TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCKArchive for January, 2010
From Russia, With Shove Pt II
So I’m sitting at some fancy whorehouse with some my Russian cohorts, waiting for Eugene the Gypsy to come to town and rescue me from their well-intentioned-but-somewhat-overbearing clutches, when this fancy French international banker dude who knows somebody comes along and insists we all go to some fucking trendy new “Mexican cantina” in downtown Moscow where they supposedly have a “great rock and roll band.”
Oh yeh, that’s just where I wanna go in Moscow! To listen to some crummy third-rate Russian cover band butchering already crappy outdated American music for a handful of drunken ex-pat office workers, KGB wannabees and other assorted lowlife cunts and wankers.
We went there. To some it up in two words: Boring! Next? After enduring a weird Mongolian Elvis impersonater for awhile, finally I can’t take it anymore.
I make a face and this fool says, “What, you don’t like Elvis Presley?”
“Elvis,” I say, “was a racist redneck punk with a little style who basically just ripped off his music from a bunch of people he considered dirty niggers. Genius Bluesmen who he wouldn’t have pissed on if their hair caught fire!”
“Well 500 million fans can’t be wrong!” The french guy says.
“Yeh they can!” I spit back. “Just look on TV sometime..”
“Aww, forget him,” my friend says. “He’s French. They like Jerry Lewis there…”
“Hey, man! What’s wrong with Jerry Lewis? I mean besides being a retard?”
“You said it. He’s a retard!” My friend says.
“Retards are funny…” I replied as we walked out to go find another whorehouse.
From Russia, With Shove
Cutting to the chase, a few weeks after Eugene the Gypsy’s Rio gigs with Gogol Bordello before moving on for the rest of their South American tour, he suddenly invited me to join him for a few gigs in Moscow and Kiev, Ukraine, his hometown.
He’d been telling me about it for some time now, and now seemed like just the right time — especially since I already had a long hankering to visit that part of the world. I also wanted to check out a lady who had been talking about trying to translate one of my books into Russian there. So I decided to finally take Eugene up on his offer.
After two weeks of near-psychedelic beurocratic red tape hassles with the Russian Consulate here in Rio over visa requirements, which can best be described as insane, like all beurocratic rituals, I finally got my Russian Visa, and later the same day, left the golden sands of Copacabana for a 24 hour plane trip to Moscow.
To sum it up in a few words, I’d have to say, Moscow sucked, and Kiev was a gas. Here’s a few scraps and details from that brief, dreamlike trip, along with the odd rant for your reading entertainment…..
Moscow. Tuesday 1 December
Nobody washes their cars in Moscow. But they are still much smarter and far more resourceful than people in most other places. Every car, you see, is basically an unofficial taxi cab here.
Since most people are broke in Russia – like most other places living under the boot-heels of the Global Bankster cartel — all you need to do is walk to the curb and put your hand out. Generally the first unwashed car that passes will stop and gladly drive you wherever you want to go. Anything to make a few quick ruples, when not peddling their Babushka’s old undies in the Metro.
Why are people in other parts of the world so stupid and unimaginitave to not embrace such simple, innovative little concepts as these for making ends meet in tough times?
The more I see of Russia, the more I feel as if I could fit right in here. Brutal Capitalism in the wake of Soviet repression. Hmmm. Lawless times calling for lawless measures.
Just did a very strange interview on Russian TV. In Spanish!! I felt just like Che Guevarra. For a minute. Until the stupid questions began falling on my weary, jet-lagged ears like Cherinobyl acid rain!
The whole surreal experience has got me thinking though.
The more I live with the ”public” aspect of this writing gig, the more I am reminded of the sad fact that most people are like fucking vampires… Especially if might have something to say or do which may affect them in a larger sense than just going to the supermarket or wanking yer log at the bank.
First there was Aaron, the wannabe documentary film director who went on an ego-driven one way trip to hell, disappearing into thin air with hundreds of hours of footage he’d shot with me, including extensive in-depth interviews of me and some of my closest friends like Joe Coleman and Jim Jarmusch. May that creepy little bastard rot it hell!
But that was just a preview of things to come, apparently. The sad truth is that they’re everywhere! Vampires abound on the dubious road to fame and glory, believe me! Either they wanna run ya down to their own mediocre level of existance, or they try to outright destroy you AND your work, mostly out of pure envy, spite or just plain meaness. Even the less malevolant ones still want to get their fangs into your neck and have a good little suck just for fun. Especially the “fans.” Don’t get me started…
No wonder people like some of my more famous brothers feel a need to build bullet-proof walls around their lives and festoon them with electrified barbed wire, elite sinper squads and roving packs of blood-thirsty Rottweilers!
Even from down here in the stinking, bloody trenches of “Underground” art, I would gladly do the same — but I’m on a budget. So I must resort to the poor man’s Security System: Rudeness. Sometimes it works out…
Jesus Wong- from Scabvendor: Confessions of A Tattoo Artist
JESUS WONG
Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
Old Testament: Proverbs 4: 23
“Panama, Central America, 1976″ Cigano reads on as Jaco listens intently.
“Visual overload, tattoo art covering every inch of the humid cubbyhole, I stepped inside. The little tattoo parlor was cluttered with all sorts of weird objects and mementos, its shelves overflowing with books full of strange pictures in unknown languages. Hundreds of little scraps of transparent paper with complex designs dangled overhead like albino bats from a low greasy dark-wood ceiling. Hand drawn tattoo designs, hanging like dried out butterfly spirits, fluttered madly in the breeze of an old metal fan, reminding me of the first time I’d peeked into a mysterious little cave of dreams like this as a twelve year old kid.
“And that’s when I saw it again. The ship. That ship. Those words. HOMEWARD BOUND. Right there on a colorful section of wall under a low wooden staircase that creaked and moaned with the footsteps of sailors and whores coming and going from the cheap hotel above.
“And again the haunting little image spoke to me from the depths of a dream. I squinted into the glowing talisman shining there like an all seeing eye, calling me closer.
“That ship would be my first real tattoo, and this was the time and place. The steady monotonous buzz of the tattoo machine lulled me deeper as I slowly drifted away on a sea of hazy images and foreign lands, hypnotically carrying me off on that high-masted sailing ship cutting fast and strong through a perfect cartoon sea of paint and ink, sailing away forever with no fixed destination or port of call…”
Jesus Wong, an ageless, skeletal Cuban-Chinese tattoo man with longish jet-black hair sits in his cramped little work space, methodically carving a dragon into the arm of a dark-skinned sailor. Jonathan stands hypnotized by the steady buzz of that strange but familiar sound. bzzzz bzzzzzzz. He can see his ship cutting its shining wake across that shady section of wall through a sea of panthers and dragons, roses and hearts and anchors and naked ladies.
The young sailor looks down at his right arm, then his left, then the right again. He rolls up his sleeve to inspect his virgin bicep, then looks down at the compelling little icon on the wall. It has been waiting for him there.
Jonathan wanders over to watch as the Chinaman finishes the tattoo on the other sailor. The tattooer is talking non-stop in a soft low monotone, his hushed voice blending with the rhythmic buzz of that mysterious but strangely familiar tool, mumbling words Jonathan can’t quite make out, special words in a special language only for the initiated, the tattooed, those who’ve known that hazy rite of passage, those who wear the Mark etched into their skin in a painful blood-letting ritual. The young sailor knows there is no turning back now. Today he too will wear The Mark.
Jonathan turns and walks back over to the wall. He stares at the design. A wave of anticipation, excitement and fear attacks his gut. He is like a diver standing on a cliff over a dark blue pool stretching out over a glowing horizon. Invisible shadows jump inside him like Mexican jumping beans.
Jonathan senses the presence sliding up beside him, cool and graceful and aloof as a Siamese cat.
“So, Sailor, ju mek de journey home now?” the Chinaman says.
Jonathan turns to look into the catlike black almond shaped eyes. Jesus Wong. Friendly eyes. But oddly aloof and alien, like the orbs of a spaceman. The young sailor finds himself at loss for words, like a schoolgirl with braces and trembling knee socks waiting for an autograph.
“Uhh, no,” the he stammers, suddenly feeling confused and overwhelmed. “Well, I mean, I dunno… I guess I’m really just starting out.”
“Den ju have de long journey in front ju, sailor,” Jesus says, with a mysterious smile.
That voice is clear like a temple bell, warm as the lush, tropical air of Central America. Unhesitating and distinct. But it says nothing. The Inscrutable Chinaman. A distant freighter blows its horn long and low, the voice of the night speaking in this strange dimly lit place where invisible insect shadows stir. And Jonathan cocks his head like that dog awaiting its master’s voice. Jesus seems to read his mind as he fixes the young sailor with those knowing alien orbs.
“De tattoo ju chooses, he come from inside he-ah,” he explains with a Zen master’s patience, touching a hand to his chest in a delicate movement. The hand looks like a silvery spider landing softly on the dark tattooed skin under Jesus Wong’s open silk shirt. A jade pendant dangles from a golden chain there, frozen in space like an eternal question mark. The dog cocks it’s head another notch. “Even when ju thinks he come from in he-aaah,” the tattoo man concludes, pointing a long elegantly manicured finger to his perfect jet-black framed head.
Then he cackles like a little jungle monkey sitting on a lost statue of Buddha.
Jonathan gets it. He obediently follows the skinny Chinaman over to his cluttered little tattoo area. He takes his seat across from Jesus Wong and surrenders his arm to the master’s practiced hands.
A straight razor runs coldly across his skin like a lizard and he winces silently as the buzzing needle pierces his trembling flesh, uniting his body and his soul at last.
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010.
Belated Christmas rant, from JS
I was born alone like a bloody little midget into this wailing cauldrin of matter. And here I shall die alone too.
I feel my time running out here and I feel the weight of a thousand slugs on my soul. Cold and slimy and damp. Merry fucking Christmas.
The smell of mold invades my senses on another perfect summer afternoon at the beach. I watch the perfect little poodle bodies of youth glistening in the sparkling waves around me and I feel the sting of ultimate Disappointment.
And now it is Christmas here on this New World Ordered Ronald McDysney Prison Planet. I sit back and watch the human hive cannibalizing itself, enraged and indignant at the bitter stench of humanity’s wailing failure, and especially at my imprisonment, my own weak mortality today.
Why is one born into such unjust and unhospitable times? Why is one created to dream of poetry and music, lust and desire and love and passion while inhabiting such a world of mind-controlled mass ignorance, hipocracy and poverty, spinning around dizzily on a stinking little dustball where silk-robed lizards make the laws for men to live by in comfortable sheep-like bondage? Where a new race of men barely worthy of the title of Slaves grovels meekly before the awesome might of a thousand diseased sheep farts? Where obesce old women resembling mutant tumors more than human beings righeously hold hostage the Holy Sex of their healthy pubescent offspring, castrating the boys and wrapping the girls up like stinking little mummies in straight-jackets of shame and poisonous pseudo-religious guilt and “moralism”? What is the purpose of one’s long, sticky visit to such a savage and unfulfilling reality?
This new, improved race of man only serves, it seems, to consume like a plague of diseased roaches while breeding itself into an ignoble extinction, covering itself in waste and excriment and eating the planet in bite-size chocolate-covered chunks while greedily cannibalizing its young.
What sort of race would ondemn itself daily to prisons called jobs and crooked madhouses called schools? What kind of an insane, godless creature would agree to live beholden to the sacred industries of Fear and Death while its wise men laugh from televised cotton candy prison cells of well-informed over-educated indifference?
What sort of hellish planet is it where machines with nobler names than their creators guarantee the building blocks of a “progress” to which its race is gleefully doomed while her philosophers peddle their rambunctious drunken souls to the highest bidder under cancerous black skies of institutionalized deception?
Who deserves to live in a society where art and nature are marginalized, catalogued, controlled, bought and sold like invisible stocks and bonds, comodities and pork bellies? Where truths are shit on in secret like dark shameful crimes and where intelligence and intuition and inspiration seeking mainstream channels of communication are condemned to be hidden in the ass-cracks of gay murderous clowns like so many sordid scraps of contraband pornography?
Merry fuckin Christmas, Uncle Satan. And to all, a good night.
Photo by Richard Kern
Cutup by Eric Magnisun
