Last night I finally watched David Lynch's Inland Empire for the first time. I know I should have seen it ages ago, but it just kept slipping through the cracks. Now, I have finally seen it and all I can say is:

I am changed.

If you haven't seen it, you must.

It will require giving three hours of your life away; but in return you will be changed.

I should say more, but I won't. I'll just ask you to believe me when I say it is truly an unassailable work of avant-garde, anti-Aristotelian, rhizomatic genius.

I intend to watch it many, many, many more times.

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The new installment at Abjective is amazing:

"drifter"

by

Jeff Crouch

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Bruce Covey's Picks for Best Poetry Books of 2008

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Here are a few deadly videos I culled from a sweet newish site called Jando:

Plastikman - "Disconnect"

Directed by Ali M. Demirel






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"Allahu Akbar"

Directed by Usama Alshaibi






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"I Met The Walrus"

Directed by Josh Raskin

"In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatles fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace."






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"Larytta - souvenir de chine"

Directed by Körner Union

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Mia Mäkilä was born in Norrköping, Sweden, in 1979:

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Matthew Dessem's project is to watch every movie in the Criterion Collection (in number order) and then publish a discussion of each film on his blog, The Criterion Contraption. Right now he is on #86 Alexander Nevsky, 1938, directed by Sergei Eisenstein.

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Brad Phillips was born in Toronto, Canada:

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"Brought To A Boil: An Essay On Experimental Poetry"

by

John Olson

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"A lovely Curiosity: Raymond Roussel"

by

William Clark

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Michael Lewis was born in Hamilton, ON, & now lives and works in Toronto:

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Check out The Underground Library -- a new wiki:

"To document, promote, and sustain the literary underground in the most grassroots way possible: relying on the knowledge of said literary underground. To give incoming generations of writers and publishers a sense of history from which they may learn and to which they can contribute. To remain balanced and factual. To bring writing back to the reader."

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Claudio Parentela was born in Catanzaro, Italy, where he lives and works:

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Be advised: Previously-unpublished Thomas Bernhard text
to be released in 2009!!!

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Speaking of crazy, avant-garde videos, I experienced Ryan Trecartin’s zany I-Be Area last year at The Wexner Center. Now you can too -- he's begun posting clips of the project in non sequential order on a youtube channel.

Here is an excerpt: