My Brain Doing WHAT?

The brain does some wonderful things. It lets you see colors, it processes time and space, it organizes your motions, and it often remembers your name. All important and necessary functions in the world of today, and all with their own unique characteristics that help make our experience as humans so vivid. Science and psychology has sought to ask many questions about how the brain does these things, and in the process has answered many important questions and bettered many lives. Take Parkinson’s Disease, a complex brain disorder ameliorated by the use of L-DOPA, or surgical cures for epilepsy, over 75% effective in alleviating debilitating seizures. Or even new Alzheimer’s drugs which may stem the ebb of memory loss occurring in that affliction. One of the major tools for investigating brain diseases and brain functions is the functional magnetic resonance image scanner (fMRI for short). An fMRI scanner is a large, loud magnetic device that allows researchers to peer inside the living brain and look at what lights up inside during complex and vital functions.

Or, sometimes, not-so complex or vital functions. Since the scanner requires a subject to lay flat and relatively motionless during the scan, there are some definite physical constraints on what sorts of real-life behaviors you can look at. Outside of that, you can look at the brain doing any number of oddball activities. Since scanners usually have headphones and a TV screen (or a projection of one) inside the scanner, scientists can show you anything from Monet to pictures of butternut squash, and provide a soundtrack, no less. A number of recent studies have taken to the weirder possibilities of brain science. Steven Quartz and his team at CalTech sought to look for the “neural correlates of cool” by showing subjects inside the scanner pictures of 140 different products and celebrities; Quartz then classified subjects into High Cool (trendsetters), High Uncool (critics), and Low Cool (losers), based upon their biological responses to those pictures—not their actual vocal responses. Evidently, there’s no hiding behind your secret Lawrence Welk obsession; the scanner sees all.

If that’s not weird enough for you, then how about a study of male ejaculation? Researchers in the Netherlands interested in the brain’s response during orgasm placed 11 grown men inside the scanner and prepared them for what can only be described as a unique scientific experience. Manual stimulation was performed by female partners, under controlled conditions—relaxed, perhaps even kinky, but controlled—while the men underwent the scan. Three of their eleven volunteers “did not succeed,” demonstrating with a bit less than 30% certainty that a troupe of lab-coated observers and a highly magnetic force-field do not make for the most romantic of environments.

And, for those less inclined to participate in a sex act within large supermagnetic scientific devices, there are more passive tasks. Like watching a movie. Scientists at Tel Aviv University had subjects watch 30 minutes of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly while their brains were being looked at through an fMRI machine. This technique of allowing a subject to “free view” a stimulus was an effort to get away from the controlled designs of most studies and attempt a more “real-world” experience. While the experience of watching monochrome words flashing on a screen is common to psychology studies and rather uncommon to daily life, plenty of us have relaxed to watch a film in a dark room. The study, however, was not without its carefully analyzed results: the data showed that different brains showed the same response to the same scenes in the movie. When Tuco assembled his new gun and carefully used his fingers to test the revolver’s cylinder, everyone in the study showed the same activity in brain regions responsible for hand movements; a comforting notion that perhaps we are more alike than we know.

Interesting results from a scientific premise that might have seemed more like a Blockbuster night than a report worthy of the journal Science. Which brings to mind an interesting point: what do these studies mean? How do we interpret them? Scientists argue that knowing the individual variations in response to pictures and movies, helps to aid in the proper diagnosis and treatment of certain visual brain disorders, and even how well those diagnoses can be generalized. The Dutch study mentioned above even claims important implications for the growing (apologies) industry of male sexual function. However the most common—and perhaps most valid—justification for these studies may be the same thing these scientists tell their grant committees; that this information can be helpful to understanding the brain as a whole and that any task, no matter how weird, may give us a better picture of what’s happening inside.

Woods at Night

I don't really have a hobby. Well, i'm a label snob, and i collect honeybuns from the vending machine downstairs like i was diabetic. But my favorite activity, besides writing, is walking in the woods at night. I've been living in cities for a few years now, so the experiences have been limited to parks--big urban parks, like Hyde Park in London or Frick Park in Pittsburgh. And often i have to climb a gate to get in or out of it; that's never really been a barrier to me, and the notion that i might get trapped in sometimes helps the aesthetic of the experience.

But that's what i like to do. Park at the edge of the forest, and start walking into the mix until i start getting that eerie feeling in my shorts. Its not exactly that i'm looking to scare myself; being scared usually only lasts a few minutes, even if you're watching a movie. Part of it is the lack of city-sounds, partly the solitude of it, but i think what attracts me most about my "hobby" is how much it forces myself to listen to my own thoughts. Not in any faggy self-reflective way, but in a real-time examination of how sporatic thought actually is. When you're in the woods at night, you forget about the memory of the things you love and hate, the things you're supposed to remember to worry about. The things that--for better or worse--have consistentcy in your own 10-year personal narrative.

I do think there's a soundtrack for this sort of thing, like any running narrative. Plenty of songs are evocative of the nocturnal hikes, whether its Rachel's Egon Schiele alubm, "Hutterite Mile" by 16 Horsepower, or most anything off Calla's Scavengers. Often what is most affecting about these songs is their spareness, as if they were trying to reflect the experience of walking in the woods at night. There can be the even sound of your footsteps, and , but its only the rustling armadillo that catches your attention.

The recent preponderance of albums written in barns and sheds demonstrates the desire to capture this musical emptiness. Admittedly, the acoustics provided by big hollow barns filled with hay are optimum for certain acoustic sounds, but the best examples of barn-music, Andrew Bird's Weather Systems, M. Ward's The Transfiguration of Vincent, Great Lake Swimmer's self titled album, and Mum's Summer Make Good (ok, it was recorded in a lighthouse, but its still creaky) all try to incorporate the rust and squeak of their natural setting as elements of the album.

Which means that if you're already in the woods (or a barn) the experience of listening to these albums places you in the context in which they're created, which makes the music itself more present, and sometimes off-putting. Kind of like when there's a police siren sample in some crunk rap and you look in your rearview mirror with no uncertain amount of fear. But beyond that, in the woods, there is a certain synchrony of mood and feeling that happens when and all you've got is the sound of a slide guitar, brushed drums, and an errant raccoon.

King Leer

At the risk of being labeled/teased as a breast fetishist (and gaining a massive upsurge in webtraffic). The links are obviously NSFW.


I have almost never laughed at a porn film. The enforced roles, the expectance romance, the predictable climaxes; it's all so pathetic, and isn't even pathetic enough for pity-based humor. And i haven't really been combing the galaxy for funny porn; i've seen my fairy-tale remakes and held my porn parties (which do NOT go over well in the UK), but i've by no means seen all 4 versions of Debbie Does Dallas. Only the original and the 1993 sequel. Both of which were laughable, but not really funny. I've heard the Broadway play is crap.

The one exception to this trend is the work of one late California movieman, Russ Meyer. Russ Meyer died a year ago last week, and its safe to say that his legacy will be preserved among the cult following of sexploitation fans and breast-idolaters he was quite successful at creating. Wikipedia actually classifies Russ's work not as pornography so much as ribaldry; its aims are centered around humor and satire. The archetypal example of the form is The Miller's Tale, or any of the more sordid bits of The Cantebury Tales, while Barbarella or Bettie Balhaus might be better modern examples. In perhaps his greatest example of the form, Meyer was able to parody both a mainstream Hollywood flic (Valley of the Dolls) with his own creation (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) and then parody that film in Beyond the Valley of the UltraVixens, his funniest (and last) film, in which cock-punching, big black mechanics, and ravenous homosexual dentists are all running themes.

The most provocative of Russ's films came in 1976, with the release of Up! In some sense, this is where he started losing it. The film opens with Hitler getting gang raped by a gigalo in a Pilgrim outfit and his cadre of geishas and gimps. He is then eaten alive by a "piranafish" (actually a black angelfish) while reading his German newspaper in a Bavarian castle somewhere in small-town central California. The rest of the film focusses on a buxom L.A. cop Margo Winchester (Raven De La Croix) who, well, investigates the case in spandex tops and her best Mae West coo. People start saying stuff like, "I'd really like to strap you on," and "Oooh, you're red. You been screwing an Indian?"

I won't ruin it for you, but they're a lot of humping and the Nazi's get their dishes. But it's a romp, the whole way through. Russ wasn't a fan of intercourse on film (Up! is the only one of his films to show extended representations of coitus), so most of the action is simulated (ridiculously) or implied. The sex acts and rhythms are parodies of themselves. There are homage shots to Bergman and Houston, historical references to Dresden and Austwitz, and a greek chorus consisting of one Kitten Navidad jaunting around the woods naked and excited, reciting plot points in Shakespearen pentameter and undulating more fiercely as the story draws closer to its climactic...oh you get the idea.

With such a ridiculous premise/plot/dialogue/delivery, Up! (like most of Russ' films) is never really played for eroticsm. Sure, Mondo Topless is the 2hr jiggle concept film, Motorpsycho is an excuse to put huge boobs on a Harley, and Wild Gals of the Naked West consists almost exclusively of a cowboy's dream of a bordertown run by oversexed women. But for every Europe in the Raw there is a Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, for every Blacksnake! there is a Cherry, Harry and Raquel! There's also probably an exclamation point for every buxom starlet.

While the first half of his oevre ran the sexploitation gamut, Russ in the later half of his career was clearly after more than just putting tits on screen in new and interesting ways. He wanted fun, and the only way he could rationalize fun with his obssesion for busty women was to place them in increasingly ridiculous situations of power or oddity. He is no feminist--to be sure, there's a decent string of good-ole-boy misogyny running through a fair number of the pictures--but he had respect enough for the women he filmed to give them unique roles. Who else can boast a Japanese Hilter-killing gimp?

(To actually see this raucus LoonyBoobs spectacle, your only options are either a fiercly independent video rental store, or purchasing online. US region 1 dvds go for over $40, but if you can manage multi-region dvds (try VLC!), almost ALL of Russ' films have been released in the UK, for relatively cheap ~£10. Roger Ebert remembers Russ in the Guardian on the event of their release.)

Nuts on Toast

For some reason, most all of my friends are beginner to pro bike fiends. This has occured in absentia of my own interest in bicycles, and frankly i've always considered the trend a little spooky. But, now AH-HA! the upper hand!

Not that i care about reproducing, but i suspect they do.