jacobjacobjacob

Dirty South Goth Weed Zombie. www.thisisjacobshelton.com

[jacobshelton]

Dumpster Diary 1: The Dumpster

The dumpster isn’t meant to be destroyed but I know it’s inevitable. I’ve been dreaming of destroying it for days, weeks even. Every time I sit down to paint a wall, create a molding for the front or glue another piece together I imagine pouring it into the ocean, setting it on fire, or tearing it to pieces.

I finally put the whole thing together this morning. It’s not a question of if it falls apart, but when. In transport? During a sudden thunderstorm? Maybe the whole thing will fall apart in the middle of a scene, wouldn’t that be brilliant? I’ve only now realized that I still need to build a door so we can get in and out of the dumpster without resorting to Olympian feats. Also I need more zip ties.

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What I Think Of When I Listen To OK Computer

OK Computer makes me think of a guitar teacher I studied under in college, he was a nightmare. A pedantic, completely coked up jazz freak, who worshipped at the altar of Radiohead – specifically OK Computer. We had a one on one class two days out of the week at ten in the morning and more times than not our time together was spent with the teacher, let’s call him “Liam,” telling me how genius Johnny Greenwood was for creating his own musical scales, and berating me for not sharing, or caring about this particular form of genius. Then he would either play John Coltrane on the guitar (the best way to hear the bird), or he would tell me why playing a Steinberger was better for intonation and staying in tune. That may be true, but it’s also for nerds.

Liam’s devotion to wonky guitar nerd music, and seeming need to direct all of his vitriol about not being lauded as a guitar genius, was so traumatizing that whenever I hear anything from the first three Radiohead albums I immediately think of him and feel embarrassed. When the opening chords of “High and Dry,” a song I had to “noodle around on” for my final, waft through a super market I tense up, worrying that someone will hand me a guitar and asked me to play through the scales, inventing variations as I go.

The only victory I was able to hold over Liam was the morning when he lugged in two guitar cases into our cramped practice space. One held a stock, white, Stratocaster, the other a gold top Les Paul. He had just joined a 70s, 80s, and 90s cover band and had been told that he had to play an instrument that fit the band’s aesthetic. As we tried to play through whatever song he felt that I could handle he kept stopping to complain about the guitar; the action, the neck, the bridge, everything, while switching between the two of them. Then he explained that he would do what he to do to make money before bringing our lesson to an abrupt end. After that day he grew more passive aggressive about my playing until I stopped going to class, vowing to listen exclusively to post-guitar Radiohead for the next 12 years.

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I Watched Nine Friday the 13th Movies and All I Got Were These Rambling Thoughts

Nine Friday the 13th Movies. Nine. I didn’t watch Jason X or Freddy Vs. Jason because I have some semblance of self-respect – also because they weren’t playing on Amazon Prime. I guess the only thing that comes to mind when I think about the 18ish hours of hockey masked slasher action that I’ve watched is, “What the fuck?” 

Seriously what the fuck is happening in these movies? Is there a through line from Friday the 13th to Friday the 13th 3D other than a string of dead teens? The first two films make total sense together (more or less), but beyond those two pieces of classic horror cinema it’s hard to make heads or tails of the series. I'm not going to review the movies one by one because if I did that I would lose my mind. This is more of a loose collection of thoughts on the canonical series as a whole- although I suppose that Jason X and FvJ are also a part of the canon, for the time being let’s call them “non-amazon prime canon” or NAPC.

I hate to say this but after watching all 9 films in such a short span of time (7 days I think), and without taking notes, the things that stick out to me are mostly the worst parts of the films: The “Enchilada” scene, Crispin Glover, and the horror film obsessed Tommy Jarvis - one of the most poorly executed characters in cinema history. Tommy should have been a woman, no questions asked. The dynamic between Jason (or any slasher) and a female protagonist carry so much more weight because of the visual of a hulking beast with crushing mother issues chasing down a young woman, even with the ridiculous hockey mask it's an all too real fear. By casting a trio of Tommy Jarvises into a series of loosely connected narratives the films turn into a disappointing dick measuring contest (aren’t they all?) that culminates with an ending that I can’t even remember. I think Jason ends up chained to the bottom of Crystal Lake and Tommy sets himself on fire.

It’s impossible to avoid looking for meaning in a horror film. More so than any other type of cinema they exist in the subconscious void where anything can happen. A lightning strike that brings a masked killer back from the dead? Sure. A psychic teen who can throw mind knives at her therapist, and who may have accidentally willed that same masked killer to murder her father? Go for it. The Friday the 13th series takes advantage of its ability to do anything, but their actions rarely mean anything. There is nothing to decipher other than the obvious. 

Here’s what I’ve learned from watching 9 Friday the 13th movies in less than a week:

- Never Swim In A Lake That's Recently Undergone A Mysterious Name Change

- Creepy Kids Are Creepy For A Reason

- Dads Are The Worst

- Moms:  Also Not Grea

Maybe there was nothing left to teach after Friday the 13th Part 2. Everyone had already figured out that the teens that cracked open the first beer or had sex the moment they arrived at camp would be the quickest to get the axe, so why not lean into it? If you’re going to end up with a machete in your head you might as well have fun. 

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Garth Brooks Eats Like a Dog

Have you ever discovered something so strange that you have to tell someone about it but don't actually know anyone would appreciate this knowledge? If so, then you know how I felt when I read this People Magazine article about Garth Brooks. The stand out piece of information here is that Garth Brooks eats like a dog. I don't know if he does this all the time, or when he's just trying to be VERY cool, but I love the way he describes what he does. 

“I said, ‘Just take your fork in your right hand. Okay, we’re going to beat it against the table three times then I want you to throw your fork over your shoulder.’ I said, ‘It’s okay.’ Beat it, beat it, and they hurled those forks, I mean just threw ’em. ‘What do we do now?’ I said, ‘Now, you eat like a dog.’ ”

Now you eat like a dog. 

[jacobshelton]

I made a thing for all you Halloween heads out there. 

[jacobshelton]

Origin Story

When Alex and I started dating I didn’t tell him about how my first boyfriend, Eliot, rescued me from a laboratory, or how he helped me open a portal to another dimension with the power of love. Like, real, true love. Who wants to hear something like that? On our first date I made the girls working at Cold Stone Creamery think everything in their store had melted. They didn’t understand why we wanted gooey puddles of thawed ice cream poured into waffle cones, but they gave it to us for free anyway. The Man in the Yellow Suit told

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Fog of Sound

In another life I made music that a specific group of people seemed to enjoy. Yesterday I was cutting up guitar parts on a plane, and today I’m sitting in a hotel waiting to watch people watch a short film I directed. Disassociation sounds overwrought but it feels accurate.

 I stopped performing in front of people in 2013, and that’s probably for the best. I could never fully enjoy myself in the moment, even when I played sober the performances are spotty. I know that I played in a small bar in New Orleans because my old roommate told me I covered Smashing Pumpkins to 30 drunk college kids, I know that I played in a small town in Illinois because I shaved my beard and had a friend draw a lightning bolt on my face. I do not remember Seattle, Portland, or New Jersey but they happened. I find that those moments come easier when I’m writing alone in my apartment. I’ll look through an old notebook and have no memory of the stories inside but they’re written in my serial killer handwriting so they’re probably mine. Creativity is strange. It bends and flexes with the landscape and disappears when you need it the most. I haven’t felt creative making music since I moved to Los Angeles. I play things when no one is around, but it’s always the same chord progressions, the same beats; nothing I would show anyone. On the plane yesterday I listened to a collection of things that I recorded over the course of a couple of months, then I cut at them until they adhered to some kind of dream logic. Plane logic? Unlike everything else I’ve been working on lately, I felt relieved to have this piece finished. To be able to close the door on whatever it was. It’s nice to now be able to apply a narrative to a time that was nothing but a confusing fog of sound. 

Central Daylight Time by Rad Wolf

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Anything To Mean Something

Why am I making myself worry about the Blair Witch and Ring reboots? I don’t care about either of them. For the most part I still like The Ring, although all the gothic atmospherics won’t save your film if the monster’s reveal is a dud, and I’ll talk your ear off about my capital L Love for the Blair Witch and its what could have been sequel if you let me. But there’s no reason that I should be wringing my hands over multi-million dollar properties.

I’m trying to listen to less podcasts. There are a few that I listen to religiously and I feel like I need to cut them out of my life so I can use the brain space they’re taking up for new ideas or facts about serial killers that I can spout off at parties. One podcast that’s proving to be difficult to excise is the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. His first season of episodes included incredible interviews with Alexander Aja, BJ Novak, and some really interesting people from the realms of music and film. But this year he’s been interviewing luminaries like John Carpenter and Peter Bogdanovich who, while once masters of an art form, have turned into grumpy old bastards who trot out the same tired bullshit about how the current generation of filmmakers and artists don’t have any soul. Or that people are just copying them, or blah blah blah set me on fire now please. Every time I listen to one of these interviews I spend an hour typing down every angry thought that comes to mind. I write full responses to people that don’t care what I think (and rightfully so, they both made some of the most influential films of the late 20th century), and that kind of reaction is taking up too much of my day.

 Do we put ourselves through emotional turmoil to avoid facing reality? Am I typing and deleting screeds against worn out directors because I don’t want to think about how much the repairs on my car cost? Nothing these people say or do can hurt me, so why do I care? In a world where nothing matters I’d really like anything to mean something. 

[jacobshelton]

Crack the Spine - Issue 197

Literary Magazine

Here’s a story about emotions and cutting off your own body parts. Enjoy?

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What a spooky morning!

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My friend Nick decided to take a break from comedy to cover The Lumineers and it couldn’t have gone better. 

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I love everything about this video. It makes me so happy. I love Chordelia. Does Chordelia love me? 

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restless procrastination

I don’t handle the time in between projects well. 

 When I work I like to feel like I’m being crushed under the weight of impossible tasks that I’ve taken on in exchange for paltry amounts of cash. I kind of hate myself for using paltry in a sentence. For the first time in months I’m entirely finished with one large project and the end of another is in sight. It’s dancing on the horizon and asking me to come do the worm, I’m just waiting on an email that says, "The check’s in the mail, and PS go do the worm with that intangible concept." 

There are always a few small things going on in the background, but none of them carry the struggle of life and death that I need to feel like I’m doing something as I sit in various states of undress at my dining room table. Currently I’m working on a few small projects with friends, which is fine if you like your work to feel like one big, never ending party where there are snacks and everyone goes out for a drink afterwards to bask in the promise that the next day will be even more rewarding. Personally I prefer my work to feel like a dare. I want a blank page to stare back at me, hissing and taunting me. Telling me that I’m going to embarrass myself in front of the world. I want a set full of actors to hand me a loaded gun and shove the barrel in my mouth. 

When everything is fun and games I become restless and start thinking about cutting off one of my feet to make things interesting. 

[jacobshelton]

I fixed this for you Citibank. 

[jacobshelton]

I had a blast last night working on the @nat.brut / spectacle AWP show. Please note the rad bolo tie worn by @kayla.e.tv #AWP #natbrut #bolotie #tedcruzisthezodiackiller

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I’ve been playing a lot of piano lately. 

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I’ve Never Liked Magicians, and Going on a Date With One Did Not Change That

This was all my fault. When I drink, I become what has been described as “extremely flirtatious.” Friends who care less about my feelings say that I become “what an Austin Powers impersonator wishe…

I wrote a story about going on a date with a magician, read it before it ~disappears~.