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NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
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We go out every night. It’s a disease. You never know what’s gonna happen. Some nights are tame. Some nights are crazy. But they’re always documented. You meet the strangest people sometimes. But some of them become your friends. And we stay out until the sun comes up. ‘Cause this is our scene. Welcome to the party.
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Winter 2013
EDITORIAL
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Bear Hug
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
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…and that’s when I realized I was gay. When I talked to Charles about it he explained to me that sexuality was like ice cream and that sometimes there were flavors you preferred over others for no particular reason. I love the company of women but I want to fuck men. Men with muscular legs. It isn’t important to me if he has a big **** or not. At least not as important as it seems to be for Lucy. She believes that no amount of finger dexterity could make up for a small ****. “A small dick has no place in a one night stand.” This is the phase she’s in right now: Free Love. “Small dicks are for tolerant girls who want relationships.” Size has never mattered to me unless we’re talking about a mans thighs. That turns me on. I realized it the summer I was invited to Billy’s legendary basement party. There were 15-20 guys there. Some were close friends, and others were friends of friends from the scene. Billy strictly enforced the rules, and people followed them just so they could get invited to the New Years Eve party every year. The rules were you could stay upstairs if you wanted to and just watch movies, drink and play games but there had to be no sexual contact. This was so that Billy’s six year old brother (who was under his care every summer while his parents traveled the world) could hang around in a “normal” environment. He didn’t want his brother to be “predetermined”. That was his favorite word after he read it in Discover magazine. He really hoped that his brother would end up straight so that he wouldn’t inherit the problems Billy had grown up with. So yeah, upstairs = no funny business. But when you wanted to play around, you could go to the basement. There were a row of flashlights near the empties that you could choose from, and close the door behind you. When you got down there, you had to announce yourself and pull your pants down to your ankles. Those were the rules. I remember the first time I went down, my heart was beating so fast and my mouth was really dry. I got to the bottom of the stairs and saw flashes of light and some guys were fucking, some guys were making out and other guys were walking around looking for nooks and crannies. But everyone had their pants down to their ankles. I remember thinking that we all looked like penguins. I stayed down there for 45 minutes.
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You’re The One For Me Fatty
THE LARRY MANNEQUIN DIARIES
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I have just enough wine in my bloodstream to rationalize anything. That’s why you’re in this elevator with me right now. “She may be overweight but she has a really pretty face.” This almost happened with another girl last week in Atlanta but the Waffle House sobered me up in time. But tonight I’m clinging to my drunkedness because you’re easy and unknown. I chose you over your skinny girlfriend because fake lashes with weak glue is a pet peeve of mine. I think her ego was bruised. That’s why she ended up with the ugly CEO. That’s why she ended up on the phone with her boyfriend for two hours after she ended up with the ugly CEO.
I’m getting out of the elevator and your constant talking is making me reconsider what’s about to go down. I’m trying to think of excuses but I can’t because my brain feels like it’s been put through the Twixtor After Effects filter. We get to my door. I’m fumbling for my room key and you are on a roll about your issues. Just when you’re getting to the part about your sister’s modeling career and how it ruined your teenage years, I get a text that theres a party in room 508. I am saved. While we are walking back to the elevator, I catch snippets of your banter: “The second doctor blotched it up…” and “My mother still tries to get me to weigh my food” but all I’m doing is fantasizing about how I will walk into the party, have a shot of Patron, lose you, say hi to a few friends and go back to my room and masturbate to a Robert Crumb comic and finally fall asleep.
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The Early Girls Always Win
THE LARRY MANNEQUIN DIARIES
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She introduced herself with perfect English. I had forgotten what that sounded like after all this time in Berlin. Of course, right when our chit-chat was turning into conversation, a “really, really, ridiculously good looking” guy (I LOVE THAT MOVIE!!) came to interrupt. I tried to save face as quickly as I could by politely leaning in to give her the customary double kiss but she made her lips touch mine and asked if I would take care of her since her gay friend was leaving with some other guy. She put her hand in my front pocket from behind and her chin on my shoulder and then kissed me since I guess the question needed no verbal consent. Of course when we got to the DJ booth, everyone there did that “dance-like-you’re-not-staring-at-the-newbie” dance. The guys gave their side-long glances completely failing at trying to be discreet. Within 10 minutes, each of them had taken their turn assessing their chances and returning to their original prospects. The two “Early Girls” that we had invited into our circle (someone has to drink that free alcohol) instantly hated her, what, with her excessively ‘natural’ make-up, her see-through white dress, her expensive MK watch, her long brown wavy hair that HAD to be extensions, her stupid tan and perfect English… But still, in perfect club etiquette both of them screamed “Hi!!!! I love your dress!” in unison after I introduced them. Then they asked her where she was from. I zoned out when DJ Bangaflex put on the new Motor City Drum Ensemble track. I was in another world. It’s funny how I have to travel overseas to get exposed to the best Chicago influenced deep house. During my religious assimilation of the crazy bassline, the newbie suddenly slipped her hand in mine again but I couldn’t tell what she wanted. It suddenly dawned on me that I couldn’t even tell how old she was either. I hate that some girl’s boobs develop faster than their minds. I called over Larry Mannequin the guest-photographer of the night who was taking picture of a girl dancing in her bra. He might be able to help me. His book says that you can figure out a girl’s age by how she poses for pictures in a club. A young girl will always want to do that thing with her lips, you know like pout or purse them into Blue Steel (I TOLD YOU I LOVE THAT MOVIE!!) or use her tongue to lick someone or something. Body-wise it’ll be all about her “tit-posture” even if she doesn’t have any tits. An older chick will be more concerned with her outfit, her hair, and making sure her arms don’t look fat and about who she’s in the picture with. It isn’t an exact science but it helps, if not with her physical age, then at least her “club age”. Even a cougar who is starting (or re-starting) her partying days in her mid 30s (it happens!) will behave the same way in photos as a 17 year old that’s just discovered the scene would. The newbie… (I can’t believe I never told you her name! So rude… It’s Victoria!) Victoria turned out to be really “young” (if this photo method is to be believed). And she became completely un-attractive to me after I saw her pose so lame (or is that lamely?). So I just took her number into my phone like Craig David taught me how to do in that song, and told her that I had to find the promoter to get paid for hosting tonight and that she could stay with the other girls in the DJ booth and drink for free until I got back. But really, I was going downstairs to find Stephanie, one of the cocktail girls who told me 30 minutes ago that I should come over again tonight since she was cut early, to smoke some weed, and that she had found the Wim Wenders DVD missing from the box last time and that I could borrow it if I wanted.
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The We In The Eye
THE LARRY MANNEQUIN DIARIES
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I am walking to the party alone under streetlights that just came on, wearing color for the first time in weeks wondering if it will take alcohol for me to regain my equilibrium and nerve. Our journey has taken me too far down from up where I belong. Your comforts are nothing to me because I’ve come to realize that you are not a home. You are a shelter of untested ideas. I have been accepting cats and dogs as my companions instead of expecting the rooster that used to MC my hangover mornings. But now I’m walking through streets that look like everything has been put through a vaseline filter. I panic. I run into a store that sells potato chips and canned goods hoping that I can come down. I’m looking for dark chocolate M&Ms but all they have is peanut M&Ms… and regular M&Ms… and coconut M&Ms… and peanut butter M&Ms… and pretzel M&Ms… They fucking have pretzel M&MS but no dark chocolate M&Ms so yeah I settle for a Kit Kat. When the wafers metabolize and finally enter my blood stream, I sit on the curb and watch the cars go by looking homeless, feeling weightless. At night, cars all look black. I think about you again. And I wonder if I should cut you some slack.
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It’s About The Analysis
EDITORIAL
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Analysis by Anthony F. Janson
The video for ‘It’s About the House’ is a hyper-modernist example of an artist, Dances With White Girls (DWWG), using multiple versions of a single song to accompany equally deconstructed visuals.
In the opening sequence, Jean-Luc Godard’s rare film ‘Notre Musique’ is invoked as a flashback vignette of a fan realizing that the obsession that gave her life meaning is what led her to question her own existence in the end.
In the second part, the video within a video section, an ordinary gathering of friends is spread out before us like a flat Guernica. Here, in an obvious reference to George Bataille’s ‘Story of the Eye’, a house party dissolves into an empty room with two naked girls breaking eggs on each other. The starkness of the scene with 4 walls, 2 girls and eggs is in-vocative of a dream, as if to depict the creative process and the subconscious elements that go into it. The repeated single note playing on the keyboard is a statement about how easy it is to create music in modern times.
After the title card blacks out letters, it is revealed that the house metaphor is a stand-in for ‘us’, and that this song is a call for everyone to remember what is truly important: communion with your fellow man. This last section shows us that even while we are absorbed in our personal dramas we are all still connected. A girl undresses only to put on a new face, unaware that it isn’t much different from her old one. A girl in red sleepwalks through life until as a final gesture, the artist (DWWG) knocks on a window and wakes her from self-absorption. She is realigned to music, naked and free.
Finally, the artist (DWWG) explains in a voice-over that he is no prophet and that he has his ups and downs like everyone else (further illustrated by the expensive Lanvin sunglasses crudely held together with scotch tape), but whatever the case may be, he never forgets that the real meaning of life lies in the connections we make.
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The Tropics
BY BRONQUES
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Back when I still had time to read (and before I knew or cared what an SLR, F-stop or fixed lens was), I came across a great passage in Tropic Of Capricorn by Henry Miller. I had tried reading ‘Cancer’ but it was this sequel that ended up doing me in. Maybe because it was set in New York and not in Paris like ‘Cancer’ was. Anyways, it was only 3 dollars from a street vendor on Bedford Ave. No Kindle or IPad version, just one paperback book to focus on. A few days into it (1) I arrived at the passage that would do me in. It was a very long winded and beautiful way of saying what Dan Wieden (2) of Wieden + Kennedy had said so succinctly 1988. The kind of passage that makes you need to put the book down. I wondered why no one had shared this little gem with me. That’s why I’m sharing it with you. It’s the section where Henry Miller is sitting in the theatre, bored… waiting for the curtains to come up… and in that moment he realizes… that this is what we have become… a generation of people waiting for the curtains to come up… and he gets out of his seat… while the lights are still on, and he leaves the theatre… and he rushes back home… and he sits down… and puts his fingers on his typewriter and he starts writing… his first novel.
1. I read very slowly.
2. Dan Wieden invented the phrase “Just Do It” for Nike.
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Summer 2012
EDITORIAL
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Free Spirit
THE LARRY MANNEQUIN DIARIES
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She slumped down again and put her head on my shoulder like a girl who’s read too many Nicholas Sparks novels
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B2398
WHAT'S ON YOUR MEMORY CARD?
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Words Of Warning To My DJ Friend Before I Board This Plane
BY BRONQUES
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Yell. Say anything. Yes, behave as if your vicious words don’t accumulate… until he’s chilling below 14th with the girl he never noticed before but that was always there. And now he suddenly remembers the beautiful creative creature that he once was.
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Let’s Call Her Lizzie
THE LARRY MANNEQUIN DIARIES
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Elizabeth would be annoying if she was, lets say… overweight or… ugly. But she’s pretty and has amazing side-boob in her little vivid-alt t-shirt.
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Winter 2012
EDITORIAL
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Yulias And Nastyas
BY BRONQUES
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She will meet her friends at a brunch place that plays really loud Euro house wearing new club clothes and a full face of make-up and they will take turns complaining about things like how her father is forcing the family to go to Finland on vacation again when she really wants to go to Miami.
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All Bitches
ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK
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I got fat bitches. I got small bitches. I got tall bitches. I got all bitches.
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Fast Fast Now (I Don’t Need You To Understand)
THE LARRY MANNEQUIN DIARIES
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We didn’t need an indie soundtrack to control the mood. Or gogo dancers to heighten the senses. Or alcohol to make it mindless.
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Gate 8
THE LARRY MANNEQUIN DIARIES
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You’re free, you’re worldly and anything is possible if you’re asked with an American accent.
Category BLOG · Tags airplanes, LA, old ladies
IMG_0433
WHAT'S ON YOUR MEMORY CARD?
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Sveltlaana
THE LARRY MANNEQUIN DIARIES
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“I’m not like that,” she said. She prefers post-war Dior. She collects vintage. Her dream is to be a clothes designer for “erotic pole dancers”. Pole dancing is a valid and respected profession here. Housewives take courses.
Category BLOG · Tags food, pinup, russia
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