TEXAS - GLEAMING GRAY SOUND ON LOCK

 Sorry to dwell on a band's name, but Silver Shampoo? I didn't really get it, so I googled it and it turns out it's the name for a shampoo for people with gray hair, which makes sense. I guess it turns you into a silver fox, like Clooney or Gere. It's the opposite of those evil ads where the precocious, disrespectful children convince the withering widower to clasp life to his chest once more, dye his hair, and go on a date with that hot widow who teaches at their school. Silver Shampoo encourages people to embrace their silvery locks and the beauty of age. So much more posi.

NEW YORK - COOGI IS ALIVE!

On a recent trip to visit Philly friends, I felt a stomach pang of immediate stress urging me to hit up this one thrift spot they had taken me to before. I demanded to be hastened there and all of our catching up and chatting would have to wait until I found my enchanted vestments. I felt a hot spasm inside my soul that a glorious treasure was waiting for me at the thrift, and if we didn't get there immediately, I was going to have a violent blood puke seizure!

LOS ANGELES - DESTROYING THE FABRIC OF SOCIETY WITH FILM

When I was scanning the shelves in the video store two summers ago I was shocked to see that Transformers had made it to DVD so fast. It had come out in theaters like two days before, yet there it... ohhhh, shit. That's not Transformers. That's Transmorphers. Months passed, and more kept popping up. The Da Vinci Treasure. The Day The Earth Stopped. Snakes on a Train. The Terminators. AVH: Alien vs. Hunter. Sunday School Musical. Every big-ticket movie that comes out gets scooped by some fuckers who rush out a straight-to-DVD Weird Al version first.

LONDON - TOUCHING PLANES FOR CHANGE

At a thrash metal gig in Kilburn I was introduced to Deborah Grayson and Tamsin Omond, two of the founders of Climate Rush, a gang of ecological activists who spend most of their time invading parliament and super-glueing themselves to things. We talked about the run up to the Copenhagen climate talks this December and how everyone ought to be out protesting like mad, demanding our leaders grow some green balls and actually do something meaningful about climate change. They invited me to spend September walking with a horse and cart across the southwest of England, organizing protests and doing activist stuff along the way. I thought, Why not?

BERLIN – CELL PHONE BARGAINS

No matter how drunk you are, there are things you simply should never do in Berlin. One of them is falling asleep on the last circle train during a weeknight with your cell phone in your hands. When this happened to me last week, two guys stole my phone, only to return it five minutes later. I was standing in front of them at a deserted station platform: confused, disoriented, and waiting to be ripped of my wallet too, but no.

LOS ANGELES - THE PROCESS OF THE PROCESS

Throughout the 40-minute ceremony at the Silent Movie Theater recreating a mass by the Process Church of the Final Judgment, people wearing dark robes (of course!) and carrying lit candles (no doubt!) spend time extolling the virtues of both Christ and Satan (“May the water give me life, Jesus Christ; Purify me with fire, Satan”) when they’re not singing Jefferson Airplane-like songs played by a four-piece band of hippies. 

NEW YORK - LOOK WHO STOPPED BY

Visiting NYC sometimes seems like more fun than living here. Like when photographer Jaimie Warren and designer Ari Fish and rapper Casey Guest just drop by the office with tales of how they met up recently in Berlin with their housemate Peggy Noland (all four of these girls live together—what a fucking insane dollhouse that must be) and they broke into spy stations and dilapidated geodesic domes. And how tonight Ari has to go to some Marie Claire red carpet event and watch that Project Runway thing she was immediately kicked off of (more on that coming soon) with that crazy hag Nina Garcia and a bunch of people would be watching her watch. Meanwhile, Jaimie will be at the New Museum for that party celebrating the release of Shoot we already told you about, to which she’s contributed. We asked Jaimie more about what she’s been up to.

MEET THE NIERATKOS - NEVER FORGET

Are we friends? I like to think so. And it is because we are friends I must come clean. I have been perpetrating a lie for the past nine months. 

FILM ISSUE EXTRA - THE VOICE BEHIND THE MYSTICAL TALKING FOX

I'll never understand film critics. How they can go on and on about some movie for like a million words and still manage to miss the main point of the film. Take Antichrist, for example: OK, yeah, it's pretty at the beginning, and then it's boring, and then Charlotte Gainsbourg snips off her clitoris. But the best bit, the truly great moment in this film, the bit that elevates Lars Von Trier in my eyes to where he already thinks he is, is the motherfucking talking fox. To use an adjective that isn't really an adjective but should be, it's totally Viking.

GORI DE PALMA KNOWS HOW TO PARTY AND MAKE CLOTHES (TO PARTY IN)

We were biting our nails about meeting Gori de Palma, as our Spanish was limited to “no habla espanol.” So, in order to get comfy around each other, we met him up the night before for dinner and beers and communicated with sign language and silly gestures. At 1AM, as we were preparing for a good nights sleep, Gori suggested we’d go to another bar and, eager to please him, we agreed.