New Texture Publishing II

Luke Ford writes:

Official bio: Chris D. (aka Chris Desjardins) has written off and on for various American fringe film buff/alternative music/media publications such as Phobos, Slash Magazine, Forced Exposure, Asian Cult Cinema (when previously known as Asian Trash Cinema), and Cult Movies since the early 1970s. He has recently seen publication of his book Outlaw Masters Of Japanese Film, which features essays/filmographies/interviews with such Japanese genre film directors from the sixties/seventies as Kinji Fukasaku, Seijun Suzuki, Teruo Ishii, Kihacho Okamoto, Koji Wakamatsu, as well as such nineties directors as Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

He is currently finishing work on a voluminous, completist study of Japanese yakuza (gangster) films called Gun And Sword – An Encyclopedia of Japanese Gangster Films 1955-1980. Chris’ knowledge of classic mainstream and ‘arthouse’ as well as offbeat genre and cult films, both domestic and foreign, led to his job as one of the programmers at The American Cinematheque in Los Angeles in 1999. He has co-programmed or programmed series on Film Noir, Mods And Rockers (American & British music/youth/psychedelic films from 1960’s - early '70’s), The New Hollywood (breakthrough Hollywood films from mid-1960’s - early 1970’s), Angry Young Cinema – The Original British New Wave, Fantasy/Horror/ Science Fiction (annual series since 1999 featuring old and new films from U.S., Europe and Asia, etc.,), The Golden Age of British Horror 1955-1975, Japanese Outlaw Masters series #’s 1/2/3/4/5/6, Screwball Comedies 1935-1960; retrospectives on directors Kinji Fukasaku, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Donald Cammell, David Cronenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Russ Meyer, William Friedkin, Mario Bava, Val Guest, et. al -- as well as a tribute to sixties Japanese action film icons, Shintaro Katsu and Raizo Ichikawa.

Chris D. (aka Chris Desjardins)

Luke Ford writes:

Author Wyatt Doyle II

Luke Ford writes:

New Texture Publishing

Luke Ford writes:

In the summer of 1981, Scr*w magazine Senior Editor Josh Alan Friedman noticed a beautiful blonde out his art director's 11th-floor window in lower Manhattan. He yelled to her for her phone number and she yelled it back just before her roommates at the Markle Evangeline Hall (a dormitory for young Southern women going to school in New York) shut her mouth.

Josh dialed and advised his future wife Peggy Bennett, "Don't ever give out your phone number to strangers in this city."

"Well, just who are y'all?"

"We're Scr*w," he said. "And thank God you gave your number to us. If you'd been across from Time-Life, you would have really fallen in with some perverts."

Son of novelist (A Mother's Kisses) and screenwriter (Stir Crazy) Bruce Jay Friedman, Josh grew up in Glen Cove.

Normally surrounded by movie stars and writers, Josh and his younger brother Drew were the only white kids from 1962-66 at the otherwise all-black South School.

"I had a powerful civil rights conscience," says Bruce in the new documentary about Josh's life -- Blacks and Jews -- named after the title cut of the blues guitarist' s third album. "I kept pretending that there were two-or-three other semi-white kids."

Josh Alan Friedman's Black Cracker

Luke Ford writes:

I stop by Book Soup on Sunset Blvd Wednesday night for the first stop of the New Texture literary tour with authors Wyatt Doyle, Josh Alan Friedman and Chris Desjardins.

Josh Alan’s new book, Black Cracker, has seven glowing reviews on Amazon.com.

Frontburner says June 9:

Josh Alan Friedman, a talented Dallas writer and musician, spent his early years in New York, where he was the only white kid attending the last segregated black school on Long Island. Now he’s written an “autobiographical novel” about the experience called Black Cracker. So last night Dawn Rizos, owner of The Lodge gentlemen’s club, hosted a dinner and book-signing there for Friedman and 75 or so of his friends, plus assorted media types like the Dallas Observer’s Robert Wilonsky (that’s Big Bob just below Friedman’s left arm in this photo by Scott Mankoff) and Alan Peppard of The Dallas Morning News.

When Josh says me, he says, “You look like a Hasidic rabbi!”

During his reading, a young black man in his twenties gets very unhappy. “How are people allowed to write this way?” he protests. “I believe in freedom of speech and everything but this is too much.”

He yells and wave his arms around and then goes out on to Sunset Blvd and keeps yelling about Black Cracker.

NASA Making Muslims Feel Good

Luke Ford writes:

This made no sense to me until I remembered how many left-wingers believe that if our society only made blacks and other minorities feel better about themselves, they’d achieve more. So it would make sense that these left-wingers would believe that making Muslims feel better about themselves would result in less criminal violence.

On his radio show yesterday, Dennis Prager says: “Imagine if he had said relations with the Buddhist world. Everybody would’ve thought, huh?

“This, you can’t say anything. There’s no such as Buddhaphobic but if you even mention just huh, it opens you up to some form of phobia.

“But the issue here is not phobia but logic.

“The average guy in Cairo has been saying that better relations with NASA is up there with the haj.”

On Fox News Monday, Charles Krauthammer said: “This is a new height in fatuousness. NASA was established to get America into space and to keep us there. This idea to feel good about their past scientific achievements is the worst combination of group therapy, psycho-babble, imperial condescension and adolescent diplomacy. If I didn’t know that Obama had told this, I’d demanded the firing of Charles Bolden the way I would with Michael Steele.”

Jewish Fast Day Tisha B'Av

Luke Ford writes:

What is the Jewish fast day of Tisha B’Av? Check out its Wikipedia profile.

So, some friends of mine were having a bonfire at Dockweiler Beach last night.

I was ambivalent about going. My soul is so in love with the Torah that it is hard for me to leave the house. I get everything I need via my high-speed broadband connection.

So I put a message on Facebook asking for a ride. I figured if I could get a ride, then I’d go.

So a male friend messaged me and I arranged to go with him.

Then a cute girl messaged me, and I canceled on my buddy, and took a ride with her. A ride to paradise!

I love finding out what the young people are up to. They have such interesting mating rituals.

I love dating young women. They’re not as jaded and bitter and defensive as the hags. They look better and they smell better. I just love the dewy sheen of youth. I don’t care if it is her youth that I am after or my own. I just know that hot young girls make me feel good. That’s all I know and that’s all I need to know. I’m a simple man with simple needs.