Alex Israel: Art as Lorem Ipsum

"gettyimages", by J.A. Gosham,
depicting Alex Israel.

Alex Israel’s exhibition “Fins” just recently ended on July 28 at the Gagosian gallery in Rome. “Fins” features an installation of sleek plastic surfboard fins presented as sculptures. The fin imagery evokes a rather rudimentary cross-lingual pun on the French “end” referencing the “Finish Fetish” that typified 1960s Southern California artwork in which artists (among them Judy Chicago) used industrial processes and materials such as fiberglass and resin to create glossy finishes for their abstract art. 

As an added bonus, Isreal has garnished the installation with text written by ChatGPT and other large-language model programs. ChatGPT even wrote his press release. Herein, Isreal (or rather ChatGPT) commented that “A.I. has become a medium in and of itself. By using A.I. to generate the press release, I’m commenting on the intersection between technology, art, and media.”

Seriously, this is all it takes to make it in art? All I need is some scrounged-up surfboard pieces and some text from ChatGPT? I really don’t want to sound like a philistine here, as I much prefer conceptual art to Marvel movies, but I’m not especially impressed by what Israel brings to the table. I can handle the surfboard fins, but the utilization of ChatGPT as if it’s some profound commentary isn’t very inspiring. The cheap pun on “fin” offends my sensibilities almost as much as the use of AI for generating the text. All told, Israel seems like the fine art equivalent of Lorem Ipsum. Regardless, his work graces the permanent collections of MOMA and the Guggenheim. Regardless, “Fins” caught plenty of buzz and brought in a sophisticated, well-dressed audience.

I don’t think it’s unfair to call Israel’s artistic ability into question. He’s also dipped his toe into filmmaking. His first and only film, 2017’s SPF-18, centres upon a host of surfing teenagers, one of whom is debating between art school and a life of surfing. Apparently, these effete existential debates didn’t resonate with the viewing masses, as the film boasts a 3.3 rating on IMDB. One IMDB reviewer writes “I'm pretty sure this movie was written by a 13 year old girl with rich parents who could bank roll [sic] the entire thing.” This comment is partly in error, as SPF-18's co-writers, one of whom is Israel, are both grown men. However, the reviewer tenders a tenable hypothesis about how this picture got made—namely, that its creator came from wealth. Packed with scenic locations, a gorgeous cast, and celebrity cameos from Pamela Anderson and Keanu Reeves, SPF-18 took resources, no matter how bad it is. Those same resources also powered “Fins.” The secret, then, to Israel’s success and international appeal in the art world would appear to be assets, along with a dose of beauty and expensive clothing, rather than talent of any sort.

If I'm being honest, I'm willing to bet I've got more artistry in my little finger than Alex Israel has in his entire trim, fit body. In the time it takes Alex Israel to get out of bed and prepare avocado toast, I've probably had more legitimately creative thoughts than he has in a year.  But because I'm flabby, shabbily dressed, and don't have rich parents, most or all of my works will never be seen by more than a few semi-interested friends in my hometown on the plains. If I was better dressed and moneyed, all I'd have to do is hoard surfboard fins and hit up ChatGPT, and I'd be an internationally successful artist. No wonder so many people in the backwater where I live dismiss art (not that the studio-wrought, IP-driven drivel they prefer in movies is much better). It really goes to show how much “fine art” and “aesthetic sensibilities” are intertwined with wealth and a vision of upper-classness.

But I don’t think art necessarily takes money for everyone, or at least not a ton of money. Give me $5000 dollars—hell, $1000 dollars—and I could make a film that gets at least a 4 on IMDB. Fin.

In Defense of Tubi

Tubi or not Tubi? That is not the question, as that is the kind of referential, pun-driven “wit” that has ruined comedy in the internet age. Regardless of this article's inane intro, some readers might still be wondering if the Tubi TV app is worth downloading. The answer is yes—if you like to watch trash with ads intermixed.

That is not an attempt at acerbic wit or irony. Rather, I am earnestly recommending Tubi to people who like movies and TV that are so bad they are good . . . or just bad.

Perhaps most notably, Tubi boasts an excellent lineup of bad horror movies. Here you can find classics such as The Hills Have Eyes and the Rob Zombie movies, most notably House of 1000 Corpses. There is no shortage of obscure slashers, such as Slaughter High, Final Exam, House on Sorority Row, The Mutilator, and Don't Go in the Woods. There's also a cornucopia of exploitation horror—that is, the real nasty and relentless grindhouse fare such as Nightmare (a.k.a. Nightmare in a Damaged Brain) and the seminal gore films of Herschell Gordon Lewis such as 2000 Maniacs. And while Tubi features hundreds of crappy independent horror films made in the last few years, including unwatchable fare like Don’t F*** in the Woods, there are also some gems. Check out, for instance, Terrifier and tell me that Art the Clown isn't more terrifying than Pennywise and Captain Spaulding combined. All told, Tubi is a crash-course in horror and exploitation.

Tubi must also be praised for its junky science-fiction. Crappy schlock classics such as The Astro Zombies, War Beneath the Earth, and Battle of the Planets can all be found here, among hundreds of others.

For years, many of the aforementioned films were nigh impossible to find on Blu-Ray or even DVD, and so a person like me would find themselves searching YouTube for bootlegs. Sometimes people like me even had to resort to downloading illegally from seedy sites like Rarelust. But not anymore, now that I've found Tubi.

For the non-horror and sci-fi fan, there's a lot of other compelling material on Tubi that could never go mainstream. Take, for instance, Pro Gay Wrestling, a non-heteronormative wrestling federation. I love the idea and a lot of the storylines—most notably the heel wrestler who swears he's not gay—but a lot of the quality of the wrestling itself is subpar. There's also a healthy serving of obscure cartoons from yesteryear. Any JEM fans among our readers? If so, you've got a date with nostalgia on Tubi.

Tubi lets you have all of this for free, but there is, of course, an ostensible catch. Tubi has ads interlarded within the programming, and this has been enough to make consumers look askance at this service. After all, it's just classier to pay for Netflix, Paramount, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus and not watch ads, right? Ads are so prole. Or are they? There are only three or four commercial breaks in any given Tubi movie, far fewer than on conventional television. Moreover, these commercials don't run as long as on television, meaning they're relatively unobtrusive. This may not eliminate the nightmare kaleidoscope of a typical commercial break completely, but it can at least mitigate the horror by making it less kaleidoscopic. That said, it's still a bit jarring to be watching Art the Clown bisect a buxom naked blonde woman with a bandsaw and then have Tubi cut to a commercial for Barbie-licensed Little People.

In many ways, Tubi is upstream from the paid services. In fact, Tubi seems to be capable of setting new trends. Just recently, Netflix has offered cheaper subscription tiers that feature some advertising. While Netflix might have “better” programming (“better” meaning overcooked dialogue and labyrinthine, recursive plots, in the view of the average middle-class viewer), Tubi still has a lock on cost-free streaming. Given the sad state of the economy and its attendant skyrocketing inflation, I think we're going to need more services like Tubi. Tubi is the food bank of entertainment.

(This image is property of 20th Century Fox, while the Tubi corporate logo is property of Tubi, Inc.
These properties are used here strictly for purposes of parody.)

As a schlock and horror fan, I give Tubi my highest recommendation. Tubi is the place to watch old horror and exploitation and sci-fi. You can call me a shill, but does someone really qualify for that moniker when no money has been exchanged? Sure, Tubi is trashy and quintessentially lower-middle class. It's not a prestige subscription by any stretch. And “Tubi and chill” just doesn't sound nearly as sexy. But it's free, and all it will cost you is time. So while it might be embarrassing to introduce Tubi to your friends, what with their sleek, voluptuous Netflix and Disney Plus subscriptions, just remember—they're the ones paying for services rendered.

"59 Chrystie Street" Revisited

The Beastie Boys' 1989 LP Paul's Boutique is arguably the finest hip-hop album ever made. A triumph of psychedelic sampling, it transcends hip-hop and can even be considered among the greatest records of all-time, regardless of genre. But Paul's Boutique is not perfect. It possesses one incontestable blemish within its final track, the 9-part song suite “B-Boy Bouillabaisse,” namely the first ninth, “59 Chrystie Street.” This segment is titled for the location of the prime Manhattan rehearsal space the Beastie Boys used during their early years, but its lyrical content describes something much more provocative. The track's aggressive, jejune sexuality would seem to hearken back to the frat-boyish aesthetic of the Beastie Boys' first album, Licensed to Ill, delving even lower than that album managed to stoop with some readily apparent misogyny (and perhaps even homophobia and transphobia). But if we allow our critical gaze to venture deeper into the cut, looking past its juvenile lyrics and into the very texture of its samples, we can argue that “59 Chrystie Street” is, if not as virtuosic as the rest of the album, at least defensible. It may even expound a vision of male sexuality that's rather profound.

Before diving deeper, it is necessary to detail the surface-level defects of “59 Chrystie Street.” We see these on full display in the first half of its lyrical content (the words in parentheses marking accompanying vocal samples), where the speaker or speakers manoeuvre a paramour into their home and/or rehearsal space:

There's a girl over there (aw yeah)

With long brown hair (aw yeah)

I took her to the place

I threw the mattress in her face

So already we ostensibly have a potential sexual partner being physically assaulted with a mattress (or, alternatively, being thrown down onto a mattress), possibly by all three members of the Beastie Boys, as they all participate in the rapping. The gang rap continues with its second half, a description of the mounting sexual encounter:

Took off her shirt (fresh)

Took off her bra

Took off her pants (fresh)

You know what I saw (wick, wick, whack)

The beat abruptly gives way to Adam Horovitz's braying laughter, and, with that, “59 Chrystie Street” concludes. What did the speaker (or speakers) see? In his 2006 analysis of Paul's Boutique for the 33 1/3 chapbook series, Dan LeRoy hypothesizes that the song “suggests a 'Lola'-esque encounter with a groupie.” By this reading, the speaker(s) saw a penis. If this is indeed the case, the track's narrative would seem to betoken transphobia. However, the bare-bone lyrics offer little confirmation as to the presence of the penis. We are left to project our own discriminations onto the big reveal, marking the track as cynically vague. Since all we have are feminine pronouns, your present author deems it just as tenable to assert that the speaker saw a vagina (as we'll see below). All we can say for sure is that “59 Chrystie Street” is an obtuse, nursery-rhyme rap about rough and impersonal sexuality. If the sexual conquest in question is a woman, then we can say the track is more than a bit misogynous, if not homo- or transphobic as per Dan LeRoy's penis reading.

And yet, peeling back the layers, more can be said about “59 Chrystie Street.” Certainly, a song is not just its lyrics. And the musical bedrock of “59 Chrystie Street”, like every track on Paul's Boutique, consists of a complexly woven skein of samples. What makes the segment salvageable, or perhaps something even better, is its thunderous drum sample. The track's unrelenting drums are those of a tribe in Burundi. The recording was originally made in 1967 by anthropologists Michel Vuylsteke and Charles Duvelle during their fieldwork in East Africa. Together, twenty-five male drummers can be heard on the recording. This particular anthropological recording would appear on a number of European and American compositions to follow, including Joni Mitchell's “Jungle Line” and “Burundi Black” by French composer Michel Bernholc (a Caucasian who really played up the “darkest Africa” angle, making for an album that hasn't aged especially well).

The predominance of this drumming turns “59 Chrystie Street” from a brainless sex rap into an incantation, of sorts, that's almost orphic in its outlook. The song possesses a certain ethnographic quality, not just in terms of 80s NYC hookup culture, but far beyond that, reaching eastward and touching on a kind of experience that's trans-societal and even transcendent. In the Burundi drumming, we have a form of musical expression that much of the American and European audience may very well consider “primitive” and “primal.” It will arouse, on some level, their stereotypes, projections, and fears regarding “darkest Africa” (as it apparently did for Monsieur Bernholc). It will evoke wild visions of an “uncivilized” country and continent (if the average Euro-American can even discern the two with regard to “Africa”). But these racist assumptions are immediately subverted, because the title of the song places the activity on a street in Manhattan, the putative capital of the developed world. The description of this all-American sexual encounter is undergirded by the forceful tribal drum. In effect, the track has collapsed the notionally insurmountable cultural distance between stereotypical “darkest Africa” and the presumptive center of Western civilization. And what has closed this cultural gap? It is the primal pull of the sexual encounter with a female—the desire for a vision of the vagina. This desire unites every male musician, no matter where on the globe he may be, whether he is a drummer in Burundi or a white rapper in late-80s NYC. (It may also apply to lesbians, though the choice of the sample and the lyrics in the present case would seem to foreground male sexuality.) For it is this vision of the vulva that stirs the Burundi drummer to beat his drum and compels the rapper to steal his drum samples. The persistent thud of male sexuality pounds on in both groups of men alike.

In seeing the vagina, all straight men are rendered one. We are all united in the vaginal gaze. Agape, we regard the vulva with thundering awe. We are gazing, after all, upon what Samuel L. Jackson rightly called “the holiest of holies.” Both the Burundi drummer and the white rapper shudder with Rudolph Otto's mysterium tremendum fascinans as they stare into that coral-petaled, vertical maw. And the vulva stares unblinkingly back at us, because it is not just a mouth, but also an eye. To be seen this way, this is what we drum for. The vulva may see and know us, but even if we can know it in a Biblical/carnal sense, can we truly know it? And so, Adam Horovitz's final line in the song echoes in our ear, sounding more and more like a question with each repetition. You know what I saw...? Does any man truly know what he saw after he sees the vagina? These are the questions that render all straight men throughout the world as a brotherhood. Fitting then, that the song should conclude here. For to snatch a glimpse—to glimpse a snatch—is to end the song—the ever-throbbing beat of male sexuality—and this vision is most likely what happens, your present author posits, at the end of “59 Chrystie Street.” The beat promptly stops, because the vision has been consummated. But the song suite is not over—it's never over, in fact—and the beat resumes anew, and the record plays on loop.

Thus, through its unabashed male sexuality undergirded by the Burundi drum, “59 Chrystie Street” has effectively overturned longstanding stereotypes about “darkest Africa.” The track has made a subtle testimony to the oneness of the human race—or the male race, at least—vis-à-vis the vadge, a vision quest, of sorts, that will forever quirt a man onward, regardless of his continent. For this reason, “59 Chrystie Street” shouldn't be considered an outright blemish on the nigh-perfect Paul's Boutique, but rather a mere peccadillo that, upon closer listening, is far from irredeemable. “59 Chrystie Street” is built on numinously fertile grounds.

Bea Priestley: An Appreciation

[B]osom heaving, her eyes flashing [...] [s]he was slender, yet formed like a goddess: at once lithe and voluptuous. [...] Her rich black hair, black as a Stygian night, fell in rippling burnished clusters [...] Her dark eyes burned [...]. She was untamed as a desert wind, supple and dangerous as a she-panther.

- Robert E. Howard

1.

You likely haven't heard of her, yet you know her already. You want to have known her. She's that girl with the Kool-Aid-colored hair smoking cigarettes at the school's rear entrance.

She is Queen of the Black Coast and beyond. Robert E. Howard couldn't have conjured a more consummate vamp, not in his most vivid, virginal reverie, not in his spiciest of stories. The epigraph above does her little justice. H. Rider Haggard could have done little more to comprise her, though with his sorceress Ayesha—the eponymous “She” from his famed novel—he draws nearer.

She hails from Wellington, NZ, by way of London. She bills herself the "Top Gaijin." At its most euphemistic, “Gaijin” translates from Japanese as "foreigner." At its most xenophobic, "Gaijin" can be rendered "outsider" or "alien." She is outside, yes, but also far above.

Her signature finish is the electric chair suplex. She calls it the "Queen's Landing," and with good cause. One of the most ascendant male wrestlers in the world is her male suitor, and she and he seem apt heirs apparent for wrestling royalty.

The "She" in question is Bea Priestley, grossly underappreciated wrestler for whom I am now about to attempt an appreciation.

2.

You might mock professional wrestling, and you are mostly justified in doing so. The wrestling you've glimpsed briefly and dismissed, perhaps while flipping channels, is all defined by some measure of compromise. There is little compromise in Bea Priestley.

She's all flailing mop and tomboyish stomps, each unpitying boot a flash of checkerboard patterns and leopard-skin prints. She has a swashbuckling swagger, jaw perpetually working with an insouciance, her sneer painted in greenish-black under jagged bangs. Without fail, that sneer gives way to a pout so pronounced it's nearly jejune. In between it all, she freely dispenses her middle-finger with arm held out at full span.

I saw her holler "fuck off" at a male fan who wolf-whistled as she exuviated her entrance robe. With that, I fell hard into her fandom.

3.

I think a lot about Bea Priestley's bumps. They have such force and gravity. They are unrelenting. They paralyze the gaze. Her bumps inspire. Her bumps titillate. Her bumps look so painful, yet they ease my pain.

I once saw a bump of Bea's where her head was caught up in a chair and then the face she was facing kicked her stiffly sans abandon (see below). I once saw Bea Priestley take multiple head-bumps, including two Tower Hacker Bombs, in a match against Kagetsu in Japan. The internet saw her take an inter-gender kick to the face from Ricochet. Bea Priestley deals in pain so expertly, log-rolling on the canvass, shag of hair roiling, gripping her brain-pan in both palms, selling the hallowed rear-blow-to-head bump.

I watch her bumps and I ache for Bea Priestley. Can't the majority audience, the common public, see what Bea's putting herself through? Can't the talent scouts see what they're missing out on? I ask these questions like these matches aren't widely available on YouTube, like they don't have hundreds of thousands of views. Hundreds of those views are mine, as I can't take my eyes off her bumps.

At this juncture, I should clarify for the non-wrestling fan that, in the wrestling business, "bumps" refer to choreographed landings.

4.

Bea's breakout bout, arguably, was her Last Woman Standing match in which she faced Nixon Newell for the WCPW Women's Championship. You may know Newell as "Tegan Nox," her moniker in NXT, WWE's "gold brand."

Newell, playing the face, came out sweet and enthusiastic and insipid. Newell's given middle-name is Rhiannon, so we must assume that the "Nixon" in her ring name is a Stevie Nicks homage. Any kindred linkage with Nicks, even tangential and/or unconscious, solidifies "crowd-pleaser" status. And Bea quickly established herself as the heartless challenger to the Gold Dust Woman.

Bea Priestley did not merely play the heel; rather, she epitomized it. She entered as the sour-faced silicone Valkyrie, in kick-pad boots and a carapace-like bikini that looked très impractical for pro wrestling.

Of course, Bea and Newell did not wrestle in any conventional sense. From the outset of the match, Bea wielded a kendo stick as liberally as she did her middle finger, dealing out many a thwack to the fawn-faced Newell.

The eroticized nature of the beating was never lost on the mostly male crowd or on Bea. At one point, Bea took the liberty of licking Newell across the face before slapping her with an open palm. The homology drawn by these consecutive indignities was virtuosic, both the tongue and the slap like unto a paintbrush across Newell's face.

Bea would eventually bring steel chairs into the ring in the promise of a massive, maleficent spot to finish the match. She would be hoisted by her own petard. Newell grabbed back the momentum and German-suplexed Bea onto the chair. It was this chair into which Bea's head was fed, and here (all kayfabe aside) where Bea laid dutifully on her cheek such that Newell could curb-stomp her ala Seth Rollins and then, only then, veritably Pillmanize Bea Priestley via an unprotected kick to the face. How many male wrestlers would take that bump?

Of course, the referee's count climbed to ten and Nixon Newell was the winner. She would go on to NXT, to be given her new name, and to flounder in the gears of the WWE machine, one among many gold dust women who would have their illusions shattered by that corporate entity and its capricious septuagenarian overlord, that reverse-alchemist who unfailingly makes lead from gold.

But Bea Priestley's name, by contrast, became elemental and immutable from that evening onward.

5.

I like Bea Priestley because she is not easy to like. She is a challenge. There is an offensive quality inhering within her. At times, her in-ring work verges upon appearing unworkable. In each gesture, she betrays some measure of disdain for the pageantry surrounding the pseudo-sport of wrestling itself.

She gives no indication of caring what the fans think. It is as if we the fans were chewing gum to be gnashed and spat out (or perhaps, once thoroughly chewed, placed in an opponent’s mouth, a tactic Bea used to intensify a camel clutch in one of her battles with Newell).

Unsurprisingly, Bea Priestley turned down an early WWE contract offer. Bea Priestley is not clay to be shaped. But alas—and, surprisingly—even the relatively progressive shores of All Elite Wrestling couldn't keep her moored. She was too talented and too jaded for WWE—that goes without saying—but even AEW, a company built on being the alternative, could not fully apprehend her acumen. For it must be said that AEW, for all the good it has done, is built in no small measure on fan-service. Bea Priestley is not there to render services for the fans.

Bea Priestley's talent is not in her promos. (She sounds one-half Valley Girl, one-half Cockney bootblack, and tends to get caught up in cursing.) And though her in-ring work is solid, this is not the locus of her talent, either. Her talent is her presence. A buxom woman with green lipstick is going to strut down the ramp with a wide and manly swagger, as if making way for comically large testes, and then is going to work stiff. Just ask brittle Britt Baker, whose skull fell victim to Bea Priestley’s rumbustious boot. (I say this not to take anything away from Dr. Baker, whose recent "Lights Out" match with Thunder Rosa marked a tidal shift for women's wrestling.)

Bea Priestley does not map on to any recognizable wrestling archetype. She is indeed Top Gaijin, but not just in Japan. She is an outlander in any federation or confederacy. She is a feral, strong-style mercenary in a milieu of fake fights.

Bea Priestley could be a female Bruiser Brody. This is both high praise and a death warrant.

6.

When grown men wax literary about female celebrities, the reader can safely presume the male author is having some sort of sexual fantasies about said celebrity women. Indeed, Norman Mailer wrote an entire volume about a decades-dead Marilyn Monroe that was rather frank in its sexual reveries.

Vis-à-vis Bea Priestley, this is not the case for me. Rather, in my fantasies, I call to mind a world in which Bea Priestley and I are, like, acquaintances at best. I spend a lot of our time together fawning over the high spots and head-drops in her matches. She is not forthcoming with chitchat, but she mostly talks about how busy it is being on the road in four continents, and about the challenges of maintaining a romantic relationship within the business. Sometimes, I mention my own dating woes—the lack of dates one presumes of men who write lovingly about female celebrities—and Bea Priestley sneers and says "well then try getting your fat fucking arse to a gym."

"Oh, Bea," I then say. (And this is also a Norman Mailer reference; cf. Mailer: His Life and Times, p. 72. The first of Mailer's six wives (a) was also named Bea and (b) was also foul-mouthed.)

To make this fantasy world even remotely plausible, in it I am necessarily employed in the pro-wrestling industry. I picture I am Bea Priestley's manager, my hit-or-miss articulateness subbing in for her mediocre mic skills. I berate her scheduled opponent, and then she finishes the pre-match segment by berating me. I refer to her as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. The commentators speculate as to our relationship, the persistent question in this fantasy world being: am I Bea Priestley's gimp? It's obvious to everyone this relationship can't possibly be romantic, and would still be obvious even if she wasn't involved with Will Ospreay.

7.

If you want to see the future of wrestling and romantic relationships, you must watch Bea Priestley versus Will Ospreay. A boyfriend vs. girlfriend match may smack of exploitative fluff, for this was certainly the precedent set by WWE in less progressive times (cf., for instance, Marc Mero vs. Sable). Some may dismiss Priestley vs. Ospreay as desperate content creation from the early COVID-19 era. But it is not to be dismissed. It is arguably a five-star match.

Priestley takes to the ring with ratty Kool-Aid colored pig-tails swishing, a bad-ass Raggedy Ann in laced tights and a halter top. Ospreay has more flash and gasconade. But Bea Priestley slaps that gasconade off Ospreay's face early on with many a resounding shoot-style strike, and the beau quickly sheds his self-assured smile.

In due course, Priestley takes a resounding slap to the chest. Ospreay begins to assert his size advantage, playing to every conservative’s expectations.

But then Priestley turns the tides with what is possibly the best DDT ever executed onto the ring apron—the hardest part of the ring (if you ignore the posts). As her male suitor staggers to his feet on the ringside mats, Priestley follows up with a double foot-stomp to the back. Flying from the turnbuckle to the outside, she looks every bit Belît, Howard's "wildest she-devil unhanged." Yet her exit route leaves her with no choice but to take an excruciating back bump on the floor. After this, moaning and almost in tears with pain, she manages to get her boyfriend back in the ring to score a near-fall.

Of course, Ospreay charges back, and soon enough he's hooked Bea's arms and secured her shaggy mop between his legs so as to presage the Storm Breaker, his A-level finisher. And then, even after all the beating she has taken, Bea counters the Storm Breaker into a Code Red. And then when Ospreay goes to his other A-level finisher, the Os-Cutter, Bea counters with a bottom-rope-aided German suplex. This is all fantastic.

So now Ospreay has to resort to his A+ finisher, his top-tier signature move, the rarely seen "Hidden Blade." It is only after he succeeds with this glorified knife-edge chop that he is able to execute the Storm Breaker and score the pinfall. The Storm Breaker—that double underhook corkscrew neckbreaker—strikes me now as the truest consummation of a relationship.

The match could be five-stars. It loses at least a half-star, however, for Ospreay's male-gazing contemplation of Priestley’s felled, face-down body, and his subsequent consideration of grabbing some sweet. Thankfully, he thinks better of it, but even the mere ideation of a goosing takes the match down a notch.

Yet the match we have just watched cannot be reduced to a mere gazing and enumerating of stars. What we have witnessed obviates words, attesting to what is really the most transcendent intercourse: to meet your significant other in a choreographed fight. This is what a romantic relationship should culminate in. The goal of coupling is not a happy, long-lived marriage or, I don't know, a quasi-mystical sexual encounter. Rather, it is a worked, twenty-plus minute battle, and a strong-style fight at that.

This is love. And due to a raging plague, no one got to see it live.

8.

I've thought a lot about women I've loved or could have loved, and I've dreamed of strong-style bouts with them. Would I put them over? How would I get myself over? Would they put me over? How would I bump for them? Would I let them roll me up in the highest of high-stack pinfalls? Even if you don't let them beat you, you must make your lover look good.

9.

There are several female celebrities I greatly admire. These include Lana Del Rey, Stevie Nicks, Serena Grandi (Italian b-movie luminary, FYI), and, what the hell, we'll throw Amanda Seyfried in there too. I've considered writing long-form pieces about all of these people (with the exception of Seyfried), but in the end I chose to write about Bea Priestley. Why? Because I imagined—as all people who write about people they admire but will never meet must—the person being written about somehow actually reading the work. 

In the above cases, there is the possibility, admittedly slim, that the person in question could like what I wrote about them. But Bea Priestley is the outlier. There's not going to be some personalized tweet about how "you're so sweet." Bea Priestley does not give a fuck what I think and would appear to be wholly incapable of ever giving a fuck what I think. All of my above praises would matter no more to her than that male-gazing Britisher who wolf-whistled at her lissome body as she bared it. 

And I admire that complete disdain for the fan. Because the fan is ultimately a spectator partaking in something altogether lower than watching or observing or gazing. They watch with empty-headed expectation of being entertained. This is, for lack of a better term, "spectation." Fans are defined by their maniacal commitment to observing exalted others in this way. That Bea Priestley hates this makes me like her all the more. 

Because I hate being a fan of anything or anyone. It pains me that, as someone who believes that what he thinks is worth writing down, I would even consider writing about any of the aforementioned celebrities. Their talents do not make them exalted or transcendent. Our worship for the marketing of their talents is what keeps them afloat, and this worship makes us so irredeemably common, insofar as we would accept such a low standard for transcendence. 

Bea Priestley's thesis, if she has one, is almost an argument against spectating itself. This, to my mind, makes her wrestling's perfect heel.

10.

That is Bea, that is Belît. The name bewilders you and so you dismiss it, you forget it.

I whisper that name like a prayer, while I pray that Bea Priestley will not be the female Bruiser Brody, that she will not end up as wrestling's Marilyn Monroe. I pray that all her bumps will land true, and that her stingers, when they happen, will heal and feeling will return even fuller than before. I pray that one day some promotion will see that there is something generational, something elemental, something eternal in Bea Priestley. I pray that you will all see this much, and feeling will return to you, too.

Rumor has it that Bea Priestley is headed to NXT, that most palatable tentacle of WWE. Specifically, she'll be in NXT UK, a tameless outlander shoehorned back into her ostensible home. When I hear this, I feel that strange mix of exultation and envy one experiences when a friend has some success. I also feel sorry for her. Because I doubt that WWE can ever truly know Bea Priestley.* Indeed, that feeling she embodies is so subtle, so rarefied, I fear that the WWE creative team cannot fathom it, let alone capture it in the ring.

I mean that feeling that high school's over, and school’s out forever, but still you know She is still there, still smoking at the rear entrance, and that She always will be. You don't know her, but you realize in time that you want more than anything to have known her.

---

Footnotes:

*Update, July 4, 2021: As could be expected, WWE has rebranded Bea Priestley, settling upon the name "Blair Davenport." While certainly maintaining the Britishness of Priestley's given name, WWE Creative has erred on the side of posh British rather than the hard-bitten British of the original. It's some consolation, I suppose, that the last syllable of "Davenport" does maintain Priestley's littoral associations (e.g. her mastery of the "Japanese Ocean" suplex). Still, I personally find that something is lost when someone submits themselves to a pseudonym. 

The Slider - T. Rex

T. Rex is perhaps best known for their radio-friendly 1971 single "Bang a Gong (Get it On)" from their stellar Electric Warrior LP. That album was the band’s seventh (but their second after abbreviating their name from the less commercially viable "Tyrannosaurus Rex") and marked the height of the band's commercial success. Critics both contemporaneous and retrospective have taken Electric Warrior as the artistic apogee for T. Rex and its virtuoso frontman Marc Bolan, but this is up for debate. T. Rex's 1972 album The Slider proves itself far more expansive than Electric Warrior, benefitting from some of Bolan's most mystically and ontologically sophisticated songwriting.

The Slider starts off with "Metal Guru," one of the record's two singles. While "Bang a Gong (Get it On)" is undeniably top-forty bait, "Metal Guru" is something quite different. Its title belies its content in that it’s not a heavy, hardscrabble jam but rather a jubilant, sing-songy meditation on the titular phrase sung over and over again by a sizable chorus. On account of the cheery bombast and sheer repetition “Metal Guru” offers, it feels as if the album is starting with a vamp—that is, the kind of all-in close-out with which one might end a song or even an album. The reference to a "guru" in the title is apropos, as both the song and the album in its entirety possess a distinctly mantraic vibe. The Slider fixates on phrases as if determined to produce in the listener an altered state.

Marc Bolan, virtuoso

Bolan follows with "Mystic Lady," a song featuring an odd time signature which doesn't just slow things down, but actually confounds the listener in an intriguing way. "Rock On" reclaims the pace with intimations of roadhouse rock, but this song is also given to fits and starts. Bolan wants to defy expectations not just for lyrics but for song structure as well.

The titular track showcases Bolan's psychedelic lyricism at its best. "I could never understand/The wind at all/Was like a ball of love//I could never never see/The cosmic sea/Was like a bumblebee." Here Bolan appears to be collapsing perceptual and linguistic distinctions between phenomena in hopes of moving toward a mystic, quasi-Vedantic state. The bumblebee, then, can indeed be the cosmic sea, when one lets go and proceeds "to slide." As Bolan attests, "And when I'm sad/I slide ." This song, then, is a sonic replication of a psychological and/or religious state. It's an invitation for the listener to slide all the while. Drugs likely were and are implicated in conceptualizing and realizing this state of "The Slider." Knowing Bolan, the main suspect here is cocaine.

With "Baby Boomerang," T. Rex hearkens back to the jaunty, infectious pop stylings of Electric Warrior. Bolan slows things down again with "Spaceball Ricochet," an ode to various instruments integral to the speaker’s self-expression: the titular space-themed game (possibly a pinball variation), a Les Paul guitar, and books—many books. The bibliomania broached here is just one among several writing and reading references on The Slider, as these activities are obviously crucial tools for perpetrating creative escapes. These elements have also paid more ethereal cognitive dividends for the song’s speaker. Calling back to "The Slider," Bolan proclaims early on that he now “understand[s] the wind/And all the things/That make the children cry." His interiority is fast progressing. 

"Buick Mackane" marks another milestone track on The Slider. Is it about a girl or a car? It may very well be both. Certainly, sexual opportunities and car ownership are closely imbricated, at least in the 20th-century English-speaking world, and Bolan is well aware of this inevitability. Sexualization of automobiles figured into several prior T. Rex tracks, including “Bang a Gong (Get it on)”: “Well you're built like a car/You've got a hubcap diamond star halo.” With “Buick Mackane,” the girl and the car have become virtually indistinguishable, once again dissolving a perceptual boundary and speaking to an underlying monistic substrate. By now, Bolan's mysticism has taken on sexual valences. As conceptually complex as "Buick Mackane" may be, its musical arrangement is one of the finest on the album, with authoritative, clangoring guitar work that gives away to grooves at its close. This vamp involves a multilayered wall of sound, culminating in an orchestral jam session that is itself semi-numinous. Evidently, "Buick Mackane" inspired Guns N Roses, as a cover thereof found its way onto The Spaghetti Incident?, in this case as part of a song suite with "Big Dumb Sex" by Soundgarden. The explicit Soundgarden vamp—"I wanna fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you, fuck you" serves to accentuate the sexual undertones of Bolan's original composition.

"Telegram Sam" served as the initial single from The Slider. It's upbeat, the guitar hook highly reminiscent of "Bang a Gong (Get it On)." The lyrics deal with some curious characters, including not just the titular man but also one "Jungle-Face Jake" and a "Golden Nose Slim." Judging by their names, these individuals don't sound like personages one would want to meet. Despite his relatively upstanding name, Telegram Sam is hardly any better. He is, in actuality, T. Rex's manager, Tony Secunda, and Bolan labels him as his "main man," in that Secunda was their primary drug supplier. Undeniably, there would be no "Slider" without the efforts of "Telegram Sam."

"Rabbit Fighter" aspires toward some amazing scope early on before making an involution into bluesy rock throughout its verses. But in the end, Bolan telescopes back out to re-acquire that grandiose sound. For "Baby Strange," Bolan strips it down all over again, getting sexual and quirky on the strength of a simple, neurotic electric-guitar riff.

The best song on The Slider is "Ballrooms of Mars." Here Bolan gets balladic, tenderly and deliberately delivering beautiful, wistful images of seduction by way of poignant maunderings. Bolan sings of how "Your diamond hands/Will be stacked with roses/And wind and cars/And people of the past." Here again Bolan collapses the permeable boundaries between people and cars and wind, the elemental aspects of the album. Bolan yells "Rock!" to inaugurate each of the masterful, siren-like guitar solos, and his one-word command is fully realized in his fretwork, which serves as an apt synecdoche for all that rock and roll can be. He even references other rockers by name, specifically John Lennon and Bob Dylan, neither of whom could hold Bolan's jock in terms of raw creativity. Of course, Bolan lacked the Dylanesque and Lennonesque attunement for mass appeal. "Ballrooms of Mars" is too capacious to make mainstream waves. Nonetheless, it's not just the highlight of the album, but a high watermark for the rock and roll genre.

With "Chariot Choogle," Bolan offers up another precarious rock anthem, with heavy guitars laid out over yet another non-conventional time signature. This song teeters on the brink of collapse all throughout its verses, but with each chorus it gives way to jubilation and upliftment, at least momentarily. After the nervous verses, the sudden build to orchestral strings gives the listener some release—some temporary deliverance. Perhaps our deliverance comes by way of Bolan’s reassurance: "You know who you are," he murmurs. All told, the trepidations of the verses feel like they've been allayed, and the song has effectively resolved itself.

The original pressing of The Slider finishes with "Main Man." Here, Bolan slows it down with a bass-heavy backing track. Spacey effects give the vocals a dreamy quality as Bolan sets into his refrain: "Are you now? Are you now?" he asks repeatedly. Bolan talks intimately to the listener, asking "Are you frog man?" and, going back to the record’s pervasive preternatural undertones, reports that "Heaven is hot, babe." By this endpoint, the writer has even brought himself into the mix: "Bolan likes to rock now," he says over and over. We've come full circle, for here, it seems, is our metal guru speaking to us from outside the surrealistic prisms that have veiled him throughout the album. Bolan goes on to sing about laughing in childhood and crying as an adult, and then reflects on his sanity. This is not at all out of place on this album. As he approaches the end, Bolan has moved toward casting doubt on the status of "Telegram Sam" as the true "main man." Bolan, it seems, is the only viable main man left, and such a conclusion is not out of character, as Mark Bolan was reputedly a narcissist of the highest order. Of course, some narcissists truly earn the right to be as self-involved as they are, embodying in full the undisputed main man or main woman, and Bolan is one such person.

Future reissues of The Slider provided further additions to the initial thirteen songs, none of which take away from the original arrangement. The track "Cadillac" brings back the car motif, benefitting from another sturdy rock riff that is augmented by the liberal use of maracas. "Thunderwing" also rocks, ornamented by nursery-rhyme lyrics. "Lady" makes for an even better finish to this record than "Main Man," arguably. In offering up a dreamy appreciation of Lady Luck via some country-fried rock and some of Bill Legend's finest drumming, T. Rex takes it home with a smooth groove, delivering us into a space much less manic than that in which we began. "Lady" also makes for a satisfying conceptual capstone, for in this alternative conclusion, Bolan simply gives his pain to Lady Luck—whether or not everything’s all derived from one essence in the end, from day to day she's our main woman.

In sum, The Slider helps the listener toward realization of a psychologically and mystically complex umwelt. Bolan's writing covers a lot of conceptual territory in just 53 minutes, making for a jamboree of strangeness that inevitably complexifies the interiority of the auditor, just as it has for the composer. The Slider embodies a weirdness that transcends era. It's less a rock album than an extended meditation with delightful psychoactive effects. And yet much of The Slider hinges upon building a song around a simple riff and then giving way to an orchestral chorus and/or an orchestral vamp at the end. It's an effective formula, but the album is in no way formulaic. Indeed, it's verily mantraic in its commitment to repetition. This is rock and roll as high-end abstract art, and Bolan is a Warhol whose oeuvre is comparably much easier to take. Yet The Slider's many confounding, oceanic elements are mollified by the fact that it rocks well. If Electric Warrior is stellar, then The Slider is nothing short of cosmic. 

On Northern Exposure

This past Saturday, I took a canoe trip along Lake Upsilon in the wilds of northern North Dakota. The sun had just come up over the tiered peaks of the pine, and the greenish-black water glittered under a thinning mist. I had just come around the lake’s western fork, bringing into view some cabins lining the shore. That was when I saw the naked woman.

In truth, she wasn't completely naked. Not yet. She wore a scant bikini, and she was peeling it off in protracted fashion, as if for the benefit of a camera. She posed and pressed and canted against the railing of the cabin’s deck.

I pulled my oar out of the water, and as I drifted ahead, a man came into view in front of her. Perhaps he was a boyfriend or a husband. At the very least, he was an amateur photographer. He was snapping pictures briskly with a camera that looked elaborate. I didn't get the make; in an effort not to stare, I was allowing myself only repeated, rapid-fire glances at the model.

The woman took off the bikini bra, and then she took off the bikini panties. The woman moved through numerous postures, some demure and some vaguely decadent. I could tell she was somewhat comely even without my male gaze at full-bore. Her skin was honey-brown, like a full-bodied lager.

As I coasted past, casting my glances, my first reaction was aghast. I'm not a prude, nor am I offended by nudes, arty or otherwise. But my initial mental spasm to the (somewhat) public nudity was to be taken aback. The impudence! The profligacy! And to be taking photos of the whole affair—the narcissism! The sexism! Shame on him! Where was his feminism? And as for her feminism, what cognitive gymnastics had she done to rationalize this?

Perhaps these priggish knee-jerks occurred because nudity outside the house is such an unfamiliar thing, especially in North Dakota. But my righteousness had fast subsided once I'd glided a quarter-mile down the lake. By then I'd started interrogating my assumptions about these intimate nudes in a new light.

Perhaps this photo session represented new levels of intimacy for this couple. In whatever time they’d spent together, they had evoked a mutual liberation in one another. His photographing her wasn't necessarily exploitative. Rather, it could be an exploration in the expanding landscape of their love. And it didn't even have to be romantic. These nudes could be a new and exciting milestone in a budding artistic collaboration. Conceivably, these photos were the very zenith of a Platonic partnership that spanned creativity and companionship.

Who was I to declare this photo session tawdry? It wasn't necessarily smut they were fashioning. Perhaps it was all private and personal, for the satisfaction, aesthetic and/or sexual, of one or both parties. Perhaps it was even art. Together, photographer and nude were producing something beautiful—a portfolio, perhaps, or even a deliciously risqué installation for the Bismarck art district. Perhaps this photo session would go onto a DeviantArt account, to be seen by anyone anywhere in the world. Even if the partnership, Platonic or otherwise, didn't work out, model and photographer would at least be left with something lovely they'd collaborated to create, surrounded by the verdant forest and the dawn. Her nude body, elegantly posed, would coruscate in harmony with the water, thanks to his eye and her willingness. This photo set could capture the splendor of the lake scenery and the people of the region. It could travel all over the globe. This would champion artistic voices from exotic locales, as places like North Dakota are strange tropics from the perspective of the cosmopolitan world of art.

And even if it was porn, this didn't have to be a problem. It could be refreshing. As I floated down the lake, I reflected on all the years and all the nude photos I’d viewed, from artsy to outright tawdry. Whether art or porn, the scene was almost always situated in New York or LA (not necessarily respectively, and rarely respectfully). If not there, then it was set in Europe or somewhere tropical like Hawaii or Miami or Rio. It was always on a beach or in a fancy home—a mansion or at least an upper middle-class abode. Quality nude photos have always had one not-so-subtle subtext: you have to be upwardly mobile or outright elite to be involved in any worthwhile depiction of nakedness.

Then and there, on that deck behind me, a photographer and his subject were taking back the nude photo. Together, they were reclaiming the aesthetic dignity of points north. Together, they were creating nudes that were visual essays arguing a counterpoint to nude photos taken theretofore: that the untainted, natural beauty of a remote northern state could be a viable backdrop for a human beauty in the nude. The setting didn't have to be a palm-girded manse with a pool overlooking LA or an ocean. It could be a densely-forested lake with water the color of Jägermeister. The model could be a squat, thick-thighed girl.

We need more nudes at northern lakes. We need stripteases in foothills and in badlands. We need erotic thrillers on the pie-bald prairies. We need sex scenes, simulated and non-simulated, in snow. We need girl-on-girl action in unassuming log cabins. We need orgies on weather-beaten decks.

The list is endless. Every permutation and combination of the above should be made to happen if we want art—or at least arty porn—to thrive.

And so, in a matter of minutes, I had gone from abhorring these nude photos to adoring them. I had gone from crying foul to crying for more. I slid my paddle in the water and steered back around. The cabin and the deck approached anew. The photographer was still photographing, the clack of his shutter having worked up to a chittering paroxysm of artistry.

And the girl, she'd struck a pose on all fours and in full mammalian lordosis, prying apart her ass-halves for the camera's Cyclopean eye.

Reflections on Toilet Paper

In the COVID-19 era, nothing is certain save for the importance of toilet paper. No matter where we reside, we have all heard about the toilet paper shortages in the wake of the global pandemic. Panicked hoarders were quick to strip the shelves of TP. For all that was (and is still) up in the air, one thing became clear: if they were destined to meet god, the consuming masses wanted to do so with clean anuses. Moreover, toilet paper shortages presented some consumers with difficult existential questions.

This was certainly the case in my jurisdiction. Two days ago, I broke my writerly self-isolation (which had already been established in the pre-coronavirus era) and ventured out to the grocery store, where I found the toilet paper shelves bare. I stared into pure, unqualified emptiness between the facial tissue and the paper towel, each of which remained well-stocked.

Gazing into the void, I was reminded of an anecdote a friend of mine had shared on the weekend previous, just as COVID-19 had really dug in its spikes, and society had started to grind to a halt. He lingered for a while in the paper-products aisle of his local grocer, watching as people came face to face with the toilet paper deficit. He observed that the vast majority of these shoppers, tasked with an impromptu choice for anal hygiene alternatives, opted for paper towel. Consequently, the paper towel had depleted relative to the facial tissue, which still brimmed on the shelves.

This evidence is anecdotal, but it allows us to tender a hypothesis a posteriori: the majority prefers paper towel to tissue as an ass-wiping substitute. They would rather have the firmness and absorptive power of paper towel than the gauzy caress of Kleenex and its competitors. Even though the paper towel is potentially abrasive and toilet-clogging, it prevails over the facial tissue, the latter's breezy tactility notwithstanding. Perhaps this is simply because paper towel, like toilet paper, comes on a roll. Or perhaps, in the absence of toilet paper, people's priorities shift. Everyone seeks an immaculate anus, but when the ideal wipe is unavailable, cleanliness of the fingers and hands becomes a crucial tiebreaker. While paper towel may scrape and, moreover, create flushing complications, there is little chance that it will disintegrate mid-wipe. The durability of Kleenex is comparably dubious.

In the COVID-19 era, then, the consuming classes may very well be divided into an ad hoc caste system. At the top will be the champion hoarders with their stockpiles of toilet paper and their impeccable anuses. In the middle will be the not so fleet, whose anuses are wiped raw, but whose hands are clean. At the bottom will be the Kleenex people, for whom there are no guarantees re: the cleanliness of hand or hind—these are the untouchables, though such a designation is moot in a social world mandating that no one can stand within two yards of anyone else.

Faced with the empty toilet paper shelf, and presented with a choice of the alternatives on either side, I decided to defer my choice. Instead, I put my money towards buying more food. I reasoned that, if things got worse (as indeed they have), I'd prefer a surplus of food to that of wiping material. After all, I wanted to guarantee that I would continue to be able to produce poops. For the foreseeable future, I would concentrate on nourishing myself, and worry about wiping on a case-by-case basis.

On a full stomach, I’ve had no shortage of ideas with respect to improvisation. Certainly, being a mostly unsuccessful member of the writing community helps. If this pandemic persists and I can't leave the house, I've got stacks of old rejected manuscripts, not to mention lots of reading material produced by my competitors in the field. COVID-19 just might give me a chance to make it all worth the paper its printed on. From that perspective, my bookshelves are well-stocked with toilet paper alternatives.

Resisting the Urge to Resist Tom Brady

I'm cheering for Tom Brady in Super Bowl 53, even though I might not want to.

Tom Brady is, after all, far removed from anything I embody. He is handsome; I am haggard. He is successful beyond precedent; I am mediocre on my best imaginable day. He is wedded to a comely woman; I avoid relationships. He is a Trump supporter; I am a non-voter. He is worth millions; I am a writer. I am literate, and desperately so; with his physical and technical prowess, Tom Brady has transcended language.

But these kinds of contrasts are not a reason to boo Tom Brady. Rather,  in the contrast itself lies the reason why the author (and the reader) of this blog should cheer for Tom Brady.

Tom Brady has, after all, bestowed a remarkable gift upon us all. He has so far given us the opportunity to spectate unparalleled greatness—that is, to view a quarterback winning five Super Bowls. This in itself is a once-in-all-existence type of accomplishment. To see him win a sixth (in high definition, no less) would be to witness eminence of otherworldly proportions, far beyond the imagination of the average spectator.

Contemplating greatness of this magnitude, then, you are faced with a choice. You can choose the path of the hater, besmirching the names of Brady-esque luminaries in many an online forum. Or you can acknowledge the superlative talent of any given luminary, and bow down before him or her or them as your superior. 

The more mature option is the latter. There comes a time when you can no longer deny that humans are not created equal, and that our world is, in reality, the domain of but a few ascendant superiors. The vast underclass can only be enlightened when its members acknowledge the supremacy of the true elite—athletes, capitalists, and most celebrities—and genuflect before them. In apprehending their acumen and accepting their dominance over us, we are able to make an even more crucial realization about ourselves: that we are slaves, and we work our menial jobs to consume products issued by this extremely select few—our telegenic masters who perform highly abstracted, commercially viable tasks at the highest level.

For this reason, all those who have been cheering for Tom Brady and the Patriots for the past decade-plus should not be passed off as mere bandwagon jumpers. Rather, Patriots fans are the enlightened vassals who have realized their individual inferiority and slavery and given themselves wholly to Brady's team and its licensed apparel, getting blissfully lost in that huddled mass of fandom clad in silver and blue New England merchandise. Their own haggard, lonely, Trump-voting lives are rendered infinitely more meaningful for it.

"Tom Brady is master, and I am slave." This is the mantra of the Pats fan. So this year, I will fight the urge to hate or to cheer for the underdog, and I, too, will repeat this mantra. I, too, will choose the path of the peon, and the profound self-awakening that comes with it. Rather than cheering against Brady, I will not just cheer for him, but actually supplicate before his matchless glory as it graces my television. At the pinnacle of underclass destiny—submitting to the broadcast of dominance—there is pure rapture. I will learn to love my inferiority, and to celebrate it. As Tom Brady moves the chains, I will come to adore my own shackles.

Also, I put all the money I ever made writing on New England. Thirty dollars on the Pats.