4/26/2002 12:16:37 AM EST

Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer’s fantastic Conspirators of Pleasure screened tonight at the International House. This is the first Svankmajer feature I’ve seen (though I’ve seen plenty of his shorts) and I’m pleased to report that it was well worth another 85 minutes in the theater’s notoriously uncomfortable seats. The International House’s Post-Communism Film Series (which this film was a part of) continues through the weekend and I nearly shit myself when I noticed they’ll be screening Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on May 24 as part of their International Cult Films Series. My calendar is marked.

4/22/2002 12:07:00 PM EST

I hadn’t been to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in a year or so, so I went on Saturday. Primary points of interest were the massive Barnett Newman exhibition and Out of the Box: 20th Century Print Portfolios, including works by Man Ray, El Lissitzky, Andy Warhol and more. I was also happy to stumble upon a room I somehow never saw before, which was full of turn-of-the-century magazine covers (Harper’s, Lippincott’s, etc) by such luminaries as Edward Penfield and Will Bradley.

4/18/2002 10:52:54 AM EST

Yesterday I escaped the unseasonable sweltering heat for a couple hours with a visit to the Philadelphia ICA. The Photogenic exhibition was especially slick, including a number of works that applied photographic principles to other media, such as relief sculpture. Shoot the Singer: Music on Video was slightly disappointing, but still well worth seeing. Particularly noteworthy was a video piece with footage from a 1982 Minor Threat show woven with an interview with a 20-year old Ian MacKaye. And, there is a lengthy video introduction to the exhibition that features interviews with David Byrne, Genesis P-Orridge, John Cale, and a number of other interesting music people.

I also found out about the Open Video Call program, which I and my Rorschach collaborators will hopefully be participating in this summer.

4/15/2002 10:56:22 AM EST

Should I go see Trouble Every Day on Thursday or should I go see The Locust? I don’t think I’ll have another chance to see Trouble Every Day in theaters in Philly, whereas The Locust will likely be coming around again within a year. Hmm. Tonight is A Chronicle of Corpses, which I’ve been looking forward to seeing for awhile now.

This past weekend I made some reasonable progress on the BREDSTIK redesign; it is once again starting to feel like version 2 is going to happen. Hopefully the arrival of the Nintendo Gamecube at our house will not further delay the site’s re-launch...

4/11/2002 03:27:00 PM EST

I survived the trip home, and apparently spring arrived while I was gone. The ice cream man is in full effect. Since I missed the first half of the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, I’m diving in tomorrow night with a late screening of the U.S. premeire of Versus. Looks delicious.

4/10/2002 03:28:23 AM EST

Detroit is interesting in a ghost town kind of way. About half of the city’s buildings are vacant. And aside from business hours, there is virtually no activity. Weird. None of this stops the place from having some sweet bookstores, though, and looking through those took up much of the day. I also got to check out a nifty arcade in the ’burbs called Marvin’s Mechanical Museum, which had a ton of weird antique coin-op machines in addition to some newer, bloodier arcade titles.

The evening was occupied by a show at a little DIY gallery/showspace called Detroit Contemporary. I don’t get into so much hardcore stuff these days, so I don’t have any glowing reviews to share, but the overall friendliness of the scene is always appealing, so I met lots of nice people wearing t-shirts adorned with band names that sound like Steven Seagal movie titles.

Wednesday will see me return to PA.

4/9/2002 12:13:40 PM EST

I’m in Detroit today. Last night I got a little driving tour and today we’re gonna do some book-shopping and sock monkey picture-taking and punk rock finger-pointing. Results later.

4/7/2002 04:06:00 PM EST

Last night was a fund-raising party at the Heaven Gallery in Wicker Park for the upcoming Version02 Festival (which I’m really sad I’m going to miss). Despite huge potential for overhipness, it was a genuinely great time, and I met a bunch of really nice people. I was also familiarized with the very slick SELECT zine.

Thanks to Kelly and her FluX Core pals for showing me a good time.

4/6/2002 02:50:33 AM EST

My friend and Grand Theft Auto 3 provider Kevin Cornell is currently the featured artist on Media Inspiration, where his true southwestern yearnings are revealed. He also squared off against Karen Ingram this afternoon in a rousing match of Photoshop Tennis. Check out the results of the match over at coudal.com.

4/5/2002 02:39:56 AM EST

My generous hosts and I got back a couple hours ago from seeing a gorgeous digitally remastered 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Music Box Theatre. Wow.

This afternoon I paid my inaugural visit to the inside of The Art Institute of Chicago (I took some fabulous photos of my sock monkey around the exterior last spring). Lots of cool stuff in there, including a number of Lautrec and Renoir paintings I’ve always wanted to see, some really great early 20th century Japanese prints, and the first Rauschenburg I’ve ever seen in person. Unfortunately, I only discovered the coolest exhibit a few minutes before closing time: Taken By Design is an exhibition of a ton of photographs and photograms culled from the Institute of Design, including works by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Harry Calahan, and Aaron Siskind. It was a pleasant surprise after the disappointment of confirming that the Chicago Bauhaus museum was merely a figment of my imagination.

4/3/2002 09:27:35 PM EST

Today I drove seven hundred something miles to Chicago. If you didn’t know, Ohio and Indiana offer little in the way of intriguing scenery. But I did see a sign in Ohio for “Gore Orphanage Rd,” so now I’ve got another name to choose from when I start my metal band.