They’re all out: “With the entire nation rapt and much of the world riveted, the last miner, Luis Urzua, rose smoothly out of the small hole in the ground, prompting an eruption of applause and cheers that seemed just as heartfelt as the outpouring that followed the emergence of the first miner nearly a day earlier.”

The week I had my wisdom teeth removed, I saw a man in line at the corner bodega drop a pencil, a nice-looking one, without noticing. I was fixed in a Percocet fog and stared at the pencil (handsome wood, something an architect would use) instead of telling the man he had dropped it. His transaction completed, he left, and I stepped up to the register, placing my beer next to it. I then turned to watch as an employee mopping the floor discovered the pencil, picked it up and admired it. I regretted not doing the same when I had the chance, but it seemed fair that all I should receive was the moment of transfer, as one man would never know where the pencil went, and one would never know where it came from, and I alone knew both.

The Gchat I received from a person I don’t exactly know, clearly intended for someone else, that said, simply, “sent,” and my crushing inability to deliver a perfunctory, helpful reply. My name on her chat list, just above or below the right one.

The occasional, peripheral certainty of a heightened martial presence in Manhattan, the alert bomb-sniffing dog, an extra pair of camouflaged soldiers, an assault rifle slung over a shoulder and gathering the sun’s warmth on Wall Street; the suggestion of classified intelligence pertaining to this day, this block; the quickened pulse that meshes with implicit and perhaps nonexistent danger, but then danger is never more than this potential, an unbroken vibration we periodically acknowledge.

A painful twinge in my forearm when painting along the molding at the top of a wall, the wall ending a quarter of an inch beyond my normal reach.

When I read a book whose author is dead I can’t help but sense the ghost reading over my shoulder-Nabokov’s chuckle as I flip back through a chapter in eager perplexity, before he teleports to the classroom of an hopelessly inept college English professor whose lectures he never misses; Woolf’s satisfaction at my satisfaction at her use of “staccato” to capture the movements of a sparrow’s head, her inaudible agreement, yes, that line was one of my favorites, too, it came abruptly, following a struggle, yet long after I’d given up.

The way I groped with a paper towel in a dark bedroom after spilling a glass of water, not willing to risk the light, searching the plane of wood until a wetness crept into the quilted square.

A dream preceding a hangover: My family has moved into a lavish, mazelike apartment, with gleaming luxuries around every corner. But in exploring the endless series of rooms I encounter an infestation of what are surely some South American variety of ant, bristling with poison barbs and secreting acidic juices and roughly the size of land crabs. When I find my father I tell him that his new apartment is overrun with ants-for mysterious reasons I refer to them as “digger ants,” which would seem to describe most ants and not properly convey how repellent or dangerous this particular species is-and my father laughs as if to say, “Well, that’ll happen when you live in a place this nice.” The room fades and is replaced with a shopping concourse dimly related to the one at Grand Central Terminal, and I wander into a cheese shop to find Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and GZA doing tandem stand-up comedy for an audience of customers so absorbed in finding the right sort of gouda or brie that they all but fail to notice the two rap legends vying for their laughter. I listen for a while but am too fascinated by the intense focus of the other shoppers to follow the threads of several jokes and eventually slink out a rear entrance, not wanting to offend the performers or (and this is a truly unacceptable possibility) be expertly mocked for leaving the show early.

Evading eye contact with friends and seeking it with strangers, especially strangers sitting in outdoor cafés, especially female strangers sitting in outdoor cafés, especially female strangers sitting in outdoor cafés and allowing their attention to drift, their heads to tilt, their expressions to darken with mystery.

A powerful, morbid fascination with countless daily ritual nothings. Juggling my small carton of orange juice and messenger bag as I attempt to extract and display my office ID. My apartment building key selected from the set, its bow pressed between the knuckles of my middle and index fingers, the blade thrust outward as though I will slash the unlucky mugger who chooses to strike when I’m mere feet from my front stoop. False accretion of detail in the subway advertisements and graffiti that fringe each commute-contours, irregularities and shadows that were and weren’t there last time. The seconds wasted every week on the observation that my favorite deli lunch order (buffalo chicken wrap) and my favorite vending machine snack (Chex Mix) are both given the code C4, this universe winking with meaningless coincidence.

The burst of loneliness when, whether in conversation or lecture, a speaker pauses to search for a word, and you silently arrive at the word they want, and the speaker then settles on that very word, not without some relish, and the strange fermata quickly recedes in the wake of further talk, and you turn to watch it shrink against the horizon.

Being so wretched at informal goodbyes that I leave gatherings without saying a word, hoping the host will construe this rudeness as somehow more intimate than the hearty backslap, or handshake, or hug.

The voyeurism of city life, yes, but more the incompleteness of it: an arm, just an arm, adjusting a curtain in a window across the street. Each bedroom filled with its own light, light from a secret arrangement of lamps. I was walking home at 3 a.m. one Sunday morning, charged with the intuition that this ghostly hour was when public became private, and came upon an arguing couple: the man stood on the curb, the woman directly across from him, the whole sidewalk between them. I didn’t hesitate to pass through this turbulent strait. She attacked his masculinity. He bragged about an ongoing affair. And as their shouting dissolved behind me I imagined they had saved their cruelest lines for an impartial passerby, for some contextless verdict made possible by tangent, the way I grazed the curve of their fury.

The unexpected calm that washed over me when I realized my laptop’s hard drive had been wiped clean, the subtle euphoria of this tabula rasa, the immense satisfaction of taking the computer apart and installing a new hard drive myself, the pleasure of starting over.

How sure I was that the man who entered the elevator and pressed the button for floor seven after I pressed the button for floor six would mistakenly exit a floor too soon, how palpable his distraction was. My purely mental smile when he strode out confidently on floor six and I mumbled something like, “I think you’re one more,” one of those otherwise nonsensical shortcut phrases. His embarrassed “Thanks.” The impression of his wobbly final step into the blank white lobby-an unstep, aborted as mind and body came to an asynchronous awareness.

All the women I love or loved or nearly loved know how to make silly faces, and they know to do it often.

The sky, which we do describe so often because we can’t, and because our failures nonetheless strike us as lovely. A landscape’s apparently infinite range of greens, of illumination and shade. Those glittering flecks in pavement! The ocean, despite its currents, flowing in every direction at once, and never going anywhere-the temporary shine of smooth wet sand when a wave retreats.

That when moving though a crowd, I fantasize about shoving absolutely everyone to the ground: children, the elderly, men twice my size with shaven heads, stunning women in precarious shoes, sleep-deprived students carrying books, cops, executives, street preachers, drunks, the rare celebrity, the person I recognize but want to avoid, the tattooed girl with brilliant teeth, the guy who sort of looks like me. I will shove them all. The crowd will subdue me, eventually; they will band together and pin me down and demand to know what is wrong with me, and I will say that nothing is wrong, that this was always how I pictured it.

Miles Klee goes outside.

Nobody gets to have any fun: the very secretive meeting on Monday between the President of the United States (who is black) and black bloggers and magazine people has been unveiled by the lamestream media. Anyway, apparently Russell Simmons’s blogger was there? Which is funny because Russell Simmons was out on the town last night, busy talking about the difference between “dirty girls” and something-something, I’m sure I don’t want to know.

I share this recent video from our animating Taiwanese friends not so much because there is anything groundbreaking about it-although the way they mimic scratched and aging film for the events set in the past is a nice touch-but to introduce you to a cultural reference with which you may be unfamiliar. Here’s how the folks at Next Media Animation explain it.

Our viewers outside of Taiwan might not understand the reference to green hats in the animation. In Chinese, to say that someone is “wearing a green hat” means calling him a cuckold. This is derived from an old Yuan dynasty custom where prostitutes’ families are punished by being made to wear green head scarves in public. The scarves became hats, and the term “wearer of green hats” now describes men whose wives have strayed.

The more you etc!

The French, explained: “Once you ask a Frenchman his opinion you’ll be there until the bottle is empty and neither of you can remember what you’re talking about.”

by Sean McTiernan

When someone stops doing something for 16 years and then gets back in the game, you expect them to be a bit rusty and outdated. The films Frank Henenlotter directed during the first decade of his career were probably quite shocking at the time, but with the “4chanification of our generation” (to quote the worst sentence I’ve ever read in a college paper) they seem almost quaint. Well, maybe Frankenhooker couldn’t be classed as quaint, but it certainly comes across as effective gross-out campy fun rather than a movie that makes you cover your face with fear.

A lot has changed since Basket Case 3 came out in 1992. The Scary Movie series annihilated most of the potential for horror films to subtly mock their own conventions. Torture porn, shot in that psuedo-Korn video style, has become what most people think of when they think scary movies. Hollywood keeps producing music-video style remakes which-though horror traditionally borrows and repeats itself-serve no purpose and strip all the character from the source material. And even before that a generation of directors was busy squeezing out variations on Scream while missing all of the irony and self-awareness that movie possessed. It seems impossible a man from a different time in horror history could come close to producing a movie that could shock and disgust in the way he so loved to do.

That said…holy shit: Bad Biology.

I’ve seen Bad Biology described as a “love story” in reviews.That’s not true. It splits into three parts: the story of two characters and what happens when they come together (boom boom). Which two characters? Well, Jennifer-a woman with 8 clitorises-and Batz, a man with a sentient penis that detaches from his body. Obviously.

Batz’ story could easily have featured in any ’80s Henenlotter movie. Due to an unfortunate complication at birth, his penis had to be re-attached and thus never really worked as it should. Once puberty became an issue and he realised he couldn’t avail himself of the main activity availible to 13 year-old boys (no, not trying to get all the animalities in “Mortal Kombat”) he got pretty upset. His parents refused to by him “hard-on pills” so he was forced to turn to injecting steroids and growth hormones into the trouble spot. Now, years later, his dick has developed a personality of its own and Batz wanders from dealer to dealer, trying to get the chemicals he needs to keep it under control. He mainly needs to use machines for release but when we do see him have sex, 2 minutes of his mournful pumping leaves a prostitute in paroxysms of ecstasy that necessitate dumping her in an alley, still moaning.

Jennifer is a whole different animal. Being born with “7 known clitorises” has given her a completely different experience of sex from that other humans. She’s in a constant state of arousal, has a large number of sexual partners and goes through all the emotions of a relationship in the time it takes to reach climax. This means she often murders the men she does it with. No big deal. She also has a baby two hours after each sexual encounter and once she gives birth, she immediately discards it. The first time we see this there is a lingering shot of the mutant infant, left to die in a bathtub. The viewer is given a couple of seconds to judge her before she quickly turns around to admonish us directly. She contends, in what has to be one of the most bizarre commentaries on abortion I’ve seen in a film, that “they’re not real babies, real babies take nine months to grow.” I can’t even tell what side it’s supposed to be on. Jennifer’s interior monologue is at least as shocking as some of the crazy stuff that makes it onscreen. Her monologue about being designed specifically by God for one purpose- “God wants to fuck me”-is probably being recited in youth drama schools all over American as we speak. Probably.

Jennifer funnels her lifestyle into a job taking sexually explicit photographs. One gig brings her to an abandoned mansion to shoot Jedi Mind Tricks’ Viinne Paz palling around with some ladies wearing giant rubber vaginas on their places. The mansion happens to belong to Batz. So this whole twisted interaction is set off by hip hop. I’m not going to spoil what happens when these two sexual aberrations finally become aware of each other, because my feeble words can’t do this insanity justice. You’ve got to see it for yourself.

Speaking of hip hop, it’s all over this movie. J-Zone is Batz’ drug dealer, Remedy organises the video shoot and RA The Rugged Man is the first man ever to attempt sleep with Jennifer. RA is the key component to this movie: his funding and friendship with Frank are what got it made. These two men are, on the face of it, unlikely compatriots. They met because RA was a fan of Frank’s and asked him to shoot one of his music videos. Frank Henenlotter was not a big hip hop fan at the time, but decided “what the heck” and gave it a go. It resulted in a fascinating and inspiring creative partnership. These guys seriously have so much respect for one another that seeing them go back and forth is heartwarming:

I had planned to write a big paragraph on how many hardships befell this production. Then I realised that would be completely redundant, seeing as RA has recorded an excellent song about just that. Unbelievably all of this, including Henenlotter’s brave and badass fight with cancer, is all true. Listen and be amazed that the movie exists.

Also: It would be a terrible omission on my part if I covered the Henenlotter movies and neglected to mention Beverly Bonner. Bonner played the friendly hooker Casey in Basket Case and has featured in every Henenlotter movie since then. She is as much a part of his trademark as unique character design and off-kilter humor. It’s always interesting to see where she pops up; in Bad Biology she’s unfortunate enough to witness Batz beating his angry penis with a door.

I’ve harped on a lot about how audacious and shocking this movie is but it’s important to note: it’s the right kind of shocking. All films are hard to make, but it’s easy enough to come up with a Human Centipede or an August Mordum. Plenty of people can try to be as brutal as possible: just look at 4chan (actually, don’t). It takes skill and craft to completely overwhelm an audience while still retaining a spirit of joy.

Bad Biology may be shocking, all of the characters may be repulsive in some way or another but none of it seems deliberately malicious. “Mischievous” maybe isn’t the first word you’d associate with a movie that features a disembodied penis forcing itself through walls so it can force itself into women, but I really do think it applies here. Bad Biology focuses on sex because, as Henenlotter points out, it’s the thing that still makes people squirm. Henenlotter’s movies are made to shock you into laughter; his aim is always to entertain. So basically, if someone finds Bad Biology offensive, you shouldn’t be mates with them and they’re bad at movies. That’s a fact, feel free to quote me on it.

Actually, I’ll happily extend that to all of Frank Henenlotter’s offerings. His shlock Glock weighs a ton, he’s a national treasure doing great work to keep truly strange cinema alive. Important as his conservational efforts and projects as a documentation are (any horror fan worth their salt should check out his predictably fantastic film on Herschell Gordon Lewis), I would urge you to see Bad Biology is a beacon of hope as well as filth. Maybe, especially now with the power of hip hop on his side, he can be coaxed into making another movie. So go to Something Weird Video and make some purchases. Also make sure to pick up Bad Biology on DVD. Do anything you can to help put him back behind the camera so he can roll out another classic. American Cinema deserves it.

Sean Mc Tiernan has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone, though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum. You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.

“Something isn’t quite right on ‘Saturday Night Live’ this season.” However could that be?

Scientists at the Ontario Science Centre, which is apparently a real place, say they are investigating this video taken by Toronto bird-watcher Peter Hickey-Jones to determine whether or not if offers proof of the existence of unicorns. While we all wait, the Science Centre advises the public on what to do in the case of a unicorn sighting, and has set up a hot line (416–696–3260) to call to report any such instances. When you call the number, you can also learn information about the Science Centre’s current show, Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids. More interestingly, here is a list of “Unicorn Facts” the Science Centre presents. Facts! From a Science Centre!

1) Unicorns tend to avoid eye contact with humans and prefer to remain unseen
2) Unicorns are known in European cultures as being fiercely beautiful creatures whose horns have curative properties
3) The Asian unicorn, described as being scaly coated with the body of a deer and a flesh covered horn, was last seen by the Chinese philosopher Confucius
4) The 1620 edition of Historiae Animalium, a book describing all the animals living on Earth, included a description of unicorns

I wonder whether there is a display at the Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids exhibit of a model unicorn on a rolling dolly like those Spike Lee uses to make his movies and like the rapper Curren$y uses in his latest video. The exhibit at the Science Centre, that is. The Ontario Science Centre.

by Jeff Hart

The last man I punched was the owner of a vegan grocery store. In general, I don’t take issue with the vegans, but I’d recently discovered this particular soy-milquetoast had been having it tantric with Claudette who, at that point, I had still planned to make my common-law wife. I caught up with the vegan in the produce aisle and clipped him in the ear. He told me that no amount of fisticuffs would make Claudette love me again, and then he had me arrested.

They say violence isn’t the answer, that it won’t make you feel better. If that’s the case, why did the afterglow of that one punch last me all the way through the arraignment?

A psychologist might tell you that a well-delivered sucker-punch, like cigarettes, like booze, is just an escape from your problems, not a solution. He might tell you that those vices only pull a man further down into a spiral of depression, leading not to answers, but only to harder drinks and harder punches. And I might ask that psychologist for a light and, while he’s looking for a match, sock him one in the mouth.

Because if he’s such a keen observer of the human condition, why didn’t he see that coming?

In summation, I felt like hitting somebody and the two intruders rooting around in my office definitely had it coming. Paul Fennel warned me in an eerily prescient phone conversation not to step to these guys, but in addition to the aforementioned vices, I also enjoy disregarding good advice.

Two steps into the office and I’ve made the intruders as the pair of jarheads that followed me into Ahmet’s that morning. One of them stretched out on my futon, cleaning under his fingernails with a butterfly knife. The other waited for me by the door, smiling. He’s the one I swung on.

My heart started to pound, the rush nearly deafening until the crack of my knuckles against the jarhead’s chin exploded like a starter’s pistol. The futon whined as the other one sat up, startled. It was a good punch. Buried his chin into his chest. Staggered him. I darted past him. I keep my gun on a bookshelf, hidden in Claudette’s emptied out memory box. The jarhead on the futon had started to laugh and clap his hands. Behind me, I could tell the first one had already regained his balance, just as I put hands on the memory box.

It was empty.

“Bang,” said the jarhead, grinning now with teeth outlined in blood.

The jarhead pointed my own heater at me, an engorged looking magnum I kept to put the fear into people. At the wrong end of it, I was at least happy to note that it worked. I put my hands up.

“Christ almighty,” said the jarhead, lowering my gun. “You didn’t have to hit me. We just want to talk.”

“You could’ve made an appointment.”

The other jarhead tittered and laid back on the futon. The first dabbed at his lip with the sleeve of his coat. He introduced himself as Yossarian, his partner as Pilgrim. Aliases, for sure, which never boded well when dealing with unhinged military types. Yossarian stuffed my gun into the front of his pants, but kept his grin aimed at me. I’d seen his type of smile before, lazy and accommodating, all teeth and enthusiasm, and yet somehow malevolent. On a southerner like Yossarian, it was a smile that said everything was peachy for now, but you might want to get out of town by sunset.

“We understand you’re working with a guy named Paul Fennel,” said Yossarian.

“I maintain a strict professional confidentiality with my clients,” I lied.

From the futon, Pilgrim let loose a tuneless whistle and ruefully shook his head.

“I’d appreciate if you could avoid jerking me off,” said Yossarian, his grin not flagging. “We already know what we need to know about you. What I said before, that was just some polite preamble to segue into what we want from you.”

“And what’s that?”

“We want Paul Fennel.”

“What for?”

“Revenge.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. First Dot warned me that Fennel was red-flagged, and now these two off-the-reservation jarheads had come around for some kind of payback. Granted, I’d only met Paul for the first time that morning, but I couldn’t figure how a socially awkward kid with some overactive sweat glands could get in deep with this kind of element. It didn’t add up. Then again, the weird burn on Paul’s chest didn’t make a whole lot of sense either.

I decided to go fishing.

“This about the girl?” I asked. “The one Fennel asked me to find?”

“Girl?” Yossarian glanced at Pilgrim. “You telling me that queer hired himself a private detective to help find him a girlfriend?”

“I guess that about sums it up.”

“Well, the heart wants what the heart wants, I suppose. But we ain’t here about any girl, Mr. Detective, and I’d surely appreciate it if you would keep your stupid fucking questions relevant to the task at hand.”

“Your revenge,” I ventured.

“Correct, sir,” said Yossarian. “Our Paul, he is not a man that’s easy to find. Unlike present company, he does not work and sleep in one easily accessed location. He won’t let us find him, but you, apparently he trusts you.”

“We only just met.”

“And that’s good. It means you won’t have any compunction about pointing and whistling the next time you plan to see him.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You’d be doing your men in uniform a great service, for starters. Also, we intend to pay you handsomely in the currency of not coming back here and killing you.”

On the futon, Pilgrim snapped his knife closed. Counting John the Bulldog and Bo Harkins, this made four people threatening me bodily harm in the last twenty-four hours. Maybe Dot was right about my instincts being for shit. The urge for violence had certainly leaked out of me.

“One question,” I said. “I’ve only met Fennel once, but he didn’t strike me as the type to make enemies. What did he do?”

“That’s a fine question. Glad you asked.”

Yossarian tossed an arm around my shoulders, hugging me close.

“Let me tell you a little story about your client.”

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Jeff Hart lives in Brooklyn. His other writing can be found over at Culture Blues.

Photo by Fabio, from Flickr.

Go here for some amazing pictures from the rescue of the Chilean miners.