Itinerantdaughter's Blog

Your dream vacation destinations are the Harry Ransom Center in Austin and Heidelberg, Germany, to see the Prinzhorn Collection.

“In France one realizes immediately that one is living in a world of adults; the children take second place.  With us, as everyone knows, the children seem to come first.  As a result we have men and women who have never matured, who are eternally dissatisfied, and who have no real respect for anything, least of all for one another.  Is not much of the morbid, frenetic activity of the American traceable to the restlessness and discontent of childhood?  The needless destruction and reconstruction which is constantly going on, presumably in the name of progress, is of a pattern with the behavior of the spoiled child who, weary of his building blocks, destroys with a sweep of the hand what he has struggled for hours to create.  The only valid reality with us seems to be that of kindergarten.”

A) Hanna Rosin

B) Anais Nin

C) Pamela Druckerman

D) Mireille Guiliano

E) Adam Gopnik

F) Other (Name: ________)

We’ve been having major issues with our radiators here at my new/temporary office, so the managing company called a radiator specialist to come in last Friday.  I was out for the day, which I now regret, because it sounds like this guy was quite a trip.  When my coworker asked him when the radiators would be fixed, he replied, “Well, when you look up in the sky, you can’t always see stars.  That’s just like radiators.”  Apparently he’s coming back tomorrow or the next day to “draw pictures” of the radiators and figure out how to convert them to steam.  On a whim, my coworker decided to Google him, and it seems that his inaugural “New York City Boiler Tour” was the subject of a 2003 Talk of the Town.  Here, a bit more about the man I like to call the Boiler Whisperer:

When he was done, the tour group set out to look at some boilers. There was a quick stop at a building on Avenue C, to watch a boiler-related film, “Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst is Your Waffen,” starring Carmelita Tropicana, a superintendent/performance artist. That was followed by a lunch break at Katz’s Delicatessen, on Houston Street, where a woman in a fur coat said to the group, “What? Are you bird-watching?” Someone told her what they were up to. “Boilers!” she said. “Oh, that’s not very exciting.” In the afternoon, Henry sneaked his people into the basement of an old church, where they saw the history of boilers encapsulated: turn-of-the-century coal to eighties super-efficient natural-gas-fired pulse combustion, then back to oil. On the way out, an engineer from Massachusetts said, “I feel excitingly illicit.”

Full article available here.

Only in New York, folks!

The director discusses his pretty damn cool background:

From what I’ve read, you had an interesting job after you graduated from Washington University, in St. Louis, in 1966.

I worked in a mental institution in St. Louis, which prepared me well for when I went out to Hollywood to work with actors. People laugh when I say that, but it was actually very good training. And not just with actors; it was good training for just living in the world. It’s knowing how to deal with people who might be reacting in a way that’s connected to anxiety or grief or fear or rage. As a director, you’re dealing with that constantly with actors. But if I were a businessman, I’d probably be applying those same principles to that line of work.

How long did you work at the mental institution?

I worked in the psych ward for about seven months, and then I moved back to Chicago and I began to substitute-teach at a public elementary school—kindergarten through sixth grade. While I was teaching, I did some freelance writing for the Chicago Daily News, and I took a few of these pieces to show to Playboy. They happened to be looking to fill an entry-level editorial staff job, which was joke editor, and they hired me.

So I write for this nonfiction blog and they occasionally send me books that they want me to look at or write about in the coming months.  In the last package from them, I was expecting one book (on the Arab Spring) and found that, but also a copy of The Last Interview and Other Conversations: Hannah Arendt, part of a series from Melville House.  I felt like the luckiest little quasi-intellectual this side of the East River!  Herewith, a bit of her talking about her background with German journalist and politician Gunter Gaus.

GG: You studied in Marburg, Heidelberg, and Freiberg with professors Heidegger, Bultmann, and Jaspers; with a major in philosophy and minors in theology and Greek.  How did you come to choose those subjects?

HA: You know, I have often thought about that.  I can only say that I always knew I would study philosophy.  Ever since I was fourteen years old.

GG: Why?

HA: I read Kant.  You can ask, Why did you read Kant?  For me the question was somehow: I can either study philosophy or I can drown myself, so to speak.  But not because I didn’t love life!  No!  As I said before––I had this need to understand… the need to understand was there very early.  You see, all the books were in the library at home; one simply took them from the shelves.

The “more” as promised:

“Tantric sex still counts.”

“I wonder if you guys have anything that would make sex while pregnant less painful.”

“These are NOT the batteries that go with these.”

“Sometimes those vibrators are really persnickety.”

“We’re looking for massage oil.”  “Oh, you’re in the lubricant section.”

“We used to have leather that was local.  And blindfolds.”

“I’m holding out for a bondage belt.”

“Who wants to fuck a plastic bag?”

“I’ve been so cold all day except when this one couple came in and asked me a question and I got so hot.”

“You play with penises, you should know this.”

“I wouldn’t put your penis in anything called a ‘Hot Octopus.’”

“You insert them into your vagina and you just walk around.”

So I’m spending two days at a sex shop in Albuquerque (more on that later) and the owner is talking to me about various sexual politics about which, boring monogamous lady that I am, I never ever would have imagined.  Here I find myself flipping through a guidebook to BDSM and coming across a section about “branding fantasies.”  Upon reading, I actually thought to myself, “That’s pretty smart!”  Which… well, we’ll leave it at that.

“A branding fantasy can be satisfied very neatly without any permanent damage to the ‘branded’ slave.  A dear friend had success with the following ingenious scenario.  We found it too cute and clever to keep to ourselves, but don’t divulge this trick to more than thirty or forty of your closest friends.

“The ingredients include a bound and willing subject, a blindfold, a hibachi (or a skillet and hotplate; hibachis are more dramatic, but indoor ventilation is a problem) a bit of raw hamburger, a can of frozen juice, and a branding iron.  The branding iron is not absolutely essential, but it does add a lot to the atmosphere.  These wrought iron props are nifty to have anyway.  They inspire interesting thoughts and conversations when left hung on a wall.

“Proceed as if you were going to really brand your partner.  Bind her so that she won’t move.  Show your lady the hibachi and branding iron (if you have one).  Get her consent to proceed with branding.  Talk about the pain that is to follow and how to care for third degree burns to help build your victims anticipation.  Now comes the blindfold.

“When the person has reached the right frame of mind, and when the hibachi is very hot, it is time for the moment of truth.  Push a frozen can of juice hard against your victims skin while simultaneously tossing your hamburger onto the hot coals.  The cold of the can against the skin will feel like burning, while the hamburger produces the sounds and smell of searing flesh.  Optional screams are furnished by the submissive.”

Is it weird that I want to see this “psychothriller porno?”
Jonas Middleton

 
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
1976, 91 min, 35mm
“A particularly deviant homage to Fellini, Ken Russell, Roger Vadim, and about a dozen other European directors, all served up in the context of a genuinely creepy horror film.” –Nathaniel Thompson, MONDO DIGITAL
Middleton’s disturbing exploration of an unhappily married woman’s fascination with a mysterious mirror in her mansion’s attic is the adult film genre’s sole psychological horror film. While the title implies a porno variant of Lewis Carroll’s classic story of Alice venturing into Wonderland, Middleton instead weaves a tale of incest, child abuse, and mental anguish, with the visual style and storytelling of a Gothic horror tale set in a sprawling, shadowy family estate. Catherine Burgess stars as Catherine, a pillar of high society whose impossibly perfect facade conceals an unhealthy obsession with an evil entity haunting her home, which takes on the persona of her late father. As her life begins to crumble around her, she is offered one chance to reunite with dear dead dad…for a price…. Expertly photographed by future Hollywood cinematographer João Fernandes (‘Harry Flecks’), boasting a cast of some of the best actors in the New York adult film scene of the mid-70s (Jamie Gillis, Terri Hall, Roger Caine, Kim Pope, Nancy Dare, Jeffrey Hurst, Bobby Astyr), and accented by a mesmerizing score courtesy of Arlon Ober and future FRIDAY THE 13TH composer Harry Manfredini, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS is a horrific gem waiting to be rediscovered by contemporary audiences.

I would like to thank my fellow NCP members for helping us help Pope Francis reach his goal of 10 million Twitter followers! Below is a news article on the subject:

“Hallelujah! Pope Francis Rejoices After Reaching 10M Twitter followers (Mirror)

As leader of the worldwide Catholic Church, Pope Francis already has something in the region of 1.2 billion followers. But that didn’t stop the technologically-savvy pontiff rejoicing Sunday morning when he hit 10 million followers on Twitter – a relatively conservative figure in comparison. Times Live “Dear followers, I understand there are now over 10 million of you!” Francis wrote on his account, @Pontifex. “I thank you with all my heart and ask you to continue praying for me.” Reuters The first non-European pope in 1,300 years has tripled the number of followers of the @pontifex handles since succeeding Benedict XVI in March, according to the Vatican, which announced Francis had reached 10 million after adding together the followers of all his accounts. This would make the pontiff more popular than The New York Times and just behind rapper Kanye West, according to websites.

“The account was officially opened on Dec. 12, 2012 in times of Pope Benedict XVI, who at the end of his term had over 3 million followers. After the resignation of German Joseph Ratzinger to the chief office of the Catholic Church, the account @Pontifex was suspended until March 17 this year, after the assumption of Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio.”

The next meeting of the NCP membership committee will be on November 1st (All Saints Day). Time and location TBD. For information on joining the group or RSVPing on behalf of your immortal soul, please contact Siobhan, whose newest administrative tasks on behalf of this group will be compensated for after her death.