Yellow Submarine 3XCDr + ltd. ed. DVDR

Is now available. Don't pay more than $15, dude! In DVD box with *SHUDDER* poorly folded inserts and free sticker that gives the middle finger to Dumb-ya and the not-so-silent majority...

Predicate

I think Peter Sotos' best work is when it's more subtle and creeps up on you long after you've read it. The most recent one Predicate is a good example of this. A much more experimental idea considering what Sotos writes about. Here the main subject is Thomas Hamilton and his mass shooting of a school in Scotland ten years ago. Hamilton was presumably someone with an unhealthy fixation on his male students -- as a physical ed teacher. I've had so-much disgust for my past PE teachers and their tireless BS, although at least I'm glad I didn't skip out or else I would've been more sickly than I am now, to give them credit. In my high school though, I don't think the PE teachers were abusive like Hamilton was although scandalously one of the vice-principals got arrested for fiddling with a minor after moving to another Catholic school. (No I wasn't a victim, although I was myself coming to terms with my own homosexuality anyhow...)

Going back to the story, there's really nothing to work with concerning Hamilton, as no-one's really sure if he was debauched towards teenage boys or not, as it's mostly speculation. If he was he might have been too scared to act on it, one thing's for sure...

But Sotos is good at expanding on even as skimpy a subject as Hamilton. A great deal of it isn't directly about him, but mostly does correlate. Especially the part where he devises an idea for a gay-porn series in tribute to Matthew Cecchi, that doesn't hit home at first but when you give it more thought is absolutely horrifying. As is the conclusion, which I'm not going to spoil for everyone but is a disturbing revelation with a truth that Sotos' hysterical detractors will find hard to accept, yet should IMO... And you do get some more introspection into Sotos' own turbulant family life, sexual frustration and more of how his own transgressive interests developed the way they did. Just now I was reading about how William Bennett of Whitehouse was inspired by his parents' constant fighting. Siouxsie Sioux in Word magazine admitted she was molested as a child and talked of how she devised her persona and music as a way of dealing with parental mistrust and personal pain via an alternate reality. Lydia Lunch has been open about her abusive childhood and I think there's evidence DAF De Sade's debauchery was a product of childhood trauma itself.

So even if I'm speculating here, I adamantly think Sotos' work has a right to exist. The same way mainstream writers not as debauched as De Sade see importance in his written works. And it doesn't look like Sotos will be going away soon whether anyone likes it or not...

Whitehouse at Rothko

About my fifth trip to NYC. (Cripes!) But worth it as always. The venue called Rothko (apparently a play on words after the company who originally owned the building) looked like the ideal place for a Whitehouse show. More like a sinister, monolithic dungeon than a night club, with bright-red lights.

Psychic Paramount opened with a solid set of dark and sinister instrumental rock that harkened to Ramleh, Swans and even the Brainbombs. The drummer's fluid and earthy style held everything together and counter-balanced the brutal guitar and bass quite well. Thurston Moore followed with a full band with (I think) Lee Ranaldo or someone who looked like him. Anyways it was mostly guitars and basses and essentially one big low-end drone-poem that made me think of Rothko-the-painter's later black-on-black works.

And then Whitehouse, who I sheepish admit was the first time I saw them live. William Bennett based his stage presence on Gene Simmons (apparently...) and looked like he was parodying old punk-rockers past their prime. I could imagine Michale Graves being like this except without the irony. (Hope Bennett's not offended by that analogy.) Also did Malcolm McDowell's infamous dance from Caligula which also reminded me of Peter Wolf from the J. Giles Band, appropriately enough (or not...) Phillip Best looked like a bitter guido music shop owner I remembered long ago, and his voice is actually now starting to show some age, but still has alot of that patented sub-Johnny Rotten vitriol I've always found endearing... My friend Angie Holm was there and I was telling her that near the end of the set I remembered being at a Catholic retreat in my teen years and seeing a film. Made in the sixties and featuring hippies partying and whatever but interjected with images of children starving, in pain, crying. Looking back on it that film was brilliant -- not that I'm anything like Peter Sotos, mind! -- and I wish that was on DVD somewhere... The memory of that seemed quite appropriate as well.

Going back to Sotos again, I did get the pre-release of Predicate, although I didn't get to that main book yet. But almost finished with the special ltd. addendum. Unpublished writings and lots of interviews. Again I'm not at all as depraved as Sotos but alot of his inspirations are quite similar to mine: the Who, Lou Reed, Swans, Alice Cooper and Francis Bacon, who along with Paul McCarthy and Paul Klee drew me closer to art than any other artists. Bacon, of course, was one painter my artist mother hated with a passion, and that really did mean something...

More...

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-shooting1nov01,0,5728150.story?coll=la-home-headlines

"My future ended some time ago."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9883793/

This is a particularily horrifying story for myself to read. Because like that poor teen I myself suffer from Asperger's Syndrome. No, obviously I'm not exploiting this case, neither am I seeking sympathy at all. (Not my style.)

It is no surprise something like this would happen, however. I'm lucky I never stooped to such a thing, and I dunno if I even would've.

I've been lucky so far. I managed to get accepted last spring for SSD payments. I lament that I needed this, and that I could never hold a permanent job that most people aspire for and get. It's still a huge frustration for me, however. Then again, seeing how so-called 'normal' people act maybe it's just as well I'm beyond the pale. I think just knowing what it was that caused such adversity in my life was enough...