Click images for desktop size: "Sans Titre" by Love 1008 I used to have a friend named Chris. Chris published a fanzine. It wasn't like most of the fanzines I read or played around with, his was angry. It took itself seriously but had enough of a sense of humor to get away with being angry and serious.
What drew m to Chris and his magazine was his interest in the "Cinema Of Transgression". Nick Zedd used the little zine to promote a lot of his more political rhetoric and personal hype and propaganda. Zedd and Chris parted acrimoniously. It was more than sort of inevitable.
Chris was sincere and not blind to his idol's clay feet.
My interest, at that time, was more in a fringe member of the "Transgression" clique, Richard Kern.
I liked Kern's movies. I liked the politics of them. I liked the politics of his shooting style and his use of film and his excitement over film as opposed to video.
I liked how the punk movement tied into his own vision and how he melded his own edgy world view with the nihilistic values and charged sexuality and promoted celibacy of the punk thing.
I wasn't blind to the fetish element in some of his work but it wasn't what interested me. I was surprised that Kern is now making more off of heavy coffee table books of his fetish photography than he ever made from his movies.
While it was Zedd who was getting Time Square openings with Scorsesee and glitterati attention Kern kept making films that got shown on a sheet at the punk clubs in New York while the next band set up. It was cool and sometimes Kern's little movies even got billing over the bands. (At least on the fly sheet hand outs.)
Kern was involved with East Coast Punk Diva Lydia Lunch, who ended up involved with Black Flag frontman, Henry Rollins. They did poetry readings together . . . actually Lydia would yell at people in the crowd. If any of them yelled back Henry would jump off stage and beat them up.
In a time when the Kipper Kids, two grown men, would appear at clubs naked, wearing bathing caps and throw paint and blood on the audience I guess that yelling at people and then beating them up qualifies as a poetry reading.
One of the Kipper Kids married Bette Midler. Henry Rollins is now doing direct to video horror films and MC'ing some whack reality game show.

Click images for desktop size: "Shy" by Any Mouse Time does ruin everything.
Anyway, back to Chris.
Eventually Chris moved to LA and got some other crazy to finance his little zine as a semi-serious, nasty and cynical FILM MAGAZINE! With full color covers and national distribution. Rah!
Now the main thing that reminded me of Chris this week is that he LOVED to get abusive phone calls and letters. He loved hate mail to the point that he would not pay bills so that he'd get collection letters and phone calls.
He enjoyed fighting with people. He liked the little battles.
Maybe it kept him in shape for the big wars ahead, I don't know. It was the overwhelming thing I remember of him.
Even though I remember him fondly and warmly, I don't share his enjoyment of hate mail. Notes and letters from people I don't know or barely know, especially notes that I think are intended to hurt me don't faze me at all. I hope I don't anger anyone by saying I look at them with detached id sometimes wry amusement. I'd like to get a clever one.
People whom I know and like on the other hand, their displeasure doesn't stress me but I don't disregard it.
Well except for the one berating me for not posting my brilliant analysis of the Pro Bowl . . . Have they played that yet? Does anyone know the score? Does anyone remember who won last years Pro Bowl?
Most of the, I guess, justifiable flack comes from the "Comments" thing.
I recently turned on comments here, more as an experiment to see how well they are working so I could consider turning them on for my puppy's blog.
Movable Type now uses a thing called Askimet to filter out spam comments. For my puppy's site it works well enough and mixing it with other tools lets me selectively allow certain ips and identifiers comments through with no problem.
Here I get about 50 spam comments an hour. To prohibit them going through to either being published or moderated I've had to set the security so high that it seems ALL comments get reported as spam . . .

Click images for desktop size: "Mortality 2" by Akjareshe This really doesn't bother me that much.
I've been trying to scan through the comments and glean out any real things. Like casinos and sex sites are pretty easy to discern. Some of them are more clever, at least clever enough for me to have to look at them more closely and find them annoying.
I did pull a couple of comments out of the spam, all from strangers as I recall. One I actually wasn't sure was genuine . . . it might have been spam, I just wasn't sure and on that day I decided to let it through.
On most days I find myself looking at a about half, getting bored and annoyed and just dumping them all. Recently I'm down to looking at the first page of 50 and then just dumping them all . . .
So if you're mad a t me because your carefully worded retort isn't published I'm sorry, blame me for being lazy but not for being uncaring.
Better yet blame the spammers. Or "Blame Canada".
Better yet email me and ask me to publish your comment. I do like reading what you have to say.
I always have.