Kenneth Anger

I found this more recent Kenneth Anger video piece via the video from my previous post. I don't like this as much as his earlier works, but it's still got that creepy goodness.

Incidentally, my mother told me those toys that Samson De Brier brought over for my brother and I were always broken.

Samson De Brier

This interview is with Samson De Brier, who was an old friend of my father. He was a long time resident of Los Angeles and a local hipster. He died sometime in the late 90s. As I was thumbing through Kenneth Anger's "Hollywood Babylon", I noticed a picture of him with Mr. Anger standing over the grave of a dead starlet. It was a shock to instantly recognize him, the same man who visited our house sporadically when I was kid. He always brought some weird antique toy for Alex and I, which at the time, being only 5 years old, usually held little interest for me. In retrospect, I wish I could remember what those toys were! If you look at his intriguing place in the video, when the camera is permitted to wander, you can get a sense of all the amazing stuff this guy collected over the years. He might have been the first 20th century goth hipster.

Within my scattered memories of Samson's visits, and even of my father, the most salient one occurred one evening by the swimming pool. As I was swimming, my father and Samson were chatting only feet away. It was twilight and it had become chilly outside. Perhaps out of laziness or finding the outside chill too daunting, I didn't want to fetch a bath towel on my own. I remember asking my father to get a towel for me and every plead went unanswered. They just kept talking, ignoring me. Just as I had probably transitioned into a whiny overture, Samson yelled "SHUTUP!". In the following seconds I felt confident my father would castigate Samson for yelling at me, and with great urgency fetch a towel for his shivering son, but they simply resumed their conversation. Oh the humiliation! I ended up taking my shivering ass to a towel on my own. Thanks Samson. Cool house, though.

The Best "In State" funeral EVER

A 22 year old Puerto Rican was killed in a shoot-out. His family had his body propped up on his steel steed for his funeral. The revolution of funerial style will be televised. Live, from Puerto Rico.

Friskies Cat Food Commercial during Winter Olympics

cry

Kurt

I met Kurt Vonnegut one summer in the late 80s, when I was about 11 years old. He happened to be old friends with my uncle Bob, a doctor. I'm not sure how they met, but they maintained a bro-mance-like bond until KV's death.
I don't remember too much from that visit, but here's what I do remember:

KV smoked, copiously, unfiltered Pall Malls. I've no clue how the Hell he lived as long as he did. He almost died once from smoking, but not from internal charring or cancers. He fell asleep while smoking, setting his house on fire and nearly burning himself to death.

His wife seemed uptight and crazy.

He had a very young daughter, probably at the time about 7 years old, which was odd because KV already seemed very old to me. But I was 11. Anyone over 30 seemed old.

He talked about Woody Allen, saying that he met him once (this was around the time the whole Soon-Yi thing happened) and thought him to be 'weird'.

He was wearing a sweater vest of some sort. So writery.

Uncle Bob often lined the walls of his apartment with KV's prints and drawings. They were almost always goofy self-portraits in profile with a cigarette protruding, dashed off in wiggly lines.

The one thing I remember the most in Bob's stories about KV was that he was convinced that the rattlesnake couldn't have been a product of evolution. It seemed to be the only lifeform with an instrument attached to its body. He theorized that aliens came one day and slapped some kind of marraca on its tail and let it loose to breed.

Spring's coming

Therefore, it's a good time for some Tiny Tim.



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