The Curious minx

Every subreddit is usually comprised of angry lil obsessives. No, darling, I don’t need to see another discography S tier ranking. And it is in this type of fandom that the fair weather blowhards dig their lil heels in deeper for their problematic fave’s microwavable take. And yes I am mostly still talking about the Roisin Murphy subreddit. At least the Of Montreal subreddit has the ongoing mildly amusing gag of people asking “Where is a good park I can visit?” Or “airbnbs closed to the Airport,” inquiries of would be Canadian tourists. Ah to live a life so low stakes that traveling to Canada is something you do just for fun.

It was reported that Roisin Murphy’s former label Ninja Tune was going to donate all proceeds to a trans health organization. No name of an organization was given and it turned out to be yet another bad piece of PR. A screen grab of a Roisin Murphy reply confirming that Ninja Tune is not diverting funds from her album. And unless you have an X account I can’t read this reply. Why oh why be a reply person. Why oh why comment at all.

I am alone while my partner goes and celebrates her best friend's one year old birthday. Newborns becoming other borns. The sisterhood of friendship persisting against the diverging lines of womanhood. And here I sit as a cis, twit scum. Wanting to dance with myself in a room with other shiny happy people. Roisin Murphy's newest album Hit Parade is giving me life. An insatiably replayable, playful master stroke of Arty, Dancey Pop. And yet we must get political.

She's only a couple years younger than my own mother. And it chills me to my compressed bones that I have noticed my own mother whom also twiddles away on Facebook, she too, has inherited other opinions about Trans People. It's unfortunate that it seems like older, occasionally bitter women are getting jittery and angsty over matters that don't concern them. And Roisin Murphy despite being a woman, a diva, shedoes not make blunt, political feminist music. But her music is always feminist, subtly subversive and alien. She comes across as a woman comfortably Alone, but not lonely. Making oddball dance fantasias for other lonely sorts. And Hit Parade does not change that. In fact it only enhances that notion. And I choose to believe that the music speaks to a truth deeper than any annoying shared opinion on social media. I believe that this conversation should transcend. "Did I disappoint you? Did I get it wrong? You sent certain signals to me." - Hurtz So Bad

And yet. I must open up and lay my soul to bare. To do it if for nothing else to appease my under heated haters. Haters come out wherever you are! I know you followed me from the atease Radiohead message board where you lovingly photoshopped my picture on a bukake. That kind of cyberbullying took real effort. Dudes rock. Gender dysphoria and depression and late capitalism. Dudes soft. 

Jenny Hval somehow is popular as Taylor Swift in my cyber reality and all these girlies cannot stop themselves. Brian Wilson is alive but also a ghost. There are artists painting sunsets that appear better than actual sunsets. Using New Mexico browns, pinks and mysterious blues. Colors that no nail appliqué can even show. Cinema used to be brighter and less dull. I want to live in a world bursting with color where all land privatization has been overturned. I want to frolic and mosey in the woods all my life long. I simply no longer see the desire to labor, to shed myself for any kind of corporation. I used to want to be an actor someone you could really build a parasocial relationship with. Get that branded bag! But now I want to be a blurry sepia photo hiding in your neon hotel bible drawer sans bible. The picture looks like a friend I had back in highschool who lost his tooth in a basketball game gone awry. Aside from the photo there’s only a turquoise flask with a rosy cartoon saxophone in the drawer. Taking up space. Good thing I don’t drink anymore. Too vain for that kind of dehydration. And it’s all been done to death. 

I am a proud day into night sleeper. I want to sleep longer than the lady in My Year of Rest and Relaxtion. I want to rip harder than van Winkle. And no one can take away what makes us dysfunctional. Sure, every employer, land owner and any other genteel, fair tormentor knows and claims ownership of what makes you good and special, but the parts of myself that make The Neurotypical, Action Figure Owners, Capital Shakers, Christian Trap and Traitors, And Workaholic Girl Bosses shiver and sick with disgust. Those parts of myself: The vanity, the sloth and dreaminess that can be xeroxed, entered into infinite search engines and reconfigured Bigger and Better. Bigger and better closet space. Bigger and better floor plan space. Oh this annex of the apartment would be perfect for my ring light rig! And you could use this as your crafting galaxy! I can really see me making content in a place like this. 

LISTENING TO:

Should Polish artists just make all movie posters?

Took me awhile to chase the Rabbit. Watched Cabaret along with the recent Blank Check podcast and reaffirm that Masterpieces matter. Cabaret is a subtle and intriguing art house nightmare. There is nothing controversial about saying Cabaret is a roving mature masterpiece.

Seen above: A rabbit wondering if these Wars will ever end

Seen above: The "Nice Nazi" conundrum

Jojo Rabbit could be called the Anti-Cabaret. More like Jojo Cilantro. I have avoided Jojo Rabbit not wanting to be bummed out ,because I'm throughly in the coffin with What We Do In The Shadows (The answer that there is Not enough TV based on movies). My Letterboxd follows left me wary. Smarties and cinetasties have been reporting Waihiti Fatigue. There's Waihiti fatigue on film Twitter and Blank Check subreddits, Oh no! Hope the film gestapo doesn't cancel my AMC membership. Waihiti to me is a Commercial Artist and Jojo Rabbit is a Pop Art triumph. Jojo Rabbit is one of the better examples of the Auteur theory and might actually be the only Cabaret adjacent movie in the 21st century. Jojo Rabbit has nuances but it's also a big brazen blunt and overly obvious goofy ass romp. I feel like I'm Sally Bowles looking for my peppermint Gin, fizzing off of Cinematic Pop Art. The power of Pop Art. And yet I let Film Twitter nag in my ear about this movie denying me of not only a quality Waihiti film, but a career best for Scarlett Johansson who contains an echo of Sally Bowles in a profound and tragic way.

Seen above: Creepy kids with guns from Alan Parker's Bugsy Malone (1976)

Are the nuances hidden in Jojo Rabbit that Nazis are good sometimes? NO. I do not believe Jojo Rabbit is in any way a pro Nazi movie. This movie is a pro Love. The movie is also a pro "Think of the Children" type movie. Children, yuck! I usually can't stand those minions especially when they have ghost busting Podcasts. I find a lot of kid actors creepy but I also love Bugsy Malone. When a movie leans into the creep factor there's a certain magic trick that happens.

The connection of Sam Rockwell playing a gay Nazi and also playing Bob Fosse was not lost on me! Rockwell and the rest of the ensemble bring the goods as well. Rockwell's Captain Klenzendorf and Archie Yates Finkel continue Wahiti's insistence on honoring homosexuality. Corruptible, doomed children existed in WW2 and gay Nazis as well. Is finding the humanity of such a character a fool's errand? I wonder how the author Christopher Isherwood (author of one of Cabaret's source materials Berlin Stories) would feel about Jojo Rabbit's depiction of sexuality because here is a quote from him on the film Cabaret:   "...Brian's homosexual tendency is treated as an indecent but comic weakness to be snickered at, like bed-wetting."

Klenzendorf is a terrifying yet compelling character, Rockwell's wheelhouse. Based on the degree of his war decorations and his opening salvo he's committed abject horrifying degrees of horror. Much like in Three Billboards, Rockwell has the ability to make audiences despise a character but also recognize his humanity. That's hard and damning work. If Jojo Rabbit suddenly turned into Our Lederhosen Means Death, then yes I would agree with this general critique of the Nice Nazi, but Jojo Rabbit is the Jojo Rabbit movie.

Through the Eyes of a Child's #1 Fan Jojo Rabbit and Pan's Labyrinth are both cut from the same "Think of the Children," "Fascism Through the Eyes of a Child" paradigm and both do an incredible job. Pan's Labyrinth is more opaque than Jojo Rabbit's visual language, but I think Jojo's story demands a bluntness. Nazis for most audiences demands a semaphore like command of visual language that Waihiti does with aplomb. Waihiti's Fuher performance as Calvin (JoJo) & Hilter is almost Paul Reubenesque in his compelling creepy silliness. The moment Jojo tells Hitler to fook off is true Catharsis. A stunt so fluid and demanding that Waihiti actually said fine I'll hire a stunt man to do it instead of doing it himself. Acting and the art of creative expression is at its heart a child-like medium. The act of playing and creating stories nourishes the inner child. Sometimes that inner child gets corrupted by Bad Actors. And it makes Johansson's performance yet another fundamental thread of this picture. Her anguish and emotional reading of knowing that her Jojo, the Jojo that runs up and down trees and innocence is still in him. Rosie represents mothers everywhere who have to believe that their children aren't monsters, because they were so little and sweet at one point. Cabaret is an entirely child-free movie except for at one pivotal moment: "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." Sally Bowles gets an abortion in Cabaret, a plot point that becomes even more profound as time crumbles backwards. Sally and Rosie would have been near contemporaries. And the scene with Rosie and Thomasin McKenzie's Elsa (Could Elsa have been the same Elsie that was the happiest corpse Sally Bowles has ever seen?), where Elsa asks a very sloshed Rosie if being a woman means drinking wine. Rosie, ever the wordsmith, further expounds on womanhood: "Sure. You drink. Champagne if you're happy. Champagne, if you're sad. You drive a car. Gamble if you want. Own diamonds. Learn how to fire a gun. You travel to Morocco. Take up lovers. Make them suffer. You look a tiger in the eye. And trust without fear. That's what it is to be a woman."

Sure. Rosie is describing Casablanca, but she's also describing Sally Bowles. Sally is a childless woman who is actively pursing her individual-minded dream of stardom. A dream for Sally that does not mean having a kid. Both Sally and Rosie can exist and both can be fully dimensional. Rosie does not allow herself to become a passive victim of circumstance or stay inside with Jojo as a lady in waiting. Rosie is a mother and a woman of action, a humanist willing to sacrifice herself for doing the right thing. There's no surprise that the best Anti-War art involves complex and fascinating roles for Women and Children.

Anti-War art is more important than ever. I don't think there's enough of it. Waihiti wanted to make Jojo Rabbit because he was worried that this kind of story was fading from the popular consciousness. The issue is that Nazis are indeed a rhetorical cliche in 2019 and now. Wikipedia page Category:Films About Nazi Germany lists 145 movies, 184 movies about the Holocaust. The fact that not every movie is about reckoning with the sins of the past is more surprising. World Wars, human atrocities, these are the sort of things we should be reckoning with all of the time if we as a species ever hope to move forward.

Waihiti is not going away anytime soon despite one middling Thor movie. The dude has garnered a lot of good will and has a sensibility that plays broad while also challenging audiences. Inglorious Basterds is also important anti-war satire that may be some people's preference, but I think I'll find myself reaching for Jojo Rabbit more because it's a more entertaining and emotionally compelling watch. There's not a lot of emotional vulnerability in Tarantino's body of work. I don't think it's healthy to be all in or out on an auteur and unabashedly love everything they do. I love Jojo Rabbit and What We Do In The Shadows (and remember really enjoying Shark and Eagle as well) and still need to see Hunt for the Wilderpeople. I think Waihiti would have done really well in a Bob Fosse movie. The man carries himself like a dancer and has an obsessive, work-around-the-clock mentality.

There is no other form of entertainment media that is more self-conscious as the TV movie. The TV movie is like one of those text heavy t-shirts bought off the FB ad algorithm marketplace: Mom: The Movie.  Many many of these TV show movies love the colon. From the in-development The Amazing World of Gumball: The Movie to the We Bare Bears: Movie, and let’s not forget the Americas Most Wanted TV movie, If Looks Could Kill: From the Files of America’s Most Wanted. The colon and TV titles go together like your favorite sitcom character and Hawaii. The colon is so beloved by TV movies that the lil stinkers behind the Aqua Teen Hunger Force  movie just had to indulge in some whacky title antics, totally demolishing the Colon title. 

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters

The TV movie title is also a  place for the writers and marketing team to kick back and relax. The TV movie title is flexible it can even just be the name of the titular series as well and the the movie portion of the title is left silent and left to the imagination like the Strangers With Candy (film). 

Other note worthy TV movie titles:

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip

Little Alvin and the Mini-Munks

Astro Boy: Mighty Atom – Visitor of 100,000 Light Years, IGZA

Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas

Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation

Crayon Shin-chan: Fierceness That Invites Storm! The Singing Buttocks Bomb

Crayon Shin-chan: Fast Asleep! The Great Assault on Dreamy World!

Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time

Munster, Go Home!

A Very Merry Pooh Year

Pokémon the Movie: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon

Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo! Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog

Thomas & Friends: Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure

Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry

Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day

Whoops Apocalypse

Hey There, It's Yogi Bear!

Yu Yu Hakusho the Movie: Poltergeist Report

^^^Definitive proof that TV really is a Writers medium!

////Stare deep into the burnt in bars of yellow or green within your antiquated TV. Isn’t it time you get a new one? My bff can whip us up a RTINGS EXCEL spreadsheet to pour over.////

A babysitter asking their adult son what Trailer Park Boys' TV movie he wants to put on.

Other connective tissue tying TV movies together: “So you want to make a TV movie?” Asks a phantom investor tapping on your nose. The easiest and most effective way is to turn to your nearest kid and see what they are watching. TVs are Nature’s babysitter after all. Children’s entertainment sells toys and a higher budget can up the marketing ante. Rugrats and Spongebob really made a gambit with toys and video game tie-ins related to their movies. Winnie the Pooh, Sesame Street, and the Muppets made movies for nap time. Then there’s the odd duck of Looney Tunes Back in Action and it’s lamentable corporate cousin Space Jams that have a deeper commercial confidence and viable that astounds critics and is fodder for so bad their good movie podcasts. 

The Movie (silent colon),  represents the apex of what an animated cartoon could ever hope to accomplish. Bob’s Burgers is the latest iteration of this Graduation from lowly animated TV series into a Movie released in theaters phenomenon. In a better, more just world there would have been a theatrically released Bojack Horseman movie that Netflix would be pouring hundreds of millions into. 

Heathcliff: The Movie

In the 80s and 90s it was once even viable to put an episodic compilation or a package film of an animated property in theaters. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie and Heathcliff: The Movie were among the only ones to pull this off, but it answers at the main cliched critical assessment that most TV movies don’t need to exist and are usually just overly long glorified episodes. 

The fact that some of these TV movies had the audacity to be released in theaters boggles the mind. Not  movie theaters being a semi-sacred space that are being defiled by over grown TV homunculi. A random sampling of TV movies that were released in American movie theaters:

Barney’s Great Adventure 

the complicated Digimon Digi-verse

Entourage

Fat Albert

Hey There It’s Yogi Bear

Horrid Henry the Movie

The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie

Pufnstuf

Thomas and the Magic Railroad

The Wild Thornberries movie

And most egregious of all TV movies to hit theaters: Doug’s First Movie.Doug, we don’t take kindly to threats around these here cineplexes.  Imagine how much cleaner A Doug Movie would have been!

We're celebrating our ten year open relationship anniversary with a screening of Piglet's Big Movie.

Did these TV shows really deserve the phrase, “One ticket to the Recess’ School’s Out, please”?  A real transaction that I witnessed as a child seeing Recess School’s Out and spying  an alone, totally solitary rough thirties looking dude.Sitting by himself , enjoying the Recess Movie. And if you get one TV movie then you’re in the bank for sequels baby, after Recess: School’s Out came out it earned itself three more straight to video TV movies. The last of the Recess TV movie franchise is poetically titled All Growned Down (I told you, writers are having TOO MUCH fun with these titles).

I'm gonna need a bigger screen to list all of these Doraemon movies.

And don’t get me started on anime movies. Seriously, I’m no weeb. I don’t know my Crayon Shin Chan (29 films) from Doraemon (30), or why there have been 24 Case Closed movies, Pokemon (24)  DBZ (21), Lupin III (13), Naruto (11)Digimon (8), Sgt Frog (5) Inuyasha (4) Hamtaro (4). It boggles the mind that there are twice as many Hamtaro movies as there are Mobile Suit Gundam movies, but anime movies work by their own logic. Anime movies tend to also have high production value and quality control. The Evangelion Rebuilds is the Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me of anime movies.  The only Western Animation that comes close to this prolific output are the true American animes:  Alvin and the Chipmunks, Scooby Doo, Thomas & Friends, Tom and Jerry, Winnie the Pooh, the Muppets. And Star Trek the only TV movies not for babies. I don’t mean to undersell Scooby Doo, because it’s the absolute beast when it comes to TV movies. Scooby Doo has done animated TV movies, live-action TV movies, puppet, crossover multiverses. Scooby Doo is the connective tissue between Batman, Bobby Flay, Courage the Cowardly Dog, KISS, Legos, and Wrestlemana (twice). There’s even a spin-off TV movie of the Scooby Doo TV movie verse with Daphne & Velma. 

You can tell Velma is the one with glasses because she's wearing a sweater with glasses on it.

Here is an excerpt of a review by Danielle Solzman of Solzy: “The film could not come at a better time for women.”

Powerful stuff Solzman.

////I am sorry that my bff kept saying the name of the website RTINGS like Drake trying to do a patois. He is way too white, way too Cali, way too Mike TV movie to be saying anything so reprehensible. I am going to sell one of his TVs out of punishment and I was actually hoping you’d help me pick out which TV I sell. Maybe I should sell his Hello Kitty CRT TV? Sadly he sleeps with his Shrek CRT TV every night and I’ll never be able to sell that one. While I wait to decide let’s think about what other connective TV movie tissue there is….////

David Lynch. A powerful TV movie connective tissue. Fire Walk With Me and The Missing Pieces antennae down the best TV movie of all time. Mulholland Dr, best failed TV pilot of all time. David Lynch’s dominance of TV is astounding mainly because the TV movie world is a dump. A memory dump and a quality dumping ground. There is so much extended goodwill given to any show that has nostalgia factor. Sometimes the TV shows feel like saved by the fan campaigns like Serenity and the Veronica Mars movies. But most of the time a TV movie has me asking who asked for this?

The Downtown Abbey movies are a huge example of this but they are one of the only big British TV movie franchises that have caught on over in the States (other than a lil comedy franchise called Monty Python). TV movies are culty by design. The TV show Community’s hollow rallying cry for six seasons and a movie is when a cult fandom dream curdles. Some of the most successful prestige TV shows still don’t make for critically beloved or well remembered TV movies either. Deadwood and El Camino were for the fans treats that helped stoke the embers. Many Saints of Newark did not bolster Sopranos legacy, because the show still looms so large that it never needed a TV movie. The fact that the movie is mostly ho-hum and innocuous is par the course. There are surprises to be sure. The Shaun the Sheep movie is a bonafide quality silent movie and all the cool alt comedy kids love Macgruber. A good TV movie can be done but they always have the stink of TV on them. 

Videodrome. Or the image of a TV show trying to become a movie?

TV shows are becoming more cinematic. TV is very much in awash in identity crises. TV season Episodes are becoming DVD chapter menu breaks for a 6-8 hour movie. To wrap this all up I think the 2022 Emmys nominations for best TV movie really sum up the essence and state of the TV movie:

“Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers” (Disney+)

“Ray Donovan: The Movie” (Showtime)

“Reno 911!: The Hunt For QAnon” (Paramount+)

“The Survivor” (HBO/HBO Max)

“Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas” (The Roku Channel)

The Survivor is a holocaust boxing TV movie btw. Just in case you’re wondering what kind of competition Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas was up against. ":The Movie", having fun with titles, and Christian holidays all remain the hallmarks of a TV movie. The Roku Channel should just be the home to all TV movies.

Image from Of Montreal’s Bandcamp, please consider supporting an artist you love today on Bandcamp

Of Montreal is the closest I have gotten to embracing a Phish/Grateful Dead style fandom over a band. I would absolutely drop everything I am doing in my life to follow of Montreal on tour. I am singing along to every song. I don’t have the songs consciously memorized, they have been programmed into me. I have listened to a full bootleg version of False Priest and have seen them live more than any other musical act in my lifetime (Around 10 times in three different states and one different country). As an aggressively weird and emotional kid growing up in the South that wanted to break through the gender binary and frighten and challenge the “normals,” you couldn’t ask for a better soundtrack than Of Montreal. I discovered them in 2007, the year of Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? The last album Of Montreal would earn Pitchfork and Big Publication’s laurels and respect.

There have been 10 albums out since Hissing Fauna and I love the majority of these albums to various degrees. There is a B-sides rarity compilation Daughter of Cloud that I haven’t really spent time with and a couple of real dud LPs: Innocence Reaches and UR Fun. UR Fun was the most recent Of Montreal album that came out in the beginning of 2020 and was more or less written off as a complete failure by critics and online fairweather fans. Critics have actively grown disdainful over Barnes’ eccentricities and their overwhelming unfashionability, there hasn’t been anything trendy about of Montreal in nearly 14 years. Real of Montreal fans know there’s usually one middling album that paves the way for a much stronger release. Mainly evident in the jump of quality between Innocence Reaches and White is Relic. The leap in quality between Trash and UR Fun is astonishing.  

UR Fun has some choice cuts and even the worst Of Montreal albums are more interesting than a good deal of today’s musical landscape. I saw Of Montreal live for UR Fun in February 2020, one of the last full capacity shows that would ever happen in Brooklyn’s Brooklyn Steel venue, perhaps forever. Unfortunately it was one of the most unpleasant oM concerts I attended and no fault of the band but due to the audience. Restless and rude bodies going back and forth, forth and back to the bar or who knows elsewhere and shoving people around. An absolute covid nightmare. Nobody attending concerts in January and February 2020 were appreciating them as much as they should.

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Of Montreal had been releasing their albums on Polyvinyl since their sixth LP, the critical breakthrough Satanic Panic in the Attic. At that point Barnes had already spent 8 years building up a devoted cult following and making hysterically ornate psychedelic pop and lo-fi rock confections. Of Montreal seem to have a layered working relationship and have been a stable home for Barnes’ adventurous output. What’s remarkable is that none of these shifts in sound ever feel like counter culture role play or trying on an EDM hat or a alternative country hat, they are always distinctively an Of Montreal album. Besides stylistic adventurousness the other running throughline that connects the of Montreal discography together is Barnes’ penchant for hyper-literate, bold everything and the kitchen sink approach to lyricism and songwriting. The highly divisive, gloriously deranged Hissing Fauna follow-up LP, Skeletal Lamping is where the free-verse, songs within songs approach fully becomes a mainstay for Barnes. Even though I Feel Safe With You, Trash is being released on a separate personal vanity label, Sybaritic Peer, Of Montreal and Polyvinyl continue to be a fertile label and artist relationship. 

I Feel Safe With You, Trash is also notably the longest album released by Of Montreal since 2004’s Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies (1 hr 9 mins) clocking in at 1 hr 6 mins. As of writing this article I have already listened to the album three times and counting upon its official release date. Not because I have a moral principal about how many times a person should experience art before analyzing it, but because the album is so damn replayable. Of Montreal at their best, and this album represents Barnes at the height of their powers, reminds me why I love and obsess over music. Hardly anyone making music today is making music this bold and adventurous. At this point in their career Barnes has more than solidified their status as bonafide Japanese word for a Music Witch. 

Barnes has been performing and producing every single instrument and singing every backing track on their albums for over two decades now, and still indicates not even a sliver of fatigue. There are days where I can barely write a single thought down because I know it won’t get a single like, it won’t lead me any closer to picking up the camera and nailing that perfect monologue. I can be salty about the life of obscurity I have built for myself, but then I have to remember Kevin Barnes. A bonafide musical genius that hardly bothers to get the word out. Barnes seems incapable of stopping making the sort of albums a person can get lost in for days. They are my biggest musical heroes, they represent exactly the sort of path I want to carve out for myself.

I Feel Safe with You, Trash is the embodiment of the gift that keeps on giving. A portrait of an LGTBQI+ artist 25 years into a career completely devoid of diminishing returns. There have been some missteps along the way with “Georgie Fruit'' and having too much fun during a mid-life crisis with UR Fun. More importantly I Feel Safe with You, Trash represents real, critical growth for Of Montreal. And this is Album One of Two of 2021, the year Of Montreal continued to take up a considerable portion of my mental bandwidth, it’s pure bliss. 

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Notable Tracks:

Aries Equals Good Trash - The first obvious “single” for the album that has a serious swaying lilting, uneasy beat. The vocals on this track are indicative of the overall shift in quality in Barnes vocals that have gotten a lot less strained and smoother.  Favorite lyric/delivery:

“I compare thee to a saturnalia (ha!) if I may be so rude.” 

The song also touches upon Barnes’ relating to be on the spectrum, both the gender/sexual spectrum and the cognitive one. Music for people breaking new ground with a broken brain. 

Now That’s What I Call Freewave - 

“Every time I look at my phone I get brain damaged. By every blamedead person I get lobotomized"

This song is also the first song in the Western music canon to introduce the phrase “feelbad songs of Covid summer.” This song also marks the first appearance of several where Barnes is absolutely shredding the guitar. I don’t really listen to much music that places and emphasis on “solos” or melting the fret board, but how can you not get excited by that burst of guitar? Also leave it to Barnes to find a way to also shout out an experimental cinema deep cut, Chick Strand’s Soft Fiction. I also discovered the Czech film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders through the song “st. exquisite’s confessions.” Why not also use your songs as a chance to shout out cool obscure cinema? 

Still from Chick Strand’s Soft Fiction

True Beauty Forever - Of Montreal go future funk. If you don’t know what that means don’t worry I’m brewing up a whole story on the joys of future funk. 

“I'm a black widow and I don't bite you so I guess I'm in love!

Possibly my new favorite Of Montreal song...

Fuckheads Is the Auto-correction - Okay I need to nix that phrase from my vocabulary because nearly every song on this album could be considered a new favorite. How can you top this opening couplet: 

Am I a creep because I don’t have a chosen pronoun? Am I a creep because my mind is the Odeon of the multiverse?

Drowner's TeÃrs - The use of pitched up vocals is an example of some of the new bells and whistles added to the oM sound palette. 

Fingerless Gloves & Kcrraanggaanngg!! - Find Barnes doing death core, metal styled goblin shrieks and it really, really works. More absolutely gnarly and nasty fret work. 

 Yamagate Florest Flutes & ThRam Rammaged à Man-Mod - Reggae/Dub Of Montreal? :O

Notes Of ViOlate SPectates A Flatter Of Male & So Chill Then (o Portão) - On an album this dense and frenetic there had to be some more ambient and chill passages and having So Chill Then as the album closer makes for a satisfying, soft landing. 

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And to close whole she-bang up here’s a picture of Of Montreal performing at one of the best music festivals in the world, Pahoda in Slovakia:

To live in America is to play by the business savvy handbook. America has never been a country of a wholesome omniloving God, instead the USA has always been the land of fleeced pockets. Much of America has fetishized the concept of “Hard Work” from the Puritantical Protestants to the Bootstrap pulling fantasia sprung from the Industrial Age. Some business CEOs even go as far to reinvent history by putting the word “Hustle” into Abraham Lincoln’s mouth:

“Things may come to those who wait … but only the things left by those who hustle.”

An actual quote from our Hardest Working President Business 

Yes, Lincoln the original Tall King, the first Presidential White Saviour, a Myth  more than Man, the living embodiment of a Pull Yourself By the Bootstraps Aesop fable. He needed that stove pipe hat to hide his vast quantity of hustle. I can see why a Business CEO type would be tickled by this fake quote. Lincoln’s legal work had him making more money at times than that of a prominent State Governor. There are reasons why he’s a Money Man. So tell me, Encyclopedia Britannica why would Lincoln feel the drive to accumulate this money and capital? Does it stem from Abraham Lincoln’s insecurities and low self-esteem from coming from a low income background? EB offers us none such info but it does lean heavily into Mary Todd Lincoln being a questionable influence on Lincoln. The EB is quick to file MTL as being the Insane, Difficult Woman who has developed an “obsessive need to spend money.” Of course, Lincoln had to make all of this money in order to pay for his expensive crazy wife. Makes perfect sense if I am someone completely stoned and drunk from hagiography and cute, quaint reductive views of history.

Lincoln’s business  savviness is made abundantly clear in his failed presidential campaign against Douglas. He published personally curated debate transcripts and his own Biography to hawk on the campaign trail. The acute self-awareness of his own remarkableness is perhaps one of Lincoln’s  main shortcomings and strengths. The man worked himself into a frenzy, constantly looked emaciated and worn down, and for what? The one few times he tries to take in one of his only pleasures in life, The Arts, he gets murdered. The Capitalist Mythmakers want us to forget about all of that. Abraham Lincoln worked because he loved to work and he was a good American, therefore if you want to be a good American like Lincoln,  you’ll work the Hustle.

Yes, this essay has been nothing but the ramblings of someone pretending like they know what they are talking about, but everytime I see the word “Hustle,” exclusively when it’s being used in terms of celebrating hyper capitalist America another part of me dies.

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Wow, the people look meaningless from up here.

The New York Hustle. The Detroit Hustle. To do these hustles once meant finding a dancing partner for the night and telling the 4/4 rhythm, “4 steps are fine, but six steps are even better.” Now the New York Hustle is working three unpaid internships with the promise that a slightly underpaid gig could be on the way. All language inevitAbly changes and evolves, but that doesn’t mean I  have to be okay about it. The modern hustle is the joy killer. The modern hustle is pushing and shoving fellow hustlers over the faint whiff of dining room scraps. To hustle is to continue to believe in your own self mythology so hard that you too can become your personal Lincoln. An emaciated, husk working for the Good of the Company, er, I mean Nation. Maybe a scuzzy Matthew McConaughey will give you a spin. That’s sure to make any hard worker smile before she collapses.

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Have you ever seen a side hustle news filler story that didn’t make you want to walk into a murky ocean’s depths? One Google “News” search of the term hustle brings up this article about a New Zealand Woman supposedly planning slumber parties during Covid times. One can only assume that this is the case because the article (sourced from the highly reputable looking Stuff.co) despite being published in February 2021 makes no reference to the pandemic. This is because New Zealand has already moved well beyond those covid days. Covid slumber party nightmares aside, the idea of hiring a professional slumber party planner in or out of Covid times is a brazenly gross idea. The extent of “planning” that should go into a slumber party is how much should you tip the pizza delivery driver, how many boxes of brownie mix, and maybe the one job I could jokingly fathom hiring a person for is choosing what regrettable movie a kid should watch at a slumber party.

Slumber parties are for children, and can easily be planned and arranged by a child. There should never be a need to outsource “Harrypotter glam” themed teepees and treats. Maybe that’s the kind of life people in New Zealand want to lead and if certain individuals want to have that ambitious drive to make a ridiculous small company they should be free to do so. The sinister creeping reality is that the standards of the Exceptional Money Making Individual are becoming the standards everyone is expected to live up to. Passion  for the sake of passion, and art for the sake of art is getting the squeeze in favor of monetizing slumber parties.

Monetizing off of Twitter followers. Monetizing off of newsletters. Monetizing off of podcasts. Content creation for the sake of profit is basically the main reason the Internet exists anymore.  If you have something you love to do in your life like the act of reading a book you better be willing to invest in a USB microphone and recording booth to start your audio book reading career because otherwise you’re just reading a book. You’re just playing a video game when you could be streaming yourself for all of your adoring fans and followers. I could be thinking, but instead I’m tweeting.

I do not respect the Hustle. I respect differences and a variety of lifestyles. I respect Passion and drive. I do not respect the Hustle, because the side hustle is just  a full-time job the capitalist system is trying to make you consider a “side” project. One look at this exhaustive CNBC “The ultimate side hustle guide for 2021”, and what they are describing is not a side hustle but starting your own small business. They are not the same thing. A side hustle should not require an immense amount of time, personal wealth, and the possible necessity of hiring a freelancer and tax analysts to start when you are already working a full-time job and/or participating in the American Breeding Dream.

I know that I am lazy compared to many over working Americans. I am already in my late twenties and still staunchly refuse to engage in American Adult Tie Sensitive Checklist. I would like to work, truly I do. I would love nothing more than to be in possession of a job in a safe and humane company that legitimately favored Human Kindness and Decency over the Grind. Working for a company that didn’t feel like the sole purpose of its existence is to make more and more money.. I am trying to minimize. I am trying not to let other people’s perceptions clutter and crowd out my mind. I am trying to survive through this pandemic that has completely melted what little brains and physical strength I had. I will not stop trying to do the Divine Hustle.

Let’s just appreciate this blurry picture of Divine being eaten by a lobster and call it a day.

“Where Y’All Sitting” is an image meme template ripped from good ol’ Vectortoons, a ubiquitous nobody. This meme represents a leftover relic of the days of true Beliebers.  This particular variant of the meme offers up a collage of usernames turned public personas of Minecraft content creators, and is not in fact secret gibberish code that Gen-Z uses for telepathic communication. For the record, and for the sake of offering my own  POV, dear Reader  I’m a rapidly decaying millennial screeching into my late twenties. The following is an investigation into a NEW BREED(Z) of Celebrity, The Minecraft Streamer.

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Millennials are more obsessed with generational categories because we have never felt an ounce of control in our own destinies.” - Me, a too wordy Millennial 

My first impression when I started Googling these names one by one is that Google generously auto generates the word “merch” next to nearly every name on this list. In the Age of the Hustle, our children’s children are hawking off not just plain ol t-shirts; but also offer a wide array of: hoodies, cell phone cases, coffee mugs, pillows, stickers (oh god, the  endless flood of stickers), clocks, shower curtains, coasters, jigsaw puzzles, magnets, tapestries, bedding (no, bedframes?), hats, fannypacks, flags, stationary, facemasks, baby onesies, coins, drinkware, pet clothing, and fake presidential campaign merch are just a smattering of the wares hawked by the people listed in this picture. This list of Minecraft enthusiasts turned digital entrepreneurs are all mostly various stripes of the same  floppy haired young men variant. An unyielding crop of snarky cocky content creators. Most of them are banking off of the success of a digital experiment that asked, “What if Lego, but as a video game?” No! There’s more to Minecraft than that! So much more and a decrypted boomer like me could  never hope to decipher.

Buy my Merch because I’m born to be on Merch. 

The cockiness permeating from these content creators is understandable. Most of these current Professional Gamers were raised devoid of a functioning plausible civilization. These Gaming Content Creators can have faith in the digital system  because it is through the stage of Minecraft they are  accumulating millions of youtube and twitch subscribers. All of these content providers are part of millions of young people’s media diet, websites churn out articles tracking down their love lives. People want to know if badboyhalo is dating Skeppy ? People want to know if Addison Rae is joining a Minecraft based content farm collective Dream SMP? Why has Tommy Innit been banned from Tik Tok? Why did georgenotfound boycott Wendy’s? Were Minx and Wilbur Soot really dating?  Does technoblade have ADD? Okay, mainly the website Distractify is asking these questions  the Google algorithm certainly encourages them too). This onslaught of articles proves that not only are these largely Minecraft based Twitch streamers profitable from a merchandising stand point but they can also be mined for tabloid fodder.  

Wilbur Soot - who is not an Incel. He’s just cheeky. 

The connective tissue that brings all of these names together is not just Minecraft and Game streaming, but the common cause of a collective, the Dream SMP collective. Apparently, young people need a collective to believe in. I know I would be lost without an Animal Collective or an Odd Future to help illustrate what a collaborative effort should look like.  Young people gravitate towards collectives and communities at large, because it is no longer available in the real world (and this was the case well before Covid). Take another name from the meme lunch room, Wilbur Soot, who is not only another Twitch based video game streamer, but he is also a musician with equally viral music videos . Soot’s general sound/vibe could be described as if Los Campesinos were extremely online and played less instruments (and just generally were worse, okay maybe that’s a thin, mean comparison). His music is not offensive, one song in particular “E-girl” finds Soot’s flipping expectations and criticizes the Internet for aiding an unhealthy romantic  fixation. Surprisingly thoughtful material that is trying to articulate the raw feeling of people plugged in since birth. Seeing  as most of these Minecraft based guys are known for being on the mic for hours at a time it does make Soot’s four minute song feel way longer than it should be. Soot’s got an impressive music production style down that makes his schtick go down easier. My verdict, Wilbur Soot is certainly a step above Hobo Johnson.

One of these e-boys were reported on for  making an off colored jokes on a Jackbox stream, and is about a complete non-story as you would expect. I am sure most of the young men listed in this collage are walking Ninja/pewdiepie hate speech bombs waiting to happen, but I am sure that kind of controversy is saved for later down the road to get over that 10 million subscriber hump.For the most part, this is bunch of dorky tech savvy teenagers who indulge in wholesome trolling and have a fixation on serving the Sponsors.  

These Minecraft based content creators’ main business pitch is a Maximalist Parasocial Bonding that specifically taps into the fan’s Good Friends based cortex. In no way am I adverse to freebasing on parasocial adult (mostly male) friendships. Being a human being, especially young and naive, is a lonely and miserable experience. People need all the faint grasp of human  connection he/she/they can get. None of these kids invented this dehumanizing that rewards people who strip themselves down to the basic elementals, strip themselves down into a celebrity sized square.

A still from the upcoming DREAM SMP movie trailer that is currently nestled at 11,100,784 views

 2020 found me in  trying to cover the season of Bob’s Burgers because AV Club had turned away from the series. And the world is falling apart and I needed something to take the edge off. Looks like the old Club decided to bring back sporadic coverage and reviewed both major Holiday specials. Reviewing a TV Show is not as easy as I thought it was. You have to write a review EVERY single week? Not just when you feel like it? Even when I know no one is reading these reviews or cares about them, the overall layer of Procrastination that is dominating my life starts to wear me down. Enough! My burger is getting cold and I want to serve you!

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‘Romancing the Beef” 

Season 11′s Episode 11 did not air on Valentine’s Day. Because NASCAR. Naturally. That didn’t stop me from going through the collection of Bob’s Burgers V-Day themed episodes and they are certainly the most casual of the holiday specials. The Bobby B’s staff don’t feel pressured to tack a V-Day special on every season, but in their current run they’ve certainly made more holiday specials than any other sitcom. Romancing the Beef can proudly rank among one of the better holiday episodes and a strong return from the season break.

The main conceit of the episode is based around Bob and Linda sacrificing their own Valentine’s Day for the sake of business. The main activity of their Valentine’s Day was going to be exchanging the top 10 favorite things about each other. A very wholesome and cuddly activity on paper but after watching the episode I did regale my own partner with my own personal Top 10 favorite things about her and it started to feel a bit like overkill once I got over 16. A simple and sweet sentiment that buoys the episode into a poignant commentary on loving lived-in monogamous relationships.

The V-Day episode before this one was from Season 9 terribly titled “Bed, Bob & Beyond.” The episode stinks not just because the triptych Belcher child tells a story format tends to yield weaker episodes, but because it was an episode built around an argument between Bob and Linda. There are sure to be quality episodes written around the occasional bump in the road that pave the way to domestic bliss, but it’s a delicate balance because Bob’s Burgers works best as a feel-good show. Bob and Linda are the fictional  hetero normative couple ideal. The real world is full of broken and shambolic love and if Bob and Linda are going to have romantic strife the material lands better when the writer’s approach Bob and Linda’s relationship with dignity. Romancing the Beef does that and more because Bob and Linda are egalitarian small business owners and they harness their love to improve their own business.

“Romancing the Beef” plays up  one of my personal favorite character beats with Louise making her the most capitalistic and business savvy of the Belchers. She helps transform Bob’s Burgers to Urge, gotta love a good anagram. V-day episodes also have fertile ground to cover with Tina and her more hormonal passionate version of love that is subverted with her subplot involving her attending an Anti-Valentine’s  Party. Both subplots balance out the episode and support each other much like the Hall of Famer V-day episode “V for Valentine-Detta” which remains the Big One as far as V-day episodes go. Most of Bob Burger’s holiday episodes consistently find the show pushing themselves on a visual and conceptual basis. Here’s hoping the rest of the season continues to deliver more heartfelt diversions.

The episode is Four Singing Cherubic Children out of 5.

PS. There is also a truly touching and heartbreaking easter egg hidden in this episode. The dearly departed Dave Creek based the character design of two Urge patrons on someone Creek knew was getting an organ transplant. Another glimpse of what a heartfelt person Mr. Creek was.

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Great North Report. 

The show remains in pretty mediocre condition. First seasons of sitcoms are notoriously the worst and there is nothing inherently offensively bad about the Great North. It's just a real step down from Bob’s Burgers in every way. The theme song remains jarring and way too long every time I watch it. On February 14th Fox dumped three Great North “Adventures.” And reader, I will spare you a deep dive episode by episode analysis. Identity crisis is the main phrase that comes to mind. Self-sabotaging, complete waste of a stacked cast  loaded with potential on muddily underdeveloped characters,  contrived cultural tourism, and a doomed over reliance on making pop culture references for the sake of pop culture references.

There is just too much Great North, the Molyneux sisters got lost in their own ice box. There are too many main characters in the Beef family so the show decides to build its main POV around the only daughter, Judy. Jenny Slate is a funny and likeable comedian but she’s completely bombing as Judy. Her characterization and her overall performance is an energy vacuum. On episode 5, “Curl Interrupted Adventures,” Judy delivers an ugly melt down tantrum that goes on forever with no payoff. Judy is basically a teenage Tammy except at least Tammy has a more defined comedic game. Tammy is a preppy little glamour sour puss that occasionally clashes with Tina. Tammy works really well as a side character in Bob’s Burgers because she’s presented in smaller doses. Making a Tammy like character as the lead is a big ask and making her the main POV really does this show a disservice.

2/26/21

Mouse on Mars - AAI

Mouse on Mars represents for me what I personally love about electronic music. The body of Mouse on Mars’ work is steeped in  kaleidoscopic irreverence and they are downright playful. There is nothing cool or all that inherently functional about Mouse on Mars’ sound. Flashier more recognizable acts like Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Autechre, and Matmos all have these elements as well but Mouse on Mars, despite being a lot of fun to listen to, the act is not held in great critical esteem. They are just a couple of gangly Germans, Jan St Warner and Andi Toma,  making music for the sake of making music. There is no stylish marketing gimmick to prop Mouse on Mars up, yet whenever I attempt to bring their name up in conversation I feel like the person hearing me is imagining some sort of unpleasant Deadmaus EDM. Mouse on Mars let the music speak for themselves and that modest presentation does not detract from the  lose yourself completely cartoony weirdness that defines their overall sound.

AAI is another installment in the long growing electronic music made alongside Artificial Intelligence. AAI weaves uncanny spoken word portions throughout the album giving the album the appearance of a vague buried concept. The voices speaking on this album are being used by A.I. while the human musicians are building and collaborating around them. Artificial Intelligence is a lot like the concept of space, something that should impress and blow most minds, but A.I. doesn’t feel like something the regular person should think about. The media narrative surrounding A.I. is heavily doomsday dystopian, which in turn has helped reduce A.I. to another mundane, overwhelming fact of life. Albums like this and Holly Herdnon’s PROTO approach A.I. with a far more non-judgemental curiosity. The A.I. overlords are coming and they don’t have to be malevolent or benevolent overlords they can just be.

The high minded conceptual ideas are probably bogging this release down from casual listening. The album isn’t ambient enough or dancy enough to make for logical background listening. The album is slightly over an hour long  which feels shockingly modest in the age of electronic musicians like Matmos and Autecher releasing three plus hour epics.

I am a walking machine. I walk. I walk. I walk.

For those adventurous listeners who want something to be challenging and kind of ridiculous then this album and Mouse and Mars are the artist for you. If electronic music is functional music then the function of AAI is active frenetic busy work. This album sounds like the sound of scrolling. Scrolling without doom. Mouse on Mars makes project music, music to put on while you immerse yourself in activity. Maybe you won’t want to dance while you listen to AAI but it will make you want to get up and move to do something productive.

HIGHLIGHT TRACKS: “Go Tick,” “Artificial Authentic”

IF YOU LIKE THIS ALBUM, THEN LISTEN TO: As already mentioned Holly Herdnon’s PROTO, Oneohtrix Point Never’s Garden of Delete, The Orb’s Moonbuilding 2703.

Also wow this album is basically NIER: The Album. Go play some Nier!

Hold on a minute! Where did my signature sex positivity go? I sound like a  scared guidance counselor trying to steer impressionable youths towards a torrid life of sex apathy. 

Let’s call the whole thing off. Better off  sticking with a cuddle and a bundle of soothed nerves.

Birthday sex for the birthboy boy, and don’t forget the birthday girl too. Infantile carnal, a ribbon wrapped self-conscious expectation. Doesn’t matter what happens as long it  happens at least once a year. I am not the tumbling pebble asking myself, “why I can’t get no proper satisfaction?” Don’t be coy, boy! Just say: Dick sucking! Or: Proper fucking. Just say it, just spray it, just don’t go tender-footing around Real Adult Sex. Don’t be cute, you wouldn’t like me when I’m cute.

Consider the kind of sex that happens on Valentine’s Day. Can you feel the pulsations of a long and gradual orgy? Are the tips of your arm hairs at attention feeling the vibrations of a torn down love hotel?  Or is V-day just another way to say:  Red Tide.

Let’s not be like those other heteros, so self-conscious and expectant.

Let’s not be like those other ponderous poly cuties, let’s invent our own secret handshake.

Of course, I think too much. Of course, I should really shut up and let my heart soar. If your heart begins roaring the Love Witch will come a’ roaming and you’ll suddenly be singing your own Melody Nelson.

My heart limpidly glides across the smudge edges of your wandering star .

Not all sex is created equal. Maybe for some, love is so, so, so much simpler. Sex, is but a day  awaiting you on the calendar. Reeking of smug love, watch how the lovers wave their rosy limbs over each other’s mental cameras.

Spontaneous birthday sex and holiday sex is one thing, but sex should only be spelled out when it’s written by constellations. I won’t tell you how to live your life. Maybe I will via telepathy, but I refuse to be another man bringing about his own self-immolation, trying to wreck somebody’s life trying to get back at Karma, the Classic Bitch, the Mother of bad genes.

Sex can be quid pro quo. Sex can be whatever consensual, emotional fantastical bond you want it to be. Sex can be a factory sealed-and-pressed box of chocolates that tastes like settling in. Sex can.

I am not going to be like the rest of the heteros. I am going to learn to listen and process what she’s trying to say to me. I am going to think too much because when I’m around her my head is swimming with ideas. Most of these ideas are foolish and I am always trying to shave and pamper them into becoming more than mere folly, but I can’t force them. Just like how I refuse to will sex into existence because a day on a calendar tells me to.

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Which is better? Birthday Sex or Valentine’s Day Sex?

 All that is shiny and white is not welcomed here! Short stacks of coins have fallen into their last slot. Tumbling down. A malleable transition metal. A malleable transference of power. Stock brokers use a silver pick to dislodge the stanky werewolf flesh clinging to his left canine. 

Wrapping an electric eel around a silver bangle. Silver seeks electricity! Silver seeps through electricity. Static shock is coming back on your favorite number one streaming platform! How dare you rub silver with my harbingers of doom!?

A noble metal is one that does not choke on the fumigations of man made air. A noble metal is the one you will surely be wise to invest in. Would be a damn pity if you were to let an alchemist down, they are such a sensitive, reactive lot.

Squirting dew drops of sulfuric acid down a silver gold mine shaft. Streams of hydrogen peroxide blonde cyanides with snide opinions of what you should do with your money come flooding in my living room. I am lord of many manors, my walls are lined with silver pipes.

Silver Nitrate. Lunar Caustic. Inhale. Deep breath. The other six of the seven metals of antiquity do not seek to cause any harm or alarm. Only those with an iron will can refrain from melting down in their mighty, ancient presence. Silver is weak. That is why silver must be made into money. Your money, my money, all of the money is the only way to make Silver stand tough in the vicious Atlantic surf.

Silver cupellation is the appellation of my occupation. That is the Medieval technique of extracting the Noble metals from the Base metals. Nobility must be extracted from the ingenious  ignorant base.  Take me back to the Bohemian silver mines and then bury my heart in the Black Forest silver mine! Back when life was fit for the Silver Screen.

Another regular Andy Antichirst buys exactly thirty exact stocks of silver. A stranglehold.

“Lift up your silver forks and knives and dig into this silver flute concerto I am about to lay down.” I pucker and I blow and blow into my flute and emits a sterling tone.

Here at the curious-minx we would be remiss if we did not provide proper witch reporting.

My Haxan cloak is caught in the metallic maw of endless litigation.

The curly tow-headed jude Squire McHumphreys said that every time I blog or write an article on the Internet that references witches I will be fined a tidy 10k for every mention of the word “witch.”

That was a vampire Kangaroo court, Jack! The Curious Minx refuses to play the game of judge lest ye be judged. The curious minx will continue to publish whatever the damn she wants to publish! Plus, this is a Tumblr and not a reputable medium blog so none of this counts.

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A coven of witches somewhere in the Bronx, possibly in Queens, but in no way related to the Brooklyn borough witches, convene in an attic, get real high, put on a vinyl copy of “Egyptian Shumba” by the Tammys on a loud throbbing loop. This particular coven had metaphysically branded themselves Tammy & The Intersectionettes. Tammy, the clammy Latinx switchblade poet especially loved to howl. The pinnacle of girl group pop and it has nothing to do with being bricked up in no Wall of (Merciless) Sound!  Sure, Tammy, fucked around with the Phil Spector Back to Mono box set, what pleb doesn’t? The christmas cuts that backended the boxset as a bonus was the main disc that was most heard in Tammy’s wild. Christmas music has a way of following anyone around. When Tammy and her dead brother Vinnie would listen to these old girl group songs anything seemed possible. Tammy starts becoming an emotional wreck whenever she waxes fondly over the wax and resin coated days spent with her true troubled genius brother. He didn’t go around shoving pistols in anybody’s faces.

Erla Ray Hazel, a Virgianian transplant witch that made a killing selling witch-specific aloe vera, breaks Tammy’s trance, “Fuck Tammy we can’t keep this energy going. If we’re going to make this hex happen tonight we need you to step up and perform your Head Witch Function! That can’t be too much to ask.” Erla Ray lifts up her plaid cloak and reveals a tambourine strapped to her ankle. She begins stamping out the odious, one-in-a million Hal Blaine drum incantation: [Bum...bum bum….Bum...bum bum ]. A prehistoric heartbeat.

Yeun Ti-sai, Franny Mac, and Bimpe Blase were the other three members comprising the coven if you have to know. I want to make sure you get the full picture. I was nothing but a cursed stagnant suit of armor hiding in a box observing the whole scene through pin-sized air holes for breathing. I am deeply afraid of sitting next to anyone on an airplane so I often prefer to have myself shipped. Unfortunately my package got relayed and redirected, the good news is that I ended up as a prop in a witch’s attic.

A horde of package hungry baby witches nearly tore into my box rendering my whole voyage futile. Thankfully Tammy, being the real deal witch that she is, managed to conjure up a scintillating cloud of clout, which the baby witches chased off instead. And that’s how I ended up bearing witness to this local display of witchy activity. Through harnessing energy and malevolent intention these witches were able to bring a Phil Spector-less world into existence. Now, I know the man was quite old, recently had the Vid’, and was more or less mentally degraded into a husk but I am not going to make the mistake of undervaluing the witches, I’ll leave that for the stewed newts and tailless bats of the world.

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Seen above: A Wall Street chalk Portal

Let’s see...what else happened in January 2021...nothing else comes to mind. The capitol building still stands in one piece. America is not a place where the buffalo roam. What’s so lousy about unity? Thoughts of the Innuguration and Insurrection cause diamonds and toilet paper rolls to pour frothy out of my skull. A small man the size of a testicle teasing toddler is slicking back his large blonde hay bale hair and putting sunglasses over his sunglasses. He puts his cold, curled lips against my raw ear (one last diamond is stuck, lodged inside my canal) and goes “Brrrr.” His utterance causes the last diamond to fall out of my head. The little man claps his hands, performs a dab, and rides the Bull into the Market Place, traveling through a secret underground society connected by a series of tubes demarcated by chalk drawings of the same blonde man boy. He is the sort of man boy that desperately needs a spanking.

I look at my script of Michelin Man erotica and toss it aside. I have found a Hot New Icon of the Moment [TM], Wally Bets. A humming pile of sleepy Chads, swinging their fists at clipped shark tempos are hungry for a champion. Many of these Chads are wearing diamond plated rubber Elon Musk masks. They are taking over the public imagination. I must protect the moon.

As a self-appointed concierge of the witches I figured that they would provide me with lunar route, for a price. Running back to the borough that is possibly the Bronx, maybe Queens, but definitely not Brooklyn I stub my digit on the witch building buzzer.

“Hello! I need to get to the moon. The moon is in danger.”

The creaks open it was unlocked the whole time. Using the sense memory of when I was in the box I managed to retrace the number of flights of stairs and upon reaching the sixteenth floor I started knocking on all of the doors. One of them has to be my witch.

“Your back. I’m actually one floor up..” Tammy says from a portal that she has opened from the ceiling. The residents of each apartment are al standing outside of their doors with an outstretched palm weighing various instruments of destruction. I tip my hat, even though I don’t have one, and clamber up one more flight of stairs to the seventeenth floor that contains the Witch Suite.

“Look, I know men are probably not allowed in your domain, let alone twice..”

“Eh we’re genderfluid around here. There are enough Boys Only, Girls Only clubs to go around.” Tammy says with crossed arms that have caused me to stand transfixed into one place.

“Sorry. Anyway, the moon is in trouble! There’s going to be an invasion of all of these little blonde man boys and their bully Chads.” I am gesticulating at an unseen presence and trying to demonstrate how diminutive this little terrorist is. 

“Have you just somehow stumbled onto the Internet for the first time in ten years? You know those billionaires aren’t actually going to let anyone from 4chan onto the moon.”

Erica Ray Hazel comes up behind Tammy and wraps her arms around her waist and says to me, “Little bitch boys going to bitch. Let’s zap this twerp to wherever he needs to go so that we can get back to ascending the Holy Mountain.” Erica Ray Hazel then gives Tammy a playful nougie, tousles her hair and goes back inside to a large plasma TV blaring Jordosky’s Holy Mountain.

“I see that you’re busy...maybe I should just come back another time.” I am about to leave and step into the elevator and turn around to give Tammy the witch her proper bow and I see that her eyes have rolled up in the back of her head and that she has become a lot farther away. I step further into the elevator and the invisible hand of the marketplace pushes on the small of my  back and I tumble into the elevator with a shimmering shaft. The door is sealed shut, my entire field of vision is in the red, and the elevator is rising, rising despite my finger fusing itself to the “Ground” floor button. The elevator does not smash through any sort of ceiling, but instead evaporates. New York City looks like a distant coma cluster from up here. New York City looks like a cheap, unreliable snow globe that despite having no visible cracks is still somehow leaking. I will miss this city, but I am moon bound now.

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Former self-appointed concierge of the witches turned Moon Guardian. I will protect the moon like a starry eyed dreamer. I will protect the moon from the Elon Musks, finance bros and Wally Bets. The chads will probably be what does me in, because I keep getting hit in the face with satellites wrapped with paper tassels that read: Retard Strength I, II, LLC, etc, I have built a pyre of these satellites and they burn oh so bright. No one is exploiting the moon tonight.