Blog Birthday!

Happy July freedom fighters and freedom fans, and happy fifth birthday to this blog. In the five years that I've been tending it, Extreme Appearances has been many things--a diversion from school work and an assignment submitted to skeptical professors, a confessional journal and a receptacle for cool-headed academic analysis, a gallery for my artwork and the stuff that inspires it by anonymous scribblers and art stars alike (ranging from shit-smeared performance artists to minimalists with remote red aluminum boners, of course).
It's been a wonky graffiti reliquary, a xeroxed flyer grotto, a font salon, a sonic outpost, a psychogeographic lint trap, a tool shed for useless parts, an archive of faded taste. Though its content is nomadic, I've always attempted to circle around certain subjects: physical space/place and digital mediation; declining subcultural tropes and their post-internet (in)significance; flawed, sloppy, and handmade sentiments and their interrelationship with slickness and distance.
I have had an opportunity to deconstruct my sense of aesthetic "taste," to find and lose my voice repeatedly.
In the spirit of collapsing antinomies, I'll be commemorating EA's fifth anniversary with an anthology zine.
Its format is to be determined and I'm excited to collect perspectives on ways the blog can be served by a tactile format. I may go so far as to crowd source funds depending on the momentum the project gathers.
Thanks for reading and stick around.
Love, EKD
Mental Titan, Emotional Mess,
The Slavish Announcer of a Series of Facts

The Poets

The poets at the Carnegie Library loved the word "cocoon."
They had that distinctive, even-metered, cool-headed poet's cadence-- low and slow to savor detail.
They were polite and nostalgic, confessional but clever.
They were sophisticated but homely: that last girl said "washrag."
They probably use forks and knives to eat pizza.

In a little more than a week I will be publicly performing my writing and am trying to exorcise the "This American Life" intonation from my reading voice.
It's hard.
I've been practicing the classic tongue twisters:
Unique New York.
Red Leather Yellow Leather.

Gunner says to recite Ludacris raps as often as possible. If I can hear my stupid voice, just turn up the volume.


Danny Mac says I should scream at least once.

Games We Can Play

1. Blurb Generator
I met a gentleman last night whose gay porn novel, Backwoods, featured some heavy-hitting blurbs on the back-- from no less than the likes of Dennis Cooper and Kevin Killian. I was impressed. Blurbs are one of my favorite formats to read and shouldn't be left in the hands of laymen.
This includes band blurbs. Bloomington show flyers are notoriously plastered with some cringe-inducing sonic descriptors. It's a shame that terms like "epic," "blackened," and "blistering" get so overused when this could be a chance for the town's aspiring word nerds (your humble narrator) to step up and offer some more inspired interpretations.
This is why I have created the Band Blurb Generator.
Show promoters who are unsure of how to sum up the sounds on their bill can look no further. Take one word from each column. Mix and match!
This thing could definitely be expanded.Consider creating a band to fill the genre you've just created. Build your culture, up the punks, etc.

2. Twilight Telephone
In Twilight Telephone I describe what I understand to be the plot of Twilight (violent vampire sex, unlikely gestation periods, something with werewolves) as it was told to me by my friend Catherine, who has seen the movie, to somebody else who is unfamiliar with the movie/series. Then they have to repeat the plot to the first person (ex. Catherine) or somebody who IS familiar with Twilight.
Then we all have a laugh about how this distorted recap is still not as fucking nuts as the original article.

3. Mating Failure
This is the one where I retroactively use context clues to come to the conclusion that the rando I gave my number to is in a pretty seriously relationship. Examples: Rando and girlfriend making plans together, kissing.

Play smart, play safe,
Love,
Erin

Visualize Me

Extreme Appearances has been on summer vacation, (laying on the deck on its Budwesier beach towel) but is full of good ideas, some of which may possibly be executed.
1) Documentation of kids' room furniture studded with half-peeling sticker scabs.
My dude Mark Newgarden has commented that he loves finding furniture at thrift stores covered in yellowing Garbage Pail Kids stickers. Me too!
What does one do with a sticker collection anyway? I don't think it's overanalysis to call this a folk form.


2)Fireworks Names Powerpoint
Appropriately timed for July 4th, the theme of the upcoming Encyclopedia Show is EXPLOSIVES. Fireworks tend to have really great names, only vaguely indicative of what they look like (Moon Traveller with report, Tiger Shark, Southern Night). Gonna whip together a lil google-fueled powerpoint for the next show, heavy on the education.



3)Historical Reenactment Stand-up Comedy
Gonna try to debut this live, starting with an 80's era Paula Poundstone routine, note for note.

Roseanne is next on the docket.

If these ideas are not seized upon in the upcoming summer months, understand they are up for grabs. This is the nature of the internet. We share.

(I also plan to forget how to write html code through months of blog inactivity.)

Architecture Signs and Semiotics

Been hard at work on this frustrating little research project for a New Media class, attempting to turn each of these collages into an html image map with a link to information on the web about each architectural sign.
I failed at that part, but luckily am happy with their looks.

Neolojizm

Expanding the lexicon when and where I can:



Dudiphone (dood-eh-fon): n. an instance in which a man repeats what a woman says right after her, but louder, and everyone hears him and laughs or goes "yeah!"
v. to repeat what a woman says in a louder voice than her, esp. a joke or insight.
Ex. "Don't dudiphone me, mothafucka."

Revisionist Herstory

Cocaine Wolf was a woman.

Smartmouth: variations on a theme

Good Ideas, not by me, but I wish they were.

1)Get a tattoo of a white picket fence around your bicep in lieu of barbed wire.
Frontyard pride, straight out the suburbs.
(Idea by Tom Streit)

2)Carnie's: a Fair Food restaurant. Elephant ears for breakfast, fried Snickers around the clock. Tenderloins too big for the bun and the occasional Indiana Banana (corn on the cob) round out the food pyramid.
It could be at Washington Square Mall, or any airport.
(Idea by Benny Sanders)

3)An ode to Mrs. Ben Dover

(By the lovely and talented Jill Marie Mason)

Free (the) Money

Extreme Appearances: wherein I release into the ether the ideas I never use, like the plants spitting out flies in my trauma landscape dream last night.
Because of overabundance. Too much information. The fun postmodern affliction.



You can start by making that video with the "Honk if you have a blog" sign, then move on to cross-stitched underpants that say "bless this mess."
Check back periodically. I'll have you making millions. I'm a life coach.