Based Safety vs. Cringe Propaganda #28

This Week in Based and Cringe

BASED SAFETY:

In another piece of excellent anti-Covid hysteria reportage, Alex Gutentag perfectly illustrates the utter chaotic incoherence behind the vaccine mandates, given that the vaccines don’t stop spread and that the vaccines don’t stop spread and also THAT THE MOTHERFUCKING VACCINES DON’T STOP SPREAD YOU GODDAMN LUNATICS!!!!!.

Moving on, Dennis Cooper (whose new novel I Wished I just finished and absolutely adored, everyone go buy it) counts down the greatest forgotten horror-themed video games of all time. Ben Granger profiles the novelist and Bolshevik revolutionary (once an anarchist before realizing the retardation of that position) Victor Serge. Electronic producer Shackleton, whose new full-length Departing like Rivers is among the best records of the year with its disorienting blend of dance music and macabre and eerie soundscapes, has the best releases of his career counted down by the usually quite shitty Bandcamp blog. Michael Millerman documents the efforts of the right wing to reclaim Heidegger from the left much in the way that it did Nietzsche after Nietzsche was falsely touted by left academics for some three decades. It feels like all of my friends — Alex Bienstock, Marc Horowitz, and Petra Cortright — are on Contain and as based as it is I feel left out and shit.

Forget that it’s written by Amy Taubin for a second and read this interview with Todd Haynes about his incoming documentary on The Velvet Underground. The Velvets are in my all-time top 3 (my most clichéd “favorite band” response but I can’t help it everything about them was perfect) and I have such an anticipation erection for this documentary that my jeans hurt. The heroic avatar of antileftist Marxism Benedict Cryptofash proves himself more than a meme with his new Substack. In a declarative and elegant writing style and cohesive and inarguable theoretical underpinning, Dr. Crypto saves Marx from the clutches of leftard academics that have done nothing but mystify and weaken Marx’s revolutionary analysis for a century. [*cue Billy Porter singing] Something happening here. Finally, I flesh out my theory of the “postmodern suicide” for Apofenié Magazine and critique the work and suicides of David Foster Wallace, Mike Kelley and Mark Fisher. “The postmodern suicide then is only the most logical blackpill to take when you fail to examine yourself,” I argue. “Mike Kelley, David Foster Wallace, and Mark Fisher all might have had similarly brutal and accurate realizations and observations about culture and unsociety, but they failed to apply that critical lens to themselves.” Part 1 and Part 2.

SELF-PROMOTING WHORE
Before moving onto the cringe, allow me to announce that my new book, Communions, is now available from Hyperidean Press’s website for pre-order (books will be shipped to October 8). Here, I read a chapter from the book (in which I conjure the ghost of the late contemporary artist Dash Snow) and answer questions from audience and collaborators. Self-promotion galore. On Low Society, I record two episodes to shill my book. Both episodes were mass reported and banned but are still available to hear on the podcast’s Patreon. Break the Rules hosts me as its guest (alongside others like Default Friend) to discuss Chris Chan, nu-metal, and more, and once again I shill my book. On one of my favorite podcast appearances ever, I join The Perfume Nationalist and discuss Leos Carax’s Pola X, Bruno Dumont’s 29 Palms, and….. yeah, my book. Finally, the very smart writer Ryan Simon interviews me for American Vulgaria.

CRINGE PROPAGANDA
There’s so much cringe in the world, but for the moment there is only one cringe that I can’t stop gagging over. As bad as I thought The Many Saints of Newark could be, it’s a million times worse. A disaster. A sociopathic insult to the legacy of this century’s greatest American pop culture artifact. A gut shot. It’s not just the series’ pathetic, MTVified, meme’d out Hollywood casting (it asks that we believe that the peculiar odd duck Junior was once 6 ft 4 and jacked Corey Stoll, we’re asked to believe that Johnny Boy Soprano, a man who lived on booze and pasta and only exercised his arms beating up shop owners, was actually souped up super athlete and The Punisher Jon Bernthal, we’re also asked to believe that Tony Soprano once looked a lot like Tony but without physical presence, menace, charisma, charm or libido, etc). It’s not just that the film lacks any cohesive sense of plot or story structure. It’s not just that the film seems to include a race war angle for the sole purpose of getting financed despite it not even really having a place in the film overall. It’s not just that Dickie Moltisanti, who is a ghost that looms over the entire series as the junkie, killer, gambling father of Christopher who Tony falsely idolizes and thus projects onto Christopher muddling his judgement, is manifested as an offensive stock guinea sociopath infinitely less interesting than he was as a specter. It’s all of this, and the fact that the movie is a direct rebuke to the existential, tragicomic genius of the show’s legacy. Its incessant use of corny meme easter eggs are a refutation of David Chase’s powerful performance art gesture that infamously closed the series. Chase told us: “No, you won’t get the narrative resolution that you so desperately crave, this isn’t about that, this is America, this is life.” Chase should be ashamed that he let this happen. It just did not need to happen.

Moving on. Charles [makes me want to] Blow [my fucking brains out]. Progressive journo, regime propagandist, and alleged NASA reject Ryan Grim writes about “how the squad” could exercise power while also pointing out how it could be risky to exercise that power, which will be followed up by his next piece: excuses for why the Squad doesn’t use power. Anthony Fauci, still free despite obviously belonging in prison, has no real response when asked why it makes sense for those with natural immunity to take the vaccine. Russiagate is proven in a court of law to be a psychological operation constructed by the Clinton campaign team in cahoots with intelligence which should be a story being widely discussed by everyone but has mostly been suppressed by the media which obviously doesn’t want any discussion of accountability for the Russiagate hoax. The CIA attempts to assassinate Assange, reported out by Yahoo News, and no one seems to care because again journalists are the real terrorists in this country and every single day they conspire to conceal the truth from and lie to us. SAD!

ILLUSTRATIONS:
1. sculpture by Ernst Fuchs
2. Dash Snow
3. The Many Saints of Newark