barrylyoung.com

There’s Something Wrong With Barry’s iPHONE!!!

Note: This is the first submission from our new writer/contributor

Do you see how cracked and smudgy it is?

I’m telling your right now… I may have bitten off more than I can chew by coming to work here.

L.A. May 10, 2012 9:15am

(Note from Ed.- great first post, Colin. Congratz! Very descriptive, in-depth and fair-minded, professional approach. Brilliant use of metaphor. Good tag line. You are clearly a journalist we will all be following closely in days to come!)

Meet Colin.

Colin (he goes by singular, christian name), is a Version 11.1 CyberPal I.M. (Intelligent Mannequin).

Educated at Oxford Virtual (a First in Semiotics), Colin has been working as a model for the last three years, primarily at Harrods, J.C. Penney and Nordstroms. This will be his first paid writing assignment. Here is a bit about this big boy (6’3″), in his own words…

Hi everyone! Colin, here!

I’m very excited about coming to work for barrylyoung.com. I must say, however, when I first visited the studios here at Modularity Films & Assorted content, I was more than a wee bit shocked at the state of the premises!

I immediately got to work cleaning bloodstains from floor and walls, evicting the family of voles dwelling under Mr. Young’s desk and plugging in the phone so that we could take calls from our many stringers around the globe. I think we are ready to start a new chapter in this company’s somewhat sordid history. Wish us luck!

A little about me… I like clothes, ponies and the writings of V.C. Andrews and Thomas Hardy. I was manufactured in 2005 by worker # 662-775 at CyberPal’s Dagenham plant. I am single and have no children, drive a powder blue Ford Escort with 260k miles on it and have an i.q. of 488. My favorite foods are portobello mushrooms and anything from Chipotle. I am a Capricorn w Virgo rising. I have no criminal record; I like to knit and crochet for relaxation.

I look very much forward to hearing your comments on my writings. I will be starting a new weekly feature called “No, Really… That’s What He/She Said!!!”

Well, bye for now- time to recharge tho old (lithium) batteries.

Oh yeah… Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms!

Love, Colin

I’m sure you can all see why I brought Colin aboard; barrylyoung.com and ravingcritic.com have needed someone like him for a long time. Now I can concentrate on graphic novels and that klezmer opera that never seems to write itself.

Yes. I think so.

But what about uploading photos?

Well, let’s just see.

And the answer is… NO.

Oh, well.

But… I also love it- grudgingly.

If one doesn’t know HTML, one can be frustrated by the idiosyncrasies and/or errors in coding.  (I am the one to which I refer).

Also, I like to build my own themes and create & control lay-outs from scratch.

Even my IT/Site Maintenance guy is stymied by the quirky and inconsistent coding/script.

Oh well… what do I want for free?

Bonnie contemplates the pitfalls of blogging as we head towards Texas.

chapter 1

i'm in my 'office'. and now- no surprise, really- it would appear that they know where i live. and work.

well armed. sleek, impressively focused and trim 3rd worlders in crisply pleated iridescent blue FB uniforms

are deploying outside in the former parking lot, wedging themselves between abandoned cars, mangled

analog tv sets floating in small lakes of raw sewage and behind the scattered barrels of carborane

super-acid (that very obviously contain aggressively dissolved human remains).

my one distinct advantage is that my guests, as well as the demi-god who employs legions of their kind, are tragically unaware of the even the remotely possible existence

of the botonic karma-phaser®, or that i am in sole possession of its indescribably costly prototype.

pmsl, right?

as i light a (medium) american spirit with my polished brass vietnamese zippo knock-off, i become

aware of the sound of a vintage Westland Lynx 800 G-LYNX helicopter arrogantly emerging from

stealth mode- appearing 'out of the blue', as it were- and now hovering about 240 feet above

the derelict industrial complex that i have for so long considered a safe haven for doing various kinds of

revolutionary mischief; not even swaggering nicaraguan cartel hit squads wander in here without

a certain trepidation.

in the copter's single passenger seat, mark zuckerberg is clearly visible, wearing light-absorbing

(and obliterating) dark-frost virtual omni-glasses. and flipping me the bird.

i flip back, getting into the spirit of things; we are now, officially, having fun.

game on.

On March 2nd, 1912, Mary Rose O’Flaherty gave birth to an illegitimate baby boy- Seamus Ryan O’Flaherty- in County Kerry, Ireland.

The father was rumored by many to have been Liam Ryan- an inveterate womanizer and bog farmer- hence the speculative ‘Ryan’ in the poet’s hallowed name.

Only existing photo of Seamus from his time in prison

During his lifetime, Seamus wrote seven books of verse, three of them published by Dregs & Sons Press of Dublin; the rest were self-published and were thought to be the source, along with his alcoholism, of O’Flaherty’s financial ruin.

His most famous collection is, of course, Halycyon Pig, 1937. It contains the timeless poem (see below) that brought O’Flaherty to the attention of not only poetry-lovers on three continents, but also to the to the Constabulary of County Wicklow, where he was wanted for for kiting checks and dealing in tainted pork (hence the ‘Pig’ in the collection’s title).

He spent the next three years drying out in Portlaoise Prison (Irish: Príosún Phort Laoise). After his release in 1941, Seamus disappeared from public view. There has been much specuation as to what happened to him; there are those who say he never died and is in fact still alive in an old person’s home in Galloway.

O’Flaherty’s Most Celebrated Book of Verse

Be that as it may, his official biography claims he died of acute alcohol poisoning and/or repeated kicks to the groin (by a jealous and jilted husband) in Limerick on June 13, 1969. He is reportedly buried in a small plot in Inniskerry.

Here is is least forgettable verse from that collection.

Like a Trout Upstream I Swim

like a trout upstream i swim

thru tepid waters murky black

‘neath the smarmy widget bridge

leading out of high-bottomed Snarf

the village of my regretted birth

here and there in the glaucous pools

flit mungous kilpish woggies, all a-char

and flanged with grommets, not unlike

uncle Lucius long dead now from

poorly blended fermentations.

his elegy, only half remembered,

did in earnest laud his easy manner

with bottom-feeding fish and crispy

bog infesting newts named Gerald,

Maud or some other Celtic nomenclature

‘Fuck all and be damned’ shriek the

dyspeptic mandrills, lining up on

mossy banks to jeer the passing

school of fingerlings in whose

midst have i my rightful stature found.

and now my dorsal fin quivers dullish

with rage that has scarce recourse

save its will to empower

my angry migration home

and farther.

i am told by carp drifting in the languid

current that Burnhole Willie has been found

face-down, skin a-leathery and nutshell brown

in a gutter in Blather Town, with fearless pigs

snuffling thru his pockets for bread crusts

and mildewed memories of more joyful days.

do not not say he is dead- only comatose-

with plans on rising come this year’s

Paschal Feast. as for Coleen and Rose

the tempestuous barmaids at the Foal

and Gosling, i cannot say. they have

lost their teeth but still leer at those

imbibing arf and arfs on dwindling credit.

i have minded my own P’s and Q’s

to no avail. my tab will go unpaid.

like a Fungous Bat emerging from its

cave I flutter-fly, twist and turn in humid air

still a-seeking glimpses of immortality or

insects fat enough to warrant effort. from

one distraction to the next I meander

becoming an annoyance to all others.

there are those who bought my sausage

but they are dead now. there is no salmon

in salmonella- only sad regrets and meat

from unknown sources. i curse them all.

like a trout upstream I swim in rivers gurgling

mud brown. i should have learned to swim

for alas- i now flounder like a scrod… and drown.

Critics have said that O’Flaherty’s verse made it retroactively possible for  Tennyson, Ovid and even Shakespeare to find the courage to explore their own mode of versifying; but critics have said a lot of things. O’Flaherty hated them all.

Here is a short film on the quest of ladder day scholars seeking answers about O’Flaherty- that no one has had the courage to ask.

why are there no Starbucks open all night? why do they all close at 8 or 9 p.m.?

how stupid.

in fact… it’s atrocious how in every city other than new york, there seems virtually nowhere that night people can go.

i was in san francisco recently (october, 2010) of a saturday night, ten-ish. i wanted a caffe americano (with extra shot of espresso). i was in the haight ashbury neighborhood. ‘no prob,’ methinks; ‘this is san fran, home of the beat coffee house. there should’.

guess again.

i even drove to the castro district, which used to be humming late-late even on weeknights.

wrong… it was a ghost town. my iphone locating app, ‘around me’,  showed zilch coffee venues still open- anywhere… in the entire universe.

i swan, y’all… i gotta open a classic coffee house in west los angeles, for those lost nocturnal wanderers, like myself, in need of a destination come the witching hours.

my office at night- in case you needed an image of what the world looks like after the sun goes down

post script: omg.. forgot about cacao, on santa monica blvd. they’re open til 3 a.m. god bless their warm, welcoming, nocturnal hearts.

also, the unurban café on pico is only open til midnight. sheesh.

An Incomplete List

Your Author. At night. Lighting an American Spirit Medium.

1. At night you can see the contours, the design and the purpose- uncluttered by the frantic movements of humanity.
2. It is quiet. No one is around to distract me.
3. Photos and film are better at night- no bogies (stray passers by) in the way. The world is lit by street lamps and neon. I have all the shadows I could wish for and there is nothing I have to ‘unlight’.
4. My imagination takes charge at night. During the day it has to take a back seat in order to negotiate my way from place to place and task to task.
5. It takes me 90 stress-free seconds to get to my office. During the day it’s seven minutes of ‘Please! Let me in. I just want to get across Bundy Ave.!’
6. there is no one telling me i have use capitals.
7. Music sounds clearer at night. And the KCRW nighttime deejays are Gods of Music.
8. There are ancient and very curious creatures roaming the nighttime landscape; in fact, I just had a very prolonged conversation with an undead woman and her lycanthropic boyfriend. They critiqued some of my artwork and gave me some nice plot suggestions for a script I’m working on.
9. Mitt Romney is asleep; he would never show up at my studio at 3 a.m. intent on shaking my hand.
10. I use less gas, because there’s less traffic.
11. I like the bangladeshi guy who works the night shift at the Shell Station on Olympic. He doesn’t have a lot of teeth, but he still smiles a lot.
12. Cacao coffeehouse on Santa Monica Blvd. is open until 3 a.m. and there always a lot kindred spirits there avoiding eye contact and mumbling.
13. God is very present at night- as He/She likes to remind me.

So… when I come into My Little Studio each evening (I’m totally nocturnal) I bring with me an impossibly long list of what I need to accomplish- right fucking NOW!

Front Room of My Little Studio

The list usually looks something like this:

1. Set up 1969blog.com (twenty posts & 120 photos waiting to be published)
2. Edit the numerous scenes I’ve shot for “Barry Young Is A Total Dick”  (an autobiographical documentary about how I lure people, usually impressionable twenty somethings who want to break into the film business, into working for me for little or no money)
3. Write ten or fifteen reviews for www.ravingcritic.com
4. Shoot animation of my Barbie/Ironman toy mash-ups
5. Finish one of ten to fifteen scripts I’ve started- mostly for tv pilots. Most pressing being “World Repair- A Tale of Slavic Mechanics Working for the Mob”, “Halfway-House News”- a somewhat over-the-top reality show, “Seeing Things” a hidden camera format show
6. Post something important and newsworthy/thought-proving/game-changing/meme-launching for my various blogs.
7. Write an Exhibition Proposal for art installations.
8. Weed out and organize photos and paintings for my art website www.barryyoung.tv
9. fix broken equipment and lease computer.
10. start novel. write biography of townes van zandt
11. record songs i’ve written.
12. learn to consistently capitalize the beginnings of sentences and first initial of proper names.
13. work on seo and site structure- in particular, linking and keyword maintenance.
14. and so on. and so forth. ad continuum.

I usually write the most important items on a whiteboard to the immediate right of my desk.

The Whiteboard to the Immediate Right of My Desk

I light an American Spirit, knock back a Red Bull, roll up my sleeves and…?

This is What I Actually Do:

• feed the mice
• look at Facebook
• look at Gawker
• look at HuffPost
• look at Salon

One of the Mice- As Yet Unnamed- That I Have Caught In My Studio

AND THEN…

I start painting.

THIS is what I painted tonight.

Liberio, My Neighbor

So…. the question is; “Who am I trying to fool?”

Only myself.

I’m an artist. It’s what drives me. It’s what I’m good at.

I’ll start making films again when I have a crew. But on my own…?

Well, you see where I’m going- where I went- with this.

Right?