Trouble likes to present itself on Tuesdays, and Ron is always to the rescue like a superhero-cum-debt-negotiator-for-a-magazine come to life. He is all the courage a fretful teen needs to tell his dad he’s sorry for smoking marijuana. And that’s exactly what our problem is today. Keep reading for the resolution to this age-old dilemma.
Japanese office culture is strange. People in business together don't talk, ever, except for a couple times a year when they spend five obligatory days getting absolutely smashed and passing out all over the city because it's expected of them. Afterward, they revert to how things were and don't discuss what happened. In the middle of this wave of festivities, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning headed into Shinjuku, land o' plenty when it comes to hostess bars, love hotels, and nightclubs... and right now drunken salarymen napping in the street with homeless people. If it weren't for the sort of clean clothes I probably couldn't tell them apart. Let's play a game called Holiday or Homeless!
When Vice told me that some fancy spy store sent them a new tiny hidden camera that screwed into a shirt button and they (the magazine, not the store) wanted me to use it to spy on people, I gave them an unflinching yes. I think I was imagining I was about to get involved in some James Bond-type shit. But then I found out that I was just supposed to go to the park and talk to people and invade their space. I wasn't disappointed though--I'm a lot better at being creepy than I am at espionage.
Immortal bassist Apollyon took time out from organizing festivals (sorry to mention Aura Noir again), touring, teaching kids music, and playing in six or seven different bands (he's lost count) to come to London and meet me for an interview. Here's some of what we talked about over a few beers (and a lot of Pantera) in The Hobgoblin in Camden last week. By the way, did you know that he played bass for Gorgoroth at the now infamous Krakow show? Well, now you do.
As 1989 moves back into journalists’ crosshairs and we’re treated to one more round of documentaries on the roots of British club culture – as the familiar who’s who zoo of Mike Pickering, Carl Cox, Danny Rampling, The Hartnolls, Mr C, Tony Coulston-Hayter, and so on all traipse across our screens to tell us again how “mental” it was at Shoom – James Palumbo, founder of Ministry of Sound, is one key figure of the period who won’t be grinning a mouthful of ground-down molars back at the world. In fact, you won’t see him at all.
Anna Biller makes movies about sex and sexy women who are smart, which is a super weird coincidence because she's exactly the same way. Take, for example, VIVA, essentially an ode to the swinging 70s that encapsulates all the best bits of Playboy, Russ Meyer and John Waters films, and lonely-heart love letters written by housewives in need of satisfaction. It was directed, written, produced, and edited by one Miss Anna Biller, and it was her first film. She also stars in the movie, which is lucky because she's awesome.
Tonight and tomorrow at Santos the O.T.O.'s throwing a festival of experimental musicks by practicing magickians, the first one of its kind. No one on the bill is a member of the O.T.O. though, so this isn't some kind of recruiting gimmick--you really think they'd do that? No, it was put together in a more general way to explore the impact of Thelemic culture on music and art, and maybe to make sure no one mispronounces Crowley's name again, thanks to Ozzy Osbourne. Tonight's performers at the Musicka Mystica Maxima (check out the site--it's just as cryptic and bare-bones as you'd think it would be) are Genesis P-Orridge & Thee Majesty, Amber Asylum, Arrington de Dionyso, Larkin Grimm, and Nautical Almanac.
Between each set there'll also be live ritual action performances including an invocation from Crowley's Gnostic Mass and Crowley's "Hymn To Pan," which is totally worth going to alone, especially if you're into veils and swords and salt.
Volker Gerling journeys from town to town, carrying a hawker’s tray full of flipbooks, reviving the tradition of hobo craftsman in his own way. A film academy graduate turned self-proclaimed flip-bibliopegist, he entertains people with a one-man motion-picture theater. Remember that photography was a gateway drug into motion pictures--and when you take it back to flipbooks, time can actually flow through your fingers, he says, and he’s fascinated with the gaps.
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.
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!
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