She tucked the makeshift blue comforter inside the large wooden bowl, pondering the many hundred corpses she’d gnaw on in the next ten minutes. She insisted on canola oil and an old-school pot that once belonged to a neighbor who had died down the hall. She named each and every one of them, so that she could familiarize herself with their agonies on a first-name basis. The finer mastications were named after the men who had hurt her or who had broken their promises and never called her back. She’d found a kernel specialist in SoHo who was starting to harvest a new crop once more with feeling and who could quote Sade while hanging upside down with a group of tops prodding him with pliers. She paid extra with the money she’d inherited from her dead dad, who had never once taken her to the movie theater. The specialist only had so much space and was paying a good deal of money to use up a parking spot for his agricultural innovation. The specialist, who had often seen business pick up with specific clients right before they were about to die, had told her not to use his name under any circumstances. And while she was tempted to break the rules, she found greater pleasure from the high-pitched screams that came from the magma-like flow of melted butter. She looked into the bowl and saw that some of them were twitching. A nice designer touch. They. Now her only social connections were the oily bits of shrieking popcorn she shoved into her mouth. The specialist certainly hadn’t been surprised when the genealogists traced her ancestors to Bavaria.
Author / Edward Champion
An Alarming Discovery In One of the Dead Tree Outlets
This afternoon, as I was counting the twenty-two badly oxidized pennies in my piggy bank over the last three months and flipping through a five-dollar newspaper that I had stolen from a Starbucks, I was especially alarmed to find the following article, located on the inside back page of the newspaper’s renowned Sunday magazine. (I have scanned the newspaper article. Click on the image to enlarge.)
I am not certain if Ms. Krapp’s article represents an effort to “spice up” the magazine, which I noticed was a mere 54 pages this week, or if it was a candid outreach campaign to the newspaper’s not-so-secret affluent demographic. I only knew that I did not quite relate to Ms. Krapp’s homicidal tendencies. But if this article is true, it appears that the so-called “safe” side of Central Park hardly lives up to the modifier casually tossed around by various convention bureaus.
Would You Feel Comfortable Paying For This Book at the Register?
The Bat Segundo Show: Esther Rots & Dan Geesin
Esther Rots and Dan Geesin appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #278.
Esther Rots is the writer, director, editor, and producer of is most recently the director of Can Go Through Skin. Dan Geesin is the sound designer and music composer of the film. The film is presently playing at the New Directors/New Films series, which is running between March 25 and April 5 at MOMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Eschewing intuitive sensibilities.
Guests: Esther Rots and Dan Geesin
Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming]
Correspondent: This leads me to wonder then how the house was located. Did you, in fact, try to find a house that had the stinkiest possible odor? Or something that was possibly in disuse? And the rat. How did you wrangle the rat in the course of the shower scene? It could not have been easy to do. Since it is vermin, you know.
Rots: It’s a shame this is radio. I’m poking out my thumb now and it’s got white lines all over it. That was directing the rat.
Correspondent: Really?
Rots: He nibbled the middle bit of my thumb. It was hanging there for quite some time and biting away.
Correspondent: Wow.
Rots: That was me directing a rat. I’m not good. (laughs)
Correspondent: Did you have to see a doctor? Get shots?
Rots: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was too chewed up.
Geesin: Tetanus jab.
Rots: No, rats are not directable. They just do their own way. But that might be a natural talent as well.
Correspondent: They say that kids and animals are the toughest to direct.
Rots: Yeah.
Correspondent: But you would say that a rat is even tougher.
Rots: Yeah. And boats. Boats are also a cliche.
BSS #278: Esther Rots & Dan Geesin (Download MP3)
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The Bat Segundo Show: Ursula Meier
Ursula Meier appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #277. This particular discussion was conducted in French and English. Many thanks to Aurélie Godet, who kindly assisted us in our conversation.
Ursula Meier is most recently the director of Home. The film is presently playing at the New Directors/New Films series, which is running between March 25 and April 5 at MOMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Searching for a new home in Bulgaria.
Guest: Ursula Meier
Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming]
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Correspondent: I must ask how you found this particular house and whether you had to consult some French transportation authority to get this particular freeway. What did you do for location scouting for something that was so essential to the movie? And I’m just curious if you had to broker any particular arrangements with any particular governmental agencies to get the cars. Maybe you could describe this.
Meier: (through translator) It was actually a lot of research. It was complicated to find that road. More than the house, it was the road that gave us a lot of work. We needed a large road. Like an abandoned highway. And it’s very difficult to find. Because if we approached highways that were under construction, they would quickly go into being bumped into the traffic. So it did not work. And then we looked around Europe. Firstly, the co-producing countries, France, Switzerland, and Belgium. And then other European countries. We went as far as Quebec. And it still didn’t work. Actually, if you had constructions on the road anyway, you had construction trucks going by all the time. So eventually, we tried another option, which was airport tracks. Landing tracks. And the problem there was that the landscapes around them were absolutely ugly and uninteresting. I was looking for something that would look well and, at the same time, have this abstract but real-looking quality to it. Also, we needed a road that would be long enough. You know, we couldn’t have anything that was short. Which was the case most of the time for airport tracks. Because we had all these cars. Approximately 300. With extras in them, driving them to create the traffic. And you needed them to drive fast enough. Like 90 miles per hour. So you needed a road that was long enough, far ahead so that they could break, and then re-stop.
BSS #277: Ursula Meier (Download MP3)
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