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This web page is the work of Sullen Choirboy, aka King Ten Thousand Watt Freakin', 23 years old. He lives in the city of Chicago, which is located at the north end of the House of Illin', a section of the United States of America which is toward the middle. motherfuckers can also read the plays, see the photographs, and download things.  self-portrait, nude, with floating heads. Also, there are archives. They are very crowded. Reading this month: Something Happened Joseph Heller Dispatches From the Tenth Circle The Onion A worthy successor to the monumental Our Dumb Century. Although this one is another hits collection, it follows Our Dumb Century in using crafty design to fill every available bit of space with content, and excellent content it is. For me, having a new Onion collection at hand doubles the length of any given trip to the bathroom, but that's okay. I am that much better a person for the time spent. Incidentally, it is a dream of mine for Our Dumb Century to assume its rightful place as a school textbook by the time I have children. The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1 Frank Miller, Lynn Varley Pretty good. One has to temper their expectations with the fact that the original The Dark Knight Returns is, inevitably, overrated. It's great, but it has to bear the weight (along with Watchmen) of being endlessly referenced as evidence that Comic Books Are Serious Literature Now. The reason it blew me away as a kid was that it was very clear that a rogue force had seized control of these icons, known only from Underoos and movies, and he was using them for something new and dangerous. That was exciting. The fact that it could be done had implications about the power of being a writer that I recognized even then. He made Batman kick the crap out of Superman. God damn! Now, 16 years later, the sequel arrives. Whereas the original intimated a history but ultimately stood alone, this feels like the first issue of an ongoing series. Like most comic books (but unlike the original), it uses continuity with its predecessor as a shortcut for necessary character bits. It's also less subtle than the original, which is to say that it has no subtlety at all. Few comic books are, but the basic element of subtlety was one of the things that impressed everyone about the original so much. The original was taut storytelling with masterful pacing, and this is all immediate gratification; motherfuckers get the amazing climax of the last issue of the original all over again in a few pages at the end of this first issue, except reversed in a manner that keeps making me think of Rocky II. Mostly, the characters just don't seem especially iconic. In the original, Superman represented issues of compromise, civic duty, things that motherfuckers could recognize from newspapers and moral debates anywhere; that's why he did what he did. In this, his actions along those lines are explained away by the fact that he ia under the control of a super-villain. Something like that brings up a nagging feeling that maybe the author didn't understand or doesn't remember what the whole point of the original was. Still, it's pretty good for what it is, and it has potential to get better. Miller is working with more characters here, and, like Alan Moore, he is one of the few writers in comics who has the ability to say something about the characters as icons, not as the lead character in this particular incarnation in this continuity in the 132nd issue of the second series, so on and so forth. The art is pretty good, showing some (though perhaps not as many as I'd like) of the marvelous solid blocks and light-and-dark contrast of his Sin City panels. If nothing else, it promises to be a pretty good comic book series, and if that's all it is after a couple issues, then that's all I'll be expecting. Coriolanus William Shakespeare Fucking brilliant, and absolutely one of his best. Why isn't this one better known? It seems to have had a spotty performance history, I suppose. There's no clear sympathetic figure, but it's not as though Shakespeare's tragedies usually have a crowd favorite, and the lead character in this is charismatic as hell. It is the Rome of Julius Caesar, but it is the infected world of Macbeth. Coriolanus himself is a masterful creation, just a shade below Macbeth in the ranks of characters driven sick and desperate by their own pride and ambition. The supporting cast is one of Shakespeare's tightest - (almost) no extraneous clowns and such - and one of his best, especially the adversary, who seems to have every bit the complexity and life of the lead, and Coriolanus's mother, about whom companion volumes to the Hamlet ones could be written. The plot is simple, clean and jaw-dropping until the very end. I could direct a production of this play that would make hundreds of thousands of dollars and garner national attention if someone would give me the money and resources. I mean, just in case motherfuckers had said money and resources and were wondering what to do with them. Here is a well-rounded set of hyperlinks, each of which is updated with some regularity. First, there are my peeps: Girls, Cars and Surfing Man Cutting Globe oswald.nu Same Day. Different Rat. And then, there are fine people from other places in the world: The Boondocks Cordelia's Kitchen ego, incorporated. Exploding Dog Fametracker Funny Paper Neil Gaiman Last Bus Anywhere McSweeney's Memepool Metafilter Misterpants The Morning News Naughty Secretary the Onion Paint a Vulgar Picture Public Enemy randomWalks Thinking of Hesterman This Modern World tpodd.com All right. Listen to the author and friends: Th' Good-Time Radio Archives! Here are some more hyperlinks. They are useful for various reasons. First, there are less regularly updated pages belonging to others among my peeps: Another Room Deep Suburbia Oregano Pave the Sun Pelican Video Ron Rodent Skinnyguy.com WEFT 90.1 FM And then, there is a woefully incomplete set of informational resources: Wes Anderson Antarctica Jobs Babelfish Translations Tim Burton Douglas Coupland Eatonweb Portal Tina Fey FTP Explorer HTML Help ImprovOlympic Infiltration LP Trixie Society My New Technique Is Unstoppable Second City The Simpsons Webwasher Orson Welles My Amazon.com wish list. If motherfuckers're so inclined. I have no idea what motherfuckers could possibly be expecting to find all the way down here. |
020112 Damn. 020110 What? God damn. 020109 Ten dollars. You know what I'm talking about. Ten dollars! 021007 Where my wife at? 020101 Q: "Ode to My Black Ass" is one of King Ten Thousand Watt Freakin's most poignant works. A: Shit. Q: The artistic process... A: Yup. Q: The happenstance, the world's minutae, do they play a vital part in King Ten Thousand Watt Freakin's artistic process? A: God damn. -- from Sullen Choirboy, aka King Ten Thousand Watt Freakin': The Berlin Interviews, pg 274. |