DANS MA PEAU (IN MY SKIN) comes from writer-director-star Marina de Van. She has a high forehead and big pale eyes set in an oval face; she is both funny looking and gorgeous.

SKIN turns on what happens when Esther (de Van) goes to a party. She - feeling claustrophobic? - wanders in the back yard. In the darkness, she steps through an obstacle course of scrap metal, when she trips and falls. She doesn't realize she's injured until hours later, when she sees the blood trailing from her leg. Her doctor is puzzled how she walked around with such a big gash without feeling a thing, and it is odd. But Esther, stuck in a corporate job and ambivalent about buying a house with her boyfriend, does want to feel something - but what?

Her skin, her self - that's what. She obsesses at her original wound; she digs at it as if scratching a violent itch; and when that itch is sated, she cuts herself another and another. And somehow, it seems more reward than punishment. She enjoys - thrills in - the sensation, the release, as if she's letting herself out of a cage that happens to be her own body. She cuts, and she cuts. She gets drunk at a business dinner, then checks herself into a hotel and has her way with herself, slicing herself and hungrily drinking her blood.

It's disturbing to watch, yet it's also abstract. You see her hand make a cutting motion, but the cut flesh is hidden by the camera angle - her body obstructing the camera's gaze. You see her expressive face wince and grimace, then fall into an ecstasy that's wonderful to her, and which might seem wonderful to us if it weren't accompanied by blood. You see lots of blood, and the resulting scars, but you aren't always sure what part of the body you're looking at, especially in a brilliant split-screen view of her cannibal masturbation. Perhaps Esther is deranged. But she has a look on her face of such satisfaction, a satisfaction that only she can give herself.

insatiable

The effect, however, must be virginal, so toss the can, ditch the Cool Whip and head for pure heavy cream. Put a dead chill on it and whip it lightly with a touch of sugar and a thimble of vanilla. It should nearly faint from languor.

via tmftml

did I leave the stove on?


click on willie for the rest of "willie nelson's excellent new york adventure" by pat padua

did I leave the stove on?

by pat padua

click on this pensive sea-creature for my photos of the 2004 coney island mermaid parade

Last in Flophouse, Alone With Bowery Ghosts

Being the last man living in one of the last flophouses on the Bowery has its benefits.

Ashcroft Video Project

Join celebrity judges Moby, Ted Hope, and John Cameron Mitchell in voting for the best John Ashcroft-themed smut video from the fifteen entries posted at Nerve today.

via fleshbot

leadership

Joe Biden: I was in the Oval Office the other day, and the president asked me what I would do about resignations. I said, 'Look, Mr. President, would I keep Rumsfeld? Absolutely not.' And I turned to Vice President Cheney, who was there, and I said, 'Mr. Vice President, I wouldn't keep you if it weren't constitutionally required.' I turned back to the president and said, 'Mr. President, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld are bright guys, really patriotic, but they've been dead wrong on every major piece of advice they've given you. That's why I'd get rid of them, Mr. President -- not just Abu Ghraib.' They said nothing. Just sat like big old bullfrogs on a log and looked at me.

via this and that

THE MOD-POP-PUNK ARCHIVES: MP3s

365 days of ubu

UbuWeb is pleased to announce the re-launch and permanent home of curator Otis F. Odder's 365 Days Project. This legendary project, in which an MP3 a day -- of mostly outsider, novelty, and oddball recordings -- was made available for the public to download over the course of 2003. Briefly taken offline at the end of the project, it is now presented here in its entirety, complete with images and vast commentary on each selection. The 365 Days Project is part of UbuWeb's redesigned, newly-named and much expanded Outsiders section.

Those '70s Photographers

"Six From the Seventies", featuring the work of mostly lesser-known but influential photographers from the 1970s -- Michael Bishop, Frank Gohlke, William Larson, Michael Martone, Joel Meyerowitz and Bea Nettles -- and the work they did that anticipated the postmodern photography trends of the 1980s and 90s.

we can't let them win dodgeball

Online ticket service Fandango.com reported Wednesday that "Fahrenheit 9/11" was making up 48 percent of advance ticket sales for the weekend ahead, compared to 11 percent for "Dodgeball" and 9 percent for next week's "Spider-Man 2."

twexus: a photoblog:

Twexus uses a database of 21743 images that I took with small digital cameras. Every connection twexus makes is random.

via apartment therapy

grainbag On-Line Gallery
via apartment therapy

sp a m lo g

From: Clair Pollock
To: Mhop
Subject: blackbody

thicken,he imagined that,chairlady,this reality
belongs,apportion,reasoning on this.iridium,at that moment,harvard,there
he became.

the siren song of summer

Finding the Hard Sell Lurking Behind That Soft-Serve Jingle
The recorded jingle, which pours out of high-powered horns mounted at the front of the trucks, is intended to lure the young and old from their bowls of sugar-free sherbet. For those who do not live where these trucks prowl, here is an approximation of that jingle. Duh-DUH-duh-duh duh-duh-duhduh-duh-duh-duh-duh-DUH-duuuh-duh. . . .

ooh, aah

The Minx 'Something We Got'

blue velvate

SHE WOAR
BLOOOOOO VEL-VAAAAATE
BLOOOER THAN VEL-VAAAAAAAATE WAS THE NIIIIIIIIGHT

sexy, desperate, lo-fi. the kids will buy a hundred million. via empty-handed, via wfmu

blair blog

I am very, very, very, very excited about this week’s journal entry. Can you feel it?

via the onion

the swinging vicar

In Unrestrained, the Life of a Priest, 77-year-old Mariani tells of his sexual exploits, with both women and men, sometimes in lurid detail: 'She put her arms around my neck and asked: "Do you like the drink?" Then she leaned over me and sucked on my lips, asking: "And don't you like this even more?"

today on fluxblog:

Impossible to locate this pop-electro-glam-house-metal which arrives to me here between the ears but in all the cases, that largely exceeds Peaches and Co. Junesex is a French group for, everyone, all the desires, all the sexual, food or commercial désirs/délires. Between girls, between boys, girl and boy or even with S everywhere. It is a gigantic sound, sexual orgy and without any taboo, which resounds.

the sound and the potus

I could hear them talking. I went out the door and I couldn't hear them, and I went down to the gate, where the girls passed with their pizzas. They looked at me, walking fast, with their heads turned. I tried to say, but they went on, and I went along the West Wing, trying to say, and they went faster. Then they were running and I came to the corner of the hall and I couldn't go any further, and I held to the wall, looking after them and trying to say.

chewy music: Ornette in the nyt.

Mr. Coleman's new quartet, with Greg Cohen and Tony Falanga on basses and his son Denardo Coleman on drums, makes dense, chewy music, very different from the brittle sound of Prime Time, the electric band of his career's second half.

s p a m log

And sanitize the dark side of her lover. Football team around marzipan, marzipan of, and pocket from mirror are what made America great! He called her Laura (or was it Laura?) Sometimes burglar inside rejoices, but tea party for chestnut always assimilate apartment building defined by shadow require assistance from bubble beyond debutante. But they need to remember how slyly for fighter pilot strokes.

commute nyc. a photoblog.
via kottke

Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004
via this modern world

nyt: the sound of the city

Then there were the hot-corn girls, pre-Civil War New York's twisted, virgin-whore fantasy. These were teenage girls, always barefoot, wearing trademark calico shawls, and selling ears of fresh-roasted corn - and sometimes themselves. They sang plucky verses at the passing men who pitied them, and wanted to protect them, or to buy them:

Hot corn! Hot corn!
Here's your lily-white corn!
All you that's got money
Poor me that's got none
Come buy my lily-white hot corn
And let me go home!

OAIster

OAIster is a project of the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Services, originally funded through a Mellon grant. Our goal is to create a collection of freely available, difficult-to-access, academically-oriented digital resources that are easily searchable by anyone.

read: cool pictures like this
via metafilter

nyt: In a Digital Era, the Darkroom Is Fading as a Photographic Hub:

In the tradition of the Rolodex, the vacuum tube and the roll-film camera, the communal darkroom - a Manhattan institution that has long sustained a subculture of professional photographers and print-making artists - is yielding to the digital imperative.

Crutch MP3s
with two live dylan covers from the white stripes.
via burnt by the sun

bush briefing notes:

This part is blurry enough that "contacts with" might also say "costume maker" or "customer murder," although these seem less likely. Although don't be surprised if we start bombing Edith Head's estate.

originally via atrios

julie atlas muz, mermaid.:

Does the art of underwater dancing require any special training? Are you self-taught or were you part of a synchronized swimming troupe as a youth?
I am self-taught. Being a mermaid obviously requires that you are very comfortable in the water and it helps to have some kind of movement training. It is also crucial to have breath control, since swimming as a mermaid is anti-instinctual. (I work in saltwater so you have to hold your breath on the exhale, not with your lungs filled with air so that you don't float).

via gothamist, via daily gusto, via about last night, cum seeing the thing two years ago

from bbc coverage of the royal ascot. via stan.

Photoethnography.com

Dark Passage: Hospital Hopscotch:

After the patients have been evacuated, the hospital is free to succumb to its own mortality. In the throes of its disintegration it makes a mockery of the order and hygiene formerly attempted within. The buildings themselves give in to their contamination. Behind closed curtains, the hospital changes into its own funeral parlor.

by pat padua

Rockin' with Barbara. by Rockin' with Barbara, of whom I know nothing and can google little more other than WFMU playlists. Lounge act Babylon.

celebrity garbage:

"For me the most interesting was BRIGITTE BARDOT,'' Mr. Rostain said, "because it was really how we know Brigitte Bardot: about the animals, what she drinks, what she smokes.''

Does she have crazy-woman garbage?

"Yeah, serious,'' Mr. Rostain said. "Not like yours or mine.''

An Afternoon in the Village of Ashnak:

The rediscovery of an unknown masterpiece of conceptual cinema from the former Soviet Union: Hamlet Hovsepian’s »Washing Hair, Biting Nails, Yawning«

illustrated smiths lyrics
via tmftml.

Bored. a video
by sue de beer.

the pearls of essex by J. Mahals.
collaborative post-victoriana from ...

the exhibition "Among Ourselves," a series of web site scenarios created in collaboration between seven young artists. Conceived over a year ago, the sites represent collaborative possibilities realized using HTML. Each scenario was generated to act as a series of guidelines to create situations in which each artist created a persona. These personas were then asked to interact within these scenarios...

Hammers, Sickles, and Turnbuckles - Soviet wrestlers mourn Ronald Reagan.

Pro wrestling has always been pro-xenophobia, with cartoonish foreigner types employed to goose the crowd into a patriotic frenzy. But during Reagan's reign, evil German and Japanese characters—everybody but the Iron Sheik, really—got bumped down or off the card to make way for the Red Menace.

Richard Hell on Robert Quine

Underworld.
underwater photos by barabara cole.
via conscientious

Antique Mouse and Rat Traps. via consumptive.

spa mblog

Any given small tv calculates. Any given soft cat falls. A odd shaped mobile phone arrives. A given silver bicycle calms-down. The shining bluish kitchen smells. His brothers expensive clock calculates. Her daughters fancy soda calculates. Any given bluish shining round-shaped sport shoes is angry the time that our children white fancy t-shirt makes sound and perhaps her slopy red table is angry.

Her expensive door stares. Any purple tall computer calculates. A given well-crafted glove fidgeting at the place that the slopy beautiful t-shirt adheres. Our children beautiful bicycle stands-still. Our tall magazine is thinking. Whose round-shaped mobile phone looks around.

Her daughters red expensive expensive bed stares. His brothers smart pensil arrives and mine fancy bed sleeps and perhaps our hairy little white glasses sleeps. Our silver green camera is angry and perhaps their little kitchen falls or our soft well-crafted red forg prepare for fight. The golden sofa run. The golden mp3 player snores.

Ramune Pigagaite - People of my Town:

People of my Town is a series of forty small sized colour photographic portraits of people from Varena. Their professions seem antiquated, strange and curious: baker, beekeeper and poet.

via conscientious

Neil Gaiman on lent

I need to start listening while I'm talking. I was having an incredibly respectable telephone conversation with an extremely respectable person this afternoon, and the subject wandered over to Basque whalers, the way that it does, and I was explaining that whale meat was one of the few red meats that the Catholic church historically allowed to be eaten on Fridays and during Lent. 'And, oddly enough, beaver was classified as a fish too,' I explained earnestly and helpfully and accurately. 'So on Fridays and during Lent people used to eat beaver.' There was the sound over the phone of a very respectable and respected person making a sputtering sort of snorting noise, and I noticed that statement was capable of meaning rather more than I'd meant it to...

by pat padua

spamb log

Subject: razor blade trombones for 899
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 04:52:48 +0600

A few tenors, and over bullfrog) to arrive at a state of philosopher Mindy, the friend of Mindy and rejoices with behind fetishist. Mindy, the friend of Mindy and sweeps the floor with related to omphalos. ammoniac constantinople cougar illogic

Where we can wisely avoid contact with our cream puff. Mirrors remain Eurasian. Taxidermist give a pink slip to light bulb over mating ritual. Defined by somnambulist starts reminiscing about lost glory, and demon defined by panics; however, pickup truck near ruffian throw at. For example, philosopher near indicates that espadrille behind scooby snack confess lover of fire hydrant. Most toothaches believe that light bulb for chess board avoid contact with football team of.

by pat padua

ron jr.:

Before George Bush spends too much time wrapping himself in the mantle of the Gipper, he might want to listen to this excerpt from Ron Reagan's eulogy for his father this evening:

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians, wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.

via political animal.

At Grand Central, Stuck After 1:30 A.M.: "This is the story of the people left behind on the platform when the last train late at night goes out of Grand Central Terminal. These tearful, angry and sometimes inebriated passengers blame that final mojito, a slow-moving high-heeled companion or a ma�tre d' who swore that rail service to the northern suburbs of New York City never stops."

via gothamist

spessi. an icelandic photographer and the gas stations he loves. via coincidences.

Bush/Zombie Reagan 2004: "It's Morning in America... Again!"

spam blogging

From: K_____ C_____
To: ______@msn.com
Subject: corpuscular gouda
Date: Sun, 30 May 2004 21:00:15 -0500


gonads remain makeshift.And make love to the dark side of her tape
recorder.But they need to remember how eagerly toward curse
daydreams.Where we can almost share a shower with our fetishist.beyond
grand piano is hypnotic.Indeed, of plaintiff approach buzzard over.
flux maddox bullfinch constantinople corpulent offset sine


umbilical allay psychotherapeutic bryan decant succubus vent
aqueous confect gerhardt dalton pelham salina emmett blinn glottal goldfish
coney maraud anus bricklayer

old railway maps of taiwan via artnotes.

Beach Pneumatic: "by Joseph Brennan - Alfred Beach's Pneumatic Subway and the beginnings of rapid transit in New York"

Horse Mask w/ Mane: "This Horse mask is constructed of soft vinyl, and comes complete with a mane." via consumptive.

Mark Kessell - Florilegium:"... a suite of unusually large (11 x 14 inches) daguerreotypes. On first glance these unique still life studies appear to be flower arrangements, but upon closer examination they prove to be studies of stainless steel surgical instruments."

postmarked: "Real Photo Postcards 1907 - 1927"

Jayne Hinds Bidaut:"The process of survival that guides us is wrought with mistakes as well as its beauties. Bidaut’s photographic method inherently bears the scars of the process right in the chemistry..."

laffs:

"I told one of my students that the most memorable Reagan AIDS moment for me was at the 1986 centenary rededication of the Statue of Liberty. The Reagans were there sitting next to French President Francois Mitterand and his wife, Danielle. Bob Hope was on stage entertaining the all-star audience. In the middle of a series of one-liners Hope quipped, 'I just heard that the Statue of Liberty has AIDS but she doesn't know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island Fairy.' As the television camera panned the audience, the Mitterands looked appalled. The Reagans were laughing. By the end of 1989 and the Reagan years, 115,786 women and men had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States, and more than 70,000 of them had died."

scrap books

"the quagmires of feminism". via the wily filipino

rockin' with barbara - i like to via incorrect music siftings. huggity huggity huggity hug.

bootleg video sources

by pat padua

Gothamist: Ham It Up: "Brooklyn artist Cavallaro sliced 312 pounds of ham and threw it onto a four-poster bed, within an air-conditioned room."

Kempa.com: More Vinyl Manufacturing Minutiae: "one of the most ingenious uses of this technology is in children's toys, the classic example being the See & Say - a pull-string toy that plays a variety of randomized prerecorded sounds"

"One Two Cha Cha Cha - Usha Uthup & Chorus." bollywood via troubled diva.

passerby: "Michelle Handelman will spend one day in Bryant Park clandestinely documenting visitors to the park, recording their conversations, photographing them, and taking note of their location/time in the park. During a single performance, entitled Passerby, she will work with performers to recreate five of the situations she observed in the exact locations at the same time they originally occurred. Handelman's project addresses the possibility for or lack of privacy in public space as well as the prevalence of and high tolerance for surveillance and will take place on Tuesday, June 29th, from 1-4PM in Bryant Park, 6th Avenue between 40th/42nd Streets. Rain date is Thursday, July 1st."

via tom moody

mp3s bythe sugar bears via mystical beast.

Doug Hilsinger & Caroleen Beatty - Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain (by strategy): "30th Anniversary remake of Brian Eno's 1974 Classic"

cvs parking lot by pat padua

new england ruins via artnotes

"WIG STALLS CONEY I. COASTER TILL RESCUERS PULL RUG OUT FROM UNDER RIDERS": via gothamist