vol #11: amyl, swarm & fan art
and a beg for whimsy
anyway, welcome back (okay, presumptuous of me!!!) to sent from my iphone with love, your hot links to epic things that i have found On The Line and the irl bit, which is hot reccos for Real Life Living™
dominique fishback & billie eilish in swarm
this is the internet bit
ugh swarm ROCKS. donald glover’s disaffected dark sense of humour, which you can see smeared thickly across both atlanta and its’ sister show swarm, is hypnotic. the show, which is not about a murderous beyonce super fan (however it would like you to think it were), is so cleverly thought out, with winks to super fan culture, cameoing both billie eilish and paris jackson.
the show has this pervasive uncomfortability, which is not an uncommon theme in afrosurrealism. perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the main character is prone to killing sprees, but there is also something about the way it’s filmed; old fashioned and whimsical with its’ film and iris shots, contrasting the hyper modern and violent content.
also, i love it when media goes to the next level to make their world come to life. you can listen to ni’jah’s album here.
drugs, skate & violence: filmmaker harmony korine, vice
harmony korine was a name i had heard a lot but didn’t know much about. now i know a bit about him. hey you can too.
poppers: reviewed from best to worst
i find amyl to be like eating a lolly: i would never go out of my way to procure it, i don’t particularly enjoy the experience, but if offered it i’ll always say yes. i often think my favourite articles are ones i wish i’d thought to have written. reviewing amyl? genius. probably not like changing the world genius, but definitely at least funny genius.
amyl, poppers, jungle juice etc etc
this is the irl bit
massages
last week maddie and i got a massage at this random place we found online. i knew it was going to be brilliant when i walked upstairs and it was in a converted office space. to jazz it up, they’d put down wooden stepping stones and a whole lot of gravel they’d bulk bought from bunnings. after having a glug from the water cooler, i passed the masseuse my cup and she plopped it down with the rest of the clean ones.
we both lay in the dark room together, on thin mattresses, whilst she got to work on maddie first. i lay under a heater with a blanket on, and was drifting along the shores of a daydream when i heard the ding of a text message. damn, i thought, i must have forgotten to put my phone on silent. but then, i heard the percussive clack of someone typing a response. i opened one eye and the masseuse (straddling maddie’s back whilst bending her leg in a karma sutra-esque position), was typing out a text.
for the rest of the hour and a half we were there she answered two phone calls, berated us for choosing the wrong massage style (we needed deep tissue not traditional thai!!!) as we listened to a playlist including white flag by dido and some of kylie’s best hits.
at one point, whilst grabbing the meaty flesh of my arm, she began to say to me, you know if you want to lose weight… alas the real tragedy of this situation was that i was too busy trying not to laugh to hear the advice.
as we left the parlour, we thanked her and asked for her name. Hundred, she responded. pardon? Hundred Thousand Good!
you can’t make this shit up.
fan art
man, you cannot tell me there is anything funnier than fan art. the vast majority of that shit suuuuuucks. its insane. i know its not nice to laugh at other peoples failings, but it’s just incredible to me that there is a genre of art that is so overwhelmingly poor. the other day salvosfit posted a story with the truism: your art is valid but not necessarily good. something to think about, particularly in relation to this.
anyway, if you’re having a bad day, look up some fan art and you’ll get a goood laugh.
the happy couple, naoise dolan
all hail the cruelly honest irish female author. naoise’s latest book is even better than her debut, exciting times. it’s the kind of book that’d i’d bring to the beach and jam my fingers in my ears to read as my friends yammered away. naoise is so brilliant because of her biting witticisms. nothing makes me more amused than a cutting social observation.
here are some of her best in the book so far:
the cultural ephemera we use to get over our exes is reliant on the labour of those who weren’t over theirs.
life offers few unambiguous red flags. more often, you see specks of crimson dye. they could form a pattern. or they could just be dots.
the lie is that women are good at feelings. the truth is that they're good spectators of other people's, and good coaches and good referees. they can advice from the sidelines. but if you drag them out to play, don't be expecting miracles.
gummo (1997), dir. harmony korine
thank u for reading kissy boom boom