fine whine

I've written about coincidences before. More than likely I will do it again. Anyway, some strange happenings have been, er, happening in a much more virtual context. So they don't really matter as much, and they're more likely more coincidental.

Anyway, I run a links blog, ketchup. As far as I know, nobody visits it. Sure, I get hits but I'm rather convinced that most of them are robots, or crackers trawling for a vulnerable server. Why, I wonder, do the crackers not go after the robots? So I periodically post links. There are more than sixty links listed, all culled from random surfing and other sources. One such source is BoingBoing. It's a great site, run by a great bunch of people, linking to wonderful and interesting places to go and things to see. I bookmark a great many of them.

So I was a little surprised to find a link to Michael Menkin's site about aliens and children. On Ketchup I had linked to its sister site, wherein Menkin explains the methods and necessity of procuring a thought-screen helmet. And so soon! But it's a big web out there — some would call it worldwide — and such things can happen by chance.

I was surprised a day later to find a link to TokyoFlash, another site I'd linked on Ketchup. The writeup was only two down from Menkin's. Could it have been coincidence again? I know it's not malice or something sinister, since BoingBoing had two other sources for the same links. I doubt it's malfeasance in any form, but I have to say it's strange. Eerie even. But I'm not mad. In a way, it's kinda cool.

Not so long ago I wrote a little ditty about coincidences and chance, specifically the chance that I'd be watching a movie (Requiem for a dream) written by the favorite author of Andy Kaufman (Hubert Selby, Jr.), a pseudo-biography (Was this man a genius? by Julie Hecht) I'd read and returned to the library to pick up the closest Selby book to Andy's favorite (The demon). Well, at the time it seemed pretty interesting a coincidence.

And now I discover that all the time this was going on I had been seeking a track sampled from/remixed from Requiem's soundtrack! By sheer chance, I was trying to track down "Zoo York" by Paul Oakenfold, off of his studio and collaboration album Bunkka. You see, I'd come across another album track, "Nixon's Spirit", featuring a rant by the one and only Hunter S. Thompson, whilst looking for the audiobook edition of Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. Further, but limited, research into the album revealed the possibility that "Zoo York" also featured H.S.T. and this was enough to pique my interest.

Anyway, to make an already long story longer, I've now sat through "Zoo York". It's pretty cool. The whole album is, for that matter, despite some missteps in the collaborators department and occasionally too much trancing, quite cool. My disappointment in the lack of H.S.T. in "Zoo York" was to be replaced with first curiousity and then the current state in which I began this post. As though there were no offbeat lyrics, there was something else, a symphonic riff at first I could not place except from recent memory. Then I realized it to be a theme from Requiem, and that was just too cool.

So here I gush like some ecstasy-crazed dj fan. Whatever. I like finding these sorts of convergences. And for the curious, the track's actually a remix of the Requiem track "Lux Aeterna", part of a dance remix project that never materialized otherwise. And to take it all one step further, evidently Oakenfold sampled Clint Mansell, who in turn had sampled from a song "Quarbani Quarbani" with Bollywood connections I'm still tracking down.

I know that coincidences happen completely by chance, but that doesn't make them seem less remarkable. I just finished watching the Director's cut DVD of Requiem for a dream, which was written by Hubert Selby, Jr. This may not seem like a big deal to you, and some probably already knew that fact.

The significance is a little more to me, though, since I just checked out The Room, also by said Hubert Selby, Jr., from my local library, based on a 'recommendation' from Andy Kaufman. You see, in the book Is this man a genius? by Julie Hecht, the intrepid author gets Andy to reveal his favorite book, The Demon, again by said Hubert Selby, Jr. The library didn't have The Demon, so I grabbed the first one they had. I haven't read it yet, but after the movie I think I'll read it sooner.

The movie's quite good as well. It's not a light watch, and in fact I had to throw in some Benny Hill just to recover—which is where this entry's title originated, as graffiti on a wall. Somehow it seemed fitting.

Anyway, I wanted to blog the link for Amoeba Proteus, the computer graphics company (director) Darren Aronofsky co-founded for his films' effects. Requiem had a hundred digital shots, and they didn't want to outsource. Their technical prowess in film should speak for itself, since their website certainly doesn't. Effectively three whole pages (including a Quicktime demo reel), the site offers very little in the way of information about their projects and accomplishments, other than their titles and brief mention of an upcoming animated feature. Not quite ketchup fodder, in my opinion. I found more interesting information in this indiewire interview.