unbreak

I'm contracted with BT until July 15th, and the early disconnection charges total about £200. So carry on as normal, just in an increasingly poisonous atmosphere.

break

Owing to a dispute with my flat-mate over the BT bill, the internet will have to be disconnected tomorrow. Subsequent blog postings will be, until July at least, necessarily less frequent. I beg your patience and understanding during this time, while I do my best to find alternative ways of keeping in touch.

LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET

Listing for Thursday's Cine Salon:

A weekly display of hidden or neglected facets of the magic lantern. The finest wines and cheeses shall be served.
Don't miss!

3 Springfield, Dundee.
Thursday 1st May, 9pm

COMING SOON!

LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET
(1977, Dir. Roger Michael Watkins)

Wikipedia.org:
Last House on Dead End Street is a 1977 horror film about a disgruntled man, recently released from prison, who takes out his anguish by making snuff films.
Few knew who actually directed the film, until Roger Watkins, who died in March 2007, posted on Internet message boards three decades after it was made saying he was behind it. The film was made in 1973, but wasn't released until four years later.
Watkins has said he was high on amphetamines while making the film. He also said only about $800 was spent making the film, while the remaining $3,000 budgeted was used to buy drugs. The film was virtually unavailable until Barrel Entertainment released a double-disc DVD in 2002. In the 1970s its release was limited to grindhouse and drive-in theatres.

IMDB.com comments:
This is a genuine cinematic curiosity and I think that any self-respecting horror fan would be missing out by not checking it. It is truly an original, one-off work. Sure, it is ragged around the edges but that is part of what makes it so gritty and atmospheric. The movie has an almost numbing and ethereal quality and really works. Extremely disturbing and definitely recommended.

QUIT PLAYIN' GAMES WITH MY HEART

While having a tidy round my room over the weekend I happened upon a couple of back issues of Yuck 'n Yum magazine. The online archive isn't yet on the go, so I've transcribed my 2006 review of Val Norris at the Collective gallery. I sorted out some of the grammar and punctuation and it bears up very well in my view. I urge you to check out some examples of her work.



"Quit Playin' Games With My Heart"
Val Norris at the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh

We're in love, you and I. The first time that I tell you "I love you", I have told you my first lie. I believe I love you and I want you to say that you love me. This serves to give me reassurance and I will feel the agony of my isolation a little less.

We are two little birds perched on an eternal branch in a daffodil idyll, basking in each other's ideas of enchantment and joy. Pink blossoms break out in scrawls of hysteria all around us and I tell myself that this must last forever. I feed the pony you sit astride as a butterfly flutters in your palm. As I play you my Michael Jackson records the King of Pop will sing of our feelings in a primal squeal that transcends his damaged features.

Sometimes you get cross and the sky turns to blood and shattered glass. A cartoon puppy on a sticker gets banished to the doghouse as you cry “YOU BREAK MY NERVES” and I cower in fear and shame. At moments like these I forget our animal bodies, our swollen heads and our big doe eyes. I know the uneasiness that has long been lurking at the back of my mind should never have been dismissed so lightly. I thought back then that you had too many cuddly toys in your bedroom.

On the floor sits an ersatz wooden table with a frill doilly on top. The doilly is home to four toy birds who face each other across the chintzy fabric. A clear Perspex cube provides some respite from an overload of ornamentation, though I know this is as minimal as you ever get. I recall a film about a fighter pilot that was on one Christmas, which someone told me about. I never saw it. A shame, because at least then we could make some small talk. This sculpture has suffered having a plastic flower draped across its face, the stem being painted glittery gold. A kitschy painting of ballerinas completes the tableau. Elsewhere deer gambol and heavily made-up women smoulder in paintings propped up against the wall like so many uneasy wallflowers at the high-school disco. I feel my clothes are dowdy dull when I see the GSA kids with all their nu-German Expressionist panache outside, but the music’s too loud anyhow, and I get the nauseous feeling of exclusion from a party where no-one wanted to stand in the kitchen.

Role-playing notes on camp girly. It’s only as girly as the pink Fraggle Rock T-shirt worn by the girl who spends her weekday evenings drinking Polish polish at a bus stop in Hexham. That girlishness can be worn as lightly as the flower with the glittery stem that rests atop the frame of a woodland scene. That girlishness could seem heavy-handed were it not so viscerally funny and the tone of voice not so disarmingly innocent. That fluttering of eyelashes can seem so beguiling when you’re dazzled by the glitter of cheap jewellery and inhaling the scent of fake flowers. Any girl this full of Babycham is anybody’s anyway. The paper the line is drawn across is scored out and smeared in an outburst of volatile feelings that I’m wary of trying to read. The pattern of the fabric has been carefully rendered with an emotional investment far greater than the toy birds ever asked for. It looks like a yearning for simple pleasures.

Your expressions of devotion seem to want to hide in a corner of the room or sink to the floor. When the little bird sits solitary on her branch the brown rabbit makes a gesture of holding his bleeding heart. It bleeds all over his leg and stains his fur with crimson crayon that is tough to clean. The violence that erupts come on in waves and bursts like weather, like nature, coming and going like the tides of the sea. It’s so romantic the way the scenery seems to reflect our thoughts and feelings, like animals and the weather, the blood and the lightning storms. When things are like this there is no happy medium like an overcast morning or a grey afternoon spent indoors playing cards or doing jigsaw puzzles. When it rains it pours. When it pours the lines get jagged and hastily scribbled down and I keep the kitchen knives where your eyes can’t see them.

I wonder for a moment, how much does the lonely reader of the Manga comic believe in the object of his affections? I bet it’s only as much as I project half-forgotten memories on you like those of a teddy bear or a former favourite cartoon character. Maybe it’s an indication of a confused identity, a scrambled mess of confused feelings that neither one of us can properly address. That’s not to say we can’t have a little fun with our masquerade, because I for one have always taken a great deal of pleasure in dressing up. We’re lucky, you and I, that we find such things fun and we don’t need to worry about our fondness for exaggeration and theatricality. Is this a kind of camp? I suppose it must be, but then you’d deny it and I’m definitely not gay.

Revelling in the decorative like we do is an engaging way of whiling away a sunny day. Don’t you know not to work with children and animals? Their behaviour can be so bi-polar. Oh well never mind, and we find we’re alone. Yours truly

Ben Robinson

response

Out at the pub tonight for a raffle organized by Generator Projects, the local gallery. In attendance was the very beautiful and talented artist Katie Orton. Although my review of her show was rejected by The List magazine (apparently it reads too much like a press release, or something) she loved it and uses parts of of it when writing her artist's statement. Nice to know, the sort of thing that gives you a little warm glow inside your heart.

domestic

Had a pair of friends round last night for a meal. Wonderful food and company, only let down by a crowd of braying morons in the front room that my two-faced weasel of a housemate had invited round for the second week running. And she's still not paid the BT bill, so I may have to suspend this blog for a while until July, when I move in with some grown-ups.

Living with students can be a trial and I'll post next week whether this dispute can be resolved.

correspondence

Today I made up a joke, and sent it via email to the letters page at Viz magazine. Admittedly it is in rather poor taste even by their standards.

I was heartened to see John Prescott bravely admitting to his problem with bulimia. He'd forgotten to be sick, the silly fat cunt.

B Acrylic