(Original) Buffy vs Mama Fratelli

who ya got???

probably not for the easily offended

via Holy Taco:
Recently we here at the Taco were talking about anal sex (shocking, I know) and we realized that the way women feel about anal sex is almost identical to the way they feel about eating at the restaurant Chili's. Here's how we broke it down.

mark yer calendars

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 -- Chris Onstad, he of Achewood, will be at Powell's to promote his second Achewood collection.
Sharing the floor with him that night will be Tony Millionaire, creative genius behind Maakies. Though, I'm not too sure why he'll be there.

Virginia Woolf

Posting that clip of Mishima made me want to hunt this one down again to post here.
It features the only known surviving recording of Virginia Woolf. It is an essay she wrote/read for a BBC radio broadcast in 1937.

Thirst Fursday

Mouseketeer roll call:
Vadim
Kevin
Jay Petersen
Mike
Mark
Rose
Annette!
and me


Last night, the above listed went out on the town for Portland's First Thursday gallery walk. Meeting up at Powell's for Jay Fiorenza's 'Disappearing Landscapes' photography exhibit -- a collection of small beautiful, haunting black & white photos, each mounted on a 5-6" block of wood. It'll be up throughout the month, so if you missed it last night, be sure to stop by some time. And at $75/piece, they're very affordable for local art supporters.
From there, we headed out across the Pearl and into Old Town, stopping by a high-end gallery with some incredibly ridiculous pieces, but also some lovely dry point prints by Dali -- but those were far more expensive than $75/piece. After that, we wandered in and out some small modern/"contemporary" galleries showcasing more collectives, rather than individual artists. Some of it was interesting, but most of it was little more than the caliber of a teenager doodling in his notebook during math class; the highlight of such being the photo collage in which the Photobucket.com watermark was visible in nearly every photo.
After gallery-hopping for a bit, Mike, Mark, and Rose headed off towards NW 21st for a friend's exhibit, and Vadim, Kevin, Jay Petersen and I went out for some Hot Lips pizza. Then it was back to bus for me, and the MAX for the others.


Most of the art was silly and ridiculous (not because my eye for art is untrainted [which it kinda is], but because it truly was silly and ridiculous), and most of the crowd was exactly the kind of people you would expect to show up for such a thing. But, regardless, it was a fun night. Hopefully we can do it again sometime. Or all meet up for Last Thursday some time.

Yukio Mishima

Were it possible, I would give anything I possibly could to sit down with Mishima and discuss art and culture and life. While I can respect a lot of his political stances, he was a bit too militaristic for me to ever want to broach that subject with him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I recently finished Confessions of a Mask -- Mishima's debut novel about a gay man trying to come to terms with his desires, as well as the sense of displacement and false identity when trying to interact with the outside world of "normality."
A book hasn't had quite the same effect on me as Confessions... since I read Edmund White's The Beautiful Room is Empty for the first time in college. Though, thinking about that now -- I wonder who I would have become had these experiences been reversed and I had discovered Mishima before White, and during a time when I was in much the same headspace, going through a lot of the same emotions, as the unnamed character/narratoe in Mishima's novel. (Oddly enough, the main character/narrator in White's novel also goes unnamed.)

a new recruit

A few weeks back, I picked up a slew of different "new" (to me) cameras at the thrift store. One of which was a Ricoh FF-3 AF Super, a nice portable 35mm point & shoot. I shot two rolls of film in it as a test drive; I got the results back the other day and I have to say, I'm kinda impressed with what this little guy/girl can do.








































the flash works!

taking the plunge

I have entered the following photos into the Holga contest at Pro Photo Supply, here in Portland. We'll see what happens.

WW(TF)II

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I went to see Tarantino's latest this past Friday afternoon.
Since I was in SE, I decided to catch it at CineMagic on Hawthorne. I get to Cinemagic maybe once a year, and every time I go I ask myself the same question -- why don't I head to this place more often??? A $4.50 matinee and popcorn and soda totalling $5.75 means a complete theater experience for just over $10.00 [this would be the part where I say something like, Fuck You, Regal Cinemas! -- but, I'll more than likely be overpaying for a movie at a Regal theater again before too long]. And, any concession stand that sells moonpies gets an A+ in my book.

As for the film itself...it was OK. It's certainly not Tarantino's best, but it's a worthy attempt, nonetheless. It's epic and grandiose and a little overeaching and very heavy-handed and kinda silly and incredibly bloody and violent. And Brad Pitt's accent sucessfully took me out of the experience every time he was on screen. Whenever his character was around, I was very aware that I was watching a movie. It wasn't a bad character, it was just a bad fit for the actor.
And, after serving up such genre-homages as Kill Bill and Death Proof, it's strange to see a more-straightforward offering from the man. But then again, he claims that this is his "spaghetti western," and seeing as how that's not I genre I know much about, I probably missed all of the signifiers a more trained eye would have spotted. Oh well. It was a worth it.
Check it out.


And if you're in Portland, be sure to give Cinemagic some business sometime. You might like it.

disappearing landscapes

disappearing landscapes, originally uploaded by jfiore73.

friend/co-worker Jay Fiorenza will be the featured artist this month at the Basil Howard gallery -- the gallery found on the thirs floor of Powell's Books.

His opening is Thursday, Sept. 3rd.
If you're in town, you should come out.
And if you're able, you should buy a piece.