Author: playhaus2015

Bionic Eyes YouTube channel ready to view

Experimenting with glitch video is one of my current passions. I finally established a YouTube channel called Bionic Eyes to publish some of my video work. A sample video, “Negative Mermaid,” is up now. The images were created using VHS footage run through a BPMC Touch Deluxe circuit bent device. I’ve created several video poems using the Touch Deluxe along with a Kaos Pad Entrancer, which will be released as soon as I add some music to them. The same set up was used to create film stills used as self-portaits posted on this blog. I used a Tachyons+ Optiglitch circuit bent video effects unit to create the cover for my poetry collection, Savage Magic:

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Flashback: Article on the Bride of Frankenstein’s singing career in Cool and Strange Music magazine

bride-sings

That time my article on Elsa Lanchester’s Bawdy Cockney Songs LPs appeared in Cool and Strange Music #28. You know Ms. Lanchester best as the titular star of Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale’s 1935 horror masterpiece.

Later in her career, she took up a kind of cabaret act where she sang silly ditties full of innuendo and double entendres. Many songs from this act ended up on two LPs, originally titled “Songs for a Shuttered Parlor” and “Songs for a Smoke Filled Room.” (Reissued as “Bawdy Cockney Songs” and, naturally, “More Bawdy Cockney Songs.”) Both are great examples of weird and strange thrift store scores.

Cool and Strange Music no longer has an online presence, but you can read the “director’s cut” of the article in my own archive here.

lanchester-LP

c&smusic28

Poems published in Otoliths & In Between Hangovers

Five of my poems made their initial public appearance today in two of my favorite journals.

Otoliths #44 published four poems: “Running Across Harappa,” “Your Ad Here,” “Barcode Traps,” and “Reaching for Mars with the Wrong End of the Stick.” You can read them here. Lots of great stuff in this issue, including some amazing visual poetry.

As a side note, an informative interview with Otoliths editor Mark Young has appeared on the Dictung Yammer blog. The discussion covers the history of the poetry journal, editing a journal, and Mark’s 50 year history as writer and editor of poetry.

I have several poems waiting in the cue at In Between Hangovers that will be released gradually. Today, “Tax Plan Sneer Job” made it into the “print” of the electronic blogosphere. You can read it here.

Flashback: Washington City Paper cover story “Stranger Among Us”

That time my article “Stranger Among Us” was the cover story for Washington City Paper, September 28, 2001. The full article is archived online here.

The story followed local electrician Napoleon Epps, who started making Atlantean One Meditation Helmets after a life-threatening work accident. The helmet, as well as other apparatus in his home and yard, were meant to help him maintain contact with some alien masters who guided his spiritual development. His work touched on outsider art, pseudoscience, and new age spirituality–and I was all over it.

Looks like the City Paper has improved its online archive of late, and plenty more of my reviews and articles can be found on their site from this page. You can find articles on psychosexual graphics magazine Malefact, outsider filmmaker Rock Savage, avant garde vocal group Comma, perennial candidate for DC Mayor Faith Dane, and poet Buck Downs and his postcard poetry project, among other documentation of local fringe creatives.

One poem in Streetcake #50

Streetcake issue #50, the “50th Anniversary Issue,” went live today (December 30, 2016) including one of my poems, “The Light Becomes the Tunnel.” The whole issue is a quick read, as it’s fairly short–great for year end vacation reading.

Sometimes you just know when a journal is right for your work. Here’s how the Streetcake editors describe what they’re looking for: “We are looking for exciting writing that is visual, innovative and experimental. We also like great imagery and humorous writing. We want to read poetry and fiction that surprises us, looks downright weird and is a little out of the ordinary. So if your writing is a bit of an outcast, then join us, support us and keep returning to the cake.”

Four poems in In Between Hangovers

Just got word that poetry blog In Between Hangovers accepted four of my poems for publication. “Radio Free USA” went live today (12/23/16). The others will be published at roughly three week intervals: “Hard/Easy,” “Marketing Zero,” and “Zodiac of the Damned.” This journal seems to share my more playful sense of avant garde aesthetics, so I’m super happy to be included.

A note on submission persistence: the first batch I sent got sent back because of the heavy indenting; In Between Hangovers is another fine WordPress blog, and the platform does not reproduce indents. It’s a peculiar glitch to WordPress, which I’m not sure is present in other blogging platforms. Anyway, I immediately rounded up a batch of poems that did not rely on the implied sense of movement and performance that comes with line spacing. Never give up.