Nasty As They Wanna Be. The 2 Live Crew members went their own ways after this.

In 1992, a Court of Appeals overturned the obscenity ruling from Jose Gonzales, and the decision was then upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. Fresh Kid Ice and Mr. Mixx released unreleased tracks from pre-Luke 2 Live Crew Deal With This under the name Rock on Crew, while Luke and Ice also released new solo albums, I Got Shit on My Mind and The Chinaman, respectively. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Live_Crew [Feb 2005]

Sexually explicit

Sexually explicit material (video, photography, creative writing) presents sexual content without deliberately obscuring or censoring it. This is in contrast to typical Hollywood movies, where sexual intercourse is often hinted at, or shown with the genitalia covered.

The term is not very specific, and what is or is not sexually explicit varies from culture to culture. Visual exposure of the penis or vagina and surrounding pubic hair are widely considered sexually explicit, unobscured sexual intercourse universally so. Some also consider certain language or writing (authentic reports or fiction) to be sexually explicit.

While some observers often label all sexually explicit material as pornography, this is not generally accepted, as it does not examine the intent behind the material. For example, sexual intercourse may be shown to illustrate principles of safe sex and as such be a component of liberal sex education, or in a film it may be part of a complex story and be viewed to contribute to overall plot development. An explicit rape scene may in fact have the purpose of negative conditioning, and vivid imagery of infected genitalia is often used as part of abstinence-based sex education programs. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexually_explicit [Feb 2005]

Censorship issues
Hip hop has probably encountered more problems with censorship than any other form of popular music in recent years, due to the use of sexually and violently explicit lyrics. The pervasive use of curse words in many songs has created challenges in the broadcast of such material both on television stations such as MTV, in music video form, and on radio. As a result, many hip hop recordings are broadcast in censored form, with offending language blanked out of the soundtrack (though usually leaving the backing music intact). The result – which quite often renders the remaining lyrics unintelligible – has become almost as widely identified with the genre as any other aspect of the music, and has been parodied in films such as Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, in which a character – performing in a parody of a rap music video – performs an entire verse that is blanked out. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_Hop_music#Censorship_issues [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 24; 21:13 ::: The Golden Ass: Or Metamorphoses (100s) - Apuleius

The Golden Ass: Or Metamorphoses (100s) - Apuleius [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Lucius Apuleius (ca 123/5 CE - ca 180 CE), an utterly Romanized Berber who described himself as "half-Numidian half-Gaetulian", is remembered most for his bawdy picaresque Latin novel the Metamorphoses, better known as The Golden Ass. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apuleius [Feb 2005]

The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, more commonly known as The Golden Ass, is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety. Written in the second century CE, it is a precursor to the literary genre of the episodic picaresque novel, in which Rabelais, Boccaccio, Voltaire, Defoe, and many others have followed. It is an imaginative, irreverent and amusing work that relates the ludicrous adventures of one Lucius, a virile young man who is obsessed with magic. Finding himself in Thessaly, the "birthplace of magic", Lucius eagerly seeks an opportunity to see magic being performed. His over-enthusiasm leads to his accidental transformation into an ass. In this guise, Lucius, a member of the Roman country aristocracy, is forced to witness and share the misery of slaves and destitute freemen who are reduced, like Lucius, to being little more than beasts of burden by their exploitation at the hands of wealthy landowners. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Ass [Feb 2005]

Ribaldry [...]
Ribaldry has likely been around for the whole history of the human race, and is present to some degree in every culture. Works like Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius, and the Metamorphoses or Golden Ass of Apuleius are ribald classics from ancient Europe. Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" from his Canterbury Tales is a classic medieval example. François Rabelais showed himself to be a master of ribaldry in his Gargantua. Mark Twain's long-suppressed 1601 certainly falls in this category. More recent works like Candy by Terry Southern, films like Barbarella by Roger Vadim, or the comedic works of Russ Meyer are probably better classified as ribaldry than as either pornography or erotica. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribaldry [Dec 2004]

Picaresque [...]
The picaresque novel (Spanish: "picaresco", from "pícaro", for "rogue" or "rascal") was a popular style of novel that originated in Spain and flourished in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term denotes a subgenre of usually satiric prose fiction and depicts in realistic, often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social degree living by his or her wits in a corrupt society.--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picaresque_novel [Oct 2004]

Serious, yet sexually explicit
Yet despite its serious subject matter, the novel remains imaginative, witty, and often sexually explicit. Numerous amusing stories, many of which seem to be based on actual folk tales with their ordinary themes of simple-minded husbands, adulterous wives, and clever lovers, as well as the magical transformations that characterize the entire novel, are included within the main narrative. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Ass [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 24; 20:40 ::: The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory

The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory () - J. A. Cuddon, Claire Preston [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Product Description:
The latest installment of this trusted literary companion covers all aspects of literary theory, from definitions of technical terms to characterizations of literary movements. Geared toward students, teachers, readers, and writers alike, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory explains critical jargon (intertextuality, aporia), schools of literary theory (structuralism, feminist criticism), literary forms (sonnet, ottava rima), and genres (elegy, pastoral) and examines artifacts, historic locales, archetypes, origins of well-known phrases, and much, much more. Scholarly, straightforward, comprehensive, and even entertaining, this is a resource that no word lover should be without.

2005, Feb 24; 18:30 ::: Semantic similarity

Semantic similarity, variously also called 'semantic closeness/proximity/nearness', is a concept whereby a set of documents or terms within term lists are assigned a metric based on the similarity of their meaning / semantic content.

An intuitive way of displaying terms according to their semantic similarity is by grouping together closer related terms and spacing more distantly related ones wider apart. This is common - if sometime subconcious - practice for mind maps and concept maps.

A naive metric for terms arranged as nodes in a directed acyclic graph like a hierarchy would be the minimal distance (in separating edges) between the two term nodes. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_similarity [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 24; 17:44 ::: The oneiric house by Gaston Bachelard

Gaston Bachelard (1884 - 1962) was a French philosopher of sciences and poetry. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_Bachelard [Apr 2004]

Three or four decades ago a book entitled The Poetics of Space could hardly fail to stir the architectural imagination. First published in French in 1957 and translated into English in 1964, Gaston Bachelard’s philosophical meditation on oneiric space appeared at a moment when phenomenology and the pursuit of symbolic and archetypal meanings in architecture seemed to open fertile ground within the desiccated culture of late modernism. “We are far removed from any reference to simple geometrical forms,” Bachelard wrote in a chapter entitled “House and Universe.” “A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.”(2) In lyrical chapters on the “topography of our intimate being”—of nests, drawers, shells, corners, miniatures, forests, and above all the house, with its vertical polarity of cellar and attic—he undertook a systematic study, or “topoanalysis,” of the “space we love.” Although Bachelard was specifically concerned with the psychodynamics of the literary image, architects saw in his excavation of the spatial imaginary a counter to both technoscientific positivism and abstract formalism, as well as an alternative to the schematicism of the other emerging intellectual tendency of the day, structuralism. In his book Existence, Space and Architecture (1971), Christian Norberg-Schulz, the most prolific and long-term proponent of a phenomenological architecture, asserted that “further research on architectural space is dependent upon a better understanding of existential space,” citing Bachelard’s Poetics of Space together with Otto Friedrich Bollnow’s Mensch und Raum (1963), the chapter on space in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s The Phenomenology of Perception (1962; original French, 1945), and two key works by Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1962; German, 1927) and the essay “Building Dwelling Thinking” (1971; German, 1954), as fundamental texts. --Joan Ockman reviews The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard via http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/back/6books_ockman.html [Feb 2005]

The 'oneiric house' [dream house] described by Gaston Bachelard has three or four floors; the middle ones are the stages of everyday life, the attic is the storage place of pleasant memories, whereas the basement is the place for negative remembrances, pushed outside consciousness. In the final sequences of Psycho the different floors of the Bates House obtain their meaning in accordance with Bachelard's oneiric house. Beginning her survey of the enigma of the house in the attic, Lila is forced to a panicked escape down into the basement where she finds the terrifying mummified wigged corpse of Norman's mother. -- Juhani Pallasmaa, Lived Space in Architecture and Cinema, http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/faculties/EV/designresearch/publications/insitu/copy/volume2/imprintable_architecture/Juhani_Pallasmaa/ [Feb 2005]

Furthermore, we could take the influence of cinema on today's architecture as our subject of study. Vincent Korda's visions of multi-storey atria in Things to Come, for instance, have fully materialized, five decades later, in John Portman's gigantic hotel projects. Portman's projects are an example of an architecture which cold-bloodedly serves the economic interests of the developer, utilizing means of persuasion deriving from stage sets designed for cinematic spectacles. -- Juhani Pallasmaa, Lived Space in Architecture and Cinema, http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/faculties/EV/designresearch/publications/insitu/copy/volume2/imprintable_architecture/Juhani_Pallasmaa/ [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 24; 13:12 ::: Maria Jolas, Woman of Action: A Memoir and Other Writings (2004) - Mary Ann Caws

Maria Jolas, Woman of Action: A Memoir and Other Writings (2004) - Mary Ann Caws [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Maria Jolas, born Maria McDonald on January 12, 1893, Louisville, Kentucky, United States - died March 4, 1987 in Paris, France, was one of the founding members of transition in Paris, France with her husband Eugene Jolas.

Jolas also translated many works including Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space.

Maria Jolas, Woman of Action - A Memoir and Other Writings was edited and introduced in 2004 by City University of New York professor Mary Ann Caws. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Jolas [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 24; 12:24 ::: Phinnweb

DJ pHinn beatmatching --http://www.xs4all.nl/~lrvk/lejo/dj.html [Feb 2005]

via http://phinnweb.blogspot.com/ [Feb 2005]

Phinnweb is Erkki Rautio of Tampere, Finland; also known as pHinn, a record collector, sometimes DJ, freelance writer, Webmaster etc., who's interested in culture equally in all its forms. Similar in style to jahsonic.com in its ecleticism and taste in high and low culture. --http://www.phinnweb.org/FAQ/index2.html [Feb 2005]

main URL: http://www.phinnweb.org/enter.html [Feb 2005]

4,050 pages in Google --http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phinnweb.com&btnG=Google+Search [Feb 2005]

Fave articles at phinnweb:

2005, Feb 24; 11:13 ::: Things to Come (1936) - William Cameron Menzies

Things to Come (1936) - William Cameron Menzies

Things to Come is a 1936 science fiction film, produced by Alexander Korda and directed by William Cameron Menzies. It is loosely based on the novel The Shape of Things to Come, by H. G. Wells.

Wells had a degree of control over the project that was unprecedented for a writer, and personally supervised nearly every aspect of the film. Posters and the main title bill the film as "H. G. Wells' THINGS TO COME," with "an Alexander Korda production" appearing in smaller type.

The film is notable for its graphic depiction of strategic bombing in scenes where London is flattened by air attacks and society collapses into barbarism. In one memorable scene, a dignitary's importance is shown by the fact that he still gets to ride in an automobile—but the automobile is of necessity drawn by a horse. This echoes pre-war concerns about the threat of the bomber and the apocalyptic pronouncements of air power prophets. Wells was also an air power prophet of sorts, having described air war in Anticipations (1901) and The War in the Air (1908), to say nothing of "atomic bombs" in The World Set Free (1914).

The score, written by Arthur Bliss, was an integral part of the film. Wells originally wanted the music to be recorded in advance, and have the film constructed around the music, but this was considered too radical and the music was fitted to the film in a more conventional way. A concert suite drawn from the film has remained popular; as of 2003 there are about half-a-dozen recordings of it in print.

Christopher Frayling of the British Film Institute calls Things to Come "a landmark in cinematic design." The special effects, while crude by today's standards, are visually powerful. Particularly notable is the sequence showing the rebuilding of Anytown. For over five minutes, we watch scenes of mysterious machines performing mysterious engineering works, accompanied and in many cases synchronized to the Arthur Bliss score. It all looks so purposeful and makes such wonderful visual sense that it is fascinating to watch. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_to_Come [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 23; 23:13 ::: Ghost Dog (1999) - Jim Jarmusch

Ghost Dog (1999) - Jim Jarmusch [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai is a 1999 film directed by Jim Jarmusch. It takes place somewhere in the present day United States.

In the film Forest Whitaker plays an African American hitman working for the Mafia, called Ghost Dog, who follows the ancient code of the samurai as described in Yamamoto Tsunetomo's guide for a warrior, Hagakure.

The movie stresses the conflict between two codes of conduct, that of the (aging) mobsters (incapable of paying the rent of their meeting place) and the one of the samurai, chosen by Ghost Dog. However, it also mentions that both tribes of honor are dying out. There is a certain sense of inevitability in the movie, and also of honor, portrayed by Ghost Dog killing two hunters he encounters on the road with a dead bear, outside the hunting season.

Between the acts a quotation from Hagakure is screened and read by Ghost Dog.

The soundtrack was written and produced by the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA, who also has a small role in the film. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Dog_-_The_Way_of_the_Samurai [Feb 2005]

Jim Jarmusch (born January 22, 1953 in Akron, Ohio, USA) is a noted film director. Following years of artistic success and critical acclaim in the American independent film community, he achieved a new level of mainstream notoriety with his far-East philosophy-themed Western movie set in New Jersey, Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai, starring Forest Whitaker, which also featured a soundtrack by the Wu-Tang Clan's Rza. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jarmusch [Feb 2005]

Filmography as director
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), includes the 1986 Coffee and Cigarettes, Somewhere in California, Memphis Version as segments - Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (2002) (segment "Int. Trailer Night") - Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai (1999) - Year of the Horse (1997) - Dead Man (1995) - Coffee and Cigarettes - Somewhere in California (1993) - Night on Earth (1991) - Coffee and Cigarettes - Memphis Version (1989) - Mystery Train (1989) - Coffee and Cigarettes (1986) - Down by Law (1986) - Stranger Than Paradise (1983) - The New World (1982) - Permanent Vacation (1980) --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jarmusch [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 23; 20:43 ::: Coffret Leroux Gaston 2vols - Gaston Leroux

Coffret Leroux Gaston 2vols - Gaston Leroux [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Gaston Leroux (May 6, 1868, Paris - April 15, 1927, Nice) was a French journalist and novelist.

In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l'opéra, 1911) which has been made into several film and stage productions (see Phantom of the Opera).

Leroux began working as a court reporter and theater critic for L'Echo de Paris in 1890, but his most important journalism came when he began working as an international correspondent for the Paris newspaper Le Matin. In 1905 he was present at and covered the Russian Revolution. He left journalism in 1907 and began writing fiction, his first being a mystery novel entitled Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (1908; The Mystery of the Yellow Room), starring the amateur detective Joseph Rouletabille. The Mystery of the Yellow Room is an important work in the history of dectective fiction as it was the first "locked-room puzzle," which has become a staple in the genre. Leroux's contribution to French detective fiction is considered as parallel to Edgar Allan Poe's in America and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's in the UK.

He died of uraemia. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_Leroux

2005, Feb 23; 19:18 ::: Phantom of the opera

Phantom of the opera - illustration (1910, detail) by André Castaigne

Phantom of the opera (1910) - illustration by André Castaigne

André Castiagne was the first artist to illustrate a story about the Phantom of the Opera. His five watercolors graced the pages of Gaston Leroux's 1910 work Le Fantôme de l'Opéra when the LaFitte House in Paris published it for the first time in book form. The following year (1911), the novel appeared in both an American (Bobbs-Merrill) and a British (Mills and Boon) edition, both translated to English by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. Unfortunately, only the American edition retained the interior artwork. Castaigne's Phantom paintings were not seen again until 1987 when Michael O'Mara Books Limited (Queen Ann Street, London W1N 9FB, UK) chose to include the five color plates in a new English-language edition of Leroux's work. Finally, the most recent edition to include these plates (at the time of this article's original publication) is the 1988 Phantom reprinted by The Mysterious Press (129 West 56th Street, New York, NY 10019, USA). --http://www.phantomoftheopera.info/artpg02.htm [Feb 2005]

Film poster for Phantom of the opera (1925)

The 1925 film version of The Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney, Sr., and directed by Rupert Julian, is one of the more influential adaptations of Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, in which a disfigured phantom haunts the Paris Opera House, trying to force the people who run it to make the woman he loves a star. It contained several scenes in two strip color, and is especially famous for Lon Chaney's intentionally horrific, self-applied makeup which was kept a studio secret until the film's premier. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_the_Opera_(1925_movie) [Feb 2005]

Phantom of the opera - The title character as depicted by Lon Chaney, Sr. in the 1925 film depiction, the most famous adaptation prior to the musical version. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_of_the_Opera [Feb 2005]

Phantom of the opera -
Cover of the 1959 Brodard et Taupin reissue of Leroux's novel in the original French (498 pages). This version is currently available for purchase from [Amazon.fr]. --image and text sourced from http://www.phantomoftheopera.info/essay019.htm [Feb 2005]

Phantom of the opera -
Cover of the first 1910 edition of Gaston Leroux's Phantom by the French publishing house Lafitte, Paris —very rare. --image and text sourced from http://www.phantomoftheopera.info/essay019.htm [Feb 2005]

The Phantom of the Opera is a story about a mysterious figure which haunts the Opera House of Paris, writen by Gaston Leroux and adapted to a successful musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom [Feb 2005]

The Phantom of the Opera is a novel by Gaston Leroux, inspired by George du Maurier's Trilby. Published in 1910, and first translated into English in 1911, it has since been adapted many times into film and stage productions.

The story is about a mysterious figure who terrorizes the Paris Opera House for the unwitting benefit of a young singer he loves. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_of_the_Opera [Feb 2005]

The Phantom of the Opera (1925) - Rupert Julian [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Inspired by Jean Rollin, Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin

2005, Feb 23; 14:53 ::: Les Mystères de Paris (10 vols., 1842-1843) - Eugène Sue

Les Mystères de Paris (10 vols., 1842-1843) - Eugène Sue

Eugène Sue was strongly affected by the Socialist ideas of the day, and these prompted his most famous works: Les Mystères de Paris (10 vols., 1842-1843) and Le Juif errant (translated, ""The Wandering Jew"") (10 vols., 1844-1845), which were among the most popular specimens of the roman-feuilleton. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%E8ne_Sue [Feb 2005]

Serials in fiction
Serial in fiction is a term used to describe any story which is told over a number of separate installments. This can be different chapters of a prose story published in each weekly issue of a magazine, a series of films with a continuing story or - in its most common contemporary form - a television production with a continuing story made up of several episodes. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial [Feb 2005]

Mid 1800s: first serials
In the mid-nineteenth century magazines publishing short stories and serials began to be popular. Some of them were more respectable, while others were referred to by the derogatory name of penny dreadfuls. In 1844 Alexandre Dumas published a novel The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) and wrote The Count of Monte Cristo which was published in installments over the next two years. William Makepeace Thackeray published The Luck of Barry Lyndon. In Britain Charles Dickens published several of his books in installments in magazines: The Pickwick Papers, followed, in the next few years, by Oliver Twist (1837-1839), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), Barnaby Rudge (1841), A Christmas Carol (1843) and Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844). In America a version of the penny dreadful became popularly known as a dime novel. In the dime novels the reputations of gunfighters and other wild west heroes or villains were created or exaggerated. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_literature:_Modern_literature#The_middle_of_the_century [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 22; 13:55 ::: Teo Macero and Bitches Brew (1969)

Bitches Brew (1969) - Miles Davis [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Teo Macero is a jazz saxophonist and record producer.

He began his career as a performer, recording a few albums, and briefly joining Charles Mingus.

Macero found greater fame as a jazz record producer for Columbia Records. He had a long and especially fruitful partnership with Miles Davis.

Recently, Macero returned to performing, playing saxophone on DJ Logic's Project Logic. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teo_Macero [Feb 2005]

Bitches Brew and post-production

Some might argue Teo Macero deserves much of the credit for Bitches Brew. His contributions were sometimes controversial, certainly important, and perhaps invaluable.

There was significant editing done to the recorded music. Short sections were spliced together to create longer pieces, and various effects were applied to the recordings. One source worth quoting at length reports:

"Bitches Brew also pioneered the application of the studio as a musical instrument, featuring stacks of edits and studio effects that were an integral part of the music. Even though it sounded like an old-style studio registration of a bunch of guys playing some amazing stuff, large sections of it relied heavily on studio technology to create a fantasy that never was. Miles and his producer, the legendary Teo Macero, used the recording studio in radical new ways, especially in the title track and the opening track, "Pharaoh's Dance". There were many special effects, like tape loops, tape delays, reverb chambers and echo effects. And, through intensive tape editing, Macero concocted many totally new musical structures that were later imitated by the band in live concerts. Macero, who has a classical education and was most likely inspired by the '30s and '40s musique concrete experiments, used tape editing as a form of arranging and composition. "Pharaoh's Dance" contains 19 edits — its famous stop-start opening is entirely constructed in the studio, using repeat loops of certain sections. Later on in the track there are several micro-edits: for example, a one-second-long fragment that first appears at 8:39 is repeated five times between 8:54 and 8:59. The title track contains 15 edits, again with several short tape loops of, in this case, five seconds (at 3:01, 3:07 and 3:12). Therefore, Bitches Brew not only became a controversial classic of musical innovation, it also became renowned for its pioneering use of studio technology." [3] (http://www.audiomedia.com/archive/features/uk-0599/uk-0599-brew/uk-0599-brew.htm)

This extensive editing was sometimes controversial in jazz circles as purists and detractors argued that jazz should be "spontaneous." But decades earlier trumpeter Louis Armstrong had quickly perceived the photographic nature of the audio recording, becoming the first musician to assemble a band solely for the purpose of recording it live in the studio. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitches_Brew#Post-production [Feb 2005]

Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of movies, video games, music, or other media.

In motion picture and television production, a sound effect is a sound recorded and presented to make a specific storytelling or creative point without the use of dialogue or music. The term often refers to a process applied to a recording, without necessarily referring to the recording itself. In professional motion picture and television production, the segregations between dialogue, music, and sound effects recordings are quite severe, and it is important to understand that in such contexts dialogue and music recordings are never referred to as sound effects, though the processes applied to them, such as reverberation or flanging, often are. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_effect [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 22; 10:35 ::: Haruki Murakami

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995) - Haruki Murakami [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Murakami Haruki is one of the most popular and controversial of today's Japanese authors. His genre-defying, humorous and fantastic works have sparked fierce debates in Japan over whether they are true "literature" or simple pop-fiction: Oe Kenzaburo has been one of his harshest critics. However, Western critics are nearly unanimous in assessing Murakami's works as having serious literary value. Some of his most well-known works include Norwegian Wood (1987) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_literature [Feb 2005]

Haruki Murakami, born January 12, 1949) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami [Feb 2004]

Murakami's fiction, which is often criticised for being "pop" literature by Japan's literary establishment, is humorous and surreal, and at the same time reflects an essential alienation, loneliness and longing for love in a way that has touched readers in the US and Europe, as well as in East Asia. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami [Feb 2004]

thanks to Mr. Seeldraeyers

2005, Feb 21; 21:18 ::: Multimedia

Multimedia is the use of several different media to convey information (text, audio, graphics, animation, video, and interactivity). Multimedia also refers to computer media. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 21; 20:55 ::: Technique index [...]

adaptation - collage - cut-up - edit - film edit - film technique - instrument - medium - mix - montage - painting - photomontage - remix - recording - sample - version - writing -

2005, Feb 21; 20:55 ::: My Nightingale Is Singing (1984) - Astrid Lindgren

My Nightingale Is Singing (1984) - Astrid Lindgren [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Astrid Lindgren (November 14, 1907 - January 28, 2002) was a Swedish children's book author, whose many titles were translated into over 70 languages and published in more than 100 countries.

Astrid Lindgren grew up in Smalandia in Sweden. Many of her books are based on her family and her childhood on a little farm. Pippi Longstocking, her most famous book, was originally invented for her bed-ridden daughter, Karin. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrid_Lindgren [Feb 2005]

Warning for puffy eyes!, April 18, 2003
Reviewer: Katarina Hjärpe (Lund, Sweden)
"My Nightingale is Singing" is a rare gem by Astrid Lindgren. Not one of her more famous books (even among her short stories, which never made it as big as her novels), it is nevertheless one of her most beautiful ones. When I feel like I need a good cry, this is a book that always does the trick.

Malin - Maria in the English translation - is a girl whose parents have died of tuberculosis, and she's forced to live in the poor house, where nothing is fun or beautiful. Malin can hardly stand it, until she hears the words: "My linden plays, my nightingale is singing..." --via Amazon.com

2005, Feb 20; 11:37 ::: Paul Laurenzi

Paul Laurenzi, image sourced from http://www.eroticartmuseum.de/gallerien/paullaurenzi/laurenzi_gallerie_2.html [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 20; 11:37 ::: Another friendly comment

screen shot

Think of the biggest pop culture nerd you know creating a Web site and you will have an idea of what jahsonic.com is about. Jahsonic has everything from a historical "gay timeline" beginning in the 1700s to a review of new CDs in categories such as "white music" and "Italo Disco." If you are in any sort of Cultural Anthropology class, or into "Disco Hedonism," this is your site. Check out the blog for weekly favorites. --http://www.jupiterindex.com/_issue/sites.html [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 20; 09:35 ::: Thanks for the link, Nova!

L’histoire moderne de la musique (soul, disco, house, reggae, jazz, funk, dub, rap and hip hop, garage, techno…), mais aussi celles d’autres segments de la culture comme le cinéma, l’art, le design, les mœurs, etc. Un site de ouf plein de ressources, mais en anglais ! -- http://www.novaplanet.com/cyber-hardcore/liens-fondamentaux,12,d,2,musique-actu.html [Feb 2005]

See also: Radio Nova

2005, Feb 19; 23:42 ::: An index of horror [...]

Saturn Devouring His Son (1819)

Media: horror film - horror fiction

Genres: bio horror - body horror - erotic horror - exploitation - fantastic - freaks of nature - gore - gothic - magic - monster - psychological horror - slasher - snuff film - vampire - video nasty - werewolf - zombie

Connotations: bizarre - blood - controversial - cruelty - dark - demon - devil - disgusting - disturbing - evil - fantasy - fear - grotesque - inquisition - midnight - night - offensive - pain - phobia - prison - repugnance - shocking - sadism - sick - strange - supernatural - surreal - terror - torture - ugly - violence - visceral

By region: American Horror - European horror - Japanese horror

2005, Feb 19; 22:26 ::: Day and night themes

day - night

2005, Feb 19; 20:45 ::: Galeries St. Hubert (1846), Brussels

Galeries St. Hubert (1846), Brussels

In 1846 King Leopold I laid the first stone for the construction of the royal galleries Saint-Hubert in Brussels, designed by architect J. P. Cluysenaer as an enclosed shopping environment with a glass and metal roof. Although other enclosed galleries had been built in Europe, St. Hubert would be the oldest covered gallery to survive to the present day. --http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/soc/shoppingcenter2.html [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 19; 20:18 ::: Juxtaposition

Generally, juxtaposition, or contrasting is an act or instance of placing two things close together or side by side, in order to show unlikeness or differences, to note the opposite qualities of the two, etc.

In music it is an abrupt change of elements.

In film the position of shots next to one another is intended to create meaning within the audiences mind.

In literature it occurs when two images that are otherwise not commonly brought together appear side by side or structural close together - thereby creating the reader to stop and reconsider the meaning of the text through the contrasting images/ideas/motifs.

Modernist poetry played extensivley with juxtaposing images, inserting unrelated fragments together in order to create wonder and interest in readers. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juxtaposition [Feb 2004]

Walter Benjamin, writing in the 1920's and 30's, used the Paris Arcades, as the focal point of a study of 19th century Paris. He constructed The Arcades Project by mixing many citations of other authors with his own comments, generating understanding as much by the content of a particular bit as its juxtaposition with other texts. For example, advertising copy might appear right before a citation from Frederick Engels. The quotes functioned as a bit of newspaper collaged onto a painting to provide concrete evidence from the past. Benjamin used montage and fragmentation as a new way to understand and write history.

-- e-Arcades by Robin Michals via http://molodiez.org/dms420/samples.htm [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 19; 18:01 ::: Walter Benjamin on Céline

There is a remark by Benjamin on Céline in the Arcades Project (p. 300) –‘Gauloiserie in Baudelaire: “To organise a grand conspiracy for the extermination of the Jewish race./ The Jews who are librarians and bear witness to the Redemption”… Céline has continued along these lines. (cheerful assassins!)’

In a letter to Max Horkheimer on April 16, 1938, Benjamin wrote, ‘You may have seen Gide’s dispute with Céline… “If one were forced to see in Bagatelles pour un massacre anything other than a game, it would be impossible to excuse Céline, in spite of all his genius, for stirring up banal passions with such cynicism and frivolous impertinence”… The word banal speaks for itself. As you will recall, I was also struck by Céline’s lack of seriousness. Gide, being the moralist he is, otherwise pays heed only to the book’s intent and not to its consequences. Or, being the Satanist he also is, has he no objections to them?’ (Correspondence, p. 558)

Benjamin describes Céline as a popular novelist (Roman populiste). This form ‘represents not so much an advance for the proletarian novel as a retreat on the part of bourgeois aesthetics… It is no accident that … Journey To The End Of The Night … is concerned with the Lumpenproletariat. Like the Lumpenproletariat, Céline, in his description of it, is quite unable to make visible this defect in his subject. Hence, the monotony in which the plot is veiled is fundamentally ambiguous. He succeeds in vividly portraying the sadness and sterility of a life … But he is quite incapable of showing us the forces that have shaped the lives of these outcasts. Even less is he able to convey how these people might begin to react against these forces. This is why nothing can be more treacherous than the judgment on Céline’s book delivered by Dabit, who is himself a respected representative of the genre. “We are confronted here with a work in which revolt does not proceed from aesthetic or symbolic discussions, and in which what is at issue is not art, culture, or God, but a cry of rage against the conditions of life that human beings can impose on a majority of other human beings.” Bardamu – this is the name of the hero of the novel – “is made of the same stuff as the masses. He is made from their cowardice, their panic-stricken horror, their desires, and their outbursts of violence.” So far so good were it not for the fact that the essence of revolutionary training and experience is to recognise the class structure of the masses and to exploit it.’ (Benjamin Selected Writings, 2, p. 752.) --http://sauer-thompson.com/conversations/archives/001543.html [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 18; 19:14 ::: Arcades Project (1927 - 1940) - Walter Benjamin

The Arcades Project (1927 - 1940) - Walter Benjamin [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

'World exhibitions were places of pilgrimage to the fetish commodity'. --Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project

If the commodity was a fetish, then Grandville was the tribal sorcerer. --Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project (1927 - 1940)

The files comprised a vast array of interlinked scraps. When Benjamin fled Paris he gave over his collected notes of the Arcades Project to Georges Bataille, librarian at the National Library in Paris. He hid them well. He might have hoped to return one day to complete his researches. But completion was itself an issue. Gretel Adorno once joked that Benjamin inhabited the ‘cavelike depths’ of the Arcades Project and did not want to complete it ‘because you feared having to leave what you built’. --Esther Leslie via http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/yarcades.html [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 18; 16:25 ::: Commonplace

Commonplace: a historical precedent for the weblog

During the Renaissance (especially in England), commonplaces (or commonplace books) were for some people a popular way to compile knowledge, usually done by writing information into books. During the height of their prolificacy, commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and humanists as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned.

Producing a commonplace is frequently known as commonplacing. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace [Feb 2005]

2005, Feb 18; 16:21 ::: Genre [...]

Keywords: content - convention - form - format - media - motif - mood - originality - setting - style - subject - theme - topic

Media: film genre - literary genre - music genre

Mood: comedy - horror

Setting: science fiction - western

2005, Feb 18; 13:42 ::: Buttocks [...]

Hot Cheeks (2004) Martin Sigrist [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Exposed - Trevor Watson (Photographer), Tony Mitchell [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Blog (continued) [...]

Blogs I Frequent

  • http://www.sauer-thompson.com/conversations/ Philosophical conversations between two Australians Trevor and Gary, covering a wide range of philosophical topics.
  • http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~aabb/plus9.html A daily, art-related, weblog from Osaka, Japan.
  • http://www.mixoftheweek.com Pre-recorded, weekly mixes of soul, house, techno, dub and other groovy sounds. Consistent high quality.
  • http://www.novaplanet.com/radiolive/novalive.asp radio-station, broadcasting from Paris

    your Amazon recommendations - Jahsonic - early adopter products