Sorry for the delay in this second installment but I am having re-entry issues.  Aside from the perennial hyperbolic BS, other distractions include shifts in medication, the World Cup and those pestering phone calls from your mom asking me if I will wear the Minotaur outfit when I come over to play hide the pipe-bomb.  What did you expect from the miscegenated Iranian-Irish?  Admit it.  You missed me like a British goalkeeper.  Us breaking up was as bad a call as Maurice Edu being off-sides.  Hush now… it’s OK… Daddy’s back.

(The red section below is a repeat… think of it like theme to The Jeffersons in reverse as I move out of my deluxe apartment in the sky and into J.J. Walker’s old neighborhood.  Dyn-o-mite!)

Who do you think you are?

Once upon a time I wrote for Culturebot under the nefarious nom de spam of Ivan Bellman.  Ivan & I executed many a dance of death, emulating a Gonzo style of art and performance criticism that involved a sordid assortment of over and under the counter literary masturbation aids.  Due to the influence of marriage, age and a little help from my friends, I find myself much transformed, now attempting to use my powers for good.  Demonology, alchemy and counter-culture proclivities still abound although, contrary to what Mishima, Genet, Sade, Fassinder and Kathy Acker purport, stage blood is indeed enough.

Snap-Back Recap

Ian.  Ivan.  Bad blog.  Short Film.  B-Cup Man-Boobs.  Cannes.  Transhomonormative wrap parties.  Yachts.  Interns.  Vodka.  Your mom and other mythical creatures from antiquity…

To those readers flipping the stations of their microaerophile attention spans, X-TINA, a short film directed by yours temporarily, was in the marginalia (literally the basement) at Cannes Film Fest but there nonetheless.  This event, held annually for two weeks in May, is over ergo rendering this screed not so much a blog entry but more like a redactive memoir or advice column from the rotting corpses of my former selves.  It is, as I am, not bad (meaning: talent-free) as much as naughty.

If this wasn’t confusing enough, X-TINA also played a couple of times in the New Fest for which it was officially selected, Mr. Kyle! (>_<) Cartman face to you!  Why don’t put up your real identity, huh?  What do you have some government grant you’re trying to protect?  So early-mid-late nineties Kyle!

"My balls are dry, and I'm running out of time."

Quasi-seriously, much thanks to the six people who came out to see the flick.  Really, you’re too blind.  Great closing night party though.  As my friends in Dublin will attest, I have been jonesing for some homo-action.  On the other hand, the after-wrap-party convergence at the Half-King started to plumb the moral depths.  The gay mixer gave way to some twenty-something J-Date function leading some dudes to think of members of my posse were fresh meat.  It was an honest mistake so I offer my apologies to the guy who I stepped to at the bar…  Dude, she’s not gay, she just doesn’t want to talk to you!

A Prologue to Stalking the Muz

As it turned out, I was at Cannes at the same time as my dear (and often nude) friend Julie Muz.  She was actually in the Festival proper whereas I was conning my way into industry parties and the like.  (I still attest Jason Kyle pushed Gary Coleman to his death.  (At your mom’s house.))  All the same, before I can recount my farcical red carpet deign to kick it with Julio, I must provide some back story.

You see part of the problem with resuscitating this stupid column is that I have the inclination to write as if you know me.  Chances are you don’t.  The odds are indeed against you having been in the audience of The Va Va Voom Room when I had a cameo as a Eunuch in Dirty Martini’s Dance of the Several Veils.  You probably did not come to see B&G where the now über-baby moms Christen Clifford ended the show by masturbating with a metal walker.  And unless your name is Rocky or Jeff Beil then you won’t remember running through walls at chashama’s farewell to 135 West 42nd.  So these anecdotes of me and Julio huffing glue down by the schoolyard are for you….

The "come-hither-so-I-can-eat-you-alive" look

Like a seasoned playwright who avoids all dramaturgical advice, many actors are skilled at salting the game of the given director.  While I’ve worked with some champions in that regard, few compare in ostentation to the high jinks JAM would pull.  Such was the case while working on this Acker re-appropriation piece. (I know that makes me sound like a tool but it was the 90’s so gimme a break.) If I wanted to give Julie direction I would have to deal with her varied perverse advances.  “Let’s make-out,” she would exclaim as I tried to give her blocking.  Then “I’m a really good kisser” or “show me your cock… just for a sec,” right before I would give up and go back to audience riser where it was safe.

Trying to give her notes over the phone was even more futile.  Her nickname for me was “Vanilla Pudding” and she would call herself “Eggs n’ Ketchup.”  Growls and moans would mix with random erotic food groupings while I feebly attempted to give her telephonic direction.  “Oooh, yeah I’m gonna mix it all up.  It’s so messy!  All over my face.  Hmmmm, you taste so good Puddin’ Pie. Yeeeeeahhhhh.”  Not sure if she was actually touching herself but I sure as shit was by the time I hung up the phone in abject concupiscence.

It was easier to collaborate with Ms. Muz if her gun (read: Mr. Pussy) wasn’t pointed at myself.  Like when the now grown childhood actor Holter Graham would spill out of the wings on stage because Julio was sticking her fingers up his ass.  Of course, the impromptu blocking stayed but you will have to ask the performers if she cued him the same way every night.

My last little story is also my favorite… I often tell it to explain the unreality of my vocation.  Julie Atlas Muz was one of three performers in Blood Flood, which was a devised piece based on the Countess Erzbet Bathory.  The Blood Countess, as she is sometimes called, was from Hangary and a distant cousin of Vlad the Impaler or Dracula as Bram Stoker made so prevalent.  Lore has it that Bathory would bath in the blood of virgin girls to stay eternally young.  There is a great Hammer film about her and a scene in the more recent Hostel II of just such a sanguine shower.

This being a piece I directed early on in my directing career there was a naked blood dance to some Mr. Bungle music followed by an infomercial where the three young women would then sit in chairs acting out a scene to share the benefits of virginal blood on the skin.  Because they were facing the audience I thought it might be better if they wore white cotton underwear so as not to distract from the play with Gatlin gun beaver shots, as it were.

It was at this point the cast got very mopey, grumbling to themselves as if the suggestion of donning panties was going to ruin everything.  Not wanting to be a dick, or an unliked dick, I gently inquired unto the source of their mounting displeasure.  Julie looked up with her big, sad Eastern European eyes and confessed, “But we wanted to dye our pubic hair matching fluorescent colors.”

“OK. Never mind.  Forget I said anything,”  I hastily replied.  The matter (i.e. their vaginas) was quite clearly beyond my control let alone my comprehension.

Tune in next time where I will actually talk about Cannes and Julie’s film Tournée (from sélection officielle, Kyle) and no more jokes about your mom.  But tell that ho she better have my money!

If you’d like to log some visuals into your own spank bank, Julie’s homepage is as follows:

http://www.julieatlasmuz.com/

(You can google Mr. Pussy at your own risk!)