WE ARE INDEPENDENTLY WEALTHY

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:06:00 +0000

WE'VE MOVED TO

TOUCHTOUCHPUBLISHING.COM

PLEASE UPDATE YOUR LINKS.

MEET YOU THERE.

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:04:00 +0000

IMPORTANT ARTIFACTS AND PERSONAL PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF LENORE DOOLAN AND HAROLD MORRIS, INCLUDING BOOKS, STREET FASHION AND JEWELRY

a love story told through an auction catalog. finished this today and thought it was beautiful.

ARTIST WEBSITE: http://leanneshapton.com/

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:15:00 +0000

Sarah Manguso is a writer. She has published two books of poetry, The Captain Lands in Paradise (2002) and Siste Viator (2006), a collection of short stories, Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape (2007), and a memoir, The Two Kinds of Decay (2008). She currently teaches creative writing at Columbia University. Her work is elegant, her style uncommon. Sarah Manguso kindly answered a few of our questions, reproduced below. Conducted September 2009.

JSE: The Two Kinds of Decay documents your struggle with a rare disease; it also deals very beautifully with the concept of time and your relationship to it. Your illness stretched over almost the entirety of your twenties. Are the decade distinctions people tend to make between the "twenties" and "thirties" meaningful to you? Can you make generalizations about your twenties (or "the twenties") now?

SM: I do find that one’s twenties involve making many judgment errors and one’s thirties involve making fewer of them and ruling out certain possibilities. Ruling out possibilities has been the great relief of my thirties. Arthur Schlesinger wrote in his old age: “Why should I waste my declining years going into churches? I will simplify life by abandoning the inspection of churches, as in earlier years I have abandoned ballet, metaphysics, linguistics….”

JSE: You currently divide your time between teaching and writing. As of right now: what constitutes a productive day? Where do you spend your time?

SM: While writing TTKOD I assigned myself to write a K a day, a thousand words a day, but that hasn’t been a useful strategy for the book I’m working on now. My days and seasons aren’t consistent enough to determine a productivity baseline; I set daily, seasonal, and long-term goals, and reprioritize them continually; I like to be organized.

JSE: What is your reading-to-writing ratio? Do you believe in a prescriptive ratio for your students?

SM: I read all the time, in the interstitial moments, and write books during the summer. All year, though, every few days or so, I write some smaller thing, like this, for example, that helps me think more clearly and contributes to the larger projects of my writing and my trying to be a kinder and more useful person.

JSE: Finally, your writing, your relationship to memory, has lately reminded me of a line from Chris Marker's film Sans Soleil: I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining. We do not remember; we rewrite memory much as history is rewritten. How can one remember thirst? I love these lines, but their exact meaning has always eluded me. This might be an unfair question, but do these lines mean anything to you?

SM: I think he’s lamenting the essential impossibility of remembering sensations; one cannot really remember everything about a kiss. It’s coincidental that one day after high school track practice, drinking from an outdoor water fountain, I thought I would try to remember how thirsty I had been the moment before, and I gave my thirst the code word unquenchable. (I know, not very inventive.) I said it to myself, in my head, in a certain whisper, with a slight break between the first two syllables. Now when I think of the word the way I said it to myself twenty years ago, I remember that almost incredible thirst and the fact that I was thirsty enough that I thought I should remember it for posterity. And I did, but not really; the memory of the condition of thirst remains, but the sensation of that thirst is gone.

ARTIST WEBSITE: http://www.sarahmanguso.com/

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:13:00 +0000

AN OPEN RANT TO THE INTERNET:

Visit BROWSERSHOTS. See how your site looks in Internet Explorer. Tear your hair out.

I realize we use a public platform (Blogger) for this site; we balance its ease-of-use with the attendant limitations. We aren't web designers, but we care. To see your site look so nice and clean on your computer, only to know that the majority of visitors are seeing some hideous, fuzzy version of the same site, is unbelievably frustrating. The browser you use has a great deal to do with it. Internet Explorer remains the most popular browser in use. Internet Explorer is obsolete. There are better options.

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:56:00 +0000

I often regret having come into this petty world; not that I hate the world. No, I love the world, I love high society and even the demimonde, since I'm a sort of demimondaine myself. But what have I come to do on this Earth, which is so earthly and so earthy? Do I have duties to perform here? Have I come here to carry out a mission--a commission? Have I been sent here to amuse myself? to enjoy myself a little? To forget the miseries of a beyond, which I no longer remember? Am I not unwelcome here? What should I say to all these questions? Thinking, almost from the moment of my arrival, that I was doing some good down here, I began to play a few musical airs which I myself had invented. All my troubles stemmed from there.

noreply@blogger.com (tapecase | r s e) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:25:00 +0000

details of an exciting new piece by the great rafaël rozendaal

hybrid moment

for more of rafaël's work here is his new blog

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:42:00 +0000

THE FALLEN IDOL, dir. CAROL REED, 1948

VISIT WWW.FILMORGY.BLOGSPOT.COM

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:28:00 +0000

VIDEO OF THE WEEK Warehouse Tour of PriveCo, The World's Most Private Company**
It takes a top secret badge to get through this door.
That way you won't have to ask any embarrassing questions, and you can shop in private.
I handle customer service inquiries in the most private manner possible.
If you have to leave a voicemail, I'll send you an email, because it's the most private way.
That way, if anything "not so private" were to happen, you'll be covered.
Pretty private, huh?
I run the show out here, and I can tell you that gossip is not allowed.
If you wanna work here, you better learn to keep your mouth shut.
That's what I do to keep things private.
Our packages are shipped in discreet shipping boxes.
Return address discreetly says "From Your Friends at PriveCo."
Here's a PriveCo invention: it's called "Double Layer Privacy."
For a small fee, we ship your entire order in this black plastic, then ship it in a plain package.
It's like privacy insurance, in case someone wants to get nosy.
Here at PriveCo, we use extra-strong, tamper-proof tape.
You may need a knife to open it, but at least you'll be sure that no one has peeked into your box and that your personal information was kept safe.
I think you know what PriveCo is all about.

** http://www.shopinprivate.com/

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:54:00 +0000

John Porcellino is an artist and writer. He has produced zines, minicomics and graphic novels for twenty-five years; he is best known as the creator of King-Cat, a series of comics and stories he has published himself since 1989. Collections of John Porcellino's work include: Perfect Example (2005), Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man (2005), King-Cat Classix (2007), and Thoreau at Walden (2008). His work is simple, beautiful and honest. We are excited to reproduce our Q&A with John Porcellino below. Conducted September 2009.

JSE: First of all, congratulations on twenty years of King-Cat! You're about to go on tour to promote Map of my Heart, a new collection of King-Cat comics from 1996 to 2001. Are you feeling reflective upon reaching this milestone?

JP: Thanks... usually these kinds of anniversaries are just another day to me, but this one seemed a little bigger-- it's half my life. And I feel like I'm just getting going.

JSE: Your comics have this rare quality of evoking so much with so little--the lines are beautifully simple, the writing is concise. How would you describe your editing process? How do you decide, for example, what to include in drawing a place, and what to leave out?

JP: I don't really think about it too much, consciously. It's usually a matter of finding what feels right for the purpose the drawing holds, and that's kind of hard to explain. It's like groping in the dark sometimes. You work and work, and yet there's something not right. Finally you fall into the right place and the drawing is complete. In my writing, there's a lot of editing. I edit a lot out. I've had to learn to not be afraid to pull back.

JSE: Your work is so intimate; you're candid about even your most difficult experiences. Has doing this gotten any easier? Are there things you wouldn't talk about now that you might have in earlier days, or vice versa?

JP: Well, there's probably a lot of life experience I don't approach in my comics. I'm conscious of the fact that writing autobiographical stories means writing about other people in a way that readers sometimes view as "the Truth." So I'm careful about what I say about people, and how I say it. Some things are more private, and that's OK.

There are plenty of things I used to write about that I would feel awkward putting down on paper now-- putting the King-Cat Classix book together was real interesting. I couldn't really believe how unrestrained I was in the early days. At the same time, there are things I can write about now that I just didn't have the life experience to comfortably approach earlier... so that has changed too.

JSE: One thing I love about you as an artist is how openly you cite your influences, the things you love. For example, you regularly compose "Top-40" lists of things that are inspiring you at the moment. What led you to start making the lists?

JP: I think at some point I just realized-- this world is pretty awesome, so why not celebrate those things about it? Sometimes people are reluctant to let on that they really love something. I wanted to stand up for the other side of that feeling.

JSE: It seems that movies and comics might share something in common; there are some great films in the list of favorites on your site. Do you ever think about film in the composition of your drawing?

JP: Very occasionally I think in filmic terms. Maybe a few times here and there in my comics that was a conscious approach. Mostly I just think of comics as comics. But I've definitely been influenced by some films in terms of storytelling-- things like Fellini, the Italian Neo-Realists.

JSE: You started making and distributing your work in the pre-internet days. How has the internet changed things for you? Are you susceptible to the internet yourself?

JP: Yeah, it's changed a lot. The ability to get the word out about things, and connect with people worldwide is so much easier now. I actually do love things like Facebook, YouTube. As a person who's very curious, I think it's pretty amazing to be able to gain access to so much so easily. That said, I like paper... zines, ink, books. The internet is great for a lot of things, but for me it will never replace something you hold.

JSE: Have you ever been approached about animating King-Cat? How do you feel about animation in general?

JP: No, never really thought about animating King-Cat too much. Not that I'm opposed to it, it just never really came into my mind. But I do like animation. I remember when the remastered Popeye DVDs came out a few years ago-- that was like a dream come true to me.

JSE: Last year you released Thoreau at Walden, an impression of Thoreau's time at Walden Pond pairing your illustrations and Thoreau's writings. How was the experience of working from his words? Are there other adaptations or collaborative projects you'd like to work on in the future?

JP: Speaking of dreams come true, Thoreau at Walden really was like that for me. That man is one of my biggest heroes, and influences-- as an artist, a thinker, a curious, expressive human being. Thoreau is one of very few things I've encountered in my life that seem so RIGHT to me personally... to be able to work with his words and create something like that was a real honor. If Thoreau at Walden ever led a reader to explore his works directly, that would be a big accomplishment for me.

As for other adaptations-- the only similar thing I have considered is a comics biography of the Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa. That's a project I'd really like to tackle someday.

JSE: Your work has now been published by larger companies, but you still produce individual issues of King-Cat yourself, just as you did twenty years ago. It's an inspiration! Any words of advice for artists who are trying to make it on their own?

JP: The advice I always give people is 1) do something because you love it-- because that might be your only payoff; 2) don't excessively compare yourself to others-- that's a game you'll never win; and 3) be patient.

JSE: Finally, your cats have always made their way into your work, which, as a cat lover, I've always appreciated. May I ask how Liz and Charlie are doing?

JP: They're doing good. It took them (Liz) awhile to get used to each other (Charlie is a total bumbling lover), but now they sleep together, give each other baths, and chase each other around the house like stampeding cattle. So they're doing good!

ARTIST WEBSITE: http://king-cat.net/

**THIS IS THE FIRST IN A NEW SERIES OF TOUCH TOUCH INTERVIEWS**

noreply@blogger.com (tapecase | r s e) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:15:00 +0000

"later that day" new video by r s e

see more videos here

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:41:00 +0000

POEM I ASSEMBLED FROM A PERFUME COMMERCIAL.

noreply@blogger.com (tapecase | r s e) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:55:00 +0000

we are very fortunate to be able to see a new print of woody's "manhattan" tonight at the samuel goldwyn theater.

the film is being screened as a part of the "film formats through the 21st century" series which discusses the much confused subject of film aspect ratio.

"manhattan" was one of the first films on home video to be shown exclusively in letterbox. it was never released in the once popular pan & scan format. woody allen wanted to preserve gordon willis's compositions and insisted that the aspect ratio be preserved when the film was released on video. indeed it is one of the finest examples of frame composition.

update: this has to be one of the most enjoyable cinematic experiences of my life!
i have seen this film many times (this and crimes & misdemeanors rank as my favorite woody allen movies) but i have never seen a more beautiful print.

the theater is one of the greatest, one of the reasons for living in los angeles! there were over 1000 seats and it was nearly filled and yet still so intimate and personal! the screen was immaculate the sound was revelatory (gershwin & james sabat!).

my eyes filled with tears several points in the film, after the opening sequence with gershwin's "rhapsody in blue", mariel hemingway's tears, and woody's expression in the final shot. it's an expression of knowledge and arrival. we are here, this is where we are now.

how wonderful to experience this in such a glorious fashion. oh, we are independently wealthy.

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:39:00 +0000

A GREAT EVENING (WITH SAM FULLER) AT NEW BEVERLY

noreply@blogger.com (tapecase | r s e) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:41:00 +0000

"silent" mimiyo tomozawa

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:23:00 +0000

1. ANNA AKHMATOVA BY MODIGLIANI
2. ANNA AKHMATOVA

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:13:00 +0000

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD, LOS ANGELES, 1949

noreply@blogger.com (tapecase | r s e) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:03:00 +0000

outrageous and deadly weather here. it's hot as hell in our apartment - well over 100 degrees -
but its not as hot as it must be in la canada flintridge, a few minutes away, just above pasadena.
the smoke plumes are so high in the sky that all of los angeles can see it. saturday i thought that hollywood was on fire because the smoke clouds seemed so near.
these videos were made by dan finnerty of pasadena. he is making time lapse movies of the pyrocumulus (!) clouds above the station fires. they are beautiful and a little frightening at the same time.

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 06:47:00 +0000

FRIDAY NIGHT FILM FEST: R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S

1. LA NAVE DE LOS MONSTRUOS, dir. ROGELIO A. GONZALEZ, 1960
2. BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, dir. RUSS MEYER, 1970

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:11:00 +0000

WORLD CINEMA (2007)
a sweet short from the coen brothers.

noreply@blogger.com (tapecase | r s e) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:56:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:25:00 +0000

MODELS, dir. ULRICH SEIDL, 1999

noreply@blogger.com (tapecase | r s e) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:30:00 +0000

new video by r s e

- you can see other touch touch videos that you may not have seen before
by visiting our other fine video outlets:

youtube

vimeo

tapecase

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:13:00 +0000

JOKES FROM UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE'S STUDY OF THE WORLD'S BEST JOKES
IMAGES FOUND AT RANDOM ON GOOGLE IMAGES

noreply@blogger.com (juliet small ernst) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:04:00 +0000

JOHN WATERS DISCUSSES MANSON FAMILY'S LESLIE VAN HAUTEN ON FRESH AIR

noreply@blogger.com (tapecase | r s e) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:20:00 +0000

j s e in early evening light