We fucked that Taschen sale up, y’all.
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Passion for Taschen
Author: Bo
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needsvpply
An ongoing catalog of the shit I want.
Introducing dystopian fuchsia.
Eons ago, in college, in the heyday of the most-updated version of CFY,K, I was obsessed with Richard Fariña’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. Obsessed. I wrote short stories based on Thomas Pynchon’s prologue. I started my own college novel based on its structure.1 I designed and sold a skateboard deck featuring cover art from the first edition.2 I read other books about the people involved. I became convinced that Bob Dylan basically copped his moving-target intellectual personality from Fariña.3 I was fascinated with the author’s biography. He published a debut novel to great reviews, and then died on the way home from the publishing party. By falling off a motorcycle! What could be cooler? Nothing!
At some point, I became aware of a movie4 adaptation. Which was important, because I kind of wanted to option the rights myself, and write a screenplay for it.5The movie, starring Barry Primus, was released in 1971, and, even then, it barely existed.
Later on, in another life, I spent a couple of years working at Vulcan Video, which specialized in cult, foreign, and classic films. If a movie existed, we almost certainly had it. But we didn’t have Been Down So Long, because it was never released on any sort of home video format. It wasn’t ever shown on late night TV. It wasn’t anywhere.
Every few years, I’d do a halfhearted search for the movie. Because while I wasn’t obsessed with it anymore, I still really like Been Down So Long. A group of us all read it back in the day.6 I have only good memories of it. It’s the kind of egotistical self aggrandizing, look how cool and young and attractive we are thing that young men read and try to write. But, like with Kerouac, if you grow out of the narcissism part, develop empathy, but retain the exuberance, then you’ve got something. So, somewhere in the back of my mind, I still wanted to see it.
I randomly searched for it the other day. And, holy shit, the whole thing’s on YouTube. Here it is:
Right off the bat, so many of my questions were answered. Why has this movie been unavailable forever? Because it is bad.
Out hero, Gnossos Pappadopoulis, is supposed to be, like, 21 or 22, I think. Maybe a little older. Maybe he’s a grad student. But he’s a college kid. In the movie, he’s played by Barry Primus, who was 33 or 34 at the time of filming, I think. That would be crazy to try today! But a 1971 33 is like a 2021 60. What might have been acceptable then7, even then would only have worked if the protagonist was a hilarious young maniac. In this movie, he’s a twisted old lecher pretending to be a hilarious young maniac, and the unknown supporting cast has a pretty tough time playing along.
So why post it here? Well, out of a sense of obligation to my Past Self, for one.8 But also because for maybe the first time in history, a YouTube comment has something interesting to offer!
The top comment, above, is from a producer on the movie. And he goes on, in further replies, to talk about filming locations, and what it was like dealing with Mimi Fariña.
Also I love that an 84 year-old man is out here on YouTube looking up the 50 year-old movie he made.
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This is what an icon looks like
Just yesterday, Amanda asked me how I would feel if Moon decided to major in poetry.
And I was like “Oof. I don’t know.”
Because, historically, I don’t really like poetry.1
But today?
Listen. I have a lot to say about the election, and the attempted coup, and the past year, and the last 4 or 5 years.
But today I think we should all luxuriate in the feeling of relief that we all collectively feel as people on planet Earth.
And today, I saw a young woman take the stage at Joe Biden’s inauguration and do something only a handful of people, let alone poets, have ever been able to. Amanda Gorman, 22 years old, recognized the moment. She was in it. Of it. And then she transcended it.
It was what she said, but it wasn’t just what she said. And it wasn’t just the way she said it. Or the way she presented herself in front of a velvety blue staircase in a yellow topcoat that made her look like a Disney princess. Or that “poetry” in 2021 has the same sort of esoteric, self-serving vibe that “modern art” does, and that she delivered not only the best example of what modern poetry is and can be, but as good example of any of the use of words as a means to uplift and inspire and commemorate.
It was all of it.
So yeah. Major in poetry, Moon. If you want to.
I don’t know if it’s the best part of 2020. But it’s certainly the most 2020 part of 2020.
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the jam of the year: 2020
There were strong contenders for jam of the year this year. Strong contenders. Let’s do a top 5. A top 5 which won’t feature A$AP Rocky, who was on the jam of the year 2 years running. So that’s a surprise.
#5 – Aminé – “Shimmy”
Let’s be clear: 2020 wasn’t anyone’s year.
But despite that, “Shimmy” sounds like the most fun anybody had on a single this year. And it’s on Limbo, an album that sounded like it was wild fun to make.
2020 should have been the year that Aminé splashed onto the mainstream scene. But it wasn’t. It was the year we all stayed home and tried hard as hell to stay sane with varying degrees of success. “Shimmy” is an anthem for a year that should have been, but never was.
#4 – Khruangbin – “Time (You and I)”
I’ve said before that Khruangbin is what happens when you make a whole band out of “Genius of Love.” Which is maybe the best possible impetus for starting a band at all. “Time” is the purest distillation of that sound so far.
This came out like right after we all went home. 7 days after they canceled the show I had tickets for, I think. Ugh. I get it, but I hate it. I’m hoping that bands everywhere treat 2021 like a 2020 do over and just tour the shit out of their good records.
#3 – The Cool Kids – “Super Smash Bros”
Shout out to the whole Griselda movement, but “this the smile Scar had when he smoked Mufasa” was the hardest bar of 2020.
#2 – Shintaro Sakamoto – “Don’t Tinker With History”
Look, man. If your shit sounds even remotely like “Special Delivery (and, by extension, “Uproar”), it’s got a good chance of ending up on this list. This song has that sound and makes brings to mind a future that sounds like the funky, groovy 70s. What else do you want out of music even, you know?
#1 – Run the Jewels – “Ooh La La”
As if there was ever any doubt.
2020 was built for these dudes. As a year, it was the culmination of exactly the type of dystopian misery that RTJ luxuriates in and laughs at to keep from crying. This was their moment, and they knew it, and they rose to the occasion with their album RTJ4.
On “Walking In the Snow,” Killer Mike drops a verse that might be the purest distillation of what it was like to live through this year.
On “Ju$t,” they put Pharrell together with Zack De La Rocha and manage to make paranoid, literary verses sound catchy as hell along the way.
But on “Ooh La La,” like in the video, they set fire to the racist, capitalist structure that gave rise to 2020 in the first place. It’s the sound of 2 journeymen making the best music of their careers and using their new, bigger platform to say some real shit and shout out their heroes. When El-P says “DJ Premier,” and Primo starts scratching? I get those goosebumps every time. It’s the jam of the year.
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needsvpply
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Coming from where I’m from
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“Are you working on a vision board?”
The other day, the homie Brendo sent me this image:
“I could see you copping this look,” he said.1 Which is flattering. I’ve never looked this cool in my life.
But I am a person who thinks a lot about clothes. And I usually adopt a uniform that I wear slight variations on throughout a season. For the past 5 years or so, fall has been chore coat weather. And it still might be. But, I told Brenden, I had been thinking about suiting and blazers for this year. I sent him some pictures:
“Hahahaha love it,” said Brenden.”You just shared your Pinterest with me.”
“I really did. I’m a little embarrassed now, but I’m rolling with it.”
“It’s all good,” he assured me. “Every man’s got a process.”
So I guess this is mine? I don’t know.