Promotional blurb on back of a VHS case for the movie Sodom and Gomorrah. (Found at: video & seminar room, Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota.)
Sodom and Gomorrah. Two cities built on barbarous cruelty and ruled by unspeakable vice. Sweeping off the pages of the bible, and brought to life by a cast of thousands, this breathtaking, epic production paints a vivid and shocking portrait of the cities too wicked and sinful to survive. It’s the story of Lot (Stuart Granger) who led the Hebrews out of the desert to these twin cities of sin, and into temptations no man or woman could resist. From bloody battle and sadistic torture to savage passion, it’s an action-packed story of shameless corruption of the flesh and spirit that leads to an awesome climax, as God’s fury is unleashed in one of the most gripping cinematic sequences of destruction ever created. Directed by Robert Aldrich in 1963, the star-studded international ensemble features Anouk Ami and Pierre Angelli. One hundred forty eight minutes, color, nineteen sixty three.
From Drinking and Intoxication, edited by Raymond G. McCarthy; The Free Press; Glencoe, Illinois: 1959.
Much interesting work was done on [drunkenness] in the 19th century, and quaint theories persisted even then. Robert McNish, a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, in 1835 in a book Anatomy of Drunkenness, discussed the peculiar phenomenon of spontaneous combustion of drunkards, a condition which, he claims, is well documented and in which the whole body, starting with the viscera, is burned in a few hours by a combustive process which for some reason does not even singe the surrounding furniture.
Here is a book highly recommended for fans of Weirdness and/or The Flyover Country: Not Normal, Illinois — an anthology of surreal, irreal, gothic or deranged stories about the Midwest.
I’m happy to have a story of my own included here (”River Dead of Minneapolis Scavenged by Teenagers”), and it was nice to see the whole collection earn a favorable review last weekend in the Star Tribune.
What’s interesting is the article’s lead, which alludes to a study asserting that reading Kafka — more specifically, exposing yourself to absurdist moments, or even arguing against the fact that you are composed of a single, unified self — actually improves your ability to learn patterns.
Cool psychology term of the day: surrealist narratives, non-sequiturs and attacks against your own self-unity are called Meaning Threats.
Before these gems started popping up on the net, the only way to catch them was by lucking into the odd screening or digging through the Minnesota History Center’s video library… and then burning them into your memory by making hasty notes and pencil sketches (old samples at bottom of post).
The sound is scratchy and the video is degraded, but you won’t regret watching this incredible footage.
This post is firstly an open thank-you to the extended family of Twin Cities film-goers who came to see “How to Live Better” in all its incarnations this year: at the Minneapolis / St. Paul International Film Festival, Bryant Lake Bowl, Square Lake Film Festival, Stevens Square Park, Rogue Buddha Gallery and more. From the entire cast and crew, we appreciate your support!
For those who haven’t seen the award-winning “How to Live Better,” December 2009 is your month. It will be screening at all of the following venues and times:
Sunday, December 13 @ 10 p.m. — Appearing on Twin Cities Public Television as part of the MNTV short film competition on channel TPT 2
Saturday, December 19 (time TBA) — At the Corner Bar in Seven Corners, Minneapolis (downstairs in the Comedy Corner Underground), along with local actor and comedy impresario Gus Lynch.
And rolling into the new year, “How to Live Better” starts a standing gig at the Walker Art Center: it will be showing continuously on the Walker’s Best Buy Film/Video Bay from March 2010 through August 2010.
We’ll see you at the movies… and in the meantime, here’s some selected photos from this year’s screenings. Thanks for coming out!
I was last punched in the face on a street in downtown Minneapolis two years ago, and what’s funny to remember are the little things:
actually saying the words “Cold-cocked me?!?” seconds after I had been cold-cocked
the paltry sound of his fist on my face – a non-Hollywood, very faint plip sound – in contrast to the blow itself, which was not paltry and sent me sprawling
post-fight: cops on the scene… cherries twirling… assailant in cuffs… I was pumped so full of adrenaline I could barely conjure the fine motor skills necessary to hold a pen, but somehow a police report shoved in my face (resurgent sense-memory from the essay-tests of my school days? A blue-book flashback?) elicited from me an outpouring of legalese:
“I was sitting in the vehicle (west-facing) when the assailant approached the car (driver’s side), on foot, with trousers pulled down/low/off and pressed his buttocks region (naked) against the window (d. side, same). As I was, at that time, angered, I stepped out of the car to confront/chastise him. His companions (approx. 5 to 8, one female, rest male) then surrounded me in a semi-circular fashion….”
I have retold the story many times, and the retellings are of course substantially different. But I would like to use this moment to very briefly discuss The Fight Story as a narrative form at large.
Variations on a Theme
There is an essay I admire by Richard Ford called “In the Face” that is, essentially, about hitting people. One of its passages (although not the thesis entire) goes like this:
Where I grew up, in Mississippi and Arkansas, in the fifties, to be willing to hit another person in the face with your fist meant something…. It [...] meant you were brash, winningly impulsive, considerate of but not intimidated by consequence, admittedly but not too admittedly theatrical, and probably dangerous. As a frank, willed act, hitting in the face was a move toward adulthood, the place we were all headed–a step in the right direction.
But I also admire the fight stories of Ron Lyke of Anoka, Minnesota, and appreciate the time he spent with me several years ago talking about his boxing gym. I pestered him then about old times – street-fighting in Nordeast – and while I sensed that he considered these war tales strictly B-roll (I had a microphone; he seemed conscious of “speaking for the record” and made repeated attempts to downplay the tales), I would not relent. I confess now that these stories interested me the most.
Here is Ron delivering a discursive mini-essay about fighting, which might be called “No Ability But a Ton of Heart”:
Here is one called “The Cracker Box Incident”:
Here is another called “Look at That Bubble Come Out”:
And finally, here is a short essay about the craft of boxing itself, a sub-lesson called “A Body Shot Is Better Than a Punch to the Head”:
(I would like to thank Ron for speaking with me that day several years ago, and for his generosity in stories. For those interested in boxing as an art unto itself or as an outlet for competition, I would highly recommend Ron’s most excellent gym: Lyke’s Anoka-Coon Rapids Boxing Gym. Ron is wearing a t-shirt on the home page that reads JAIL SUCKS.)
Phraseology of the Fight Story… and Grandpa Bill
Two other stories, in brief:
I once worked with as a bar-back at a restaurant called Billy’s, and my shift partner was a friendly and gregarious ex-con from Chicago named Terry. Terry had a talent for riffing, and nothing seemed to release this gift more than the fact that I would eat lunch on my break. It was, in his eyes, the height of absurdity. The riffs poured out in the form of giant, improvisatory lists: “Yeah, I see you standin there, slackin, eatin yo slacka lunch… lookin at yo slacka clock… thinkin bout that slacka convention up in Amsterdam… buncha European slackas, cookin up them slacka schemes, findin all kinds of ways for slackin….”
He came to work one day and said he’d been mugged.
“Jesus, Terry,” I said. “That’s awful. You feelin okay?”
“Took my hat. Took my wallet….” And here a great smile spread out over his face and he said: “But I caught up wit that man. I broke him proper!”
*
Finally, I would like to recognize the cherished sequence of family stories passed down to us from my grandfather, Bill, who spent most of his adolescence in Iowa fighting people – either as a matter of circumstance (”Hey, Mister. You Iowans don’t grow half as much corn as we do. And at that… it’s only half as big.” A fight ensued.) or by profession as a bouncer in the Star Beer Garden in Charles City.
Bill has many stories about fighting people, and all of them, unfailingly – no matter the setting nor the characters nor the mechanics of the fight itself – end with the phrase: “And then I beat the piss out of him.” The line is delivered almost apologetically, and is preceded by a long, grave pause.
Recently I heard a variation on the fight stories heretofore unknown to me. We were driving down from Minnesota to visit his wife’s grave (one of the last such trips we’ll make; each physical action for him these days – showering, walking, climbing into a car – is more difficult than the last) and the appearance outside the car of the northeastern Iowan landscape – the gently and almost imperceptibly rolling plains; the water towers marking our progress: Mason City… Rudd… Floyd… – woke in him a visible passion. He was home again. He began telling story after story, and one he told was this:
“Clayton Miller and my sister Amelia come get me in the night out to the Lion’s Field. And there was a lot of men up there. All of em waitin to fight. And so a man up there beat the piss out of Clayton Miller. And Amelia beat the piss out of another man. And a man come up to me, and he had a dog. And you know what? I had my dog. And you know what then? My dog… beat the piss out of his dog.”
The moonlit battle… the field littered with casualties of all species and genders… the weird appearance and martial behavior of the dogs… I was enjoying the bizarreness of the scene so much that I was honestly surprised when he paused and then delivered the de facto amen – the time-honored line we loved, and which marked the story as authentic and true.
I was thinking about some of the problems you outlined in your manifesto — “Nobody listens to me”; “I’ve lost the power to grip the minds and hearts of the public,” etc. — and they are bummers. I am being as honest as I can when I say that I feel your pain.
But maybe your poem, novel or surrealist dream-theater belongs outside of the gallery. What I’m saying is that maybe there’s room for a genuine art experience — a spark ignited in the mind of a single viewer — that occurs in the world of commercial circulars and coupons.
I am enclosing an excerpt from September’s “Angie’s Mailbag,” from the consumer-reviews aggregator Angie’s List. “Susan T.” writes:
The type of artwork mentioned above looks like this:
I am going to put on hold the fact that I think this might represent a real artistic triumph — the working artist, through the medium of a consumer publication devoted to reviewing house-painters and plumbers, unwittingly sends a message to a woman in Texas, and that message explodes in her brain like a nightmare — and am instead going to take this time to reflect a little about distortion.
If you are Susan T., you want to hire a plumber who looks like an adult human plumber. He should not “look like a fetus” or have “boneless rope-arms.” But I keep coming back to an axiom, probably flawed, that the more a work of art expresses its uniqueness, the more it will seem broken, wrong or distorted.
Furthermore: this is a good thing.
(As an aside, doesn’t the Angie’s List plumber seem like — that famous distortion — a Giacometti shadow?)
Notable Unique Artists hired to perform commercial work are often hired expressly for this skill — the ability to see wrongly — and I’m reminded of the Errol Morris commercials where a man’s head is framed out in favor of his blue-collar gut, or where the “natural subjects” of a rooftop party — attractive young people drinking alcohol — are instead seen in fragments or partially obscured by a chunk of steel.
I worked on a website once where a client balked at using generic photographs (ubiquitous) of well-dressed business people. The smiles and sartorial sharpness and non-insanity of the people, she said, was itself disturbing and unreal.
In any case we should be thanking Susan T. of Dallas. I can’t share her view, but who’s to say she didn’t have her fill that day of signal-disruption and expressionistic interrogation. Sometimes we want to know the world.
Which brings me to these last items of internet curiosity: Iconoclastic Artists Making Commercials. (David Lynch and the Coen brothers.) Which is wholly different from artists appearing in commercials. (Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol.)
