CLUES/TO/A/MYSTERY

→

Here it is. After waiting and hoping and waiting and hoping for what feels like a thousand years, this is the new film by psychedelic cinematic auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky.

It screened at Cannes Saturday night as part of Director’s Fortnight.

From the L.A. Times:

Deadlier than ever, presumably, after an even longer absence, Jodorowsky, 84, has returned to directing with “The Dance of Reality,” his first movie since 1990’s “The Rainbow Thief” (a work-for-hire with Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif that he has since disowned). Billed as a work of “imaginary autobiography,” “The Dance of Reality” is among the most eagerly anticipated titles in this year’s Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes, which is also screening “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” a documentary by Frank Pavich about Jodorowksy’s fabled, doomed attempt in the mid-1970s to turn Frank Herbert’s classic science-fiction novel into a big-screen space opera.

“Every one of my pictures is different — I die and I’m reborn with each one,” Jodorowsky said last week by Skype from Nice, where he was on vacation, preparing for the Cannes maelstrom. Even over a spotty connection, the bearded Jodorowsky, with his shock of white hair and gleaming row of improbably perfect teeth, registered as larger than life. An expansive if rambling conversationalist, he apologized several times for his faltering English and his penchant for digressive rants. After one vigorous diatribe — on the evils of money — he said, with a smile: “You know, you are speaking with a crazy person.”

2013-05-21

sungoddessfree asked: are you aware if there are any drugs that look like dmt that aren't?

Not really. It’s a pretty rare bird.

→

As a follow up to the skid row doc narrated by Hank, I thought I would post this letter from Bukowski regarding the censorship of his book Tales of Ordinary Madness. Via Letters of Note

→

I lived in the Toronto Annex for a little while in the nineties and early 2000’s, just at the border of Kensington Market.

The neighborhood was, for the most part, pretty well-off. Lots of Saabs and restaurants with one word names. But just at the the neighborhood’s border, over at College and Spadina - for any of you familiar with T.O. geography - there was the Scott Mission, a homeless shelter rife with mental illness, alcoholism and people who were just plain down and out. Beside the Scott, as if to make a step up in the world a bit easier to find, was a place called The Hotel Waverly. A fleabag flop house straight out of the noirest film this side of Detour.

While I never worked up the courage to rent a room, the place held certain fascination for me, if only because of its cinematic scuzziness. I love places like these: grind houses, arcades, peep shows, and automats. Places that seem to reek of lives lived and lost.

The Best Hotel on Skid Row takes us inside one of those places: the Madison Hotel in L.A. And gives us a window into the bleak lives that etch out existence in some of the rooms. Charles Bukowski narrates. His cool laconic cadence providing the same sort of meaningless shrug toward the audience that life itself seems be sending towards the film’s protagonists.

2013-05-17

Over the past week or so, I have been listening, on and off, to a series called Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything Or Old Bob Exposes his Ignorance.

This is a long series of interviews that Wilson did near the end of his life in which he spends hours detailing his philosophies regarding everything from drugs, to conspiracies to yoga to the internet. It’s a fascinating conversation. Very mellow. Very deep. And it’s a reminder of what a visionary intelligence R.A.W. was.

During one of the conversations he goes into a detailed analysis of Leary’s 8 circuit model of human consciousness, even lining the concept of each circuit up with a day of the week to make it easier to understand and remember.

The whole set in general is incredibly lucid, entertaining and engaging. Highly recommended to those looking to step outside of their reality tunnel for a few hours.

→

Now online from the Drug Policy Alliance: An Exit Strategy for the Failed War on Drugs: A Federal Legislative Guide

This comprehensive report contains 75 broad and incremental recommendations for federal legislative reforms related to civil rights, deficit reduction, law enforcement, foreign policy, sentencing and reentry, effective drug treatment, public health, and drug prevention education.

2013-05-13

Edward Gorey relaxing at home.

2013-05-12

This is the polish movie poster for Vertigo.

→

Adobe is running an interview with one of my favorite all-time comic book cover artists, Bill Sienkiewicz. He spends most of the interview talking about his use of photoshop. but there are a few other interesting bits in there as well, like who he looks to for inspiration:

Neal Adams set the bar high in terms of realism and a unique illustrative approach. I love the work of Alex Toth, who did Saturday morning cartoons with such a perfect grasp of saying the most with the absolute least with simple lines. In general, I gravitate toward artists who mix it up in terms of media and who have a personal vision—where I get a connection to the creator’s worldview and their story. To name a few favorites and committing the grievous sin of omission of others who will come to mind later, I admire Kyle Baker, Frank Miller, Mark Silvestri, Mike Mignola, David Mack, Brian Haberlin, Wendy Farrow, and Amanda Conner.

2013-05-06

I spent all of last week eating nothing but whole foods. And one unexpected side effect was my development of junk-vision. That is, everywhere I went I could see nothing but junk. Strange concoted inventions that were called food but weren’t. Not when compared to the perfection of, say, a grapefruit.

Case in point: the potato chip which, as much as i LOVE to eat them, are not actual food, but rather inventions created in factories.

So it was with great interest that I read this interview from the Atlantic with Michael Moss, the author of Sugar, Salt, Fat about them:

As I researched Salt, Sugar, Fat, I was surprised to learn about the meticulously crafted allure of potato chips (which I happen to love). When you start to deconstruct the layers of the chip’s appeal, you start to see why this simple little snack has the power to make a profound claim on our attention and appetite. “Betcha can’t eat just one” starts sounding less like a lighthearted dare—and more like a kind of promise. The food industry really is betting on its ability to override the natural checks that keep us from overeating.

Here’s how it works.

It starts with salt, which sits right on the outside of the chip. Salt is the first thing that hits your saliva, and it’s the first factor that drives you to eat and perhaps overeat. Your saliva carries the salty taste through the neurological channel to the pleasure center of the brain, where it sends signals back: “Hey, this is really great stuff. Keep eating.”

The industry calls this salty allure a food’s “flavor burst,” and I was surprised to learn just how many variations on this effect there are. The industry creates different varieties of salt for different kinds of processed foods: everything from fine powders that blend easily into canned soups, to big chunky pyramid-shaped granules with flat sides that stick better to food (hollowed out on the inside for maximum contact with the saliva).

2013-05-04

Gracie and Zarkov’s Notes from the Underground Vol. II is available through Google Reader. You may know these two from their heavily distributed document DMT: How and Why to Get Off. If not, simply google that title and you will be rewarded.

Gracie and Zarkov are true psychedelic pioneers, offering trip reports on unusual substances long before repositories such as Erowid existed. Their original writings were distributed via the underground and in magazines such as Mondo 2000. It’s amazing to me that, in this time anyone can get their hands on this once extremely rare material with a simple click.

2013-05-03

This is what DMT looks like.

2013-04-30

The blog Movies in Color features screenshots from various interesting films and then breaks down the pallet used in constructing the shot. I’m not sure exactly what the exercise achieves. But I can’t stop scrolling.