Frankenstein vs. the World

Sat., 7/31

Magdelena Zurawski
Joey Yearous-Algozin
Holly Melgard
Robert Dewhurst

2 p.m., SW corner of 6th & Market
(the milkweed sculpture-fountain next to the Dow Chemical building)
hosted by CAConrad / Transgressors
Philadelphia

Tags: holly melgard, joey yearous-algozin, magdelena zurawski.

( . . . wonderful picture, via Ariana Reines . . . )

Tags: chris kraus.

Tags: mama cass elliot.

I love Dottie’s guided tour through the Stevie Nicks archive on YouTube. As always Dottie’s effortless insight and ability to cut right to the (wild) heart of things is startling and impeccable. My favorite parts are where she talks about the video above, where she compares Stevie’s voice to both Chanel No. 5 & a family of crocodiles, and where she talks about Stevie being OK being stupid in an interview on CBS. I think it’s an important thing, to be OK being stupid (don’t I know it).

Watch this short clip in which Nicks supposedly talks about her songwriting.  It’s hilarious how she suffers the stupidity of Rita Braver in that interview, who seems to have no clue about her music or even what to ask her, so she just lets her ramble on about her permed 80’s hair. I love how unafraid Stevie Nicks is to say nothing of substance at all. She does say something interesting though about her songwriting in the beginning—that she gets inspired a lot by everyday things and she’ll write a line down and start a poem (I think it’s cool how she thinks of her songs as poems). She seemed to indicate also that there are lots of lines that don’t become poems, that are just random lines floating in the ether. I respect this kind of quotidian freedom of hers to create beauty out of seemingly nothing at all.

Tags: dorothea lasky, stevie nicks.

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I marry you world, my stolen heart
dispersed into the fray of clothes
I’ll get back by wearing everything

– Alice Notley

Tags: alice notley.

My birthday is this week. My wish for my twenty-sixth year is to meet a girl who will look at me with “Natalie Merchant eyes” (see below). True love.

Tags: billy bragg, john prine, michael stipe, natalie merchant.

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“Backwoods” by Cub

Tags: lisa marr.

AMERICA THE LARGE

Matchbooks say Thank you in today’s America
Telephone operators tell you Have a nice day
Restaurant checks say Please come again
And so do the men
Color TV gets better reception here than over there
Criminals spend less time rotting in jail
Everybody has a lot of rights, even the poor
Although they are often too poor to notice
A lot of people’s homes are heated in winter
And even those without heat thank their lucky stars
They aren’t in England pushing luncheon vouchers
Across a greasy steam table in some cafeteria
Landlords are wonderful they never come around
Except to say Hi!
Artists can always get a grant from somewhere
Or someone at least will buy them a drink
Glamorous people invariably get into glamorous magazines
Malcontents find themselves humanely humored by a benevolent government
And nuclear submarines have no parking problems at any naval base.
The radiation level in America is way below the danger level
Established by impartial scientists.
And scientists can always get a grant too.
These are only a few things that are good about America.
There are many more.
Friendly, well trained police.
Expert murderers and rapists to keep them employed.
Nukes, and anti-nukes.
Matter, and anti-matter.
Bonnie and her corresponding Clyde.
Mamie and her ever-presidential Ike.
Rockwells, George Lincoln and Norman
J. Edgar, Herbert, and Buxte Hoover.
There is nothing mysterious about America.
Our only sphinxes adorn Mt. Rushmore like real men
And not some half-breed enigmas nobody ever heard of.
Patti Hearst Patti Page Patti Astor Patti Smith Patty Cake
This is a fantastic, Pat-Happy Nation.
A nation united by surrealism
All fifty states locked in multiple orgasm by a
Real amazing constitution.
Never coming to a climax except in police actions and military
Interventions.
One nation under God
Expunger of Nixon
Bomber of Hanoi
Executioner of the dreaded Rosenbergs, Ethel and Julius
Napalm rainfall for communist demon children
Assassin of Allende, Diem, Kennedy John, Mossadegh, Martin
Luthur King Jr. Malcolm X Kennedy Robert George Jackson
Flag-hoisting icon of Iwo Jima, Tripoli, Guyana
Two-fisted scourge of the enemies of freedom and the freedom of enemies
We salute you OH AMERICA
INVENTOR OF EVERYTHING
DEBTOR OF NOBODY
PROTECTOR OF NATURAL LUBRICANTS FROM THE SORDID
DOMINION OF SMELLY SHEIKS AND THE MUSLIM HOARDES THEY
SQUASH AND ELECTRIFY IN THEIR ELECTRIFYING PRISONS
OMNISCIENT NAVIGATOR OF MESSIAH HELICOPTERS
LEAKING OIL TANKERS AND VOLCANOS

LONG MAY YOU WAVE GOODBYE

– Gary Indiana, 1976

Tags: gary indiana.