pinpointed for oblivion

Subject:	Jarkko's intro to Dynamic Inebriaism
Time:	11:56 pm.
Mood:	Jarkko.

"Of course, it all started in the streets": Some notes toward an adequate understanding of Dynamic Inebriaism.

"[t]he bar is like our art gallery. And we'll art you all night long. Ungentle shall be the manner of our arting." --Drake Drysdale Tinzeroes

O. Introduction.

"Life's not just about getting drunk and riding bikes. Sometimes it's also about getting drunk. Thus, our dojo of Dynamic Inebriaism has arisen. For the uninitiated, we demonstrate the art of drinking, while our founders and practitioners perpetrate drinking as art. Regardless, it involves atrocious acts of violence directed at one's own body, particularly the liver. What separates us from (mere(ly)) functional alcoholics is that our acts are not for their own sake, nor for merely personal reasons: these acts are social acts, and (therefore) political/artistic acts. Dynamic Inebriaism dictates being a jackass when you're drinking: a transcendent, joyous jackass, which is fun, funny, and wholesome. We disdain and reprehend those who drink and (to?) become jerks, who are grating, braying, stupid and annoying. Jerks need to shut the fuck up, and tip better, and we will help them with both. With gusto! It's painful, it's emotional, usually it's funny. It is a labor of love." (Tinzeroes [2000]2004:286)

With these words, Drake Drysdale Tinzeroes announced the codification, clarification, and organization of a set of artistic/political principles which he called Dynamic Inebriaism (DI). Developing in the streets of Portland over the mid-90s, DI and its adherents boast an ever-expanding repertoire of projects, and have generated interest and criticism across the world. In this brief introduction to DI to date, my aim is to sketch the principles and principals of DI, in that order. I will be much more complete in the first section: the intellectual historification of DI must take precedence over the merely biographical (gossipy) recounting of exploit, granting of credit, and so on. In the final sections, I will lightly annotate a selected bibliography of DI works, and provide a brief conclusion.

A note on format, and one on terminology. First, words in italics usually denote DI terms for main tendencies within DI theory and praxis. There is, however, no glossary. Occasionally italicized words simply indicate, in accordance with standard practice, the title of a periodically published publication. Second, I shall use the abbreviatory term "DI" throughout with a systematic ambiguity. It shall refer variously to: an abstract body of ideas; a group of people (Dynamic Inebriates); a collection of work(s) (by those people, involving that body of ideas: Dynamic Inebriaic work(s)). Where context does not indicate which of these readings is appropriate, I am referring to all of them with simultaneity. Caveat lector!

1. On the principles of DI.

DI blurs distinctions between art, everyday life, and political activity. Precisely, it demonstrates that those three putatively separate categories of social existence are--or at least can be--one and the same. This exciting blurring is achieved through the combination of alcohol in conjunction with at least one of the following: performace; improvisatory play, social criticism. At its most inspired, and towards the end of the night, DI can achieve actual revolution. I shall treat of these in turn.

Performance:
DI is (currently thought to be) possible only in public. It requires both shared space and other--specifically non-DI--people. Shared space usually ranges from truly public areas to privately-owned facilities open to the public, as in Tinzeroes' famous aphorism "of course, it started in the streets. Then we took it to the bars." (Tinzeroes [1995]2004:i, et passim) (Note here that a bar inevitably provides both public space and non-DI people, if only the captive employees.)

Tinzeroes on the importance of the streets to DI merits quoting at length:

In Portland, you get mainly two things. You get the streets, which are inviting here, a milieu that absolutely demands your presence and your action. These streets are artisans, turning out bespoke inhabitants and, inevitably, furious participants. If you can ride the streets of Portland without stirring toward productive madness, you likely have no soul. And you get drinking. You've got a thirst, Portland. We've got one. (Tinzeroes [1996]2004:10-11)

Another key space-based element of DI performance practice involves the expropriation of private space, a redefining of environmental eventualities: crashing a party, or barging in general. And of course there are social parallels to these spatial practices, like butting (a form of verbal barging). Interrupting is another DI hallmark.

The public serves variously as inspiration, foil, fodder, or target. Verbal (inter-) action is key; indeed it is so vital to the DI enterprise that Tinzeroes has occasionally quipped that "the primal DI act is the heckle" (italics mine). (Tinzeroes [2002]2004:314-5 See also Canadian 1995 and Tinzeroes 2001b) As in the crucial text excerpted above, the crucial distinction to be made is between the jackass and the jerk. Tinzeroes on the line to be drawn:

[be] loud without being a blowhard, forceful and never belligerent, entertaining without needing attention. And no keg stands ever. (Tinzeroes [1997]2004:619)

Improvisatory play:
Mainly a can-you-top-this verbal interaction, creating edifices of offensiveness most within earshot will find alternately bizarre and garnering reactions from involuntary overhearers running the gamut from A to B. (In this case, from 'appalled' to 'blanching in disgusted fear'.) Group bike rides--bar to porch, for example--offer much the same fluid dynamic of interaction; here, bruised bodies stand in for shredded egos. Tinzeroes: "Rules? We make them up as we go along. Then we ignore them, mostly." (Tinzeroes [2001a]2004:78) On a smaller scale, this tendency within DI produced the scripts for ST and CC's long-running puppet show Super! Hero! Shared! Housing! (as yet uncollected).

Social criticism:
DI's social-critical activities operate on many levels. At the macro level, their insistence on public drunken un(der)employment calls into question the entire tottering structure of late capitalism. (Many onlookers have argued that their very existence undermines any remaining case for the existence of god.) A steady avalanche of enthusiastic explorations of, say, finger-bangery will offer a spirited denunciation of what pass for mores in these degraded times. On the micro level, DI practioners are terribly involved with calling bullshit (usually on strangers down the bar) and asking 'what the fuck is wrong with you?' (ditto). This uninvited abuse-based form of policing (see Tinzeroes 1997) is an exciting advance over the typically consensual shame-based moral economies of savages (see the fields of anthropology and philosophy).

2. On the principals of DI.
D. D. Tinzeroes:
It is impossible to explain this man's role in DI without invoking the names "Guy Debord" and "Clement Greenberg", and not just because all can be described as "pompous bowtied windbag with a pencil-thin moustache and a steady stream of cabana boys on his arm". No, also because both made important pieces of art, in a new style, and then told people how to look at the works, and how to interpret the style. At mind-bendingly specific length.

No one invented DI, but DDT was unquestionably the one who wove its elements together explicitly first, and it was he who named it, and he who championed it in his publications, encouraged others to participate. Easily the most important figure in DI, and the most influential. Honorary doctorate from Kuolema/Jokerit College, currently teaching there.

Some of his many highlights include: drunken swordplay in the workplace; major works of scholarship on figures ranging from "the chick from Species" to Mars M. Stoonz to Terri Hatcher; articles, polemics, manifestoes, and analyses on literally every known element of DI, many collected in his 2004 volume of selected works; major editorial contributions to both I.D.E.A. and B3, the latter being an omnivorous review collective disguising revolution as social commentary, then disguising social commentary as eating fast food and watching American Cyborg: Steel Warrior. Also responsible for the scripts to most of the Drunken Bunny cartoons. Currently said to be at work on a pair of colossal tomes of DI, one on inside jokes, the other on electronic music.

Signature move: Text, with intermittent bouts of violence.
Signature lines: "What you clearly have failed to comprehend is..." "If you didn't want to know, what the fuck did you ask me for?"

Silken Thomas:
Earliest known associate of DDT. Brought many of the principles of DI into Chvnk. Important film-maker, propogandist and nets provacateur. Known for a creepy grin, picking on the ladies, and firm opinions. Made an important contribution to DI theory by discovering da Vinci's watering hole. He realized that his bikes were actually getting built at the bar, in conversations, as much as with wrench and torch and pile at the shop. He then theorized that what happens to the bikes in the shop is what happens to the DI people talking, down at da Vinci's watering hole. Bizarrely, dispenses sex advice on the internet.

Major emmisary of both Chvnk and DI through his travels and relentless committment to mingling. Photographer, puppeteer, and cartoonist; responsible for much of the branding of both movements.

Signature line: "Hey, so I heard about this party we could crash."
Signature move: Creepy grin, followed by lots of bad touches.

C. Collision:
Diarist. Unstinting chronicler and staunch embodiment of day-to-day DI. Convinced that boring anecdotes are art: warrior poet of the habitual, with a prose style best described as "avalanche of minutiaes". King of inessentia. Conisseur of strippers, whose ongoing zine project Rack Notes first suggested the contours of the field known as "stripper studies" (as I showed in Clenninden 2001:118-42, et passim). Evan Williams and Oly enthusiast, probably the most committed pure drinker in the DI crew. A drunkard's drunkard, widely known as "the death of the party" for his crushingly dull tales and alcohol-exacerbated self-pity. Likes: reading in bars, explaining things, the wailing guitars and the crash of the drums. Dislikes: being talked to by strangers, taking showers. Of late has claimed to be the originator of the phrase "life isn't all about getting drunk and riding bikes. Sometimes it's also about getting drunk." Usually grumpy, recently discovered the gin and tonic.

Signature moves: bourbon rocks, bottle back; snakebiting a sixer of talls.
Signature line: "If you'd shut up for a fucking second, you might actually learn something."

Airport Dickstain:
Not precisely an adherent of DI, Dickstain was an early influence, something of a covert founder. Through his early work in music and fashion, he strove to put the revolting squarely at the center of revolution, picked up on several DI practioners in later years. (See TruckStop WHORES 2002a, 2002b.) After the band broke up, he took up a career as a travel artist. These travel exploits, and his demented accounts thereof, are probably the first works wholly embodying DI principles. Harrowing to read, and tiresome to hear about, his impassioned and impaired visions of Barcelona streets, London sheets, Salt Lake City vomit, Chicago whores and acid in Kansas provided a bar-napkin sketch of DI from the perspective of a strange and unpleasant man far from home. (See Dickstain 2001c.)

Other notable moments: showed up to a hippie wedding with a sleeveless tshirt and a case of Milwaukee's Best Ice. Got cut off at the reception of another wedding. Short-lived photozine (Dickstain 2003) got wretched reviews. Three separate tattoos involving the word "kunt". Expelled from the Guitar Institute of Hard Knocks.

Most recently, in Dickstain 2005, he provides a vile and unsettled account of a visit to Seattle, focussing upon patries, pasties, bourbon, and magazines of pornography. Other than that, little has been heard of from AD the past couple years. Nobody seems to mind much. Some speculate he has moved to Oakland; his ex-girlfriend (see Jimmy Caruthers) claims "he's down in Chino, doing a nickel on a statch beef".

Signature move: Crashes your (keg/cocktail/key/costume, etc.) party with a six-pack of tall cans, explaining "I don't wanna owe you assholes anything."
Signature line: "You watch this band on your knees, bitches!"

Jimmy Caruthers:
Travel artist along the lines of Airport Dickstain; slightly artier, more successful at nailing broads. Actually in Europe through the duration of Dickstain's European ASSault Tour of 2001, though they never hooked up. Holds advanced degrees in thugonomics and girlology. Terrific wrestler if you're wearing a skirt. Champion public pisser. Former manager of New Skull, greatest DI band of all time; currently patron, manager, and handler of Culo Juice, semi-retired singer. Once got Dickstain's girlfriend to dress like a whore on-stage. Available to mc your party for a nominal fee.

Signature move: Balls like baking potatoes in a bread sack.
Signature line: "What, dude!? I thought you knew your girlfriend was hot! Fag."

The Canadian:
Early collaborator. Illegal immigrant, later deported. Made important contributions to thinskinnedism, condesencion, and wealth of irrelevance. Case study in the canonical Lester Bangs text You Can Live Like a Billionaire on No Income: I Do All the Time, and This Book Tells How. Core heckler. Pioneer of unemploymentedistics, currently reduced to working three jobs and volunteering on the side. Working on a piece called "Twenty-three ways of looking at a mandal" (italics mine).

Signature move: Coming to our country to drink our beer, sleep with our women, and to try as hard as Canadianly possible to avoid taking a job away from anybody.
Signature line: "With me or at me, as long as they're laughing."

Megulon-5:
As D. D. Tinzeroes is to DI, so is M5 to Chvnk 666, which serves as the best-developed project deriving from DI principles. Admirable insistence on pinball. Doesn't get out much anymore, sadly.

Signature move: Insincere, bland, blinking politeness staving off a punching.
Signature line: "Clear the streets! Return to your homes!"

3. A selected bibliography of DI (with annotations here and there).

Canadian. 1995. "Let us now shout abuse at famous men." Unpublished mimeograph, widely circulated prior to the discovery of the nets.
Caruthers, Jimmy. A warm, wet place to put my penis: Oral histories and photoessays of Portland's back doors and bathroom windows. Ongoing, irregularly published zine, stretching back to 1994. This work demonstrates, among other things, that Caruthers is easily the premier nonconsensual photojournalist of DI. Better libraries will have his landmark fifth issue, "Forms of stalk; forms of cock: A rope of sand", still the most chilling evocations ever written about the cycle between angry public interaction, angry sexual interaction, and, often, back.
Caruthers, Jimmy. 2000. Libations in public Unpublished, and indeed rejected, M.A. thesis. Terrific, though unsysematic, accounts drawn from work Caruthers had done across the globe to that point.
Clenninden, Jarkko. 1998. What happens when the colored F.B.I. guy observes the negro observers in the Mexican caravan? Some racial tropes from a likely candidate Kuolema/Jokerit College Press.
Clenninden, Jarkko. 2001. Toward an Anthropology of the Easy Girl Unpublished, available from the author for a nominal fee.
Collision, Chris. Rack Notes Uncollected occasional zines from 1996 through 2005. Sadly, illustrated only via crude pencilled cross-hatching.
Dickstain, Airport. 2001a. European ASSault Tour Out of print zine.
Dickstain, Airport. 2001b. USA SINe Wave Tour Out of print zine.
Dickstain, Airport. 2001c. Planuh Tammer Tour Comprising the previous two self-publications, with a few otherwise unavailable travel pieces. In most major zine libraries: if AD ever turns up again, copies will likely also surface.
Dickstain, Airport. 2003. I sharpie out my dick to make it look bigger: Pix of public sinks in which I have of late piss'd Hopefully out-of-print photozine. Pointless and offensive. Worth owning exclusively to inventory sinks to avoid.
Dickstain, Airport. 2005. (Fucked) up in the old hotel: Tales from the Moore hotel, Seattle, WA, november 2004 Text-heavy zine, with a few of his trademark grease-pencil drawings of the sights and sites of his travels.
New Skull. 2000. Rock on the mind: Greatest Hits LP Out of print.
Tinzeroes, D. D. 1995. On the poverty of sober life: considered in its economic, political, psychological, sexual and especially intellectual aspects, with a modest proposal for its remedy The first explicit text and still the bible of DI. A monumental achievement whose staggering implications are only now starting to be understood.
Tinzeroes, D. D. 1996. A revolution in everyday drinking A difficult text, full of forbidding neo-post-Hegalian abstraction. Worthwhile mainly for its strikingly well-rendered anecdotes of the early days of DI. One feels sure that, having read this work, one could navigate the streets of his city with perfect accuracy, no matter how much drinking had been done, so precise is the sense of place.
Tinzeroes, D. D. 1997. "In your face with a 'fuck you', pal!": Preliminary investigations of the jerk and his rebuking and of the Dynamic Inebriaist perpetrator's conditions of organization and action No theory here! Nothing but rigorously observed, described and classified moments of public action. Few readers have made it all the way through this encylopediac examination of the possibilities of Inebriaism, in both its positive and negative aspects, and it is to this fact that we owe the current underdevelopment of our theory and practice. Like a hundred thousand bar fights committed to paper.
Tinzeroes, D. D. 2000. Society of the dynamic inebriate Thorough revisiting of DI thought up to that time. Easily the best introduction to DI, and other than Tinzeroes 1995, its most essential work.
Tinzeroes, D. D. 2001a. Perspectives for drunken alterations in everyday life: An interview with myself Transcript of an impromptu lecture delivered in Denver, Colorado's Lancer Lounge. A marvellous demonstration of Tinzeroes' masterful technique of rhetorical questioning, and full of those off-the-cuff brilliances so beloved by DDT's co-workers and magazine staffers. Skillful, enthusiastic agitprop. Thought to be the (verbal) "second draft" of a lecture delivered the previous night at the Lion's Lair; no recording exists of this, however.
Tinzeroes, D. D. 2001b. badinage, persiflage, banter...: A contribution to the typology of interactive verbal abusery AKA "Why little Johnny's got shit on his lips!" Another transcript of DDT in rare form, verbally engaging essentially every patron of a Portland bar over the span of three hours. Yet another massive achievement, this night of work synthesized and demonstrated all available knowledge on the topic of shit-talking. Perhaps Tinzeroes' most affectionate tribute to Airport Dickstain to date. (His life, his work, his person.) A tiny potion of this material was formalized the next year.
Tinzeroes, D. D., ed. 2001. Bad Food, Bad Movies, Bad People: Harsh Judgments on Divers Species of Poisonous Failure Kuolema/Jokerit College Press Essential collection of reviews from the B3 collective. Pungent incites and trenchant analyses on topics from Golan/Globus to Escape From L. A.
Tinzeroes, D. D. 2002. New rules of Dynamic Inebriaist method Kuolema/Jokerit College Press. DDT's first wholly innovative theoretical text in years. Glittering aphoristic prose, authoritative incites, and analysis with neither peer nor flaw. Almost impenetrable for the lay reader, but a great lay for the penetratable reader.
Tinzeroes, D. D. 2004. "Bring me the head of the chick from Species": Selected writings 1982-2006 Kuolema/Jokerit College Press Comprising a tiny fraction of DDT's works, this 800-page behemoth absolutely must be owned by everyone everywhere at all times.
TruckStop WHORES. 2002a. I just wanna smoke my trust fund 2xLP: Falesafe records, Portland OR, USA. Comprising all known recordings, including live material.
TruckStop WHORES. 2002b. Dickstain Tutu DVD: Falesafe records, Portland OR, USA. Two live shows, including the legendary first, featuring Homie in the haystack and a violent rebuke to the intrusive Culo Juice.

4. Conclusion.

The proper historification of DI can hardly be begun. DI itself has only just begun, and remains full of "unfinished, or soon-to-be-unfinished projects". (Canadian, p.c.) In this brief introductory guide, I have tried only to provide a rough outline of the current shape of what began on rainy streets in the turbulent 90s, when a small coterie seized their Portland-granted birthrights and began to hit the bars hard, fast, deep and long. These Campfire Girls of debauchery--giggly, handy, and inappropriate to fantasize about--have cut quite a swath through the political and art worlds, and surely have only just begun.

DI, as I have attempted to illustrate, is essentially a set of ideas about certain types of social action. Within DI practice, public interactions are undertaken, (largely) in order to undermine currently dominant or fashionable notions on a variety of topics. These targets include, on an average night: the nature of the appropriate/inappropriate; what precisely can we agree (not) to talk about; what exactly can (not) be joked about; and the relationship between alcohol consumption and worth, productivity, and behavior, often from a sexual perspective.

DI enacts various sorts of usually inacceptable behavior, in a joyous and non-damaging fashion. Through these means, DI seeks simultaneously to criticize and replace current social modes of living economically, morally, politically, artistically/aesthetically, transportationally, conversationally, sexually, and so forth. Every element of DI insists: if it can be done in public, then, if done according to DI priciples, it can be done better:

"[Y]ou can't imagine the fun we're having, because you have never mobilized the counterpushpull both of (a) dynamism and (b) inebriaism. These two things, you must, drinkers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your restraint!" (Tinzeroes [2001a]2004:93)

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