jürgen fauth’s muckworld

From the secure, undisclosed New Jersey location where we’re weathering the storm, here’s a muckworld roundup, covering the triumphs, marriages, deaths, drug convictions, and ambivalent critical reception of five artists so famous their first names are enough.

Jami
I have neither video nor photos to prove it, but an exquisite literary time was had at KGB Bar on Friday, where Jami Attenberg celebrated tax day and the release of her Instant Love paperback together with Pauls Toutonghi (Red Weather), Darin Strauss (Chang and Eng and The Real McCoy) and Min Jin Lee (Free Food for Millionaires.) Jami read a story about anonymous sex with accountants. Darin Strauss played the Dobro, and Anya Ulinich sang the Internationale. I have it on good authority that less than half of those in attendance actually recognized the song, which indicates that it’s been a good long while since everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers. The dustbin of history, indeed.

Kermit
Finally, good news from New Orleans: Kermit Ruffins got hitched! I realize St. James Infirmary isn’t quite appropriate, but it’s the best Kermit on YouTube. Congratulations, and thanks for all the BBQ. (And thank you for the tip, Robbi Jeanne.)

Kurt
“If you read Kurt Vonnegut when you were young — read all there was of him, book after book as fast as you could the way so many of us did — you probably set him aside long ago,” begins Verylin Klinkenborg’s piece in the Times. I followed her advice and just picked up Cat’s Cradle for the first time in 15 years, and it’s even better than I remembered. Around 1999, I saw Vonnegut speak, but at that point, he wasn’t my wavelength at all and just seemed like another bitter old Luddite griping about how superior the post office was to sending email. My friends Dusty and Kathleen enjoyed hanging out with him afterwards, so perhaps it was me who was bitter. Either way, Kurt could write. John Leonard in The Nation: “God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.” Mourning at Metafilter and on Maud Newton.

Quentin
That Cleopatra rant was my last word on Grindhouse, but there are a few more pieces worth pointing out: Filmbrain, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last week, thinks Quentin needs a girlfriend, and the Looker agrees with my assessment that Death Proof is just way dull. At The House Next Door, Keith Uhlich and Matt Zoller Seitz have a debate that’s twice as exciting as the actual movie–and almost as long.

Trey
Trey pleads guilty. IANAL, but five years probation with mandatory prison in case he slips sounds like a tough deal. Hang in there, Trey. We love you. Push on ’till the day and don’t you listen to that evil Amy Winehouse. A video of better times:

I bought this book as a joke, an afterthought, just because I’d already spent twenty minutes in the dusty Prenzlauer Berg used book store where the salespeople were playing Warcraft in the corner. “Kinski’s always good for a laugh,” I figured, and forked over my three Euros. Little did I know that the joke would blossom into a full-fledged obsession. I’d grown up with an idea of Kinski based mainly on the German TV shows I saw during the 80s: Gottschalk, talk shows. Whenever Kinski was on (and he seemed to be on a lot), he could be counted on to rave and rant and make a public spectacle of himself.

We watched Woyzek in high school, and it freaked me out. Since, I’ve seen Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu, and countless of the two hundred B pictures, Edgar Wallace and Karl May adaptations he appears in, and Herzog’s mean-spirited My Best Fiend. Still, Kinski’s artistry seemed to consist of Kinski just being Kinski, a megalomaniac who could outcrazy everybody on screen because he was a madman offscreen, too.

No longer. I can’t say that I understand him after reading his outrageous, boundless autobiography, but at least it’s possible now to imagine what the world looked like from inside Kinski’s head. As he puts it, everything about him was too too: he felt too much, loved too intensely, reacted too quickly, fought too viciously; a raging, fucking, screaming beast of a man whose emotions were too close too the surface, whose appetites where too ravenous, who had no sense of proportion. Put him in a TV studio and ask him idiotic questions about his international success or the endless bad movies he appeared in, and he would show his disdain, question the intention of the hosts and refuse to answer. He talks too quickly and he pounces too early, but you can’t deny that he has a point.

Rewatch his films, and you can see it there, right on the surface: every twitch of his soul is written on an unbearably intense face, threatening, seductive, almost too alive. The agony, the joy, the madness–if our senses weren’t so dull compared to his, we would appear mad, too. It’s no surprise that before the backdrop of mid-20th century German mainstream culture, a creature as fearless as Klaus Kinski should seem completely nuts.

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It was one of those downtown nights that go a long way toward justifying the absurd rent we pay: as part of an epic lineup, Marcy read at Rachel Kramer Bussel’s In the Flesh series at Happy Ending. There were Victorian choose-your-own-sex adventure novelists, Stephen Elliott, Mo Beasley’s UrbanErotika poet’s posse, and somebody simply known as the Pussy Miner.

My favorite reader I’m not married to was Jami Attenberg, whose story “Catch and Release” you can read at Nerve.com. Also seen eating cupcakes in the dark red recesses of Happy Ending: Lisa, Nichelle, Jolene, and Dan Alford. Here’s a little video of Marcy, which I hope you enjoy–I had to throw pornographic magazines at interfering paparazzi to get it. I’m not proud of this, but it’s true.

Later, we crashed the second open bar of the week, some kind of movie party for a shoot down the block, there was champagne and rumors of Hollywood stars. Night of the Hunter played on a wall and Jami introduced us to Indochina-bound John, Alternadad Neal Pollack, and the MacArthur-winning mastermind behind Diner Dash.

We got a ride home from Christen Clifford, who had read a piece about getting locked out of her apartment with a breastfeeding baby in one hand and a vibrator in the other. And here’s the last name I’ll drop in this post: on our way out, Marcy ran into Helen Hunt and handed her a copy of Twins. It was a decidedly Shortbus kind of night–sane and permeable.

[tags]nyc, reading, marcy, jurgen, books, sex, happyending, erotica, robert mitchum, helen hunt, rachel kramer bussel, cupcakes, stephen elliott, neal pollack, jami attenberg, christen clifford, breastfeeding, poetry, vibrators, youtube, video, paparazzi, namedropping, partycrashing, chinatown, linkfest, mo beasley, muckfilm[/tags]