Advertising is Evil Incarnate (but my Momma made me do it)

my mother, aka Momma Monihan, is a diabetes expert (partly because, like everyone nowadays, she has diabetes, though, she’s had it for a LONG long time, so she’s OG with it, but she’s also an expert because she’s a PA which is almost like a doctor or something, or so she claims) SO she used to help a lot of people with their blood-sugars and whatnot. i say “used to” because as of late, people just stopped showing up. so to make ends meet, she started this new company sticking people in the face with botox needles and crap. basically a medical cosmetic company. and people are lining up around the block. (lesson being, in ‘Merica it’s more important to look good than to feel good.) so to help the inanity effort i broke my rule and made this little advert for her.

let me know what you all think?

(and just for the record, i sorta think feminine fuzz is always hot. but ‘fraid i’m not the target market, so…)

–monihan monihan, october 2008

NEW VIDEO/NEW VERNACULAR

Save a sore lower back and some slightly thinning hair, old age has meant little more than a myriad of heartbreaks and a gradually expanding vocabulary. My pain, be it physical or emotional, is none of your business, but I will tell you that this now mediocre command of my mother tongue has largely stemmed from finding myself involved with various forms of litigation (Q: what part of ‘can’t squeeze Kool-Aid out a cobblestone’ they not getting?)
Larger lexicon, likely the only upside of having to make so many appearances before Judge Roughneck.
Want an example? Redaction. A word I would have never used, never known, never given a gnat turd about, had it not been for a certain current housing battle I presently find myself entangled in, with none other than thee “Capital M” Man.
Back in the day, I’d a probably just said something to the effect of, “totally crossed out, not like Kris Kross, but like the CoIntelPro cross-dresser did with all his classified papers on the Panthers” oblivious to the fact that there was a simple little 9 letter noun that could say the same damn thing. However now that I’m old, and I find myself in these old people situations (housing battles and the like) I’m forced to learn and use such words in order to avoid living on the proverbial park bench. Ahhh, education at its best. Saving a sorry soul from a life of lice, piss-stains and open-air sleeping accommodations.
So, in honor of this new appellation taking refuge in my dome-piece, I’m going to place this bad boy into practice to make sure I don’t forget it in a minute (‘cause isn’t that the best way to make a new expression stick? –Use it, so you won’t lose it.)
And what better way to employ the term than to show off some of the email exchanges during the process of producing this latest video production masterpiece. But not just any electronic correspondences, no-sireee-bob, I’ll be sharing with you, young fresh fellows and fellowrettes, full blown no nonsense keep my ass out of further litigation REDACTED emails. Yes, you heard correct, what I’ll be exposing, my dear readers, are documents that have been thoroughly edited, sharpie’d, censored to conceal the vital bits of illicit information, so as to allow the authors of the documents in question the leverage necessary to deny any culpability of any sort, at any time, in any form, whatsoever, so help them Confucius. Which in laypersons’ terms means, ‘if you can’t read the names under the black ink, you can’t prove shit.’ Leaving it so I can claim I was referring to a bad motherf—[ooo, shut your mouth] “What? I was only talking ‘bout Donald Duck,” and with that I’ll be crystal clear and free, just like water used to be.
Don’t worry Mama, I’m coming home!
S’pose what I’m really getting at is since there was so much hip hop hoopla surrounding the making of this here music video/short film production/masterwork, I’m sure there’s probably like at least 7 seriously gossip happy nerds out there that will bother reading this and have a grand old time trying to decipher the cryptic significance barely veiled in these ever-so-vaguely altered messages and I’m here to give the people (well, the nerds at least) what they want. But with a twist, of course. The Redaction Factor. To make it more exciting, challenging, confusing, annoying. And then again, though I doubt it, maybe some of you nerds and non-nerds alike are interested in the behind the scenes nonsense that goes down behind closed doors and firewalls during the making of these little music movies. Whatever the case, without further ado, I present to you…
Redacted email numero uno:

[This was the original email I received from a certain “someone” after a brief phone call in which another certain “someone” from a certain label told me they wanted to make a video for a certain song recorded by a certain artist. In the phone conversation I was told that the certain artist wasn’t going to be in the video, leaving me to assume (strike one against me) that this was a decision of the certain artist’s making. And thus our decent into hell begins. We start with the email that contains the “treatment” (actually two versions, one by one certain “individual”, and the other one by an alleged “feminist”.)]

REDACTED LETTER #1

[I responded to this above email to the sender of the email with this email of my own…]

REDACTED LETTER #2

[On the follow up phone call I reiterated the points in the redacted email above and then made it clear that I could only do the video if 1) it was cool to change stuff to make it a little less “on the nose” and “didactic”—making sure it didn’t come off as some anti-choice propaganda, but also not coming off like a knee-jerk pro-abortion thing either—because preachy crap is always crap; it's more important to try to get people to think than to tell them what to think—and most importantly 2) I needed to make sure what I wanted to do was cool with the artist (it was her song after all). Blessed with a healthy intuition, I sensed that the artist probably hadn’t seen or probably wasn't going to be feeling the narrative I had just read. So next thing I did was tried to contact the artist to see where she stood in relation to this potential production. And tried. And tried again. And after a week of phone call voice mails, text messages, and unacknowledged iChats, (did I mention that this artist has a tendency to go MIA, and ironically enough, usually to MIA, but not alas, with MIA, whom she doesn’t particularly care for, prompting many an argument between us.) What was I saying? Oh, yeah, after a week of trying to track the artist down I finally got through on a chat (man, i hate that word "chat" fingernails on a chalkboard). Think it was a google "chat", if memory serves…P.S. Note the time, 4 in the morning. Shit’s like detective work I tell ya.]

REDACTED LETTER #3

[After this exchange we talked again on the phone and my artist friend said, “Fuck it, I should be involved. It is my most personal song after all. So I was like cool, let’s make this happen. And I got the ball rolling. But then my friend, the artist, really went into hiding. Couldn't find her at all, for a long ass spell. And all the while I had the other parties involved asking me when I was going to start. Quagmire brewing. So I started the shoot, all the while hoping that I would be able to track a certain artist friend down when it came to the days of her scenes.
Never happened.
Got to the days where I needed her, but still no answer on the various lines of communication. So fuck it, I did the damn thing as best I could without her. Sound like a dick move? Going ahead without her? If you were one of the 9 people who pay attention to the mindless underground hip-hop chit-chit-chatter circuit (big up the boring backpack message board/blogger massive, you know who you are, seen?!) you may have heard that the artist was none too happy about all of this. But before you rush to judgment and cry Foul-e-lujah, please read the post-production exchange below for a more thorough explanation of my rationale. And then feel free to comment. And I’ll rebut. And so on and so forth. So I can relive this wonderfully banal moment of my life and argue these points again and again, in perpetuity, ad infinitum, always and forever...or at least until the cancer kills me.]

REDACTED LETTER #4

[still no response, so…]

REDACTED LETTER #5

[And still no response, so I went to the artist’s show anyway, and it was sort of awkward, but who cares. I sort of like awkward. My whole existence is awkward. Default setting for my whole aura, awkward. Whatever. Bottom line is we still haven’t properly spoken and resolved any of this. Maybe one day we’ll laugh. Or not. Who knows? However, that’s not the end to this boring tale. There’s more in store to induce a snore for sure. Check out these exchanges over the content of the film between myself and certain inside players, resulting in a migraine where all I could see for 3 straight weeks was the flashing integer 4080. The letters are out of order, so it might be even more puzzling than all of this already confusing crap you’ve been trying to sift through, but that’s okay because the comments were out of order when they came into the world in the first place. All I can say is it may be helpful if you go to the bottom and read these in reverse because the shit is all backwards, literally and figuratively.]

REDACTED LETTER #6

[And that, Ladies and Germs, is Redaction. My new favorite bit of terminology. Hope you’ve enjoyed, at least as much as I have (n't). And on a final note, please watch the long version of the video. Yes, that means there's an ADD version too for you preocc spacecases. But seriously, it's only in the longer cut that you can witness Mr. Dead getting sucker punched in the family jewels by his youngest son, Lil’ Lil’ Dead--it's adorable. Come to think of it, guess that was Lil’ Lil’ Dead’s interpretive response to the subject matter of the song. Wait, are we on to something?  Roshambo--home remedy approach to paternal abortive/spermicidal measures? Perhaps a new craze? 'Cause crybaby men always feel left out whenever women have something to call their own? (Well, everything except the lower pay for equal work thing.) Aa-and on a final final note: watch the film in HD will ya? For better quality! Just click on the HD symbol and it will open up in a new tab on the bricolagista! vimeo channel). And feel free to check out the other stuff that's posted there too.]

Tally Garden Tool!

–Monihan Monihan, September 2008

something i recently wrote for frank151

it’ll teach you how to fly around the world for free…spit-roast the capitalist pigs…and eventually stop global warming.

your seeds will thank me one day.

you’re welcome.

(an’ a-yo, click on ‘em if your eyes are bad. they open up into early bird special size)

Me. That’s who.

First off, this is my first “blog” ever. Might be my last. Who knows? Reason being I have a serious problem with all this “look at me! Check out how important and fly and fresh and cool I am” nonsense that goes on in our culture nowadays. Look, nobody cares what party you were at last night. First you gotta ack’, THEN you gotta act. Where’s the concrete shit? A lot of talk, but not a lot of walk in our world today. Fools typing away while staring real hard at their own crotch vicinity. Something seriously sick about that. But hey, Dante asked me to do this, and I owe him a solid for stealing a certain girl from me a long time ago, so I’m sort of obliged.

So, ‘ere we go.

ME ME ME ME ME! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME!

Just got back from a two-week trip around Europe. And was violently sick the whole time. Still am. (Why the fuck am I writing and not sleeping?) That’s the crux of the whole problem: Staying up too late and getting up too early. Never resting and acting like an idiot. 24-7. Not a good schedule. And the shit caught up with me. I played the dice, and now I’m paying the price. Have pneumonia or something, coughing like a dying dog with nothing coming up. As the great George Jefferson said, “Wheezy!” Feels like there’s water in my lungs and no amount of medicine is making me feel better. Wah wah wah! :’(

I know nobody cares (Fuck it, let’s be real, nobody is even reading this—Again, Seriously, blogs? Get out of here.) But guess what? I care. It’s my “entry”. And I could be dying. So fuck off, let me mutter. Pete “Dogshit” Dossett didn’t dub me ‘Cry’n Moan-a-lot’ for nothing.
Okay, anyway, like i said above, this blog shite is all about shameless self-promotion, right? So back to ME!… This is why I’ve been in Europe and why I’ve been letting myself get dangerously near Heath (didn’t know the) Ledger territory.
1st stop the Untitled-Documents show at Bread and Butter in Barcelona of which I was asked to participate. More washed-up skaters, graphic design nerds and middle-aged graf writers pretending to be “artistes” or some nonsense. So, of course I took part. They’re selling my “art” for 2000 Euros. Fucking brilliant! Who wouldn’t want to get in on that action?! Templeton, Rose, Mills, you better watch yourselves.
The KDU put this up and here’s the Untitled-Documents link where you can buy the t-shirt. (Gotta love the German work ethic – turning everything and anything into an extra few Pfennigs. ) Speaking of t-shirts, the other reason I was in Barcelona was the debut of a REAL art project: my bandwagon boarding new t-shirt line:…a t-shirt company for people who are sick of all these stupid t-shirt companies (on display at The KDU booth–thanks Gensy- but no, I won’t be voting for your “experienced” Witch or the guy with the ears or the hermunculoid (for obvious reasons). fuck it, just check out George Carlin for a taste of what I think about voting ). Okay, what we’re we talking about?
YES!!! t-shits. Bringing it back to the essence. Plain t-shirts with simple, straightforward, no-bullshit messages (okay, maybe a little bullshit). Check ‘em out. Don’t be a herb. Get yours before they’re played out.

www.ilovetshits.com
Response? Euro-peons were really feeling the onesies. Odd, given that the pale-faced Euro’s don’t even have kids anymore. In fact, in a lot of Euro-Cuntries, they give “whiteys” cold hard cash, just to make babies. Serious. They’re really worried that the so-called white race (of which there’s really no such thing—social invention, not a biological fact) is dying. I say “good”. Die Whitey, Die! But on the neo-realism, if i wasn’t already taken, and I likededed me some snowflake Euro bird? I’d a been gone to France to make seeds already. Get some loot for procreating. Crazy. Sure, more “White privilege” in full effect. But hey, making money for rubbing tummies? Brilliant. Plus you could get some EU love and probably start making real money with a green card or something ‘stead of being stuck with this monopoly money the US dollar is currently turning in to.

All righty. Enough social commentary. Just order some damn t-shits and your life will get better instantly. You’ll get play. You’ll get compliments. You might even get punched in the grill!!! I promise.
www.ilovetshits.com
Okay, aside from the Untitled thing, and my life-altering t-shits, Bread and Butter was basically a trade show full of dickheads whom you wouldn’t want to hang out with in a million years. All the shit about how East Atlantics dress better than everyone else can be quickly dismissed after 5 seconds of witnessing this crowd. Bottom line is people under 60 dress like shit everywhere in the world nowadays, no matter where you are. And “street-wear”? Just another term for butt-fucking-ugly.
Next Stop: Venezia, Italia
By now I was just getting sicker by the minute. Which really sucked, because not only was I traveling with my good friends Kalindi and Saurabh the Soapman, but the city was virtually tourist free this time of year, plus we were staying at my friends’ Wolfgang and Marie’s palazzo (that means palace in Italian, dummy). And as is commonly the case with palazzo’s, the spot was top ranking.

Here’s the bathroom, designed and built by Marie:

And here’s a Venetian mosquito that probably bit my ass while I was trying to sleep off my sickness adding a new strain of virus to my already death-tickling disease.

And here’s some other shit from the car-free streets of Venice:

From Venice I went to Amsterdam to meet up with my old skate comrades DJ Clyde (old school Alva rider cum DJ/stylist dude, not to mention the most well-connected ex-dread in Amsterdam) and Robert Boerleider (the king of continental comedy, the Guinness Book Record holder for the world’s longest drop-in, and most importantly Slammy’s hip-pad founder and president—Tony Hawk used to ride for him, for realski). Here’s Boerleider’s blog in Dutch—a language that no one, not even the Dutch, speak anymore. And here’s his head-shot (oh yeah, Boerleider’s also an actor/social critic/solo world-traveler)

Seriously, one of the funniest people alive.

So Amsterdam? Clyde was DJing at the Dutch version of Fashion Week (of course). Nothing much to say there that I haven’t already said (see above: i.e., people dressing like shit) besides maybe the fact that everyone in this city still smokes. Fashion weak meets fashion wreak. But that shit is getting cut real quick, so no more stinking threads in the Netherlands’ near future, thank Allah. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you’ll find an awful picture of ME! looking like a corpse after I just about puked from 2ndHS hell, bad fashion and just plain being sick as shit already in the first place.

And Boerleider? Just going on and on about drinking snake blood and eating dogs during a recent trip to Cambodia. He’s got footy. He made me watch it. Repeatedly.
He likes traveling around the world by his lonesome. Said that his lawyer told him, given his personality, that it’s the only way he should (and probably could) travel. Now if he could just learn how to hold his camera straight, maybe, just maybe, he could turn all of this into some sort of a show. Comedic genius brewing? Time will only tell.
After A’dam, Paris. Took a bus for some stupid reason (see head-shot above). Boredom through Belgium.
But then arrived in the City of Lights.
Met up with my wonderful Ex, Mebrak Tareke. Here are some retro-modeling shots of Ms. Tareke before she quit the stupid fascism, oops, I mean fashion bullshit, and started translating and writing for UNESCO and AFP (she has a Masters from London School of Economics-out of our league fellas, sorry.)

So civilized to have such a strong friendship with someone you used to exchange fluids with. Makes me feel, dare I say, grown up. Weird. But good fun hanging out with Ms. Tareke. We went and saw Ken Loach’s most recent film-“It’s a Free World”. Sort of bland, but not without its moments of great acting…but then again forced dialogue—basically typical Loach. Important subject matter shoved down your throat with minimal flavor. Like going out for dinner to a vegan restaurant. Mebrak was more forgiving, having had similar experiences growing up as an immigrant in dusty ass London. So maybe I’m being a bit harsh.
Next day hung out with Thomas, French Fred and Leo at ill-studio and discussed plans for building our online media empire. Shit’s gonna be big-you heard it here first. And these guys really are ill. Then again, I was too. And next thing you know I was heavily medicating myself for a flight back to JFK. Got back just in time to shoot the new Jean Grae video for her track “Love Thirst” off her upcoming Blacksmith LP release “Jeanius” . The video is going to be a special Valentine’s Day release, which means probably a March 1st release (set your clock to hip hop time)…stay tuned. In the meantime, think you can go to www.okayplayer.com and scroll down to the Feb. 1st entry to see some stills from the shoot. Jean’s looking real sexy in this one people. So just keep ice in the area. And quick note to all the inevitable “Jean sold out, using her body to push her records. Say it ain’t so, Greasy, say it ain’t so!!!” Relax, it’s a tongue in cheek commentary on all the stupid messages she gets from her horny My Space “friends”. I’ll explain in more detail once the video is finished and released (once the critics rev up to full bitch and moan mode). Okay, think that’s all for now. I’ll be back…unless I die from this bug. In the meantime, check out our film company’s site www.bricolagista.com

And in case you haven’t heard, check out www.ilovetshits.com

And stay tuned for that Jean Grae video. Blue flame shit. Coming soon. So yo, Dante, is this good enough for the bloggery?