Category Archives for Arthur No. 27 (Dec. 2007)

“One Man Goofing: A visit with legendary Zen humorist Henry Jacobs” by Joel Rose (Arthur, 2007)

This article was originally published in Arthur No. 26 (2007), alongside an appreciation of Henry Jacobs’ The Fine Art of Goofing Off by artist/filmmaker Mike Mills. With the very welcome news that a) a new Henry Jacobs release is on the way, and b) the extremely highly recommended The Wide Weird World Of Henry Jacobs/The Fine Art Of Goofing Off cd/ & dvd set is finally back in print, we thought it was time to brush off the dust from this piece and offer it online for the first time. Here goes…

One Man Goofing: A visit with legendary Zen humorist Henry Jacobs
by Joel Rose

Once a week, Henry Jacobs drives to a community center near his house in Marin County, California to play ping-pong with his neighbors. But it’s ping-pong with a twist: Jacobs, a natural righty, insists on playing with his left hand. “I don’t know if I’m as good,” he says. “But I sure have a lot more fun, because I can surprise myself. With my right hand, I never surprise myself.”

The 82-year-old Jacobs has been playing left-handed ping-pong every Monday night for the last seven years. At first, he says, the neighbors were skeptical. But they’ve gradually come around and started playing with their off-hands, too. Jacobs recently started filming interviews with his fellow left-handed ping-pong players for a documentary. “I envision it mainly for the Third World,” he says, and for a second it’s hard to tell whether he’s joking or serious. “The motive is to try to clean up the rather ugly image [of Americans] in the last 50 years or so,” culminating with the present conflict in Iraq. Jacobs says he wants to offer an alternative view of American culture, and ping-pong is the perfect vehicle because of its popularity around the world. “The economics of it are pretty basic. A paddle which you could make out of banana leaf or whatever,” he deadpans. “It’s not about wiping out the planet. It’s about a simple activity called ping-pong.”

Jacobs sees the new documentary—which doesn’t yet have a title—as a kind of sequel to The Fine Art of Goofing Off, the series of animated television programs he worked on in the early 1970s. He says he’s filmed eight or nine interviews so far. Instead of shooting them head on, Jacobs had his subjects invent tasks to perform. (“One guy is fixing an electric lamp. Another guy is diddling around with some paintings.”) The point, says Jacobs, is they’re involved in what they’re doing, even while they’re talking out loud about ping-pong. “They’re not forced keep trying to remember all the points they wanted to make,” says Jacobs. “They can stop talking and get the screw-driver in the right place. It takes the pressure off to constantly be producing something useful and intelligent.”

And of course, “all this will be edited mercilessly. So you’ll only get little pieces of anything.” This, says Jacobs, was point of The Fine Art of Goofing Off: “Never do something so long as to bore someone.”

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THE SODFATHER: Californian compost wizard TIM DUNDON (Arthur, 2007)

The Sodfather
Californian compost wizard TIM DUNDON talks shit with Daniel Chamberlin.

Photography by Eden Batki

Originally published in Arthur No. 27 (Dec 2007)

Original design by Molly Frances and Mark Frohman.

Find bonus Sodfather photos by Chamberlin at Into The Green.

Alchemists are often characterized in modern times as bumbling would-be wizards at best, greedy charlatans at worst. They’re portrayed as fumbling hopelessly in cluttered laboratories, unenlightened madmen trying to turn lead into gold. The reality is more complex, of course.

Alchemists were up to plenty of things, many of them having to do with relating to the natural world—and understanding its processes of transformation and transmutation—in philosophical and spiritual dimensions that transcended traditional religious thinking, both Christian and pagan, and preceded modern scientific thought. The whole “lead into gold” thing was but the most lucrative of the alchemical —or hermetic—practices in the eyes of the monarchs and rulers. Alchemy’s material prima as Peter Lamborn Wilson writes in the recent collection Green Hermeticism: Alchemy and Ecology, “can be found ‘on any dung hill.’ Hermeticism changes shit into gold.” It’s an image memorably realized in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film The Holy Mountain wherein the thief character takes a dump in a fancy bucket, and Jodorowsky, playing an alchemist, distills those fresh turds into a hefty chunk of golden bling.

Such fantastical processes are well known to dirt-worshipping gardening sage Tim Dundon, the beneficent caretaker of California’s most famous compost pile and the kindly warden of the tropical forest that has fruited from its rich humus. It’s here that Dundon, a scientist-poet in the truest hermetic sense, finds hope and salvation in the transformation of death into life—of rotting organic matter into nutrient-rich soil—that takes place daily in the fecund jungle he maintains on his one-acre yard.

The botanical odyssey of Dundon, the self-proclaimed “guru of doo-doo” and the man whose mammoth compost pile once covered a football-field-sized lot, begins in 1967 with a marijuana shortage. Like any good gardening story, it encompasses Hollywood producers, fires, suicide, PCP injection, a nude Quaker iconoclast, standoffs with city officials and a violent pet coyote.

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C & D interview Jimmy Joe Roche and Dan Deacon, review AC/DC, more [Arthur No. 27/Dec 2007]

C & D
Two guys who will remain pseudonymous reason together about new music “product”

Originally published in Arthur No. 27 (Dec 2007)

ultimatereality

DAN DEACON & JIMMY JOE ROCHE
Ultimate Reality dvd
(Carpark)
C: State-of-the-art psychedelic film with music composed by electro-dance party joker Dan Deacon and visuals by Jimmy Joe Roche, two guys from Baltimore’s Wham City operation. It’s constructed from clips from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career—Conan the Barbarian, Terminator, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Predator, Junior—collaged and layered and doubled together into something altogether overwhelming at 35 minutes in length.
D: This is Arnold’s mind on drugs. Arnoldelic, baby!
C: Absolutely gorgeous, seriously funny, weirdly poignant and possibly seizure-inducing. This is a landmark work. It’s the first time someone has taken the stuff those Fort Thunder and PaperRad dudes were (or are) doing—bright color-saturated, warped psychedelia incorporating pop iconography—and thrust it forward into a new realm of…of…beauty, really. Watching this right now is for me like seeing “Wonder Showzen” for the first time, or Chris Morris’s “Blue Jam”: a breakthrough on many levels, by somebody pretty much out of nowhere.
D: [reading from Arthur Magazine office rolodex] Or Baltimore…
C: [mischievously] Hand me that. Let’s make a phone call. [Dials on red phone…] Hello? [In Howard Cosell voice] Yes, this is Arthur magazine. We are seated here drinking kratom-powered smoothies having just watched “Ultimate Reality,” and we had a few questions for the filmmakers. [turns speaker phone on] So, Jimmy, what exactly is Wham City and you guys must know the Fort Thunder guys, right?
JIMMY JOE ROCHE: Wham City—the space—was a dingy, insane warehouse, then another one. Me and Dan and Dina and Adam and some other kids lived together at SUNY Purchase, all graduated in 2004, and we had this sort of unfigured-out energy. We knew we wanted something, we had a vision undulating out of control, and those guys wanted to move to Baltimore, because it’s cheap as hell. It seemed like it was a potential void where someone could come in and do art, totally fresh.

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CELEBRATION, profiled by Ian Svenonius (Arthur, 2007)

cover photography by Stacy Kranitz; cover design by Molly Frances & Mark Frohman

With all the hubbub around Celebration this week (see their exciting new future-vision here; check out the crystal-manifesting video for “Evergreen” here), we thought it’d be a good time to re-post frequent Arthur contributor Ian Svenonius’s cover feature profile/interview of the band published in Arthur No. 27 in late 2007. You know, we thought we’d posted it online already but boy were we wrong. Today, we make amends.

ians

Sidenote: the ever brilliant Svenonius, pictured above and on track for a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2011, has a new rock n roll band—Chain and the Gang— and a new record, Down With Liberty … Up With Chains, out this spring. He’ll be co-headlining a two-month tour with the sainted Calvin Johnson and the Hive Dwellers band starting April 8. Details on all of this activity at the Chain and the Gang’s myface page.

Okay, here’s the story after the jump…

Not All Humans Are Bad
Field notes on the rock ‘n’ roll band Celebration by Ian Svenonius
Photography by Stacy Kranitz

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The Way of The Riff: Contemplators Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) and Al Cisneros (Om) discuss roots, rock, rhythm and chess (Arthur, 2007)

Originally published in Arthur No. 27 (Dec 2007)

Artwork by Arik Roper
Introduction by Daniel Chamberlin

My favorite story about Om, the bass and drum duo of Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius—the rhythm section of now defunct drone metal icons Sleep—takes place on the back patio of Los Angeles club The Echo. It’s a cool winter night in 2007 and we’re all gathered here—hippie goners, young punks, indie rock squares—to take in a few breaths of fresh air before the band takes to the stage inside. One group stands out from the crowd: two women and a guy who are having a whale of a time, gesticulating wildly and laughing like crazy. At one point the dude approaches a hipster who’s nervously dragging on a toothpick joint. Our man offers his flask to the young fellow and a confusing exchange takes place: I can tell that he’s looking to swap quaff for toke, but for some reason he’s having trouble communicating this. I catch on about the same time the stoner does, giving up the doobie to the guy and his gal pals: They’re deaf, this happy trio of Om heads. That’s how deep the band’s sensual, mantra-like music goes.

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“IT’S COMING DOWN, BABY!”: Sir Richard Bishop interviewed by Erik Davis (from Arthur, 2007)

Originally published in Arthur No. 27 (Dec 2007)

bishop.jpg

It’s Coming Down, Baby!
Erik Davis catches up with SIR RICHARD BISHOP—gypsy picatrix, ex-Sun City Girl and guitarist extraordinaire
Illustration by John Coulthart

Superlatives can be lame, but Richard Bishop is one of the few post-punk guitarists who came of age in the 1980s to have achieved the incendiary prowess of a true Guitar God. Though largely unknown outside the underground, Bishop plays and improvises with an uncommon and original power. He can tantalize in a myriad of styles, he has a global jukebox in his head, he can shatter the walls of sleep and chaos, and he can turn on a dime. He loves the guitar and mocks it: he plays like an absurdist and a romantic at once. He studies the occult and travels the Third World fringe and you can hear it. He plays guitar to save himself and fails in the endeavor and you can hear it. He can scare the shit out of you sometimes, and he can make you giggle and grin.

For decades Bishop played with his brother Alan and the Charlie Gocher in the Sun City Girls, where his ferocious and inventive exploration of psych-rock, punk spew, idiot jizz, Indo-Arabic fantasias, and jazzbo abstraction was often shadowed by the madcap antics, acerbic lyrics and general air of arcane weirdness that surrounded that impossible act. Gocher passed away in February this year at the age of 54, and the Girls are no more.

But over the last half decade, Bishop has also been playing and recording solo instrumental music as Sir Richard Bishop, and the effort is really starting to flower. This year SRB released two great albums. While My Guitar Gently Bleeds features three long pieces that triangulate his essential territory as an improviser: a North African arabesque, a noisy electronic nightscape, and a modal neo-raga on the tantric tip. Polytheistic Fragments is a more accessible and varied work, featuring a dozen tunes that also stretch into Americana, gypsy rag and Lennon-McCartney charm. As always, the recordings are packaged with strange and mystic images that speak to Bishop’s longtime study of esoterica.

Earlier this fall Bishop toured with labelmate Bill Callahan. I called him while he was taking a break in Seattle.

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“WILLPOWER TO THE PEOPLE!”: Applied Magic(k) column by the Center for Tactical Magic (Arthur 27, Nov. 2007)

WILLPOWER TO THE PEOPLE

by the Center for Tactical Magic

Art direction by Molly Frances and Mark Frohman

printed in Arthur Magazine No. 27 (November 2007)

Cognitive scientists use the term “Magical Thinking” to describe a lack of causal reasoning. According to them, the belief in superstitions, lucky charms, and rain dances often falls into this category. But the term can be applied to any situation where one makes judgments based on a cause-and-effect rationale that wouldn’t hold up under scientific scrutiny. Simply put, magical thinking is (from a cogsci perspective) the analytical by-product that occurs when your hopes, fears, desires, prejudices, and beliefs take over your decision-making.

Child psychologists often use the term slightly differently. For a child, magical thinking often refers to conditions in which the cause and the effect are disassociated. For example, the kid sees you grab a remote control from the table and hears the stereo turn on, but doesn’t yet understand that the two actions are related. It is primarily this aspect of magical thinking that stage magicians rely on when performing illusions. In feats of magical reverse engineering, a good magician will think about a desired effect to be produced, and then work backwards to plan the method. The success of the effect is then greatly enhanced by the magician’s ability to conceal the method from the audience. In essence, the magician returns the audience to a state of child-like perception where causes and effects are distant strangers. Some embrace this sense of wonderment while others resent the inflicted feelings of naiveté. Yet, it should be noted that while such magical thinking evokes a child-like sense of the world, it does not limit us to childish behavior.

It would be easy to believe that magical thinking is merely the refuge of children, magic show audiences, and the superstitious; however, we bathe in magical thinking nearly every day. Many of our decisions are based not on scientific rationale but rather on information we receive from a variety of sources – friends, cultural influences, mass media, etc. And many of these sources are in fact assemblages of conflicting truths, traditional bias, and competing agendas. When we enter a theater to watch a magician perform we expect to be deceived. But what are our expectations when we read the paper, watch the news, and listen to politicians?

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