Based Safety vs. Cringe Propaganda #57
This month in based and cringe...
THOUGHTS
I hope you all had a spectacular Thanksgiving. As you might’ve noticed, I’ve been doing this column far less than I once was. This is for reasons both practical — I’m a far busier man that I was the two years ago that I started this platform — and personal. You see, I just have far less enthusiasm in keeping up with the outré vaguely right wing online media than I once did. It’s become clear to me that what once was interesting inevitably morphed into another corporate media wing. The musician (of Hatewave and To Live and Shave in LA fame, etc.) and perennial outsider artist Nándor Névai claims in his excellent book/art project/record series The Price of Frontier that punk was a pre-planned control project to turn youths into (paraphrasing) violent, retarded gangs incapable of advancing in the world and that Burgess and Kubrick predicted such a subculture with A Clockwork Orange. In many ways, I’m inclined to agree with him. And if punk was such a control operation, what was Dimes Square? One has to consider the time that Dimes Square came out of (Covid) and the direction that it went into (shadowy tech related financing) to fully comprehend this. Maybe Dimes Square didn’t encourage us to become Sid Vicious clones and annihilate our brains and bodies with hard drugs, but it sure did encourage us to endlessly spew bile and venom into the digital ecosphere, didn’t it? If the addiction to the click isn’t a form of control, then I surely don’t know what is. And that is, unfortunately, where many of its denizens remain and likely will continue to do so in perpetuity. I mean – fuck, lot of them made livable wages out of it. Good on them, but I have different intentions.
The purpose of Safety Propaganda has always been and always will be to cultivate an aesthetic, an atmosphere, a concept, AND an art that, despite having zero backing from any of the predominant cultural institutions, can still generate a substantial audience through the sheer magnitude and magic of the hyperlink. This Substack will remain a large part of it, but I am nothing if not multifaceted. I have novels on the horizon. I am chasing after a dream in a rock n’ roll band (Botched Chadification.) I am dieting, blasting gear and turning my fizeek into a statement on contemporary masculinity. I got shit going on, if you catch my drift. Clicking through other people’s work — good or bad — is a time suck and one I intend to do less. Have no fear, there will still be amazing content on this website. My collaborators and I intend to continue counter brainwashing your feeble little minds. But going forward, this column of the based and the cringe will be a monthly endeavor, or less.
On a side note, Botched Chadification played a show this passed weekend in Woodybury, NY at a local bar called Finnegans Pub. Thanks to all involved with the promotion of the show. The image above was shot by Hardcore Tony.
BASED SAFETY
Remedy Entertainment recently released a sequel to its 2013 cult classic video game Alan Wake. I’ve now played through the entire game of Alan Wake 2 and, when I wasn’t recoiling in horror and anxiety, my jaw was dropped to the floor. It is an astonishing and visionary artistic masterpiece that absolutely reveals new possibilities previously unknown in the medium of gaming. Heavily influenced by Twin Peaks: The Return, Stephen King novels that center around tortured novelists, the procedural but dark investigative narrative of Fincher’s Seven, the blurred realities of novelist Mark Z. Danielewski’s head fucked horror masterpiece House of Leaves, and even Bret Easton Ellis’ meta-fictional horror novel Lunar Park, Remedy creative director Sam Lake has achieved his masterpiece with Alan Wake 2. And, given that this is the visionary behind games like Max Payne and Control, that’s saying something. Alan Wake 2 allows the player to traverse between realities — the material world as well as “the dark place”, a clear interpretation of Twin Peaks’ Black Lodge — and characters. In the dark place, you play as the titular Alan Wake who got lost in the hell dimension at the end of the previous game, and new character Saga, a light skinned black woman FBI agent who is hilariously condescending to the Pacific Northwestern mountain people in a manner that can only be read as a cryptic social satire from the playful mind of the Finnish Sam Lake. Lake, who memorably made his own face that of Max Payne in the original series, also lends his unique visage to the character here of Sam Casey, Saga’s FBI partner, allowing the player the feeling of bouncing ideas off of Max Payne. It’s a wild experience, people. Loaded with easter eggs and references to other Remedy titles, an unbelievably immersive and horrifying atmosphere, and laugh out loud moments galore, Alan Wake 2 is the creative work of 2023. Here’s an interview with Lake.
Speaking of glorious visionaries, props to this blog for reposting this fantastic conversation between Lars Von Trier and Paul Thomas Anderson from the early 2000s, after the filmmakers had released Dancer in the Dark and Punch Drunk Love, respectively (coincidentally the films of the artists that I like the least but whatever.) Harmony Korine has been doing a lot of interviews in promotion of his new film/experience/infrared experiment Aggro Dr1ft, and this particular one with the Locarno Film Festival is compelling. A much referenced artist around these parts, Nicolas Winding Refn, restores a whole horde of forgotten masterpieces of trash art cinema and Mubi shows a whole bunch of them on its website right now.
The Who Cares Anyway podcast is an audio continuation of a book by author Will York about the fascinatingly avant post-punk scene of San Francisco in the ‘80s and ‘90s. So far, the show has hosted a range of interesting artists and musicians, from rock writer Mark Prindle to members of the roving SF performance and noise collective Caroliner. This new episode, on singer-songwriter and member of countless bands and projects Barbara Manning, is special to me. Barbara’s band 28th Day is amongst my favorite guitar pop groups of all time, surpassed only by the likes of Felt or the immortal Game Theory. While on the topic of underground music OGs, Chicago-based conceptual artist and noise musician Andy Ortmann appears on our friends’ show Noisextra to discuss his time in the tape trading culture on the ‘90s. Furthermore, Patrick O’Neil of vicious American noise duo Skin Crime also appears on the show, this time assisted by quotes from friend of SP Dominick Fernow who has been quoted saying that Skin Crime is the best American noise project, period. Noisextra’s co-host Mike Connelly, another SP affiliate known for projects like Yellow Gas Flames, Hair Police and his tenure in Wolf Eyes, is on the receiving end of an interview here with White Centipede Noise.
Beloved Monica, otherwise known to the Internet as Mommy Milkers, appears on The Perfume Nationalist discussing Emily Brontë’s macabre erotic masterpiece Wuthering Heights and explaining the perpetual BPD allure of Heathcliff. Though he doesn’t make a great podcast host, it was still cool to hear the novelist Bruce Wagner fill in as the host of Bret Ellis’ podcast. I can’t recommend to you enough the podcast/audio collage by Kosten Koper called L’Etranger. Every week the man slices up all the texts, music, and audio content of the underground subcultures of the Internet and remakes it all into its own unique piece of artistic form. This particular episode includes a snippet from my recently shown play Celebutante Rape Therapy.
The brilliant writer New Juche releases his own publication, Gallows Fruit, which I don’t have a copy of yet so can’t say what it is other than that I’m sure it’s great. Manhattan Art Review editor Sean Tatol addresses the ugly truth that art criticism doesn’t exist anymore; it’s all just endless promotion paid for by top galleries. “There’s no clear economic reason for art criticism that is not glorified public relations to exist, and so it barely does,” he writes. In truly excellent news, friend of SP and amazing artist Darja Bajagić, who has endured years of endless political accusations by libtard losers in the art world but never wavered, apologized or compromised, is announced as the representative of her home country Montenegro for this year’s Venice Biennale. Amazing. The Invisible Dole will be visibly coping (if you know you know.)
If you have ever wondered what it would be like to get caught attempting to stealing the car of UFC Middleweight Champion Sean Strickland, this is how it would go.
CRINGE PROPAGANDA
The worst aspect about David Velasco being fired from Artforum after publishing this letter condemning the shelling of Gaza and generating the ire of the Zionist big wigs behind some major galleries as well as their collectors ISN’T that it reveals the art world once again as a space of abject hypocrisy that celebrates freedom of expression exactly up until the moment that certain ideological tenets are challenged. No, we already fucking knew that. The real problem with all of this is that Velasco, a terrible editor who was all too happy to encourage cancel culture and ideological hegemony and narrowed contributors down to his hyper-educated multi-”culty” friends during his tenure at the magazine, is now being martyred as some bastion of moral courage. I assure you, that’s not who this guy is. He is no Norm Finkelstein, OK? He simply only associates with people who all think the same way and didn’t understand the split that Israel would represent between liberals and their bratty leftist subs. That’s it. Nevertheless, the event is intriguing in its demonstration of the fact that “the left” has clearly run out its usefulness for the liberal ruling class.
Someone who is courageous, on the other hand, is none other than the double champ Conor McGregor. Ireland, apparently, has a severe immigration crisis brought about by horrible liberal refugee policies that have seen the country’s welfare state be eaten up by foreigners. I don’t know much about the situation but Angela Nagle explains it well enough here. Nevertheless, many of these refugees commit heinous crimes against the native populace, culminating with a knife attack perpetrated on a woman school teacher and three young girls by a Slovak Romani refugee (what the fuck?) Conor is enraged about it, and publicly so
“Imagine a mega power nation allowing this absolute foolishness!! Imagine the United States! This is the most preposterous, ridiculous, scheming attempt at gaining votes this government has attempted yet. A real showing of the lack of care they have for the common Irish citizen. As it stands they do not have my vote. Shame on them!”
In case anyone forgot, Conor is a billionaire and a god to his home country. If he ran for office tomorrow he would win in a landslide. After the Irishman rioted in defiance of their negligent government, the Irish government now launches an investigation into the mixed martial artist. It’s clear they have no case, but are almost certainly doing so to prevent him from ever running or fully stepping into the political arena. Fuckers.
In some weird UFC news, you best familiarize yourself with the saga of Ian MACHADO Garry and his very overzealous and much older wife Layla Machado Garry (the Machado is from her ex-husband I shit you not, more on that later.) So, Ian is a fast rising Irish UFC star who copies Conor’s quotes and literally everyone thinks is the most annoying person on Earth. News of a weird marriage situation rumored the fuck out after Garry was ejected from welterweight champion Leon Edward’ gym, citing the fact that his mere presence had become a distraction. Then, people learn that his wife controls nearly every aspect of his life. And THEN we learned that Layla’s ex-husband was hired as Ian’s nutritionist AND lives with the couple? The couple responded to this in a very weird video, where Garry says “if you were a WAG I wouldn’t be with you.” WAG apparently is a British term for “wives and girlfriend” and, more explicitly, women who latch onto young athletes. Well, it is now revealed that Layla actually wrote a book called, I shit you not, How to be a WAG. Sean Strickland reached out to the young Ian to give him advice: ditch the wife. Ian responds by threatening a lawsuit, a taboo amongst professional fighters. It’s all a beautiful train wreck to witness.
Finally, apparently the sculptor Doreen Garner officially goes by the name “King Cobra” now and I already thought she was a bit scary.