Feral House Weekend
I just got back from a four-day trip to LA where I was submerged in Feral House's weekend of Weimar culture events. It was my obsessive-nostalgic dream come true.
Thursday was an invitation only (good thing I'm friends with Paul) salon at the Feral House house in honor of their two newest books on the era, Mel Gordon's Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant and a naughty, female-empowered coffee table book called The Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin.
The Feral House house was exactly how I had always dreamed and hoped it would look, from the framed portrait of Aimee McPherson to the Hansel and Gretel architecture of the house itself. It was just like that Simpson's episode when Bart looks into the office of Mad magazine and sees Alfred E. Newman riding around on a unicycle. It blew my mind.
As anyone who would actually be reading my BLARG already knows, I've been pushing Mel Gordon's books on everyone for the past three years. It was quite the experience to hear him talk on the subjects that are near and dear to me...fast girls, narcotics, the occult. He even handed out some sort of elaborately packaged Chinese aphrodisiac (once used in Magnus Hirschfeld's "Sexual Institute") that he claimed contained the ground penises of three different animals. If that doesn't work, I don't know what would. Unfortunately, the supply ran out before I got one so there will be no first-person DeQuincey orientalist drug experience rant from me...but I'll look into it.
Friday night Mr. Gordon spoke on Erik Jan Hanussen, whom I've been looking for info on since I tried to write a paper on Istvan Szabos 1988 film "Hanussen" for a German Cinema class at CSU Fresno (go dogs!). Even though it's a Hungarian film (but German language), I insisted on writing on it because my father had mentioned something once about Hitler having a Jewish psychic and I was just amazed to have found something on the topic. The libraries in Fresno eight years ago yielded no information on the actual man and the film is pretty lacking, so I think I must have written a pretty shitty paper. Now I'm reading Mr. Gordon's book and it's just amazing that history seems to have forgotten or misinterpreted this important political and cultural player.
Saturday night was the final night of Feral House's events...further delving into Berlin's girl culture. There were some amazing slides projected...Weimar domms, clown sex, opium parties.

Here are some memorable quotes from my time in LA:

"Those buttwads at Starbucks and their T-Mobil!"

"I'm bi...centennial."

"I'm here with my friend."
"You mean the guy with the tits?"
"No, the other one."

"Have you met Torture King?"

AIRLINE BILLBOARD: "Non-Stop from Leno to Letterman"
That just says it all about LA, doesn't it?