"By
working with comix, I can ratiocinate. They get to fly below critical
radar, and thereby go into your head" - Art Spiegelman. Below
Critical Radar is a history of (mostly US and UK) 'alternative' fanzines
and comics. From Sniffin Glue and Vague through Hate, Headpress and the
mighty Eightball. Avoids politically uh-oh antagonists like Answer Me!
Available through Slab-O-Concrete
publications.
Proximity.At this point I felt like writing something serious about love, having had the spectre of the thing pushed up my hooter courtesy of one St Valentines Day. But a couple of things are bugging me - Will Self bemoaning the fact that the internet was going to dehumanise us all, creating a world of "closeness without proximity"- and, of course, Dubya and Blair opening a can of whoop-ass in the Baghdad suburbs.
The latter is miserable. Long-range combat tactics slipping into the arena of terrorism. War without proximity. Or culpability. A few strikes here, point-making slaughter out of sync with any decent strategy to make Iraq a fairer state. It's facetious say 'give war a chance', or that it'd be more noble for parties-at-odds to face-off in a field Braveheart-style, when I'd be the first into a rubber dingy paddling for Spitzbergen if a draft card arrived. But the problem of big-cheese terrorism, as with the small-fry variety, is that there is never a sense of resolution and closure. Hate becomes part of the participant cultures identities, until enemy attack actually does more than any public holiday, traditional dress or group ritual to unite and define the attacked party. And the scrapping yin/yangs it's not-that-merry way along ad infinitum.
The former is literatti hot air. Human beings adapt and find a balance, as they did upon the advent of radio and television. I, for example, balance every hour of net usage with one of groping, panting and sudden, unwanted intercrural penetration on London's Northern Line. And am considering opening Bar Frot - a cyber cafe with ear-tonguing staff.
Proximity is good, but sitting in a bar or restaurant does not always guarantee closeness. That said, the readership of this site could fit into my kitchen, and you're all very welcome, whoever the hell you are.
Into progressive house and UK garage? Can't get enough downbeat and leftfield?
Of course you can't. Knock thrice on www.burnitblue.com, ask for
Chloe, and all your dance-related reading needs shall be satisfied.
"Place, there is none. We go backward and forward,
and there is no place" - St Augustine. "We want the airwaves"
- The Ramones.No-one talks new millennium any more. There's a strange lack of arrival, after the build-up; even for Y2K cold-water-pourers like myself. Maybe the nineties were all clock-watching. Which now gets less important again.
Upon arrival, one should unpack, freshen up and hit the sights. Don't lounge around the hotel room. 7% of people access this website via their television set. Stats amazing, up the resolution. Observe the changing leaves of the seasons but uproot the just plain baffling, or restricting. Better start thinking Dog And Pony Show The Musical. Or maybe I should know my place.
Roland Hicks makes large-scale photo-realist paintings of inconsequential
objects. A Lipsyl or a digestive biscuit. Lying in incredible detail on
inconsequential mats or tables. It's like a drunks-eye view of the world.
Or a childs. Nothing 'iconic'. Apart from the perspective itself. They'd
make good sleeves for an Arab Strap CD. And they're on show in London February
2000 at the cool and hidden, occasionally trashed, Alfred
Camp Gallery.January 29th, 2001.
Why, hello there. You've reached the new address for The Dog And Pony Show. The site is still being chiselled out at this time. In fact most of those links over yonder on the left are still under construction.
As you can see the womb-centric magazine format of the geocities site has been rejigged into a rolling, phallic column. E/N - everything/nothing articles, modern review, satire, fiction and links will be archived under the most appropriate heading. We'll wing it and see. Video / mp3 subject to whatever hardware or software I can knock off or borrow.
Link to the site and alert me to yours. Contribute. Remix. New mail address.
DPS
