today in “People Who Are Better Than You” news…

Seriously, seriously, I thought I was doing well. I mean, not great. Not epic. But, well, well.

Well, enough.

I got two paying blogging gigs. I get enough blogging students to get by. The immoveable object in my living room appears to be moving towards movement, or making a move towards moving towards movement, which is what at least a nanophysicist would call progress, of a sort and if only relative.

And he’s not even a relative.

But there are always those, according to various Desiderati, who do it better.

Better. Stronger. Faster.

And now, it appears, there are even those who do it for a larger and more loyal audience despite being dead six months.

Writer/artist Theresa Duncan, subject of a January Vanity Fair cover story (among plenty of other coverage), is updating her blog from beyond the grave. Cries for help: now available months after they’d be useful. Duncan—whose intentional overdose on pills last July led to the suicide of her partner Jeremy Blake a week later—had become, according to acquaintances and friends interviewed by Vanity Fair, increasingly erratic, paranoid, haggard, hard-drinking, and depressed in her last year or two. She was convinced that Scientologists were harassing her and Blake, trying to sabotage her stalling career (movie and TV projects that never got off the ground, including one that was supposed to star erstwhile friend of the couple and famed Scientologist musician Beck) and his ascending one (a scheduled retrospective of Blake’s work at Washington DC’s Corcoran Gallery ended up going on posthumously). So: what does a dead woman blog about? Dick Cavett, Sherlock Holmes, and T.S. Eliot.

So, pretty much no change there, if she were a book-blogging Typepad type, of which she was only 50%. Come to think of it, this isn’t the first time we at the ol’ raincoaster blog have been out-blogged by a dead woman, although the circumstances of the last time were quite different.
The last post that appeared when Theresa Duncan was alive posted on my birthday. Aw, thankies! Since then, she’d set two autoposts: a spooky, Basil Rathbone one for two days before Halloween, and one for New Year’s Eve. Perhaps she’d miscalculated the date of All Saint’s Eve, or maybe her calendar simply had a faulty October? Or maybe there’s a deeper meaning (there always is, with conspiracy theorists).

October 29th is Saint Narcissus’s Day.

Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake

Christopher Walken reads The Three Little Pigs

No, really.

PS posting will be light till next week, maybe one or two per day. Even bloggers deserve a vacation, no?

Merry Christmas, Mister Kubrick

Brian Atene is here, with a special Christmas message for Love Bug fans, deceased Hollywood figures, and your whole family.

The 12 Days of Christopher Walken

Many and varied are the Ways of Walken: yea, from the leather-clad styles of Gabriel the Archangel to the bewigged walking nightmare which haunted Hairspray, he is Christopher Chameleon, the Nyarlathotep of the Silver Screen, instantly recognizable yet always different. Christopher Walken is, like the mythical river, never and always the same.

So it is at Christmas Time.

The 12 Days of Christopher Walken

The First Day
The partridge, the pear tree. I trust both have arrived safely on this First Day of Christmas. The partridge, unfortunately, required mounting for shipping. Taxidermy. I had to strangle the poor bird with my own two hands. Sometimes small cruelties must be tolerated for the greater holiday good—in this case, pears.

The Second Day
May the two beautiful turtle doves, enclosed, enliven your Second Day of Christmas. I have recorded their mournful songs on a compact disc, also enclosed, so you will understand why I found it necessary to smother them. These birds—these birds could drive you fucking crazy.

and the rest…

As well, there are those who have grown up, but have yet to abandon the sweet rituals of childhood. Rituals like the annual Letter to Santa. But when you’re a thirty-five-year-old nightclub booker, you have to find an edgier recipient for the sake of your reputation, hence:

Letters to Christopher Walken

While Artist-in-Residence at Cornell’s arts dorm, I was expected to come up with stimulating art-related programs for the students to participate in. “Letters to Walken” allowed them the chance to write their yearly Christmas letter to Christopher Walken.

 

Tapdancing with Christopher Walken

quiz: which Star Trek species are you?

Yeah, baby! Boneheaded spelling errors aside, this quiz has nailed it! I’m teh kewlest!

What Star Trek Species Are You?

created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as RomulanYou Are Romulan, You enjoy structure as long as you’re on top. You sit and wait for people to tell you something. But you are very conceited. You’d rather be with yourself then with your friends, You never know when they’ll stab you in the back.

Romulan
85%
Klingon
75%
Federation
75%
Vulcan
65%
Cardassian
55%
Borg
50%
Ferengi
40%
Dominion
35%

Stolen from museditions