Diary

Tempest in a Tea Room

The artist Bruce Conner is featured in this videotape which bounces east and west, depicting the fragility of holistic hooligans in a world of hit-and-run encounters, Prozac, and pizzas. A meditation on faulty plumbing and paradise lost... but not forgotten!

Temple of Torment

There is so much to absorb: the wetness from the sky. The hooded figure in the box. A big plate of pasta, and that chair on wheels. Messages of moral guidance clash with actions that are on a collision course with dilapidation. And through it all the water runs, the fridge is full and hearts yearn for that which mellows the melody of God’s glockenspiel. For the winds of change rattle the bones of the grim reaper as he swings his scythe in rhythm to a cacophony of corruption intrinsic to this orchestra pit of purgatorial preludes and egg laying swan songs.

 The Target Shoots First

“Christopher Wilcha’s fascinating feature-length video reminds us how seldom we’re allowed to see certain businesses operating from the inside. Wilcha, a 22-year-old college graduate and alternative-rock enthusiast, was hired by the Columbia Record and Tape Club—apparently as a fluke—to help launch a whole new niche-marketing division, which brought him face-to-face with the contradictory meanings of the term ‘alternative’ once it’s been embraced by the mass market.

Tales of the Twilight Typist

The summer comes to an end as the viewer tours the loft and art, the lofty art of Mimi Gross, the swinging dummies of Doug Skinner, and the mysterious real estate of famed author, Whitley Streiber. Hear his story of terror and beauty under the trees and roof of his country home. See for yourself the man behind the mystery and the people who love him. Also, as an added attraction: rare shots of UFO author and investigator, John Keel. An informal look at the incredible.

Supercell

Clouds abound in this short meditation on vaporous masses that flow across the borders of our windowpanes, leaving in their wake the wreckage of discarded diets and sugar coated emptiness. Into those holes that surround us with the sweetness of puffy dough we plunge into a landscape of desolation and rebirth, never again to deny the terror that piles up in the sky like a malignant mound of virgin pudding. A mass of revolving turbulence hell-bent on defying gravity in the name of vertical instability and electrical insanity. A supercell for the supersized who flee its windy wrath.

Sunbelt Serenade, Part 1: Oklahoma

The rivers are in flood stage during a scenic tour of Tulsa; while in El Reno, Oklahoma, it's as dry as a two-week old peach cobbler. The locals puff up on breaded catfish while an influx of British visitors seek in vain a vegetarian platter amid the thunder boom and hail clatter. 

Sunbelt Serenade, Part 2: Los Angeles

Flies buzz among the congestion of combustible contraptions as Western civilization gasps for air amid Oriental orifices that emit the stench of sugar and spice and everything nice.

Sunbelt Serenade, Part 3: Arizona

The rocks are red, the mood is blue, the sky is big, and the scars on the earth run deep as a man and woman shop incessantly for nature's bounty and the trinkets of a vanishing culture. 

Suji's House of Shame

Male escorts and crytozoologists battle behemoths and bulemics in this student-teacher collaboration about undying evil and those that escape it via the LOVE CANAL.

Studio 8

The place where my students and I confront each other and glimpse into a world infiltrated by beloved infidels.

Snake Goddess

A combination birthday/going away party proceeds at its own shallow pace, while revellers reminisce inwardly amid a paralyzing atmosphere of mixed drinks and emotions that choke all but the young at heart and body.

Skim Milk & Soft Wax

Skim Milk & Soft Wax explores Jewish identity from the point of view of the American filmmaker, who was raised to believe that Israel is the "land of milk and honey". However, the realities of her personal experiences of Israel collide with that Edenic image. Instead, the state of Israel is complex, shape shifting, and often disappointing. Therefore: skim milk - a substance of reduced nutritional value, but which still lives in the name of "milk". And wax, the stuff of religious offerings, which is always ready to change its shape.

X MASS

A California winter turns the left coast into a brew of foaming festivities while landlubbers leap for joy in the spray of salty slurpings.

Woman of the 90s

Storms batter California as 1995 ushers in a world of computerized characters and unplugged souls in search of electrified juice. The images of a naked past haunt the denizens of today as a wet tomorrow threatens to sweep them into oblivion on a tide of technology. Already water-bogged and bloated, the occupants seek the sun and the worshippers who strip in defiance of Divine dehydration.

Winter Hostilities

The ground is frozen and the whiteness hides the carcass of a thing that once was happy... but now maybe had gotten gassed by things undigested. The bones of once-mighty and blubbery beings stand erect among midgets or dangle around the necks of dormant cannibals destined for a likewise extinction and yet, there is hope. As long as there is still a little meat on those bones our appetite for living goes on.