B. Downing's "Johnny, Oh Johnny"
Part of a quintet of tributes to the great Kishore Kumar on the site, this short combines footage from the 1975 classic "Framed", starring the portly and charismatic Joe Don Baker, with scenes from the 2007 flop "Knowing", featuring a floundering, rescuing Nicolas Cage. Also with short bits from George Pal's early sci-fi classic, 1955's "Conquest of Space". The soundtrack is Kumar's classic opening title song from 1971's "Raja Jani". Editing, remixing and subtitles by Brandon Downing. Premiered on January 16, 2010, at SpaceSpace in Ridgewood, New York, at Poetry Time's showcase of John Sakkis, Niina Pollari, and John Coletti.

Kevin Opstedal with a micro-review of my RAVE ON! and Derek Fenner's Wild Schemes over at Ukulele Feedback, both just out from Lew Gallery!

i wanted this video in black and white letterbox but it was too hard...forgive, i'm really sick, ear infection and sinus infection and state of the union...sabrina calle was dancing with her uncle tonight somewhere not in florida...play both vids at the same time, it's better.

finished Wyndham Lewis's BLAST yesterday. still have no idea what Vorticism is. some of the things i do know about Vorticism don't really point me towards anything useful. i know that Vorticism eschews the romanticism of the past (Impressionism) as much as what Lewis saw as the romanticism of the future (Futurism) ("[Futurism] an accelerated form of Impressionism"-p. 158). you'd think this would point to "the present" as being primary to the Vorticists; e.g., "the new vortex plunges to the heart of the Present" and "with our Vortex the Present is the only active thing." ah yes now i'm starting to get it...but then almost immediately from the same page (p. 147) "there is no Present—there is Past and Future, and there is Art" and "this impure Present our Vortex despises and ignores"...okay...so what the EF? the Future is romantic and fetishized, the Past is romantic and fallacious and the Present is impure and negated. but the present is also "Art" and thus viola, Vorticism! and what the hell am i supposed to make of that? i guess i'm just not at all clear on how Lewis is defining the Present/Art. and BLAST is 160 pages. i feel like i should be a little closer to understanding what the hell Vorticism is all about after 160 pages. any comments would be appreciated. thanks.

it's my life and it's now or never...somehow i'm sick...after listening to a Lee Perry record 11 times in a row i woke up at 4am and took NyQuil nighttime. slept till noon. just went fruit shopping. bought Fuji apples and Texas oranges. bought Basmatti rice and sugar. bought French Vanilla and Hazelnut coffee creamer. back in bed now. going to watch W. and The Tudors Season 2 and Inland Empire. finished W. Lewis's BLAST this morning. going to finish The Grand Piano Part 9 this afternoon. probably going to finish Rooms Are Never Finished by Agha Shahid Ali this evening. wrote a poem last night. watched Battlestar Galactica The Plan last night. it wasn't that good. but i'm a BSG completest so whatever. just like every young man should have an Anticon phase maybe every young adult should have a Minimalist phase. tried to download the season premiere of Caprica last night from Bittorrent but got spooked and stopped the download. there's a manifesto towards the end of BLAST that confused me. it's called "TO SUFFRAGETTES" and subtitled "A WORD OF ADVICE." i can't tell what Lewis is doing with the tone e.g. "we make you a present of our votes/ only leave works of art alone." what the hell is going on here? i mostly hated the Caprica mini-series so i just really have my fingers crossed that Ronald Moore (and his "rag tag" team of writers) can correct what was so lame about it in the new series. is Lewis giving women the middle finger? or is there some tongue in cheekiness going down? did anybody catch Caprica on SyFy last night? i just hated typing "SyFy." does anybody know why they retardified the spelling? does someone own the copyright on "SciFi?" i'll still probably buy the Caprica mini-series cause i'm a BSG completest. i've been listening to Henryk Gorecki's Misere and Gavin Bryars The Sinking Of The Titanic and Erik Satie's Gymnopedies pretty exclusively over the last week or so. i've been in a pretty dramatic mood all week. i wanted to take a walk today with my brother. i wish that people who were sick would just stay away from me. anybody know where i can stream the football games for free online tomorrow? LRS sent me his new book as an rtf. file, what the hell? should i drink whiskey this afternoon? will it make me feel better? my mom is making me move all my comic books and baseball cards and GI Joe's out of her house. she needs my childhood closet space. this is a travesty. i think she should hold on to all that stuff until i have a kid and can pass it all on to him. but she needs the closet space and there's no negotiating. going to eat rotisserie chicken and Basmatti rice for dinner/lunch. for dessert i'll have an orange without peanut butter on it and a fuji apple with peanut butter on it. graffiti in Brooklyn is more like graffiti in Athens than graffiti in San Francisco. really messy and aggressive and funny. does anybody know a good piano teacher close to the Lower Haight? rates? disposition? constitution? thanks. i think i need to be a musician. i cry a lot. discovering the Minimalist school has changed my life a bit. i picked up Girls' Album at the same time i picked up Nico Muhly's Mothertongue and can't stop listening to Muhly. and i love Girls. but i can't stop listening to Muhly. maybe it's the weather or maybe i'm getting older and my tastes are changing. but i can't imagine buying anything other than contemporary classical music right now. i'm being completely melodramatic. i love Kurt Vile as much as the next guy/gal but i'd rather get totally fucked in the head by Gorecki than the best of what Matador has to offer. and this is exciting to me. i've been writing a lot lately. RAVE ON! from Lew Gallery came out last week. but i've been writing more and more into it. i think i've figured out how to make it a bigger book without playing the conceit out. at least i hope so. all sorts of things are flowing into it now. i can't wait to reorganize it. i've been burning girly scented candles in my room. smells so good in here. like girl-neck/breasts. maybe this cold will be a short one. or maybe the medicine is just working too well. i hope my nose stays this non-snotty. i usually start slow though. and i'm the biggest dick you've ever seen when i'm sick. so it's imperative i cordon myself off from all loved one for fear of making enemies of them. the loved one's mostly understand but sometimes they don't and we fight. i hope i don't get into any fights this weekend. i'm looking forward to some sunshine next week.

The Greenpoint Gazette wrote a nice article about our Poetry Time SPACE SPACE reading last week...check it out!

"...If the term “poetry nuts” is one way of thinking about fans of poetry, then the community of nuts that has sprung up around Space Space could be accurately described as “mixed.” The crowd at Saturday’s event—young, hip and friendly, the type you would expect more at a show or an art opening—was impressively diverse. Attendees included many Brooklyn-based writers like Zachary German and John Dermot Woods, indie bookstore owners, zinemakers, even Christian Lorentzen, who is an editor at Harper’s. Such an audience speaks to the quality of the programming and the comfort of the environment. “There does seem to be a sort of community of people who come to Poetry Time, and it does seem real and strong,” said Gocker."

i'd love to sell the last 7 copies (in the universe, for all time) of my chapbook BOUT BOUT. just 4 bucks flat for the chapbook...and to sweeten the deal i'll throw in a copy of my very new chapbook (came out last week) RAVE ON! from Lew Gallery. so a copy of the BOUT BOUT and a copy of the RAVE ON! for only 4 bones...paypal on the sidebar! or write me at merkoneus@yahoo.com with any questions.

and to entice you even more i'll throw in a special mystery gift (not junk from my room i promise!) unique to each person that orders...

by check, by paypal or by cashmoney...

come on, help a brother out...it's a great deal! i'd order from me if i was you! thank you for listening...

love you...
John

Cat's photos from our B.I.G. trip to B.R.O.O.K.L.Y.N. including: airplane, swank hotel, friends, poetry, day trips, art, video, booze, weather, readings, cats!, dinner party, brunch, beds!, Mid Town, Brooklyn, Queens!!! if CA Conrad does the prayer pose and Stephanie Young does the over-her-head-angle-self-portrait pose and Nada Gordon does the belly dancer pose and Brandon Brown does the middle finger pose, then i guess my pose is the faux-scream mouth open pose...seriously, i need to not do that ever again.