Paul Barker

Christopher Drew is different and thus kind of cooler than other famous teenagers, like Justin Bieber, because he is an artist’s artist. Which is to say, the dude is a little cuckoo. And that his priorities aren’t necessarily all about making mad bank and getting his dick wet. Dude writes poetry and distributes it via MySpace for goodness sake.

In Imperial Bedrooms, Clay buys two escorts –– a teenaged boy and girl –– and brings them to a house in Palm Springs. The boy is from down under, Australia. The girl from the Bible Belt, Memphis. At one point, Clay is “smeared in shit” and pushes his fist into the girl. She shrieks with shock until the boy stuffs her mouth with his cock, gagging her. Shortly thereafter, Clay tells us that “the devil was calling out to [the girl] but it didn’t scare her anymore because she wanted to talk to him.” All the while, in the background, a group of crickets buzz and hiss incessantly.

July 1776 folds into February 2008: Jefferson and Obama merge. The visual motifs of McGiney revitalize the verse of Whitman. The gold rush pioneer morphs into the post-recession innovator or agent of change.