Chazzbot

Raiders of the Lost Ark (part 2)

2011-11-09T17:25:00.001-07:00

NOTE: The following is a work in progress. The entry here will be lengthened as writing continues. This is, as yet, unedited. Any comments and/or suggestions are welcome. Right now, I'm trying to get down all the details and see if this ends up going anywhere.

The flyer was otherwise vague on details, offering only a brief, inexplicable summary and tantalizing lines like this: “Raiders contains romantic interludes, dangerous liaisons and terrifying chases—high action elements that leave audiences on the edge of their seats.” In 2011, such descriptions seem sweetly innocent, almost naïve, but in 1981, coupled with promo photos and the now-iconic font of the film’s title, they seemed revelatory.

“OPENS THEATRES EVERYWHERE JUNE 12, 1981,” the flyer promised, and I believed.

As spring progressed, and the end of school approached, news came of another, slightly less exciting, event: my aunt and uncle were planning a summer road trip, and would be staying with our family for a number of days in early June. Accompanying them would be my aunt’s younger sister, Star, who was situated in age between me and my brother. What this basically meant to me was that I would soon be subjected to another ongoing round of my uncle’s puns involving the hateful coincidence of an advertising campaign featuring a tuna fish with my name and the brand name of a canned tuna that the fish promoted, seemingly unconcerned with the implications of his advertising a product made from the flesh of his own species. “Sorry, Charlie,” I could hear my uncle leer. “Star-Kist. Get it?” he said as his mouth widened into an obnoxious grin. “Star kissed?” I wanted to beat him.

An additional cause for annoyance was Star’s tendency to act older than she was, and her willingness to mingle with adults and join in their conversations. This struck me as not only highly pretentious (though I did not know what that word meant at the time), but as needlessly provocative, as if Star wanted to show us how much she deserved to join the company of adults, while lesser mortals were corralled in the rumpus room. She was, in short, snotty, and this provoked in me an irresistible urge to mock her at every turn (though never in the presence of the adults whose company she so craved). I simply could not fathom the idea of wanting to spend more time than was necessary with adults and their dreary conversations about money, or liquor, or sports, or unfunny jokes. Why, I wondered, would one not prefer the privacy of one’s own bedroom, where the drone of adult conversation could be drowned out by turning up the volume of one’s cassette recording of “Weird Al” Yankovic? (My attitude in this regard has not changed much in the last 30 years.)

Star, we learned, would be bringing a friend along on the road trip. This information I processed with a shrug, though if it had come only a year later, I would have experienced near-fatal paralysis at the prospect of an unknown girl spending a week in my house. And I had larger concerns—namely, how many days remained before I could go see Raiders of the Lost Ark. These otherwise meaningless days were filled by such activities as reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels, watching movies that were neither well-promoted nor mysterious (like Flash Gordon), and going to the mall, which, according to the diary I kept, was “full of chicks.” Though I felt life was largely pointless until I could see Raiders of the Lost Ark, it did serve the arguably valuable purpose of allowing me time to further establish for all the world to see that I was a highly credentialed and hopelessly doomed nerd. (Tarzan novels. Seriously.)

In the early days of June, my uncle, aunt, and grandmother arrived, along with Star and her friend, Jamal. Jamal seemed to me a peculiarly exotic name for a girl, and in my later years (post-Cosby Show, that is) would seem even more peculiar. Though I never thought to ask the origins of her name, I suppose it might have had something to do with her own origins as a girl born in the early 1970’s to parents residing in Northern California. Jamal was short, blonde, and situated somewhere in that awkward phase between “spunky” and “sassy.” I am pretty sure she had not yet reached puberty, because there is no mention in my diary of her breasts.

I had not seen Star for a year or two, but, though initially shy and reserved, she didn’t seem much different. As someone who was just beginning to sense the social ostracization that accompanied higher-than-average intelligence (remember: I was reading Tarzan novels), I recognized in her a kind of kindred spirit, though, as the daughter, sister, and sister-in-law of professional educators, Star was probably far less ostracized—at least at home—than I was. This in no way prevented the deployment of my scorn, though this was done as subtly as possible, or as subtly as possible for a 13-year old nerd who enjoyed listening to Dr. Demento.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

2011-10-24T16:17:00.003-07:00

In the spring of 1981, the greatest movie ever made was The Empire Strikes Back, the greatest band in history was E.L.O., and I was 13 years old. The clarity of my mind and opinions at that age was aided by several key factors: the Star Wars films did not yet need to be designated by their episodic chapter numbers, for one, and there was no reason to believe that whatever sequel followed in 1983 (or whenever it showed up) would not raise the bar as high as it had been raised by Empire. For as jaw-droppingly great as Star Wars had been, The Empire Strikes Back had taken everything that worked in the first film and somehow made it even better—the dialogue, the special effects, the characters, the power of the Imperial Fleet—everything. The future of the Star Wars Saga seemed bright.

Another key factor: I hadn’t heard of many other bands that could do what E.L.O. seemed to do routinely and with ease, which was to make songs that were not only within the range of my vocal abilities, but to package them in grandiose album cover art that depicted spaceships in bright, primary colors that were replicated as massive stages when the band went on tour (not that I would ever see them live at my tender age). And the lyrics of the songs were about things like lions giving speeches in the jungle about our “great blue ship,” and aliens visiting Planet Earth from “a distant place and time.”

I had nearly completed my first year of junior high, doing well in most of my classes, other than P.E. and shop, and I had started getting the attention of others. Certainly not any girls and few, if any, of my male peers, but my English and journalism teachers seemed to think I was worth special attention. “You have some very real talents,” my 7^th grade English teacher, Mr. Dobson, had written in my yearbook. “Use them.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, but it sounded encouraging.

There was no reason to think that things would not just keep getting better and better. NASA had even successfully launched a Space Shuttle, a reusable orbital spacecraft! My phone call request for “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Another One Rides the Bus” had been played on the Dr. Demento Show! I was the King of the World.

And sometime that spring came yet another indication that all the stars were aligned in my world. A mysterious letter, sent from the Official Star Wars Fan Club, showed up in the mail. The Official Star Wars Fan Club and I had joined forces shortly after I first heard news of an impending sequel to Star Wars. The Official Star Wars Fan Club, in those pre-internet days, seemed the only reliable source for news and updates of the latest chapter in the Star Wars saga, and I happily submitted my $15 membership fee, which, in addition to several tangible benefits like stickers, posters, and patches, ensured bimonthly delivery of Bantha Tracks, the official newsletter of the Official Star Wars Fan Club. I was an Insider, a status I proudly demonstrated to the world by repeatedly wearing my Official Star Wars Fan Club jersey to school, hastening the separation of myself from my peers, particularly the girls.

But such concerns were trivial once the mysterious letter was torn open in my shaking hands. For there, on an 8X12 flyer, were four color photos from something called Raiders of the Lost Ark, “the result,” the flyer declared, “of one of the most significant filmmaking collaborations in motion picture history.” Directed by Steven Spielberg! Conceived by George Lucas! Starring Harrison Ford! Holy crap!

Chazzbot II

2010-08-31T09:49:00.002-07:00

Since ending this blog in 2009, I have received 36 comments on my final post, more than I recall receiving on any other post in the 3 1/2 years this blog was active. Since that time, I have gravitated toward Facebook, where I can share my opinions and rantings among those people who already know me, and where I seem to receive much more immediate feedback than I did with this blog.

For those of you who don't know me personally--and since most of those 36 comments have been written in a language I can't read, I'm assuming that includes many of you--and who wish to continue the dialogue that began on these pages, I encourage you to follow me on Tumblr, where I have started a new blog, creatively named Chazzbot II.

Chazzbot II is different in kind and purpose than this blog. On the new blog, I generally post quotations and images that I find interesting, amusing, or engaging in some way. If there is a theme or guiding principle behind Chazzbot II, it comes in the form of lyrics from Neko Case's song, "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood":

It's not for you to know
But for you to weep and wonder
When the death of your civilization precedes you.

(The only video I can find for the song consists of, appropriately enough for me, a montage of scenes from Battlestar Galactica. Enjoy?)

Chazzbot II, then, is less of an editorial page and more of a Victorian-style memory book. Though I rarely comment on my postings, and I haven't set up the blog for outside comments, it is my hope that the new blog serves as a kind of launching pad for new ideas, or at least as a means of promoting authors and other creators who I think might be worth your attention.

Anyway, if you have find my comments here of interest, please visit my new site. And, for those of you who commented on any of my postings here, thank you for bringing me out of the wilderness, at least for a time, and for your willingness to listen to my ramblings.

Chazzbot is dead. Long live Chazzbot II!

Goodbye Is Too Good a Word

2009-01-23T09:22:00.003-07:00

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together:
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, "Don't hope
On this side of the grave."
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

--Seamus Heaney

The Cure at Troy

The Official Theme Song of the George W. Bush Presidency

2009-01-13T22:43:00.001-07:00

The Final George W. Bush Press Conference

2009-01-13T22:30:00.001-07:00

A clueless, pathetic fucking embarassment, to the last.

LDS Relief Society: Creatively Bankrupt?

2009-01-13T22:16:00.003-07:00

Sometime during the Christmas season, a hand towel and a candy cane appeared on my doorstep, accompanied by the following letter. Either the Relief Society is rapidly running out of ideas, or the members have all suddenly become rampant fans of Douglas Adams:

The Towel

At first glance, one looks at a kitchen towel and thinks, "Wow, a towel. . . I needed a new one," or, "Wow, a towel, the old ones are getting stained and worn." But, have we ever stopped to think that for years, even thousands of years, the towel has not just been used in the kitchen, but for a variety of reasons?

Take for example: the mother who wipes the tears off a little child to sooth the physical and emotional hurt; the physician who binds the wounds of a bleeding patient; a woman in her home wiping her hands as she moves from task to task; the weary traveler who wipes his sweated brow; the manager of a boxer who "throws in the towel" to save the life of his protege; or the young man wiping the grease off his hands as he fixed the old jalopy.

Not withstanding all the above examples, perhaps the most significant use of the towel was about two thousand years ago when our loving brother took an ordinary towel in his hands and dried the feet of his disciples only hours before his crucifixion.

Sure, the towel is a handy item with a myriad of uses; but it also had a deep symbolic meaning when seen in the hands of the Savior doing a work of kindness for his fellow men.

So, take this towel, knowing it is given with love, and do works of goodness with it, as the Savior worked goodness with his, so many years ago.

With love,

The *********** Ward Relief Society Presidency

Really? A towel?

All in all, I think I'd rather receive another copy of the Book of Mormon.

The New Gestapo

2008-12-02T23:51:00.002-07:00

VIA EMAIL
November 17, 2008
Southern Utah University
351 W Center St
Cedar City, UT 84720

Re: Copyright infringement

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am contacting you on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. (RIAA) and its member record companies. The RIAA is a trade association whose member companies create, manufacture, and distribute approximately ninety (90) percent of all legitimate sound recordings sold in the United States. Under penalty of perjury, we submit that the RIAA is authorized to act on behalf of its member companies in matters involving the infringement of their sound recordings, including enforcing their copyrights and common law rights on the Internet.

We believe a user on your network is offering an infringing sound recording for download through a peer to peer application. We have attached below the details of the infringing activity.

We have a good faith belief that this activity is not authorized by copyright owners, their agent, or the law. We are asking for your immediate assistance in stopping this unauthorized activity. Specifically, we request that you remove or disable access to the infringing sound recording.

We believe it is in everyone's interest for music consumers to be better educated about the subject of copyright law and music. In addition to taking steps to notify this network user about the illegal nature of this activity, we encourage you to refer him/her to the MUSIC Coalitions website at www.musicunited.org. The site contains valuable information about what's legal and what's not when it comes to copying music.

You should understand that this letter constitutes notice to you that this network user may be liable for the infringing activity occurring on your network. In addition, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, if you ignore this notice, your institution may also be liable for any resulting infringement. This letter does not constitute a waiver of any right to recover damages incurred by virtue of any such unauthorized activities, and such rights as well as claims for other relief are expressly retained. Moreover, this letter does not constitute a waiver of our members' right to sue the user at issue for copyright infringement.

It is likely that this DMCA notice is not the first you have received from us or other copyright owners. Interested in exploring technological options to potentially receiving fewer of these notices? Many universities have implemented technological anti-piracy tools and report receiving fewer copyright infringement notices. Please see here for a listing of some of the businesses that offer network management tools to higher education institutions: http://www.musicunited.org/12_Resources.html

Thank you in advance for your prompt assistance in this matter. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via e-mail at antipiracy2@riaa.com, via telephone at 1-800-223-2328, or via mail at RIAA, 1025 F Street, NW, 10th Floor, Washington, D.C., 20004. Please reference Case ID '102686' in any response or communication regarding this infringement.

Sincerely,
Jeremy Landis
Online Copyright Protection
RIAA

List of infringing content------------------------------

britney spears blackout

-------------------------

INFRINGEMENT DETAIL

--------------------

Infringing Work : britney spears blackout

Filename : Britney Spears-Blackout [2007][CD+SkidVid_XviD+Cov]192Kbps

First found (UTC): 2008-11-12T00:49:44.51Z

Last found (UTC): 2008-11-12T00:49:44.51Z

Filesize : 109312479 bytes

IP Address: ***.***.***.***

IP Port: *****

Network: BitTorrent

Protocol: BitTorrent

Driving Back the Darkness

2008-11-05T10:17:00.004-07:00

And so it was that Gwaihir saw them with his keen far-seeing eyes, as down the wild wind he came, and daring the great peril of the skies he circled in the air: two small dark figures, forlorn, hand in hand upon a little hill, while the world shook under them, and gasped, and rivers of fire drew near. And even as he espied them and came swooping down, he saw them fall, worn out, or choked with fumes and heat, or stricken down by despair at last, hiding their eyes from death.

Side by side they lay; and down swept Gwaihir, and down came Landroval and Meneldor the swift; and in a dream, not knowing what fate had befallen them, the wanderers were lifted up and borne far away out of the darkness and the fire.

--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?

--Toni Morrison, Beloved

AP Photo by Rob Carr, via the New York Times.

I Believe

2008-11-03T11:15:00.002-07:00

In 2004, after the results of the last presidential election, I put together a playlist for my radio show that expressed my deep disappointment in where the country was headed. I called it my "Break-Up Tape for America."

Tomorrow, the country will again go to the polls, and I have reason to believe the results may be more in line with what I believe are this country's greatest strengths: optimism, unity, dedication, and a willingness to work toward what is good for all, not just the wealthy few.

It has been a long and, at times, tiresome campaign. We have seen the best--and the worst--of the candidates. In the past eight years, the country hit bottom in a way that I hope I never live to see again. I lost a lot of faith in not only the election process, but the very character of the people who inhabit this nation. That loss of faith was, perhaps, a reflection of my own sadness at the blind eye many citizens turned toward the actions of their government: authorized torture, unjust imprisonment, unwarranted surveillance and loss of privacy, greed, environmental irresponsibility, and a deep cynicism about the role of the United States in the world and the capacity of its citizenry to resist such cynicism.

If, as the two presidential candidates have been promising, this is to be an election for change, I, for one, welcome it with open arms. It is no secret which of these candidates I think offers the best hope for this change, or which I believe will raise the character and tone of this country closer to its promised ideals. But, on the eve of a national election, this is perhaps a time to remind ourselves of the great power we have, on an individual level, to enact change ourselves. We need not wait for a charismatic or determined national leader to show us the way (although it might not hurt to have a leader capable of such inspiration); we can--and should--do this ourselves, on a daily basis, for the betterment of our own lives, if not for those of our neighbors and fellow citizens. We have, and always have had, this power, though the Bush administration has done everything in its power to make us forget this.

As the election has been drawing closer, I have found myself returning to some of the music I enjoyed in my twenties, a time when most of us are optimistic and eager for what the future holds. It is no great surprise that I also find in this music a feeling of nostalgic security that helps subdue, for a time, my great anxiety for tomorrow's election and the future of this country. One song in particular has come up again and again on my playlist, a song that expresses both the promise and uncertainty of the days ahead, and a song that offers, at its core, a firmness, a faith, in one's ability to meet those challenges, that promise.

I offer it here, along with these comments, as a kind of personal token of my faith and hope in you, in us, in our sometimes troubled nation. Whatever your political leanings, please vote. And let's hope that the next few years will do more to bring us back together. I believe we can be better and that we will be better. In short, I believe.

100,000

2008-10-27T09:57:00.004-07:00

Obama drew a crowd of at least 100,000 in Denver this weekend. Colorado, which has not carried a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992, is now considered a toss-up state. FanTAStic!

Denver Post coverage of Obama's Colorado rallies here.

Smallville: "Prey"

2008-10-23T23:02:00.002-07:00

With each episode this season, long-time (and sometimes long-suffering) Smallville fans are at last beginning to see progress toward fulfillment of the Superman legend. This week’s episode features a couple of pivotal moments toward that end. We see Clark engaged in regularly rescuing ordinary citizens; an ability to leap up, if not over, tall buildings in a single bound; and Clark rushing to the aid of . . . Jimmy Olsen? Let’s see if this week’s story is in need of rescue itself!

You can read the rest of the review here.

VOTE

2008-10-23T08:40:00.002-07:00

HOPE

2008-10-19T13:05:00.003-07:00

With less than two weeks to go before the election (and 93 days left in the Bush presidency), Obama draws a crowd of over 100,000 in St. Louis, his biggest crowd ever at a U.S. event. Tellingly, Missouri is typically a red state.

Full story from the Wall Street Journal here.

Don't forget to vote!

Smallville: "Committed"

2008-10-16T23:26:00.003-07:00

Air Date: October 16, 2008

The recent run of engaging episodes hits a bit of a misstep here, although the silliness of the plot is almost made up for by the engaging character moments. Smallville is now a series at the venerable stage where the audience tunes in for the character interaction as much as, if not more so than, the actual stories. Still, that doesn’t help explain this particular story.

Read the rest of the review here.

Palin Porn

2008-10-14T16:47:00.002-07:00

Vote Republican

and we will all get

LAID!

(From a series of publicity shots from Hustler's politically-inspired porno Nailin' Paylin' )

UFOs on the Mountain

2008-10-14T08:29:00.002-07:00

Well, I should have guessed that Air Force personnel would be wary of reporting UFOs while on duty. This is a message from a listserve I'm on composed largely of AF retirees who served on the Mountain:

Mon Oct 13, 2008 11:09 pm (PDT)
There must be hundreds of personal adverntures that occured on that hill. There are stories about snakes, intruders, girls sneaked in, characters like our Sgt Clapp, and many some of us have seen UFOs on the radar. Of course, none were reported because the fear of filling out a 4 page report was worse than an attack from "little green men". Keep up the good work, eventually you'll have plenty of material for your book. [name removed]

Entourage: "ReDOMption"

2008-10-12T23:12:00.001-07:00

Air date: October 12, 2008

Top 10 Things I Learned from Entourage This Week

1. When Dom calls Vince out of the blue to let his childhood friend know that he is on TV in an O.J.-style L.A. freeway chase, that may be enough for E to cancel a meeting.

2. At a certain age, according to Ari, the ability to whack anything is impressive.

3. When golfing with potentially antagonistic, manipulative agents like Ari Gold, who is willing to do anything for his client’s career, it’s best to bring a pro golfer as a back-up.

Read the rest of the list here.

Smallville: "Instinct"

2008-10-09T22:22:00.002-07:00

Air Date: October 9, 2008

Smallville lately seems to have recaptured the spirit of the Superman comics of the late 1950s and early 1960s, in which stories about the Man of Steel were, first and foremost, fun to read. The plots were often ridiculous, but came with little baggage; it was easy to hop into an adventure and enjoy the ride. This week’s episode of Smallville easily falls into the same category, and offers nothing more or less than pure escapism.

Read the rest of the review here.

Some of It

2008-10-08T21:43:00.002-07:00

At a certain point, he became rather cavalier about his now-regular absences. He seemed to time them, placing them in the middle of the week, like a Wednesday golf game. And he was usually gone all weekend, as well. He would pop back home as if nothing untoward had happened, as if he had been out to get cigarettes. He would bring back gifts: records from a downtown shop, or t-shirts, as if he had been vacationing somewhere, which, in a way, I suppose he was.

During the day, there would be a silence, a mutual truce. My brother and I would be in and out of the house, off on some excursion. But as the shadows of twilight lengthened, a process that did not take long on the mountain, nocturnal creatures would stir, smacking their lips at some imagined feast of blood and pain. My brother and I would be tucked in, my mother's lips clamped tight, her eyes turned away from us. She knew what was coming, and dreaded it, but did not, could not, shrink from confronting him. In this she was brave. For by a certain hour, he would have a certain number of cans or bottles beside him. If it was baseball season, an East Coast game would be blaring in the background. More often than not, however, he would be playing music on the stereo. The hi-fi system was the point of pride in his living room, far outclassing the television set in terms of prominence, placement, and attention. When the arguing, the confrontations, would begin, he would turn the stereo up louder and louder, and I would listen intently to every note, every lyric. The Eagles' Greatest Hits was the favorite, a collection of songs that I came to know by heart, the featured soundtrack in a recurring drama of beatings, shouting, dish-crashing, and spitting.

Because as loud as the music became, I could always, in that thinly-walled room, hear their positioning, their circling. I imagined the two of them as wild animals, jockeying for the most advantageous location from which to strike. What struck me most, at that age, was the bitterness, the sheer contempt in both of their voices; hers, that of the betrayed, the victim who wants to show none of her pain; his, the contemptuos, arrogant, and drunk playboy, the one who assumed that she existed to tend the home and the children, while he did whatever he wished. They were voices I only heard at night, between them. Those personalities did not exist in the light of day, or in front of me.

With occasional glances toward my brother, to assure myself that he was asleep and would hear none of this, I would listen to them, laying on my bed in the dark. The slapping sounds were the sharpest, ringing through the halls. These would usually be followed by a generous round of spitting, and I gradually learned to distinguish between the two of them: she had a more delicate approach, using only her saliva. He would draw upon reserves of bile and mucus and would punctuate his profane names for her with a release of phlegm and then a blow. I would hear the blow, of course, and then the fall, either against the adjoining wall, or the floor, or, on one memorable evening, the coffee table. He had knocked her to the floor, picked her up, and bounced her off the coffee table, a move worthy of a wrestler. This resulted in a shattered eardrum, and she would be driven to the hospital, at least a half-hour's drive down the mountain, by the same man who had caused the injury. What words they exchanged on that particular drive, I can only imagine, though I have never really cared to do so.

These performances, from the perspective of a child, would seemingly last for hours, though I am now unsure whether such savagery could be maintained for much longer than one hour. For after he had (as he always did) beaten the fight out of her, he would open the back door and toss her onto the concrete porch, a kind of sheltered storage space, where she would sob and scream and curse him. I would hear every word she spoke, every move she made, her shuffling across the concrete with her battered body, her endless, endless weeping.

The first time this happened, she pounded on the back door, yelling his name over and over again. By this point, he had calmly returned to his game, or to contemplating the music, ignoring her. Then she started tapping on the window, my bedroom window.

"Charlie?" she said in her mother's tone. "Charlie? Can you hear me? Can you let me in?"

I was nine years old. What else was I going to do? I got out of bed, softly tip-toeing past my seemingly unconscious brother, and went to the living room.

"What are you doing up, son?" my dad said, sounding as if he was pleased to see me, but startled by my insomnia. I didn't know how to respond to him, so I said nothing, and proceeded toward the door. His tone darkened.

"What are you doing? There's no one out there. Go back to bed."

I opened the door and let her in. She nearly collapsed on me, then rushed toward where he was sitting. But he had already risen, partially anticipating her return, but heading toward me. He dismissed her with a backhand to her face, and, as near as I can recall, concentrated on kicking me, silently, as if my betrayal were so shocking, he could think of no words to punctuate his violence.

On later evenings, my mother and I devised a plan. She was small enough to squeeze into the window, though the positioning was awkward. I moved my bed, so that when her upper body came through the window, she could tumble onto the mattress. I became adept at opening the window silently, though I would usually have to wait until I heard snoring from the living room, or until one of the louder songs, like "Lyin' Eyes," would come up in the track listing, so I could let her in without him hearing. I don't know what he imagined she was doing out there all night. Who can fathom the logic of such an animal? But I waited, until I could open the window without him hearing it. And she would tumble clumsily onto my bed, weeping softly and bleeding from her face. Being a mother, she did not take up space on my child's bed. She would sleep on the floor of my bedroom, until he left for work in the morning. And I would watch her, on the floor. And I would watch my brother, sleeping on the bed across from mine. But I did not sleep. While he was there, I did not sleep.

Rubble from the Mountain

2008-10-05T19:22:00.002-07:00

Since I know now blog posts about my former abode are being monitored, I shall refer to my special place as "the Mountain," at least while I collect my thoughts regarding my recent visit. Once I have some semblance of a plan on how to go about writing on "the Mountain," I will begin using its proper name once again. For now, my thoughts, feelings, and references about the place will remain generic.

Sadness is the dominant emotion of the moment. Sadness for the way such a unique place has been neglected; sadness for the memories that make what is an otherwise beautiful wonderland so painful for me to confront; sadness for being separated from the rest of the reunion party by my age; sadness for being sad.

On the plane out of San Jose, I knew I was on the wrong side of the aircraft to see the Mountain pass under the wings. However, I did see the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton go by, a place I knew was situated almost directly across the valley from the Mountain. It was a place I had been too terrified to visit as a child; my fear of heights induced a sense of vertigo whenever I thought about looking through a telescope at a magnified image of anything directly overhead, like the sun or the moon. Ironically, I later became fascinated with just such images and, at one point in my early college education, I aspired to become one of those people who live or work at remote astronomical posts like Mt. Hamilton.

As the observatory passed beneath me, I unconsciously touched the window of the plane, as if to bid those aspirations goodbye. They belonged to another person, another me, and I wondered if this other self could have obtained more from his life had he not been subjected to the peculiar family dynamics he encountered on the Mountain. A self-pitying moment, perhaps, but one engendered by two days of thinking about little else besides the Mountain, what had happened there, and its current state of decay. Once I became conscious of this again, my hand fell away from the window, dropping to find a distraction, some other physical sensation to divert my thoughts from wallowing in the might-have-beens of the past. Or the present.

Later, after landing in Las Vegas, I boarded a 15-passenger van for the ride back to my car, parked in St. George. The van was mainly filled with ugly Mormon women who, having fulfilled their primary function as child-bearers, had allowed themselves to dwindle into frumpy hausfraus with no hint of sexuality about them. They pointed and clucked at the desert landscape surrounding us, a landscape I have grown quite accustomed to over the years. It is a dead, moon-like environment, and there are still great pockets of the western desert that remain only sparsely decorated by life, by color, a sensation I could relate to only too well. But I do credit the Mormons for bringing life to it, or at least parts of it. Their efforts to populate the arid environs of Utah seem almost noble compared to the state of the Mountain I had left behind. And the gross irony of populating a remote, yet gorgeous, location and letting it fall to neglect and ruin, then restricting future visits only to "authorized" personnel, was not lost on me as I stared at the desert landscape rushing by the windows of the van, on a highway that was the closest thing to a river for miles. Whatever their other crimes, at least the Mormons have not yet abandoned their "home", their Zion, leaving their temples to the wind, their homes to the elements.

Though I do not necessarily consider the development on the Mountain to be quite the moral equivalent of paving paradise (for one thing, it was never quite possible for the population of the Mountain to rise too far above 120 or so at any given time), I do consider its abandonment a crime, as is the decision to let the toxic ingredients of the settlement seep into the surrounding hills. And there is a parallel here, too, of course, with a man, a father, who did much the same thing to his own family, abandoning them for what he seemed to think were greener pastures, however temporary, allowing the toxins of his personality and his drunkenness to leech into the home of his children.

All the time I was in San Jose this weekend, I was constantly aware of the presence of the Mountain, not least because of the box-like structure on the summit, which is visible for miles. Like the Watcher of the Fantastic Four, the box on the Mountain sees all, records all, without the faintest hint of any emotion, any human response. In my wanderings on the Mountain, I found the building that once contained the base chapel, a place I remembered as the location for the Christmas pageants and Sunday school classes of my youth. A few of the building's windows were still decorated with inspirational paintings, remarkably well preserved. My attention was immediately captured by one of these which featured a rendering of an Apollo capsule in orbit around the Earth. Above this illustration was written these words: Primus me Circumdiste ("You were the first to encircle me"), along with dates corresponding to the exploratory voyages of Magellan (1520) and Apollo 10, the dress-rehearsal mission for the moon landings.

If my familial experiences on the Mountain left me feeling abandoned, alone, and helpless, I think it must have been the Mountain itself--for all its unfeeling remoteness--that saved me, that offered me some escape from the wreck of a home I was living in, a home now literally wrecked by abandonment and the exercises of visiting SWAT teams, who now use the Mountain as a training post for "extraction" operations. The only extraction I was offered during my time on the Mountain was that of the imagination, and the Mountain's offerings in that regard were endless. It was the first to encircle me, and the only entity, human or otherwise, to attempt to engage me during that time.

One thing I realized, or remembered, about the Mountain during my visit this weekend was this: for as remote and lonely as it could sometimes be, it was by far the most loyal and the most cherished of my many childhood homes. How fitting then that now we are both abandoned wrecks, our main mode of expression that of endless and largely pointless regret about those who once attempted to live among us.

Melodramatic Prologue to Umunhum II

2008-10-02T08:11:00.002-07:00

One evening Sam came into his study and found his master looking very strange. He was very pale and his eyes seemed to see things far away.

"What's the matter, Mr. Frodo?" said Sam.

"I am wounded," he answered, "wounded; it will never really heal."

But then he got up, and the turn seemed to pass, and he was quite himself the next day. It was not until afterwards that Sam recalled that the date was October the sixth. Two years before on that day it was dark in the dell under Weathertop.

--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Umunhum, Part One

I've been nervous all week, shaking whenever I think about setting foot on that mountain again. Finding the corners of the bedroom where I once shook. Looking in the secret places around the base where I used to hide. I briefly contemplated an end to my own story on the mountain itself, but that feeling has passed.

It seems like one of those episodes of Doctor Who, in which the Doctor runs into one of his former selves, completely aware of how and when his earlier incarnation will die, but unable to say one word, offer any warning. That person from the past, himself, is dead, and though he may be able to revisit the location of his demise, he may never revisit the time. It, too, is dead, at least to him. It has to be.

I don't know what will happen. I've already had one momentary burst of emotion, prompted by nothing more than thinking about the place, seeing it again, hearing in my memory that lonely whine of a spinning antenna that has long since been dismantled. Before Umunhum, I think I knew very little about things like hate, or rage, or betrayal, or fear, true fear, the kind that leads nine-year-old children to become invisible, physically and emotionally.

I don't know what will happen. I don't know if I will be able to write about it. I wonder if it's best to just put it away, like the empty buildings on the mountain itself, which are scheduled for demolition. I wonder if, like Sam, I will come back, or if, like Mr. Frodo, I will sail even further away from everything I know, everything I love, everything that built me back into some semblance of a human being after I left that place, that mountain of doom.

"It seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded," said Merry.

"Not to me," said Frodo. "To me it feels more like falling asleep again."

Entourage: "Fire Sale"

2008-09-28T22:57:00.003-07:00

Air date: September 28, 2008

Top 10 Things I Learned from Entourage This Week

1. A good way of postponing depression is to do a guest spot on The View.

2. There is nothing better for a “general meeting” than having something to say, especially if it involves a bid for your client.

3. Only Richard Simmons can get away with wearing a tank top and shorts on The View. (But what the hell was Whoopi wearing?)

You can read the rest of the review here.

A Heartbeat Away

2008-09-28T10:31:00.002-07:00

Pat Oliphant, The Washington Post.

Natural Born World Shaker

2008-09-28T07:32:00.003-07:00

"He was smiling... That's right. You know, that, that Luke smile of his. He had it on his face right to the very end. Hell, if they didn't know it 'fore, they could tell right then that they weren't a-gonna beat him. That old Luke smile. Oh, Luke. He was some boy. Cool Hand Luke. Hell, he's a natural-born world-shaker."

--Dragline in Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Goodbye, Paul.

Smallville: "Plastique"

2008-09-26T00:36:00.003-07:00

Air date: September 26, 2008

Consider me re-geeked for this series. After a few seasons of what often seemed like aimless wandering through lame story arcs, Smallville has come back strongly this season, with stories and characters that actually remind us that this is a show, after all, about Superman.

Read the complete review here.

The Change Candidate?

2008-09-25T20:36:00.002-07:00

Campaign Advisor: David Friedman

Lysistrata, Emasculated

2008-09-25T15:05:00.002-07:00

from the SUU Journal (all emphasis mine):

A modern-day adaptation of the Greek play Lysistrata is making its debut to the Adams Memorial Theatre tonight.

Christine Frezza, associate professor of theatre arts, director and adapter of Lysistrata, said she started on the adaptation last April.

"I was inspired by the state we live in," Frezza said. "Utah rightly promotes love, marriage and families, and I wanted to update Aristophanes to focus on those values."

Frezza said this play is about a war between the Spartans and the Athenians, that has been going on for centuries.

However, an even bigger war comes about between these two groups and all their wives.

Elisa Marcheschi, a sophomore secondary education major from Ogden, plays the protagonist Lysistrata.

"(Lysistrata) is a strong, intelligent and modern woman, whom the other women respect and follow as their leader," Marcheschi said. "Lysistrata starts the uprising because she is sick of the women being unappreciated and underestimated."

Joshua Cha, a sophomore theatre arts major from Wellington, said he is hoping for a great turnout and is excited to be able to perform. He plays a herald named Harold.

"This play is about men learning to treat women as their equals, not inferior, neither superior," Cha said. "I think this is a good story and I think the changes that Christine made with the script help younger audiences understand it."

Vince Major, a sophomore theatre arts major from Phoenix who plays Proteus, said this romantic comedy makes a great free date night.

"I hope people walk away from this show and they feel that they were entertained," Major said. "I (also) hope that people walk away and are able to laugh at themselves and the way they may fight with a loved one."

You can read the article in its entirety here.

By contrast to this "update" of the play, made for the benefit of "younger audiences," here are some excerpts from the summary of the play as presented by Wikipedia:

Led by the title character, Lysistrata, the story's female characters barricade the public funds building and withhold sex from their husbands to end the Peloponnesian War and secure peace. In doing so, Lysistrata engages the support of women from Sparta, Boeotia, and Corinth. All of the other women are first against Lysistrata's suggestion to withhold sex. Finally, they agree to swearing an oath of allegiance by drinking wine from a phallic shaped flask, as the traditional implement (an upturned shield) would have been a symbol of actions opposed to the aims of the women. This action is ironic and therefore comical, because Greek men believed women had no self-restraint, a lack displayed in their alleged fondness for wine as well as for sex.

and:

Lysistrata touches upon the poignancy of young women left with no eligible young men to marry because of deaths in the wars: "Nay, but it isn't the same with a man/Grey though he be when he comes from the battlefield/still if he wishes to marry he can/Brief is the spring and the flower of our womanhood/once let slip, and it comes not again/Sit as we may with our spells and our auguries/never a husband shall marry us then."

From the news article, it doesn't sound like much of the original play, or its anti-war sentiment, made it to Cedar City, does it? But at least the kiddies will be able to come and enjoy a wholesome comedy about the battle of the sexes, and not have to worry about anyone criticizing the war that may have killed their daddies.

I don't know what Frezza thinks she's updating here, but it ain't Aristophanes.

NOTE: I plan on attending the play this weekend, and will report back.

Inspiring Quote of the Week

2008-09-24T14:43:00.002-07:00

"A case could be made . . . that the Jews [of Austria in the late 1930's]. . . benefited from having doors closed against them. It would be a bad case. The humiliations were real and the resentments lasting. But there was one undoubted benefit to us all. Whole generations of Jewish literati were denied the opportunity of wasting their energies on compiling abstruse doctoral theses. They were driven instead to journalism, plain speech, direct observation and the necessity to entertain. The necessity to entertain could sometimes be the enemy of learning, but not as often as the deadly freedom to write as if nobody would ever read the results except a faculty supervisor who owed his post to the same exemption."

--Clive James, in Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts.

I'm only 15 pages into this book, and it is easily one of the most fascinating and engaging historical surveys that I've read in some time. Well worth checking out.

Led Zep to Join Journey in Ranks of "Douchiest Rock Band"

2008-09-23T11:11:00.002-07:00

Check out this story.

Now, I understand that Robert Plant perhaps does not have the full incredible vocal range that he used to, and that lesser mortals (such as, say, Billy Joel) have employed back-up singers to cover those notes that are now beyond the reach of the, ahem, elder rock statesman. I'm OK with that. (Let's put aside for the moment that Plant delivered one of the best vocal performances of last year in his collaboration with Alison Krauss.)

I also understand that Led Zeppelin could have, at any time during the past 30 years, hastily organized a reunion tour and, with minimal-to-no rehearsal time, filled up stadiums around the world and made a shitload of money, like pretty much every other rock band that broke up prior to 1999.

But the idea of Led Zep touring without Robert Plant in front of the mic is perhaps the douchiest and most misguided idea in popular music since Natalie Cole recorded a "duet" with her long-dead father. Consider, for example, the reaction of many longtime fans to the re-emergence of Journey (I know this is comparing apples to rotting corpses, but bear with me) with a new lead singer who not only sounds remarkably like Rock Icon Steve Perry, but fucking looks just like him as well. Now, any O.G. Journey fan with anything resembling a sense of integrity (to their own taste, if no one else's), regards the touring original members of Journey as giant douchebags. And rightly fucking so.

Keep in mind here that Led Zep, upon the death of their drummer, Rock Icon John Bonham, almost immediately decided to put the band to rest forever. No Bonham, no Zep. And rock fans at the time, though sad at the loss of perhaps the greatest rock band on the planet at that time, recognized and fucking respected the wisdom of the surviving band members. In fact, such was the level of respect engendered by this move, that many of us even forgave the decision to release the band's outtakes (the execrable Coda) as sort of a farewell present to the fans.

Thirty years down the road, the decision to reunite without John Bonham is understandable, if not quite forgivable, only because John's son, Jason, is perhaps the only person worthy to pound the skins behind Plant, Page, and Jones.

But the concept of Led Zeppelin touring with a replacement lead singer is the stupidest fucking idea in rock history and is doomed to failure. I hope that anyone who calls him/her self a fan of Led Zeppelin will excoriate this decision in the harshest possible terms in order to let Page, Jones and Bonham II know that, if they proceed with this plan, they will forever be regarded as the Douchiest Band in Rock History.

(And I say this in spite of Robert Plant's almost equally douchy quote from the article that Led Zeppelin has "never been about the fans." Mr. Plant, I respect your integrity and, in comparison with your bandmates, may come to worship your integrity, but as a long-standing Led Zep fan, I cannot let such dismissive statements stand without sending you a hearty "Fuck you.")

I have spoken. We now return you to continued aesthetic contemplation of Physical Graffitti.

Entourage: "The All Out Fall Out"

2008-09-21T21:08:00.003-07:00

For this review, I followed the format established by Victoria, another Two Cents reviewer who wrote up the first two episodes of the season. If you like the format of this review, let me know. I suspect I should probably change it up, but I sort of like the top 10 style she adopted. Anyway, here's a teaser for the review:

Entourage
“The All Out Fall Out”
Airdate: September 21, 2008

Top 10 Things I Learned from Entourage This Week

1. A ho + a floozy = a hoozie. And hoozies are most likely French.

2. Mrs. Ari doesn’t always mind when Ari acts like a 25-year-old, or even an 18-year-old, and if it takes a new red Ferrari to get him there, well, that’s why we have anniversary presents, isn’t it?

3. If you are going bankrupt, like Vinnie, you have three options:
A. Reduce your expenses, mainly by cutting off the rest of the gang.
B. File for bankruptcy
C. Take a temp job appearing at a Hollywood sweet sixteen party.

You can read the full review here.

Smallville: "Odyssey"

2008-09-18T21:43:00.003-07:00

Here's the opening paragraph of my review/recap of last night's season premiere of Smallville. You can read the full review at The Two Cents. Leave a comment there that will impress my editors!

Smallville
“Odyssey”
Original Air Date: September 18, 2008

As Smallville begins its eighth season, the series faces one of its biggest challenges. In the wake of departing cast members, story arcs that seem to have left the Superman legend behind, and an aging Tom Welling, can the series retain its disgruntled fans and restore glory to the legend of Clark Kent? And if, as some suspect, this ends up being Smallville’s final season, will the series end with a bang or a whimper? Let’s see what kind of tone the season premiere sets.

Review continues here.

Fringe: "The Same Old Story"

2008-09-17T12:33:00.002-07:00

Wrote the following as a sample piece for The Two Cents, a TV review site that has offered me a position writing about Smallville and Entourage. My reviews should start showing up on the site within the next week. Until then, enjoy these comments on last night's episode of The X-Files clone, Fringe. You're welcome!

"The Same Old Story"

Original broadcast date: September 17, 2008

I still miss Mulder and Scully, but with the exception of those characters, last night’s episode of Fringe continued its reboot of the X-Files franchise, complete with a gross-out teaser, seemingly inexplicable phenomena that, by the end of the episode, are mostly explained, and further hints of a complex conspiracy behind it all. Does the second episode help the series form its own identity? The truth is out there.

The episode’s teaser does manage to up the X-Files’ ante in terms of shock value and overall creepiness. We see Christopher, a guy who looks like a cross between an inebriated Matthew Modine and Tony Perkins checking in another hotel guest, and a working girl in a hotel room, after concluding some, er, business. While Christopher gets out what looks like a drug kit in the bathroom, his partner (Loraine with one “r”) chats him up from the bedroom, until her stomach begins convulsing and she begins screaming in pain and horror. Before long, her tummy has swelled to disturbingly pregnant proportions and Christopher is dropping her off outside the local emergency room before making a fast getaway.

Loraine is rolled into an operating room, where her caretakers soon adopt open-mouthed expressions of horror and disgust. Loraine’s abrupt pregnancy is freaking out surgeons, so we know something freaky is happening. Cue spooky opening montage!

The episode then quickly reintroduces us to the main cast of characters and the premise of the series. We are reminded that Walter Bishop, the kooky scientist, has spent 17 years in a mental institution and has already forgotten that his old lab was returned to him in last week’s episode. Peter, Walter’s grifter son, rolls his eyes at this and offers appropriately sarcastic commentary on his father’s mental state, before he is off with our heroine, Olivia Dunham, at the behest of the mysterious Mr. Royles, to investigate the hotel room where Loraine was, shall we say, introduced to the miracle of life.

Olivia quickly realizes that this case follows this M.O. of a serial killer she and her former love, Agent Scott, investigated without resolution twelve years ago. The killer, dubbed “The Brain Surgeon,” apparently had some fixation for the pituitary gland and devised some brilliantly efficient means of extracting said gland from his unfortunate victims. Cue ominous music!

Coincidentally (?), crazy Walter Bishop also has had some experience with Mr. Brain Surgeon, via his former lab partner, Dr. Claus Penrose, whom Walter is reminded of after remembering the location of a car he parked before entering the institution. Said car is full of interesting knick-knacks, including a severed hand in a jar (shades of Doctor Who) and lots of files that are sure to contain plot devices for future episodes. Walter speculates that Loraine’s birthing pains were largely inspired, if not induced, by Penrose’s experiments in manipulating growth hormones for the Defense Department as a way of creating super-soldiers. Cue Captain America!

After we see Christopher entrap another lady of the evening, Walter and son drop some Jules Verne references and Blair Brown offers her best impersonation of the Cigarette-Smoking Man, before Walter comes up with the idea of using the latest victim’s last vision before death to identify where the Brain Surgeon has been, er, operating. How can we know what the victim’s last vision was? By extracting the electrical images preserved on her retina, of course! Cue eyeball extraction scene that would give Fredric Wertham pause for thought.

While Walter and Junior Agent Astrid make popcorn, Olivia and Peter chase down the Brain Surgeon after identifying the location obtained from Eyeball Lady. Turns out that Brain Surgeon Christopher is Penrose’s experimental son, whom Penrose could not stand to see die. To survive, Christopher must continually ingest pituitary gland juice from his victims. And who can blame the guy? Any sacrifice in the cause of younger-looking super-soldier skin must be valid, right?

Though Penrose escapes, the episode shifts into seed-planting mode for future episodes, and we get hints that Peter’s medical history might make for interesting reading and that he may have spent some time in a lab sleeping in a Michael Jackson-style oxygen chamber. Cue Lost-like episode-concluding sound of closing door!

Considering that Fringe has been placed in the timeslot following House, Fox clearly has big plans for this series. So what do you think? Is Fringe making more sense the less you pay attention? Are Olivia and Peter up to the challenge of helping us forget all about Mulder and Scully? Will Agent Skinner and CSM be making guest appearances on the show? Is this really “the same old story” or is Fringe’s envelope-pushing content as fresh as Walter’s laboratory milk and popcorn?

Musician Quotes of the Month (Or So)

2008-09-10T16:37:00.003-07:00

"Right now America is in a state of upheaval. Poverty is demoralising. You can't expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor. But we've got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up...Barack Obama. He's redefining what a politician is, so we'll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I'm hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to. You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future."

Bob Dylan, from the TimesOnline, June 5, 2008

Q: What was it like when you last saw him?

A: We held hands. It's funny, even at the height of our friendship--as guys--you would never hold hands. It just wasn't a Liverpool thing. But it was lovely. I sat with him for a few hours when he was in treatment just outside New York. He was about 10 days away from his death, as I recall. He was very poorly. But it was lovely, really lovely, and the years just stripped back. We joked about things. . . . Just amusing, nutty stuff. It was good. It was like we were dreaming. He was my little baby brother, almost, because I'd known him that long.

Paul McCartney, on his bandmate George Harrison, in the August 2008 issue of Uncut

Ditka Kitty!

2008-09-08T09:33:00.011-07:00

Mike Ditka looks like a fuzzy kitty cat! Don't you just want to rub his face? Whoz a nyce kitty? Whoz a suhweet kitty?

I, Terrorist

2008-09-03T10:10:00.002-07:00

Caught part of a Star Trek: TNG marathon over the Labor Day weekend, and found myself getting sucked into some great episodes I hadn't seen for a number of years. Among them was "I, Borg," an episode (you will no doubt recall) in which a lone Borg is brought back to the Enterprise for medical treatment, and is soon incorporated into a plan to disable and destroy the entire Borg Collective by means of an impossible geometric shape implanted into the Borg's programming. Captain Picard's history as one who was kidnapped, tortured, and "modified" into a Borg himself changes his usually more reasoned approach to an enemy, and, during the episode, he expresses an unusual degree of animosity toward the Borg. (A similar attitude is presented by Guinan, a character who rarely expresses strong emotions at all, preferring to listen to her customers.)

By contrast, several crew members who are working with the Borg (Dr. Crusher and Geordi) begin to develop a relationship with the Borg and to introduce concepts of individuality and free will to it/him. Eventually, the Borg is given a name ("Hugh") and develops a sense of his own persona apart from the Collective. The crew slowly begins to reconsider Picard's plan to exterminate the entire Collective.

This is one of the best episodes of TNG, one that challenges information presented in previous seasons about the nature of the Borg, who were initially introduced (by Q) as an opponent that Starfleet was in no way prepared to face. Unemotional, implacable, and seemingly unbeatable, the Borg were in many ways presented as the ultimate enemy of the Trek universe. This episode, however, brilliantly dismantles all those assumptions by making the Enterprise crew, and the audience, reconsider the Borg and the nature of individuality.

During the episode, as the crew begins to debate Picard's plan, the following conversation ensues:

Doctor Beverly Crusher: I just think we should be clear about that. We're talking about annihilating an entire race.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Which under most circumstances would be unconscionable. But as I see it, the Borg leave us little choice.

Commander William T. Riker: I agree. We're at war.

Doctor Beverly Crusher: There's been no formal declaration of war.

Counselor Deanna Troi: Not from us, but certainly from them. They've attacked us at every encounter.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: They've declared war on our way of life. We are to be assimilated.

Doctor Beverly Crusher: But even in war there are rules. You don't kill civilians indiscriminately.

Commander William T. Riker: There are no civilians among the Borg.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Think of them as a single collective being. There's no one Borg who is more an individual any more than your arm or your leg.

Doctor Beverly Crusher: How convenient.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: It comes down to this: We're faced with an enemy who are determined to destroy us. And we have no hope of negotiating a peace. Unless that changes, we are justified in doing anything we can to survive.

No doubt this conversation will sound familiar to anyone who has read a newspaper in the last eight years. The original broadcast date of this episode? May 11, 1992.

The episode concludes with the newly individualized "Hugh" choosing to return to the Collective in order to protect his new friends. The hope is that Hugh will retain at least some of the values and insights he gained during his time on board the Enterprise and will thereby influence the Collective to begin operating as less of a single mind and more as a group of individuals, with all the complications and arguments that implies. (The series would revisit the consequences of Hugh's return to the Collective in a few future episodes, which I may also need to revisit.)

I was surprised by how much the episode resonated with me. I believe it was the first time I had seen the episode since 9/11. I was pleased that an episode of TNG had been so far-sighted, but I was more disturbed by the fact that 1) if our current foreign policy is any indication, few seem to have taken these ideas to heart, and 2) that if we choose to follow this course of action we are more likely to be "assimilated" and/or destroyed by our Collective-like enemy than we are to "convert" them to our way of thinking; that is, if we continue to ignore the fact that they, no matter how comforting it may be for us to think otherwise, are made up of individuals, just as we are. As Sting once sang about our Cold War opponenents, "I hope [they] love their children, too."

Notice! Notice! Notice!

2008-08-01T11:03:00.002-07:00

When I was in my graduate program at Bowling Green State University, I rented a one-room apartment close to the campus. The apartment complex was populated by a mix of students and relatively low-income workers, which made for some interesting encounters in the hallways.

The management of the complex was overseen by the daughter of the owner of the rental agency, who herself lived next door to me. On occasion, I would come back to the apartment to find some memo or notice placed on my door, usually in regard to some change in policy by the rental agency. Once, I received a notice warning not to place any bills in the outgoing mail, as someone had been opening said mail and stealing account information from checks and invoices. Fun!

Perhaps the most memorable notice came when the rental agency experienced some major property damage. I found the grammar and phrasing of the notice so pathetically amusing that I kept it with my mementos from Bowling Green and I now reproduce it here for your own enjoyment. I have not changed any of the wording or punctuation from the original memo, other than to remove identifying details.

NOTICE! NOTICE! NOTICE!

WE HAVE SOME VERY SAD NEWS. THE RENTAL
OFFICE CAUGHT ON FIRE TODAY (8/27/03) AND
EVERYTHING WAS LOST THAT WE KNOW OF.
PLEASE KNOW THAT RENT IS STILL DUE ON
THE FIRST AS OF RIGHT NOW. HOWEVER ALL
RENT CHECKS NEED TO BE BROUGHT TO ***
NAPOLEON ROAD APARTMENT ***, THAT
ALSO INCLUDES MAINTANCE REQUEST OR ANY
OTHER PROBLEM THAT YOU HAVE TILL WE
GET THINGS FIGURED OUT. TO GET A HOLD OF
ME MY HOME NUMBER IS ***-***-**** IF I AM
NOT HOME PLEASE LEAVE ME A MESSAGE OR
A MESSAGE WITH MY HUSBAND AND I WILL
TAKE CARE OF IT WHEN I GET HOME.
MAINTANCE EMERGENCY CALL THE HOME
NUMBER FIRST BUT IF I AM NOT HOME PLEASE
CALL MY CELL AT ***-***-****. ALSO, WHEN
YOU BRING ME YOUR CHECKS IF YOU COULD
PUT YOUR PHONE NUMBER ON THERE THAT
WOULD BE GREAT BECAUSE I KNOW THAT ALL
THAT STUFF IS GONE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR
UNDERSTANDING.

THANKS AGAIN,

******* MANAGEMENT

Year 14: The End

2008-07-18T17:34:00.005-07:00

I've made some pretty decent mixtapes in my time, if I do say so myself. This one, born of a range of conflicting emotions, may be one of my best, composed of three "movements". Delivery pending. Details forthcoming. Sing along if you know the words, won't you?

Part One: State of the Union
1. John Williams: "Theme from JFK"
2. Elvis Costello: "Indoor Fireworks"
3. Hole: "Violet"
4. Aimee Mann: "Stupid Thing"
5. Bright Eyes: "Landlocked Blues"
6. Fleetwood Mac: "Landslide"
7. Radiohead: "Let Down"
8. Steely Dan: "Haitian Divorce"

Part Two: Binge and Purge
9. Jimmie's Chicken Shack: "What Do I Do Right?"
10. Fear: "I Don't Care About You"
11. Ramones: "Glad to See You Go"
12. Ben Folds Five: "Song for the Dumped"
13. Lou Reed: "Sick of You"
14. Foo Fighters: "I'll Stick Around"

Part Three: Goodbye Is Too Good a Word
15. Neko Case: "I Wish I Was the Moon"
16. Marvin Gaye: "When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You"
17. Sinead O'Connor: "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance"
18. Bob Dylan: "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright"
19. Jackson Browne: "In the Shape of a Heart"
20. The Eagles: "After the Thrill Is Gone"
21. Bruce Springsteen: "When You're Alone"

Selections from the playlist can be heard here.

This is all I'll have to say on the matter for now. Those of you still tuning in to this blog can spread the word.

No More Politics as Usual

2008-07-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

Inspiring Quote of the Year

2008-07-16T11:15:00.002-07:00

"Think of something from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there.

After all, you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that doesn’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, read it again until it does, because it is important."

from Steve Grand's Creation: Life and How to Make It
encountered via AdamPolselli.com

Groovefest 2008: The Next Day

2008-07-03T14:07:00.002-07:00

As a case in point of how a solid bluegrass band can stir up an audience, take the Minnesota band Pert' Near Sandstone, who awakened the audience on the first full day of Groovefest from the late afternoon soporific lull engenderd by John Boy's Mule, who played almost exactly the same set that had performed the previous evening at The Grind. I will say that, despite their failure to rouse the Groovefest audience, Mark Viar on upright bass and Ken Sager on dobro kicked ass. In fact, each of the performers in John Boy's Mule are more than competent; I think their set could use a kick in the pants, so the audience could better appreciate their talents.

Anyway, back to Pert' Near Sandstone, who stepped onto the Groovefest stage just in time to kick the afternoon into high gear. With almost the same instrumental line-up as John Boy's Mule, Pert' Near upped the tempo a few dozen notches from the previous set, and banged out some blisteringly quick bluegrass. Though the band had a healthy dose of original numbers, highlights of their afternoon set included brilliant covers of the Beatles' "Rocky Raccoon" (chosen, no doubt, purely as an excuse to rock the party after the line "in the next room at the hoedown" was sung) and Guns & Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle," which made clever use of shifting tempo and willful abandon to accentuate all of Axl's grunting and moaning, creating what Pert' Near's lead singer dubbed "heavy-metal bluegrass." That performance alone was worth the sunburn I got. A fantastically energetic band with a sense of humour, well worth checking out. There are a number of short clips of the band performing on YouTube, as well.

The band that followed Pert' Near was Moses Guest, from Houston. Moses Guest has a truly unique sound and style, looking at first glance like a traditional rock combo (and certainly with the chops to back up that impression), but in performance veering toward jazz fusion, but in a way that maintains the best of their rock band construction (particularly in the versatility of their keyboard player, who sounded like he was raised on a strict diet of Booker T. & the MG's). With their challenging tempo shifts, the band was not an immediate crowd pleaser, but they soon won over most of the audience with their creativity and skill. If it's possible to combine only the best elements of jazz fusion and jam bands without sneering, Moses Guest may be a band you need to hear. Of the songs available on their website, I particularly recommend "Best Laid Plans," which they played as a feverish extended jam at Groovefest.

My two favorite acts at this year's festival both played at the Grind on Saturday night and Sunday morning, respectively, and I'll sing their praises in the next post.

Groovefest 2008: Day One

2008-06-27T08:23:00.002-07:00

Cedar City's annual music festival kicked off another year last night at The Grind, Cedar's independent coffee house and frequent host to small touring acts. Tim Cretsinger, owner of Cedar's independent record store and frequent host to local acts, dedicated this year's Groovefest to his father, who was marking his 80th birthday that night (though not in Cedar City).

Two acts were on Thursday night's opening bill. The first was Nowhere Man & A Whiskey Girl, a keyboard/guitar Americana combo out of Willcox, Arizona. Though their repertoire consisted mostly of covers of such artists as Tori Amos, the Be Good Tanyas, and fellow Arizonians World Class Thugs, NM&AWG's distinctive style provided a fresh spin to their well-chosen selections. Singer and keyboardist Amy Ross has a sweet, surprisingly powerful voice and partner Derrick Ross' subtle guitar style complements Amy's keyboard nicely. The couple had a charming stage presence, apparently making up their set list as they went along. The band also seemed surprised by the appreciative audience--at one point, Derrick remarked that he wasn't used to people actually listening to him perform. But the attention was well earned, and the band's playful approach was as endearing as their music. Amy offered her vocal trumpet accompaniment to two numbers, passing it off as a joke, but her impromptu-like vocalizations worked to expand the band's range without becoming cutesy. While performing one of their newer songs (whose title I failed to remember), Amy took the audience by surprise by belting out a powerful chorus.

By the end of their set, the audience had expanded considerably and responded enthusiastically. The band currently has two full-length CDs available; I, for one, would like to hear much more of what these performers do in the future and hope they return to Cedar City very soon.

Nowhere Man and A Whiskey Girl have a MySpace page, a Facebook iLike app, and a page on their record label's site. This is an act well worth checking out.

The second act of the evening was John Boy's Mule, an "old-timey" five-person combo out of Park City, Utah. Consisting of guitar, upright bass, dobro, fiddle, banjo, and mandolin, John Boy's Mule offered a pleasant set of traditional country and early American folk, incorporating covers of the Carter Family, Townes van Zandt, and the Grateful Dead. I was slightly disappointed by the set--I got the sense that the band was capable of a much more rousing performance but were holding themselves back for some reason. This may have been due to the limited range of the Grind's sound system, but I was surprised that the band did not receive a more enthusiastic response from the audience. The later performance time also meant that Cedar City's teenagers became the dominant demographic of the Grind, since there are few other hangouts for them in this reserved town. Teenagers also are not known for their appreciation of fiddle bands, and though they were not especially obnoxious, the band certainly did not have their full attention. To my mind, this is as much the band's fault as that of the teenagers, as I have seen similar combos win over an audience with both a more dynamic set list and a ballsier stage presence. Still, John Boy's Mule certainly has the musical chops to offer a much more gratifying performance and perhaps they will feel more comfortable on the outdoor stage of Groovefest this afternoon.

Groovefest continues throughout the weekend. I'll try to post some more comments about the acts I catch in the next few days. You can read a "very brief history" of Groovefest here. If you're in the Cedar City area this weekend, Groovefest should not be missed. Two days of free music from a diverse range of acts from all across the country. You can't beat that with a stick.

Disturbing Quote of the (Last) Year

2008-06-09T21:37:00.002-07:00

"About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, 'Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second.' I said, 'Well, you're too busy.' He said, 'No, no.' He says, 'We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq.' This was on or about the twentieth of September. . .

"So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, 'Are we still going to war with Iraq?' And he said, 'Oh, it's worse than that.' He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, 'I just got this down from upstairs'--meaning the Secretary of Defense's office--'today.' And he said, 'This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years.' "

--General Wesley Clark
February 27, 2007

As reprinted in Where to Invade Next, Part 3 of a three-part issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern (Issue #26). The issue ironically overviews the threat potential of seven countries, including Iran, Pakistan, Syria, and North Korea. Ordering information here.

Welcome Back, America

2008-06-05T07:34:00.002-07:00

I just want to take a moment--in the midst of speculating about what Hillary will do next, who Obama's VP choices might be, how the hell we're going to get out of Iraq, and whether or not the Hulk movie will be any good--to mention that an African-American is the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America. In a country with our troubled racial history and its continuing problems of discrimination (prison populations, poverty rates, education), this is an amazing moment. This is the real promise of America--that anyone with enough drive, ambition, and a little luck, can rise to prominence. Whatever your political leanings, this will be a political season long remembered in American history. Punch it in!

Olbermann on Bush's Golf Game

2008-05-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

Stuff I Got on Record Store Day

2008-04-20T11:06:00.002-07:00

I really hit the jackpot yesterday at my local record emporium. First of all, to celebrate the purchase of my new turntable and in acknowledgment of my middle-age status, I picked up some used vinyl, all of it replacing cassettes I've owned since the mid-1980s: Peter Wolf's Lights Out, David & David's Boomtown, John Fogerty's Centerfield, and the Replacements' Tim. Woot! I also picked up R.E.M's latest, which is really as much a return to their former glory as most of the reviews have been saying, and a 2-CD compilation of Thelonious Monk (for the price of a single CD). All of my selections were 20% off, which was an added bonus.

Apparently, purchasing vinyl selections on Record Store Day was the right choice, because there were a number of vinyl-only freebies awaiting the discriminating music consumer. Once I brought my selections to the counter, the store owner, Tim, began loading me up with all kinds of schwag, including two full-length vinyl samplers from Columbia and Universal, as well as a Destroyer/Wye Oak split 7" from Merge. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Also bestowed on me were the following CDs:

Redeye Distribution sampler
Fontana Distribution sampler
Best of Indie Rock sampler
Best of Metal sampler
Black sampler
Vice Records sampler (a DJ mix)
Happy Birthday to Me: a Sub Pop 20th anniversary sampler
and an EP of Paolo Nutini's "Live Sessions" (I've never heard of him before.)

Now, whether or not these samplers contain any interesting music remains to be heard, but the sheer amount of free music being handed out was a pleasant surprise. I was also given a 2008 Rhino Records wall calendar and offered a bunch of free stickers and pins.

So, not a bad haul overall. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I will spend hours at a time in a record store, whether or not I'm being offered free schwag, but it was nice to see a lot of the record labels getting into the spirit of the day and providing so much free music. This doesn't do much to dispel the average record label's insistence on shooting themselves in the proverbial foot by refusing to adapt to their customers' preferences as far as digital accessibility, or their attempts to criminalize their most loyal consumer base, but at least the local indie joints had one day out of the year where the labels were helping, rather than hindering, their operations. Hopefully, they won't be entirely subsumed by Wal-Mart, Best Buy, or iTunes for many more years.

Danny Federici

2008-04-18T16:19:00.003-07:00

Danny Federici, keyboardist and organ player with Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band for 40 years, died yesterday afternoon after a three-year battle with melanoma. Federici was a key component of Springsteen's sound and a versatile performer, able to evoke tenderness in Springsteen's ballads and hardcore thumping in the Jerry Lee Lewis style for the Boss' rock & roll numbers. The E Street Band patterned their sound in the style of Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound," especially in the first half of Springsteen's career, and it is difficult to imagine the band without Federici and his contributions. A fantastic performer, Federici's musicianship will be sorely missed.

A more detailed outline of Federici's career, from UK music magazine Uncut, can be found here.

Of course, Springsteen's official site has posted a short tribute, which includes a video of Federici's last performance with the band on their current tour.

I don't know if this means the end of one of the greatest rock & roll bands on the planet, but it will certainly never be the same.

I Need That Record!

2008-04-18T12:57:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow (April 19) is Record Store Day, initiated to celebrate and promote increasingly threatened independent music stores. In a time when iTunes and Wal-Mart are the top two music retailers nationwide, indie music stores allow one to experience the joys of spontaneity and browsing, but are gradually being driven out of business by high rent, gentrification, and, of course, digital music.

My local record store--Groovacious--is offering 20% off everything in the store, live music, and door prizes. If you are fortunate enough to still have an indie music store in your area, you should drop by and check it out tomorrow. You might be surprised what you can find, and whoever is running the counter probably knows more about music than the teenage chumps working at Best Buy.

The four-minute trailer here is from a recent indie film (that I have not seen) that explores the unique cultural (and occasionally obsessive) experience of indie music stores. Don't let chain stores dictate your access to music!

Sorry if I sound too much like a shill here, but I really cherish the little shops where I've discovered hidden musical treasures. You will, too!

Obama on Last Night's ABC Debate

2008-04-17T14:45:00.001-07:00

I've never heard a series of such useless, pandering, and partisan questions as the ones asked by ABC's "journalists" in last night's Democratic debate. Neither the public's nor the candidates' interests were served, unless that candidate is John McCain. Even Fox News has done a better job hosting debates than ABC's dismal, irrelevant hosts. Here's Obama to give you his take on the whole debacle. I love this guy.

Fresh

2008-04-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

Incredible! from kwest on Vimeo.

Goddamn Batman Image of the Week

2008-04-09T08:26:00.002-07:00

Isn't this gorgeous? I love how Robin is depicted as a gangly pre-pubescent kid. The artist is Frank Quitely, who has done some great work on Grant Morrison's run of New X-Men, and is currently drawing the best version of Superman since Curt Swan.

The image above is a variant cover for issue #10 of All-Star Batman and Robin, one of my favorite comics of the moment. Quitely comments on the image here.

Super-cool ginormous HD version of the image here.

He's the goddamn Batman!

Starbucks' New Frontier: Crescent City

2008-03-27T19:54:00.002-07:00

Marion Moon, a Eureka resident, discovered Starbucks was open on her third trip to Crescent City this week. [Note: Eureka is more than 80 miles south of Crescent City.] She's a McKinleyville Starbucks regular.

"You bet!" Moon said about coming to Del Norte County more often now that the Starbucks is open. "This is the only place I can go to Home Depot and Wal-Mart. It's one-stop shopping."

I'm not a big fan of Starbucks anyway, but I can't imagine why any hot-blooded coffee-seeker in Crescent City would rather get their fix from the Corporate Beastie rather than the little drive-up hut I started referring to on my last visit as the "Java Teat," where busty young girls in halter-tops will happily work for their tips by leaning fulsomely over into your car as they deliver a steaming cup of caffeine into your trembling hands. But, then again, I'm a pervy middle-aged guy. Ah, Java Teat. . .

Full story from Del Norte County's own Daily Triplicate here.

My lovely little home town by the sea, surrounded by trees older than Caesar, and populated at least in part by some of America's most violent felons. Someday I will return to liberate you: trees, felons, Java Teat girls, Sasquatch, Starbucks coffee drinkers. All of you. Someday.

Mixwit Yo

2008-03-27T14:51:00.002-07:00

I'm fooling around with a new website that lets you create mixtapes, assigns them a URL, and provides a widget for posting. You can see my example below. I like being able to design the face of the "tape," and I have been searching for a while for a way to post mixes here. The "Phat Bat Trax" sample below is not really themed in any way; let's call it a beta version of what I hope will be a continuing series of themed mixes.

Let me know what you think of the songs. At this point, I hesitate to call it a mix. Do check out the Mixwit site, though. It's a hoot to play with and very user-friendly. Other than searching for songs, creating the "mix" took less than 20 minutes.

Phat Bat Trax

2008-03-27T14:50:00.001-07:00

2008-03-25T11:03:00.000-07:00

More of these over at Postmodernbarney. Enjoy!

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008

2008-03-19T12:30:00.003-07:00

If Arthur C. Clarke was only known for his science fiction, his death would still be regarded as a momentous loss. If Arthur C. Clarke was only known as the first scientist to propose the idea of putting artificial satellites into geosynchronous orbit, he would be remembered as a man who has influenced the daily lives of the world's population. If Arthur C. Clarke was only known for his work on the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, many film lovers would praise his contributions to innovative cinema. But, of course, Arthur C. Clarke did all of this, and much more besides.

Much of Clarke's science fiction deals with themes of how humans are shaped by their beliefs, and how those beliefs can (or should be) challenged by scientific inquiry. My two favorite stories of his deal directly with these themes: "The Star," about a supernova that destroys one civilization and alters another, light-years away; and "The Nine Billion Names of God," about what some might regard as the ultimate computer program.

It is beyond the purview of this blog to list all of Sir Clarke's accomplishments and contributions here. Suffice it to say that he represented humanity at its best, as a man whose knowledge and curiousity led him to explore the capabilities of our species and to challenge the misguided assumptions of those who operate merely on superstition or willful ignorance.

The NY Times obiturary.

An NYT science blog, Dot Earth, featuring a video of Clarke's thoughts on his 90th birthday.

A bibliography of Clarke's over 100 books and short stories.

Five Years

2008-03-19T09:18:00.003-07:00

One man shall smile one day and say goodbye.
Two shall be left, two shall be left to die.

One man shall give his best advice.
Three men shall pay the price.

One man shall live, live to regret.
Four men shall meet the debt.

One man shall wake from terror to his bed.
Five men shall be dead.

One man to five. A million men to one.
And still they die. And still the war goes on.

James Fenton, "Cambodia"

Iraq Body Count
Just Foreign Policy
Antiwar.com

Bush declares U.S. is on the cusp of victory

4000 Americans. At least 80,000 Iraqis.
Fuck these guys. Fuck this war.

Obama's Plan for Science Education & the Space Program

2008-03-16T11:38:00.002-07:00

I can't find this information on Obama's official site, but SpaceRef.com has the details of Obama's policies regarding the space program. It's an encouraging list, with an emphasis on science education, but there's nothing particularly innovative here. To be fair, the space program is not an issue of great importance in the presidential campaign, and there doesn't seem to be much difference between Obama's plan and those of the other candidates.

There is one important distinction of Obama's plan, however:

Keep Weapons out of Space: China's successful test of an anti-satellite missile in January 2007 signaled a potential new arms race in space. Barack Obama does not support the stationing of any weapons in space. He believes the international community must address the issue of space weaponization head-on and enter into a serious dialogue with Russia, China and other nations to stop this slow slide into a new battlefield.

China's pursuit of a moon-landing is indicative not just of their increasing technological capabilities, but a kind of chess move reflecting their arrival as a superpower, a global force with enough economic and military might to change the face of world politics for many decades to come. It is no coincidence that the U.S. Apollo program came at the zenith of America's power, just as we were exercising that power in all the wrong ways during the Vietnam War. Whether or not China's moon landing serves as a contribution to scientific knowledge will be of far less symbolic import than the moment a Chinese astronaut plants his/her nation's flag in the desiccated soil of our satellite, representing a true majority of this planet's inhabitants.

One of the great failures of our own space program is that we did not follow up on the achievements of the Apollo program by establishing a permanent presence on the moon or in orbit. The International Space Station is, as its name suggests, a "global" rather than a nationalistic endeavor, but if China has learned anything from us, they will pursue an idea that we abandoned and become the first nation to establish a property claim on another planetary body.

China's anti-satellite weaponry is, as Obama's plan suggests, the first step in another vital claim: the dominance over artificial satellite technology, the technology that makes cellphones, information distribution, and global communication possible. The new Cold War will be be one not only of political chilliness, but the literal coldness of the next global battlefield, near-earth orbit.

On a more prosaic note, the Obama plan, like those of the other candidates, expresses support for the completion of the ISS, but offers no explanation of how the station will be completed or maintained if the shuttle program is, as planned, mothballed in 2010. The lack of regular shuttle visits will have enormous implications for the staffing, maintenance, and stability of the station, and none of the presidential candidates have yet offered any solutions to that problem, science education support notwithstanding.

Pachelbel Rant

2008-03-13T10:44:00.001-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, the musical insights of Mr. Rob Paravonian.

Esta Tierra Es Tuya

2008-03-12T16:21:00.001-07:00

Been meaning to post this for a while (at least before the Texas primaries took place). But remember: He's only popular because he's black. Right, Hilary?

Beatles Quote of the Week

2008-03-12T08:20:00.002-07:00

May Pang, who lived with John Lennon for 18 months in the early 1970's (before he reconciled with Yoko Ono), has released a collection of her photographs of Lennon during that time, a period which included Lennon's signing of the agreement that legally "dissolved the Beatles' partnership." Pang's book includes her photo of Lennon signing the document, and Pang relates Lennon's surprising reaction:

“When John hung up the phone,” she writes, “he looked wistfully out the window. I could almost see him replaying the entire Beatles experience.”

Given that Lennon had been particularly militant about leaving the Beatles in 1969, it might seem odd to learn that he did so wistfully. Not to Ms. Pang.

“Everybody changes,” she said. “With John things changed on a daily basis. It’s a question of time. Five years earlier was not the same situation. In 1974 he had just seen everyone. The friendship was still there. They were brothers. There was no animosity. And even though they all felt they had to break up to get to the next level of their musical careers, John had started this band that changed the world. It changed pop culture. It changed how we live and how we dress. And he knew that. So when he sat down to sign, he knew that this was it. His was the last signature. As he had started the group, he was the one to end it.”

Full story from the New York Times here.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2008

2008-03-11T14:06:00.003-07:00

I was going to write a bit about this year's inductees, but, conveniently, I came across this great little audio & photo essay on Time.com that covers the bases pretty well. I suppose it's becoming easier to be cynical about the Hall of Fame and its mission--after you've inducted Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, what's left to do, right?--but I am, ultimately, pleased that an organization like this exists.

A nephew of mine is beginning to discover classic rock and has asked me and another of his uncles who enjoys music to burn some CDs for him. His parents are both devout Mormons and have pretty much prevented their kids from bringing anything resembling rock and/or roll into their home, which is a great tragedy and a sure way to ensure that your kids will either grow up hating you and defying your teachings or ending up in intensive therapy (or both). At one point, this kid's mother found some old Loverboy cassettes that her husband had carted around since his own teenage years. She let him keep the cassettes, but threw out the cover art from the cassette shells. Apparently, close-ups of asses in tights were too much for her fundamentalist sensibilities.

I remember as a kid taking great pleasure in songs like the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane," which blatantly introduced lines like "Haven't seen a goddamn thing" to the otherwise sedate rock station I listened to (now a "classic" rock station, of course). It was only much later that I figured out that song was about a bunch of sex-crazed coke addicts, which did nothing to diminish my appreciation for the song. Listening to songs like that as a kid, though, made me feel subversive and edgy and cool, even if my dad listened to the same music. My father, for all his faults, had an excellent record collection and did much to encourage my enjoyment of music, and I still occasionally find myself buying a 1970s-era album he used to own: Boston, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner, etc.

So I am more than happy to provide my deprived nephew with as much classic rock as he can handle, or as much as he can hide under his mattress, as the case may be. If anything will get him out of that repressive household, it will be rock & roll. It's a trite and corny sentiment, perhaps, but I still believe that some music--even corporate over-commercialzed rock--can change hearts and minds and show otherwise miserable children (as I once was) that you should only put up with so much bullshit.

Here's a list of this year's bullshit detectors. Leonard Cohen and Madonna are the giants here; I like Mellencamp quite a bit, but he's always struck me as a kind of low-rent Springsteen. Despite the Time narrator's claim, I listen to AND enjoy surf music, so it's nice to see the Ventures get a nod. I have problems with the Dave Clark Five, though. Their main claim to fame, as far as I can tell, is in being the first band to ride the coattails of the infinitely superior Beatles, but there isn't anything particularly memorable about the DC5's music, certainly nothing that needs to be preserved by an entity that calls itself the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

But I can't deny that somewhere out in the sticks of middle America, there might have been some kid in the mid-1960s who thought the DC5 kicked the Beatles' asses, and liked them because they represented something that his parents hated or feared. More power to you, kid.

Chazzbot's Oscar Picks (Updated with Winners)

2008-02-24T13:15:00.003-07:00

I was hoping I'd be able to see all the best picture nominees before today, but with only hours left before the beginning of the awards ceremony, I figured I'd better get my picks posted so I don't spend Monday morning fielding calls from angry bookies. So here goes.

For a complete and printable list of nominees, here's a convenient PDF file. I'll check back in tomorrow to see how my choices fared.

Animated Feature: Persepolis
I wouldn't be upset if Ratatouille won, but I don't know many animation fans who would say that Pixar has gone unrecognized for its features in the last few years. Persepolis sends an important message in this election year. And in this perpetually frustrating category, how does Surf's Up get nominated rather than The Simpsons Movie?

Art Direction: Sweeney Todd
A stylish looking film, and more interesting than the other nominees. WINNER!

Cinematography: No Country for Old Men
The gorgeous, haunting, desolate photography of this film is what makes it an Oscar contender in the first place. If you're a fan of this category, check out this fun list of the year's best shots.

Costume Design: Elizabeth: The Golden Age
I get a charge out of watching Cate Blanchett prance around in, well, in pretty much anything, but especially those Elizabethan (redundant?) horse-riding, sword-wielding outfits. Once more unto the breach, with corsets tight! WINNER!

Documentary Feature: No End in Sight
We're running out of time to remind anyone who's still unaware that George W. Bush is a fucking twit.

Film Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Did you see that shot where Jason crashes through the window? Holy shit! Even Indiana Jones has got to give up props for that. WINNER!

Foreign Language Film
I don't have a pick in this category because nobody saw any of the fucking nominees. When are the rules for this category going to be revised to reflect, you know, movies that actually get screened in the United States?

Makeup: Norbit
Remember how pissed off Eddie Murphy got last year when he was denied Oscar gold? I think it would be a hoot to see Norbit advertised as an Oscar winning film. Let the devaluation of the Academy continue!

Original Score: Ratatouille
Evidently, the Academy changed the rules this year so voters in this category no longer get copies of the nominated scores on CD. Voters now have to consider the score only within the context of the film. What kind of bullshit is that? Way to devalue composing, Academy dorks! Anyway, the score for Ratatouille is a worthy addition to the grand tradition of creative, amusing and ADD-pleasing animation music. Raymond Scott and Carl Stalling would be pleased by this wonderful score.

Original Song
Who cares? I'm not even looking forward to hearing these songs performed during the ceremony. Meh.

Sound Editing: Ratatouille
Layers upon layers of sound delight. A 5.1 surround sound aficionado's dream.

Sound Mixing: No Country for Old Men
There are many passages in this film in which the camera gazes out at vast, lonely landscapes of geographic and/or human desolation, and these passages are emphasized by an exquisitely delicate soundtrack. Think of Chigurh slowly treading outside Llewelyn Moss' hotel room, a scene in which dramatic tension is almost entirely conveyed by the not-quite-absence of light and sound. Think of the wind whistling around the corpses of drug dealers. Think of the distinctive slap of Chigurh's palm on his ever-present decision-making coins. Genius is at work here.

Visual Effects: Transformers
Jesus, can you beat giant freakin robots fighting on the interstate? Well, turns out you can, but Sunshine wasn't nominated.

Adapted Screenplay: There Will Be Blood
The screenplay for No Country for Old Men hit almost all the right notes from Cormac McCarthy's novel, but anyone who's tried to slog through Upton Sinclair knows how tricky it would be to mine dialogic gold (or, in this case, oil) from that turgid prose. Plus, I can say with confidence that I will be quoting the milkshake speech for at least the next ten years, to the increasing annoyance of my friends and co-workers.

Original Screenplay: The Savages
I know Juno is probably the favorite here, and props must be given to the audacity of Lars and the Real Girl's premise, but The Savages surprised me by taking what could be an easily sentimentalized concept and wringing honest human emotions out of both its characters and its audience.

Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)
Cate Blanchett as 60's-era Bob Dylan? I don't even care that she's not wearing a corset!

Leading Actress: Laura Linney (The Savages)
A surprisingly layered and complex performance. Not surprising because I wouldn't expect Linney to deliver such a performance, but because it would be easy to end up pitying her character, and I ended up cheering her.

Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
Not even close, friendo. WINNER!

Leading Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
Tommy Lee Jones gave two outstanding performances this year, and I would not be averse to seeing him win for his less-visible role from In the Valley of Elah. Ultimately, however, I don't think Jones' quiet dignity can compete with the complete bugfuck insanity of Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview. He is the Third Revelation, muthafucka! WINNER!

Directing: There Will Be Blood
I noted elsewhere on this blog that with this film Paul Thomas Anderson had entered the pantheon of great film directors. Additionally, though I'm not sure how much direction an actor like Daniel Day-Lewis needs, Anderson deserves credit for eliciting equally notable performances from the rest of his cast, who are not diminished by the lead actor. And Anderson deserves to win just for the balls-out brilliance of one of the most unique films I've seen in some time. Accordingly:

Best Picture: There Will Be Blood
I drink it up! WTF?

Hurry, Oscar fans! Only 3 1/2 hours left to argue with me!

StoryCorps Marches into Logan; Finds Perfect Couple

2008-02-15T15:49:00.005-07:00

If you listen to NPR with any regularity, you are probably familiar with StoryCorps, a project funded by National Public Radio and the Library of Congress that works to preserve the oral histories of "regular" Americans. A few months ago, StoryCorps made a stop in Logan, Utah, where, years ago, I met the regular Americans pictured above. According to the Utah Public Radio website, about 240 other individuals recorded their stories and histories during this Logan visit.

The story Lynne (L) and Stephen (R) tell concerns Stephen's proposal to Lynne on the deck of the White Owl, Logan's beer pub and lunch site of choice for discerning gourmands who don't mind eating things that are fried.

I was there to witness this event, and I later journeyed to Italy to attend the wedding itself. Each event was a mere social formality, since I have never known either Lynne or Stephen to express anything but the sincerest devotion to one another. Theirs is a truly loving relationship, one that has endured for their entire adult (and at least part of their pre-adult) lives. I'm glad some of their story has been preserved through the efforts of StoryCorps because they seem to represent an increasingly rare example of a couple that was truly meant to be together. Weird.

BTW, Stephen is only wearing that t-shirt because he saw me wearing it first. Douche!

You can listen to their story here. (As far as I know, the story has not been broadcast nationally.) They are really quite lovely human beings, even if they never call and seldom read this blog.

Majoring in Violence & Death

2008-02-15T09:28:00.005-07:00

When shit like this happens four times in a week, it can no longer be called a "tragedy." It is a disease. The tragedy is that we continue to accept it, by virtue of the fact that no one has taken any concrete steps to prevent it from happening again. Our noblest efforts have been devoted to campus alert systems, urgent pleas for students to register their cell phone numbers with university security or student services offices so that students can be sent a text message alerting them to the danger of a roving gunman. A text message! Think about that.

This could all happen again tomorrow, could be the next day, but more likely it will be both. And even as this bloodshed continues, we will shrug, perhaps pause a moment, chalk it all up to another day of violence on an American campus and move on. Nothing really new here, unless it's the novelty of seeing a different campus, in a different season, painted in the crimson hues of America's rampant gun violence, our favorite and most cherished sport.

I've written about this before. The echoes of apathy in our government institutions and even in the newsrooms are overwhelming. School shootings have become an accepted component of American life. Think about that.

One of my students had a question this morning about the murders at Northern Illinois University. He had missed the news and was just hearing about it from me. "Was it as many as Virginia Tech?" he asked. I told him no, his interest waned, and we moved on with the day's lesson, comforted in the knowledge that the bar had not been raised, no record had been broken. Think about that. Think about that for one goddamn minute.

Released from a World He Never Made

2008-02-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

Steve Gerber, a leading light in 1970s American comic books, a singular writer of odd and affecting comics for mainstream publishers, an advocate for and icon of creators rights, and the creator and co-creator of several characters including Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown, died Sunday in a Las Vegas hospital. The cause of death is believed to be pneumonia, although he had been suffering from a long-term illness, pulmonary fibrosis. He was 60 years old.

Tom Spurgeon's obituary of Gerber continues here.

Mike Sterling offers a remembrance and a linked history of Gerber's marvelous creations.

Mark Evanier's personal thoughts on his friend here.

Here's a cover gallery of the original run of Gerber's Howard the Duck.

If you only know of Howard the Duck through the craptacular 1986 film, you owe it to yourself to read the bitingly satiric and surprisingly subversive (for a mainstream publisher) comic book series. Ten bucks at Amazon will get you a complete run of the series.

Waugh.

1984's Hot New Bands (Part 1)

2008-02-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

The March 29, 1984 issue of Rolling Stone featured an article highlighting "the future of rock & roll" via "ten new bands you'll be hearing from soon." Most of the featured bands have now faded into obscurity, but for the sake of nostalgia, Chazzbot brings you their names and their respective write-ups in the magazine, and seeks to find any trace of them on the internetz.

The individual profiles do not credit specific authors, though a byline on the first page of the article notes that the profiles "were reported and written by Kurt Loder, Debby Miller, Steve Pond, David Fricke and James Henke."

Band #1!

Breakfast Club

"We write very quirky love songs," says the Breakfast Club's drummer, Steve Bray. "The songs are really sad, lyrically, but they sound up." As the band's first single, "Rico Mambo," amply demonstrates, the Breakfast Club's forte is dance music: jumping rhythms, modern textures and smart, funny lyrics.

The songs may be about sorry situations, but they certainly aren't mopey. "Now, you want to hear about people who have their emotional armor intact," says Dan Gilroy, who, like his brother Eddie, sings and plays guitar in the band. Previously, the Gilroy brothers had been fooling around with weirder, more comedic stuff as the Acme Band and Voidville. But when Bray, who used to work with Madonna, came to New York from Detroit, his funkier influences were the perfect foil to the Gilroys' artier roots. "The chemistry is great," says bassist Gary Burke, "because we're coming from two different directions."

With Bray supplying the dance-groove tracks and Dan and Eddie concentrating on lyrics "with humor running through them, humanizing them," says Dan, the Breakfast Club is recording its first album. After the LP's done, they'll be performing live again. In pajamas, of course. "The Eighties," Dan says, "will be Thriller and Breakfast Club."

So, where are they now?

Steve Bray has an interesting web page that features lyrics to his "Ballad to Madonna" and some of his other thoughts about Hollywood. (Warning: Page features automatic music and some photos of Steve's ass.)

This page, linked from the band's Wikipedia entry, features video and audio clips of Madonna performing with the band. (Warning: automatic music)

The perhaps slightly better known film, The Breakfast Club, was released on February 15, 1985. If one assumes Dan is referring to the film, rather than his band, in the article's final quote, he wasn't half wrong.

Chazzbot Recognition Factor: Zero. I've never heard anything by this band.

Next up: Lone Justice

Downloads of the Month

2008-02-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

When I was a teenager, I used to compile monthly lists of all the albums that had received reviews in Rolling Stone of 3 1/2 stars or higher. Then I would take the list to the local record store (located in the Layton Hills Mall) and buy the two lowest-priced albums on the list (in the popular cassette format). I eventually managed to build up a fairly decent music collection that way (even if my cassettes are now obsolete), but, fuck, I'm glad those days are over.

I like these songs. I bet you'll like them too. It's a low-risk wager!

The Way We Live: "King Dick II"
Chicken Legs Weaver: "Your Enemy Cannot Harm You"
Aaron Neville: "Hercules"
Beirut: "Elephant Gun"
The Bluetones: "My Neighbour's House"
Air feat. Jarvis Cocker: "One Hell of a Party"
Amy Winehouse: "Fuck Me Pumps"
Fake Problems: "Motion of the Ocean"
Timbaland feat. One Republic: "Apologize"
The Last Town Chorus: "Modern Love"
Interpol: "Obstacle 1 (Arthur Baker Return to New York Mix)"

In other music news, I changed the Last FM widget on the site from a playlist to a list of songs I've listened to while on the computer. Turns out a lot of Last FM's songs are only available in 30-second snippets, which seems to defeat the purpose of compiling a playlist. Anyway, now you can contemplate the wisdom of the last five songs I heard. (The list is taken from songs played either on my laptop at home or my office computer.)

And, since this post seems to be all about the music I listen to and how cool it is, here are the 10 most played songs on my laptop, as of this evening:

1. Dexy's Midnight Runners: "Plan B"
(Who knew? Turns out they did other decent songs besides "Come On, Eileen"!)

2. Hot Chip: "Baby Said"

3. Vanilla, Jade & Ebony: "Graduation Rap" (from the Ghost World soundtrack)

4. Alabama 3: "Woke Up This Morning" (from The Sopranos, which I am still missing)

5. Avril Lavigne: "The Best Damn Thing"
(I know, and fuck you.)

6. Badly Drawn Boy: "Once Around the Block"

7. Ben E. King: "Spanish Harlem"
(I enjoy this mostly because I get some childish glee out of constantly singing the first line thusly: "I picked my nose/in Spanish Harlem.")

8. The Blue Jays: "Lover's Island"
(You can't beat old doo-wop.)

9. Oasis: "Don't Look Back in Anger"

10. R.E.M.: "Get Up"
(I'm psyching myself up for the possibility that the new R.E.M. album will blow.)

Enough with the music. I'm going to go watch tonight's episode of Lost. What are you listening to?

Super Tuesday

2008-02-05T10:27:00.001-07:00

"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."

Don't forget to vote. History will be made in this election.

There Will Be Blood

2008-02-04T17:07:00.000-07:00

With There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson enters the pantheon of great film directors. Although this is an American film, and tells a story that perhaps could only be told in America, Blood is a film with literary aspirations, one that speaks to many people and tells many different stories.

Though the film is dedicated to Robert Altman, Anderson has already made his homage to Altman. That was Magnolia, a sprawling, engaging, but not always coherent film about the random, often invisible threads that connect us all. Blood, by way of contrast, is a film about a willful severing of all those threads, an abandonment of all that one man perceives is preventing him from achieving enough power to remove himself from society.

In this and many other regards, the film reminded me most of Stanley Kubrick's work. That is not to suggest that this film is derivative. (It is certainly not as derivative as, say, Magnolia.) Where Kubrick's alienated characters are often contrasted by opulent or overwhelming environments--the grand hotel of The Shining, the palace rooms and battlefields of Barry Lyndon or Paths of Glory, or the planet Jupiter in 2001: A Space Odyssey--the characters or, more precisely, character of There Will Be Blood is surrounded by an environment that is just as bleak, lifeless, and uninviting as his own heart. To his credit, Anderson's director of photography, Robert Elswit, does nothing to pretty up the oil fields and isolated towns of the film's milieu. Even the Pacific Ocean ends up looking like a wading pool, an all-too-miniscule oasis in an otherwise uncompromising land.

The film's lead character, Daniel Plainview, brilliantly and harshly portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis, is similarly barren. "There are times," he states in an isolated confessional moment, "when I look at people and see nothing worth liking." As the film progresses, we watch Plainview abandon nearly all of the pretenses (what we might call "social niceties" or, more directly, "humanity") that have helped him become an extremely rich man. In the end, we are left with a character who loves no one but himself, and even that may be a misguided assumption on our part. But at no moment does Day-Lewis fail to be anything but absorbing. His is a frightening, disturbing portrayal, and I can't think of another actor who would dare play a character as singularly unredeeming as Daniel Plainview. One is reminded of his Bill the Butcher in Scorsese's Gangs of New York, but even Bill had a rougish gleam about him, if only during his rousing speeches of racial hatred. Plainview has no such gleam, nor does Day-Lewis ever wink at the audience to reassure us that Plainview should not be judged too harshly.

There are many possible ways to interpret the film, which is one of its many strengths. It is perhaps too pat to say that the film reflects whatever light the audience shines on it, but I found myself considering, at various points during its 2 1/2 hour length, issues relating to America's claim to moral strength and how such attitudes were able to develop, the seemingly eternal yet ultimately futile struggle humans endure between faith and material comfort, the need for men to place themselves above their presumed subordinates, the desire men have to place themselves beyond issues of family while still craving its societal securities, and why our culture finds such men--even men as ethically impoverished as Plainview--to be prime candidates for leadership roles. This last theme, of course, led me to think of Bush and Cheney, their own ethical bankruptcy, and the tremendous pit they have dug for us, our children, and the reputation of our nation.

I don't want to suggest that this is an overtly politicized film, for Bush and Cheney are merely the latest insidious endpoint for trends in our culture that had their origin, as the film suggests, in the industrialization of America, specifically by means of oil development and the greed any similarly-scaled endeavour naturally engenders. Even Eli Sunday, the film's second most prominent character, a man of "faith", cannot escape the demands and expectations of America's quest for power. Plainview and Sunday engage in a increasingly personal battle of wills, one which instills them both with the need to humiliate each other, particularly in two scenes which are among the most disturbing and emotionally wrenching moments I have seen in recent films, scenes that left me trembling.

There are many other aspects of the film that are worth discussing, which only serve to remind me that so few films these days are worth discussing in anything but the most obvious narrative terms. This is a film that sticks on you, much like the blood and oil that coats the bodies of the men killed in Plainview's wells, or the cloth crosses stuck on the hearts of the ignorant settlers who think that either Plainview or Sunday will redeem their miserable lives. This is a film that you will take with you outside the theatre as you contemplate the casual indignities of the housing crisis, or the cynicism of a president who uses torture and lies as a means of personal enrichment, or the promise of a candidate who dares to offer hope, rather than anger, as a way to empowerment. The film offers little in the way of hope or optimism for our curiously mythologized assumptions about power and its consequences. What it does offer, as we approach what may be a way off of the dark path we've been led down these last seven years, is a time to reflect--in the dark, among strangers--whether our national myths are based on anything other than the callous self-interest of hateful men.

******

Though it is perhaps the most deserving, this is not the kind of film that wins the Academy Award for Best Picture. Anderson may get a nod for his direction, but this is a hard film to celebrate, at least in terms of the self-congratulatory tone of the Oscars, the very tone, ironically, on which the film turns its cold, uncompromising eye. Don't let that stop you from seeing it, as soon as possible.

Why You Should Care About FISA

2008-02-01T10:25:00.001-07:00

Blistering commentary from Keith Olbermann's Countdown. Even now, with less than a year remaining in Bush's occupation of the White House, Olbermann remains one of the very few mainstream commentators who is willing to call bullshit on the continual manipulation of Americans by the Bush administration. Required viewing before Super Tuesday (and beyond).

Boarding Clip of the Week

2008-01-29T11:15:00.001-07:00

Check this out. Slow-motion footage of skateboarders doing what skateboarders do while the cityscape around them is demolished (also in slo-mo). Fucking gorgeous, but one of these kids is going to lose an eye!

Site Maintenance Update

2008-01-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

If you scroll down a bit on the sidebar, you will see a playlist from Last.fm, a streaming music website that may remind you a lot of Pandora, in that if you tell it which artists or genres you like, the site will generate a playlist of related artists and genres that you might also like. Additionally, the site allows one to compile personal playlists for use on one's blog, as you can see here.

For my playlist, I've tried to include songs and artists that don't get as much attention as they deserve, following the indie ethic of my college radio days. There is no other consistency to the playlist--it's pretty much all over the place. You will hear some underground hip-hop, world music, alt.country, punk and all kinds of other eclectic selections.

As of today, my playlist only contains 15 tracks, but now that I've played around with the site, I expect to keep adding songs to the list at least on a weekly basis. If you find yourself interested in setting up an account of your own at Last.fm, look me up.

I've also updated the links, deleting some that I had either lost interest in or that didn't seem to be posting regularly anymore. I also added a few, including Brandon's professional site, so he can tell you his news directly. Also on the list are Occasional Superheroine, one of the smarter comics blogs, and two pop culture sites I've grown to like: Sasha Frere-Jones is perhaps best known as the pop music critic for The New Yorker (where he maintains another worthwhile blog), and I found the Jane Dark site through a link on the SFJ site.

Let me know what you think of the playlist.

No Alarms & No Surprises

2008-01-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

I can't imagine anyone will be surprised or enlightened about this story's confirmation of the Bush administration's continual duplicity, but I'm glad someone is crunching the numbers, even if the effort comes several years too late to be really useful to the nearly 4000 American soldiers and untold numbers of Iraqis who have been killed as a result of George W. Bush's ideologically motivated lies to the American people:

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

In other non-surprising but still horrific news, Mitt Romney, the Republican Mormon milkshake-loving presidential candidate, has encountered black people on the campaign trail. And what do you imagine he might do in the face of this unencountered species? Romney goes with what he knows: spouting racial stereotypes about "bling" to children and limply reciting outdated hip-hop lyrics. Far from being an amusing anecdote of Romney's travels (though I have no doubt his campaign staff will spin it as such), this story emphasizes Romney's inherent, if ignorant, racism toward people who were referred to in his religious texts for 130 years as "cursed". (Though, in this regard, the members of Romney's faith are, historically speaking, little different from most other U.S. religions.) Welcome to America, dawg!

Now that at least two of the leading Republican candidates have demonstrated that they value their religious teachings above and beyond comparatively recent documents like the U.S. Constitution, and have no qualms about imposing their non-scientific mythologies on everyone else, isn't it time somebody called bullshit? Here we have yet another disgraceful legacy of the Bush administration: our presidential candidates (or at least only the Republican candidates--so far) must now bear the seal of approval from Christendom, even if this seal has only been received in the candidate's imagination. Gods help us, if not them.

A Time to Break Silence

2008-01-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 1967 at Manhattan's Riverside Church

The Year of Schrand Begins

2008-01-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

My close personal friend and loyal Chazzbot reader Brandon R. Schrand has been chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection for Summer 2008.

Pretty exciting news considering the high visibility of the award. You can look for Brandon's memoir at a B&N near you soon. Or you can pre-order it and say you were familiar with his work before he was an award-winning author. (There will be more and increasingly prestigious awards to come, I'm sure.)

I've written about Brandon before on the site, especially back when his late, lamented blog, Chronicle West, was still up and running. He's a fantastic writer and a great beer drinking raconteur. Among other adventures, he and I survived one of the most misguided group camping trips in modern memory.

You can read more details of the award at Brandon's new professional website. (A professional website! This is perhaps the new marker of true and/or potential fame in our wired culture. A site where you might avoid discussing misguided group camping trips, for example.) (Actually, I'm not sure anyone who experienced that camping trip actually wants to write about it, but that's another story.)

Chazzbot sends its warmest congratulations to Brandon and heartily recommends that you find any and all of his published writing and enjoy the shit out of it. (This is my favorite piece of his (in PDF format).) You'll be hearing more about this writer in the near future, and not just from me.

First, Jon D. Lee; now Brandon R. Schrand. Who says Chazzbot doesn't have its digital finger on the literary pulse of the new millennium?

The Return of Dave Sim

2008-01-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

Dave Sim, in case you don't know, is the creator of Cerebus, a 300-issue comic book series that began as a parody of Conan, with a barbarian aardvark as the central character. By the end of the series, Cerebus had become something very different, something like a reinterpretation of the world's major religious texts (as perceived by the same aardvark). Along the way, the series touched (at times, brilliantly) on issues ranging from abortion, fascism, literature, religious power, political power, the banality of superhero comics, and the nature of God. Along the way, Sim also lost much of his initial fanbase with his provocative and occasionally deranged essays on feminism and women.

Though I find Sim's essays fascinating, the ideas they contain suggest that Sim has left the path of rational thinking. His work on Cerebus, however, remains a high point of the medium, and that includes everything from scripting and lettering to Sim's extraordinary talent as a cartoonist. Sim's work is among the best that comic books have to offer, and in my estimation, he ranks just above the Hernandez Brothers as a cartoonist whose work will/should stand for ages as a high point of comics writing and illustration.

Sim, who has long proclaimed that Cerebus would represent his life's work, is preparing a new series which will debut in April of this year, entitled Glamourpuss. Keeping in mind that Sim is an avowed misogynist, a new series that seems to be based largely on women in the fashion industry might give one pause for thought, e.g. Are you sure this is a good idea, Dave? On the basis of the illustrations posted on the website, however, Sim's cartooning skills are in full force and even show substantial improvement from the final issues of Cerebus.

It is for Sim's superior illustrations that I will seek out Glamourpuss. If you can divorce what a man thinks from what he produces, I encourage you to seek it out as well. For anyone interested in comics, Sim is and always will be a master of the art. (A somewhat frustratingly designed website is up featuring some of Sim's art to promote the series.)

This blog post explains, in more detail than I care to get into on my own blog, why so many of Sim's fans are torn between the beauty of his work and the ugliness of his ideas. And here is a short interview with Sim that is thankfully limited to his thoughts on the new series. I've expressed my enthusiasm for Cerebus earlier on this site.

New Hampshire (updated with links)

2008-01-10T14:47:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting for some pundit to explain to me why Hillary Clinton's "unscripted" emotional moment signals a revival of her campaign, while Howard Dean's unscripted emotional moment from 2004 was a career-killing gaffe. (Which is not to say that Hillary will not make a career-killing gaffe during the remainder of the campaign.) Dean's outburst at least had the virtue of being unquestionably honest, if poorly expressed. Even so, I've never been able to figure out just why that killed his campaign, especially after being subjected to what were, to my mind, the infinitely more embarassing syntactical stumblings of candidate George W during that particular political season.

But when Hillary chokes back her tears, suddenly she is a front-runner again. Feminist pundits have been quick to point out that plenty of male politicians have shed a watery drop or two without risking their credibility, but whenever I see the by now familiar footage of Hillary's emotional confession, nothing about it seems authentic to me, unless what we are in fact seeing is an exhausted politician coming off of a resounding defeat in the Iowa contest.

Obama, by contrast, seems to be a more emotionally honest candidate, if that description is not a complete oxymoron. Few people who have seen or heard him speak would, I think, deny the man's impressive oratorical ability, or even the quality of his faith in America, but I keep asking myself: "Is that enough?"

A colleague of mine who supports Obama pointed out to me today that, for her, it's now all about the running mate. Obama needs to select, in her words, a "Cheney"--not another Great Satan who feeds on the documents of democracy and the blood of Iraqi children, but an older, experienced pol who knows his/her way around foreign policy.

Because I've spent much of my voting life in Utah, I've always had the luxury of voting my heart, if only because my non-conservative vote is meaningless here. So I voted for Jesse Jackson in 1988, and Ralph Nader in 2000. The one occasion where I felt I had to vote strategically was in the last presidential "election" when I was living in Ohio; at that stage, it was back to my grilled-cheese sandwich strategy. As it turned out, the Ohio election was a complete sham, and the Democratic nominee whose name shall not be repeated here chose to ignore the enormous discrepancies in the Ohio (and Florida and Michigan) polling for the sake of the country. If only he had known.

Anyway, next month's Utah primary gives me another opportunity to cast a potentially meaningful vote for the Democratic Convention. I was considering Richardson for my vote, but it looks like his candidacy is not going to survive much longer. So I'm back to my head versus heart problem. Experience over passion? Stirring speeches over crocodile tears? Bleh.

I'm not entirely certain why I doubt Hillary's tears. She strikes me as a bit too posed, a bit too polished, and she sets off my bullshit detector. Some might argue that my votes for Jackson or Nader serve as an indication that my bullshit detector is offline, but I've never felt embarassed by those votes (again, I have the luxury of casting what I know to be meaningless votes anyway). It's entirely subjective and emotional, but after the New Hampshire results, I didn't feel any sense of excitement or promise, only boredom at seeing a professional politician manipulate her way to a win.

Is Obama any different? Time will tell. Until South Carolina, I'm trying to choke down a rather bland sandwich.

What's the Matter Here?

2008-01-08T18:18:00.000-07:00

I've never been a tremendous fan of Natalie Merchant's records, though I do admire her distinctive, semi-lispy voice--instantly recognizable whenever it can be heard. Combined with the musicality of a crack band like 10,000 Maniacs, Merchant's voice often met the boys more than halfway, providing a melancholy tone to some stirring instrumentation (reaching a peak in songs like "Don't Talk," about an abusive drunk).

Merchant sacrificed a great band for a solo career, one in which her sentimental and more cloying lyrical tendencies were allowed free reign. The Maniacs followed a similar course, and I find their early albums, particularly In My Tribe, to be their best. That album contains possibly the best pop song ever written about a literary figure this side of Dylan ("Hey Jack Kerouac"), a song which itself contains one of the best critical assessments of Allen Ginsberg ever written, in pop music or otherwise ("Allen baby, why so jaded?/Have the boys all grown up/and their beauty faded?"). The album also offers the most heartbreaking song about Los Angeles I've ever heard ("City of Angels," which ranks, in my estimation, just above NWA's "Fuck Tha Police" and Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge"), and a stunning first-person account of illiteracy ("Cherry Tree"). It's a gorgeous record.

Merchant left the band after another two albums, and I've never felt compelled to listen to an entire album of hers since. Apparently, I'm in the minority in this regard, as Merchant achieved much more success and widespread recognition with her pop solo albums than she ever did with the Maniacs, who never quite managed to break out of the college radio circuit.

The fact remains that hers is a original, appealing voice and that her solo career was a commercial success. All the more confusing and frustrating, then, is the state of her career now, as explained in a review of her recent string of performances in New York City, her first concerts there in four years. Writing for the NYT, Jon Pareles notes that Merchant has no recording contract, though she is still writing songs and, evidently, playing to enthusiastic crowds.

Merchant's situation provides yet another damning indictment of the recording industry today, an industry that seems intent on making itself extinct through the continued persecution of its fans, its failure to meet the consumer demands of its market, and its unabated pursuit of quick profit at the expense of developing and encouraging artistic talent.

Whatever your opinion of Natalie Merchant, the fact that this distinctive musical voice has no other venue to offer her songs other than live performance says a great deal about the music industry's ignorance and its imminent collapse. It's time that we had a more effective way of hearing the kind of music we prefer, and that artists like Natalie Merchant had a better way of reaching her audience.

Separated at Birth?

2008-01-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

A Romulan plot? I wouldn't put it past them.

Iowa

2008-01-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

I was pleased to see Obama squash Hillary in last night's Iowa caucuses. As much as I respect President Bill Clinton, I can't bring myself to fully trust or invest in Hillary. I don't like her proposals about funding higher education, for one thing, and she seems too invested in D.C. politics to really bring much new to the Oval Office, at least in terms of progressive thinking.

Don't get me wrong. I'd vote for a grilled cheese sandwich over the current Occupier of the White House, but in these initial stages before the Democratic Convention this summer, I am voting more with my heart than my head. Which is why I was also pleased to see Edwards come in second in the Iowa campaign.

Part of me, however, is concerned about what the new President will face upon entering office. Bush's legacy will include the world's largest bed of quicksand in Iraq, a colossal and ongoing national debt, a collective international sneer at what the United States has become politically and ethically, a plunging value on the dollar, a shrinking supply of oil, and a shredded Constitution. As Lou Reed once said about another glorious Republican legacy, it'll take more than the Angels or Iron Mike Tyson to heal this bloody breach.

So I find myself looking at the candidates whose experience might be up to the task. And that means looking at Clinton, or even McCain. Certainly a vote for McCain in Utah might go further than any Democratic selection, I cynically tell myself.

I don't like thinking in practical terms this early in the election season. I want to be encouraged by Obama's words of hope and Edwards' words of conviction. And, for the most part, I am. And yet. The voice in my head mutters, "Will that be enough?" Because our nation is in the shithole and it's going to take more than a glad hand and a winning smile to get us out.

I guess we'll see how things go until the convention. It seems that the Democratic ticket will be pretty much determined by February anyway, so it won't be too long a wait. In the meantime, I'm celebrating the victory of two guys who I desperately want to believe in. At this point, with little over a year left for Bush to keep fucking with us, I want to believe in anything.

Books Read in 2007

2007-12-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

Now it can be told! I'm a little less embarassed about publishing my list this year, since I managed to read slightly more than a book per month (though this is my lowest recorded page tally). Still, my primary reading remains short-form works like articles and short stories. I read a ton of that shit.

As usual, favorites are in bold.

Total number of pages read: 4256
Pages read in 1985: 21,061
Pages read in 1986: 17,757
Pages read in 1987: 11,496
Pages read in 1988: 9058
Pages read in 1989: 5892
Pages read in 1990: 7743
Pages read in 1991: 4870
Pages read in 1992: 5395
Pages read in 1993: 7568
Pages read in 1994: 4441
Pages read in 1995: 5417
Pages read in 1996: 4268
Pages read in 1997: 6890
Pages read in 1998: 6546
Pages read in 1999: 4324
Pages read in 2000: 8639
Pages read in 2001: 12,542

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
Blankets by Craig Thompson (graphic novel)
An Edge in My Voice by Harlan Ellison
The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder by Mark Crispin Miller
Summer Blonde: Stories by Adrian Tomine
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
The Poor Bastard by Joe Matt (graphic novel)
Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The Little Man: Short Strips, 1980-1995 by Chester Brown
Light in August by William Faulkner
The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman and George Perez (graphic novel)
The Last Castle by Jack Vance
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

Favorite Music of 2007

2007-12-26T14:41:00.000-07:00

Entering my fifth decade of life this year didn't seem particularly unnerving, though I perhaps now give more thought to regular checkups and rudimentary exercise than I did a year earlier. However, looking over the list of predominantly mainstream albums I most enjoyed this year gave me some pause for thought: Am I at last a fuddy-duddy? Have I lost my ear for the new, the seldom heard, the forgotten? Am I now destined to potter over my CD collection like an urban gardener over his limp beanstalks, remembering the glories of harvests past?

If so, I suppose there could be worse companions than these fine musicians, listed here roughly in order of preference and/or repeated plays:

9. Radiohead, In Rainbows
8. Wilco, Sky Blue Sky

If I have indeed become a fuddy-duddy, let me first blame these two bands for showing me the gilded path. I love both of these bands fiercely, to the extent that I will buy their new releases before hearing a note. In their past few releases, both of these bands have experimented more with sound than with song, but this year both bands seemed to rediscover the simple pleasures of songcraft, measuring their odd beeps and twitters with genuinely literate and expressive lyrics. Luckily enough, both bands also feature lead singers who can (when called upon to do so) emote with the best of them. Both of these albums feature some absolutely gorgeous songs, something I've not come to expect from these bands in the last few years. Although I will happily seek out any of their future noodlings, it was nice to see them both return to what, for them, passes for roots rock.

7. Arctic Monkeys, Favourite Worst Nightmare
These lads, by contrast with the comparatively old hands above, are still in the blossom of their working-class anger, though this should not be mistaken for punk disdain. Rather, the Arctic Monkeys channel their aggression into surprisingly empathetic songs about the people in their neighborhood. Unlike Bob of Sesame Street, however, the Monkeys are willing to peek around the curtain of their neighbors' windows, sometimes to devastatingly honest effect, as in their heartbreaking anthem to a housewife's lost youth, "Fluorescent Adolescent," one of my favorite songs of the year.

6. Paul McCartney, Memory Almost Full
Back to the fuddy-duddies, then. Macca's latest shows him more willing to experiment with instrumentation and songcraft, though experimentation to the former Beatle means something very different than it does to Radiohead or Wilco. The opening number, "Dance Tonight," for example, is a charming little mandolin number that McCartney wrote for his youngest child and is only experimental in the sense that it is not overwrought with McCartney's sense of self-importance (an affliction that more often struck his former partner, John Lennon) or the need to make any kind of grandiose statement about the vapid subjects that sometimes dominate McCartney's songs. Later in the album, McCartney acknowledges his past, but again manages to be more charming than cloying. The kicker is "The End of the End," in which the Beatle projects to the day of his death, evoking the sad realization that, aside from Ringo's perpetual nostalgia tours, Paul is really all we have left of the world's most influential pop band. This song, and this album, make you feel that perhaps we should enjoy whatever good years this man has left. But, like Dylan's recent renaissance, McCartney doesn't elicit any sympathy votes with his music. It speaks for itself.

5. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Raising Sand
Initially, I thought this would be more of a novelty record. It certainly is that, but not in the sense of it being an of-its-era throwaway. The novelty (or one of them) is in hearing Plant's grizzled voice wrap itself in harmony around Krauss' gorgeous lilt, and in the way they manage to resurrect some real chestnuts from the R&B and C&W canons. If, like me, when you listen to Led Zeppelin's fourth album and find yourself looking forward more to "The Battle of Evermore" than "Black Dog", you will fucking love this album. Ride on.

4. Steve Earle, Washington Square Serenade
The story of this album is almost as much fun as the album itself. Steve Earle, long the outcast leftist songwriter in a town full of conservative hacks, finally gets fed up with Nashville, marries one of the best singers on the planet, loads up the truck and moves to Manhattan, where he procedes to emulate the young Dylan by writing songs about what is, to him, a newly discovered mecca of characters, sounds, and inspiration. In doing so, like Dylan, Earle churns out one of the best albums of his career, a folky fuck-you to Trashville and all the small-minded hicks who inhabit it and a hummy hallelujah to NYC and all its freaky immigrants. Unlike anything coming out of country music these days, this album tells us what it really means to be an American.

3. Bat for Lashes, Fur and Gold
Before I fell in love with Bjork, her albums used to scare me shitless. Hypnotized both by her voice and the amazing range of fucking weird-ass noises she would throw together in her songs, I could only sit transfixed, like the RCA dog listening to his master's voice. This album is the first time since hearing Bjork's chirpy growl on a Sugarcubes record that I've felt so entranced by a voice whose words make me shiver in repressed terror. It must be love.

2. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
Until I heard this record, I thought that any 20-something's evocation of the Golden Age of Motown would fall into the tired histrionics of Boyz 2 Men or Mariah Carey-style yelping, where a potentially interesting song becomes an excuse for the singer to ululate like some sped-up version of a Cold War siren. Amy Winehouse, despite (or because of) all her drug-induced tragedy, knows that Motown was not intially a City on the Hill and that its songs were made to sound best coming out of a transistor radio, something Mariah Carey wouldn't touch with a ten-inch heel. Better yet, Winehouse looks like she has just stepped out of the era, and carries the pipes to prove it. This record is a sonic love-letter not only to some of the greatest music made in America, but to the poor shlubs who stayed up all hours learning etiquette, fashion, and dance steps to bring it to the masses. This is, and always will be, a music of the people.

1. Bruce Springsteen, Magic
I wrote about this on the site earlier, and I have lost none of my enthusiasm for this wonderful, much-needed, album. There are at least three songs on this masterpiece that never fail to bring tears to my eyes, and at least that many that make me want to blast down the freeway, hooting at underage girls. Like his earlier classic, Born in the U.S.A., this album has been sadly underestimated and misunderstood, but it will, I have no doubt, be regarded as one of Springsteen's most vital statements. This is an album we should feel lucky to have, and one that may well serve as a reminder, years hence, of what made this country great and how we pissed it all away.

Future Students Threaten Balance of Universe

2007-11-27T17:13:00.000-07:00

I was going through my photo rosters for spring semester and came across these two students, both of whom are registered for my "Writing About Art" class. Not knowing a thing about either one of them, it looks like they are probably complete opposites and will cancel each other out in a huge anti-matter explosion once they enter the classroom. I'm thinking of setting up some kind of betting pool to see which one will earn the highest grade and/or beat up the other one first.

The Past Is a Source of Knowledge

2007-11-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

For the last few days, I've been rummaging through my 20+ year collection of Rolling Stone magazine as I prepare to abandon my print copies in favor of the new CD-ROM collection of the magazine. There is one issue (technically two, I guess, since it's a year-end double-issue) that hasn't held up very well and is an immediate candidate for the recylcling pile. That would be the 1982 Photo Yearbook issue, comprising issue number 385 & 386, with a publication date of December 23, 1982-January 6, 1983.

It's pretty much a vacation issue for the magazine's staff, comprised largely of photos of musicians, celebrities, and newsmakers from the last 12 months. There is a blistering article by William Greider titled "What Reagan has done to America" and a review of the year's 40 best albums (a list that includes Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, The Clash's Combat Rock, and John Cougar's American Fool (!)). There's also a "Final Tributes" section that acknowledges the deaths of prominent musicians, celebrities, and newsmakers from the last 12 months. (I hope everyone at the magazine had a nice long vacation.) The first page of the section is devoted to John Belushi and contains the lyrics of a song ("That Lonesome Road") performed at his funeral by James Taylor and Don Grolnick (a song that has since been covered by the Dixie Chicks, among others).

Most of the rest of the magazine is taken up by amusing blurbs about the year's events, which become all the more amusing with 25 years of hindsight. A few highlights:

Idaho rep Larry Craig bludgeons rumor to death
Idaho representative Larry Craig called a press conference to announce that he was not--repeat, not--one of the congressmen in the Capitol Hill gay sex scandal.

from the Photos section:

It was business as usual as the Who toured the U.S. for what may be the last time: Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend quarreled, huge crowds turned out to see them, and they earned millions of dollars.

and I found this item personally relevant and somewhat gratifying:

Cliff-hanger Notes

Graduate student Donald M. Judson was disciplined by officials of Ohio's Bowling Green University after he pulled out a pistol and played Russian roulette in front of the creative-writing class he was teaching. "I was trying to demonstrate to the students the intensity of an experience," Judson explained, adding that one student told him it was "the only interesting thing that happened to her in four years at the university."

Judson is now in his late 50's and has a rather colorful past, as this article explains. Nice to see that he made it this far.

Oh, Look! A Rant! About Comics!

2007-11-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

I recently received this purchasing suggestion from Amazon:

Chazzbot,
We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated books by Bill Watterson have also purchased Garfield Fat Cat 3-Pack: A Triple Helping of Classic GARFIELD Humor Vol 3 by Jim Davis.

I ask you, in all seriousness, would any self-respecting fan of Calvin & Hobbes actually purchase a Garfield collection? I want Amazon to tell me who these people are so I can slowly gouge out their eyes.

This is probably the exact kind of thinking that prompted Watterson to quit comic strips in the first place! Go on. Read any single strip of Calvin & Hobbes, and I guarantee you that it will contain more imagination, wit, and creativity than pretty much the entire collected works of "Jim Davis" (now best recognized as a corporate entity rather than a "creator").

Not to mention that Garfield has been licensed and merchandized to the extent that the franchise (It's no longer appropriate or logical to call Garfield a "character". Characters, by definition, represent life, and there has not been any life in that tired strip for years.) represents basically everything that Watterson strived to avoid--over-commercialization and the loss of appreciation for the strip from which the character(s) originated. Check out the official website of "Garfield and Friends" if you don't believe me. There isn't a comic strip in sight, but there are cartoon representations of the legal and licensing entities for the property. And flashing exhortations to "pick a product." 'Nuff said.

On the day Calvin & Hobbes left the comic pages, I knew that particular section of the newspaper would never again be as engaging or charming or poignant. On the day Garfield leaves the comic pages, an event only feasible if the hordes of lawyers and commercial interestes protecting the franchise are simultaneously decapitated (and preferably maimed), I will cheer.

In short, Garfield represents everything that is wrong with modern comic strips. Calvin & Hobbes, on the other hand, represents everything comic strips are capable of, everything they could be if entities like Garfield, or Blondie, or Beetle Bailey, or B.C., or any of the other humourless, soul-sucking franchises that clutter the funny pages didn't exist. Remember the last time you laughed at one of those comic strips? Me neither, bub.

I am generally one of those people who become highly annoyed whenever I see one of those Calvin decals on some truck or SUV (and I have only seen them on trucks or SUVs) that depict Calvin pissing on a Ford logo, or a team logo, or, my favorite, kneeling in prayer. I mean, seriously, what the fuck? (It should be noted that Bill Watterson has never licensed any Calvin or Hobbes merchandise.) But I would be willing to risk a potential lawsuit and possibly even drive a truck if I could find a decal of Calvin pissing on Garfield's fat face.

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. Fucking cat.

Remember, Remember

2007-11-05T15:56:00.000-07:00

At the school were I teach, there is a large rock in front of the library which is often painted over with announcements about activities. Today, November 5, the library rock looked like this:

Some of you may recognize this as the inverted anarchy symbol used by V in the graphic novel (and film, if you count that) V for Vendetta. By a strange coincidence, I have been using V for Vendetta as a text in my class on terrorism. In fact, this was the last text we read in the class. (We are now reading Ian McEwan's novel, Saturday.)

The character V wears a Guy Fawkes mask as he works to overthrow the fascist government that has taken over England. The novel, written in the late 1980s, is set in 1997 and 1998, but still works as a chilling projection of the power and influence of fascist politics on a complacent citizenry (like, say, the United States in the early 21st-century). Since V spends a lot of his time in the novel accomplishing what Guy Fawkes could not (i.e. blowing up the Houses of Parliament), it is only fitting the first chapter of the novel opens on November 5, the historic anniversary of Fawkes' failed attempt.

Whoever painted the library rock clearly didn't forget the significance of the date:

Naturally, I was delighted to see any sign of progressive, pro-active politics at my little university in Southern Utah. I was equally delighted that this act of graffitti occurred in conjunction with my use of the novel in two of my classes this semester. Now, does this mean I am giving myself credit for inspiring this mystery student or students? I suppose I cannot go quite that far, since the film exists and I guess it's possible that a student on campus could have been inspired by that thin adaptation of the novel to paint a rock in front of the library that I walk by every morning.

But that wouldn't explain the mysterious "V" symbols that appeared in my classroom today, a class that has not read the novel. Clearly, something is up. I like to think that I have not only inspired one or more students to buck the system, but that I am instilling dangerous thoughts of anarchy and political subversion into a culture that is sorely in need of alternative viewpoints. As V him/herself said, "That is their task: to rule themselves; their lives and loves and land. With this achieved, then let them talk of salvation. Without it, they are surely carrion."

By turn of century they'll know their fate: either a rose midst rubble blooms, or else has bloomed too late.

Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex

2007-11-02T10:11:00.001-07:00

I'm pleased to see this band getting some more attention now that this song is appearing in those ubiquitous iPod Touch ads. The band is CSS, and Chazzbot heartily recommends their album, "Cansei de Ser Sexy."

This song enters the official playlist of great songs about music (or great music about songs, if you prefer). You could easily sandwich this between the O'Jay's "I Love Music" and Sister Sledge's "Lost in Music".

Fuck, I miss having a radio show.

Unmitigated Disaster

2007-10-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

I know I'm not the only one to point out these discrepancies, but I don't think they can be emphasized enough.

The Superdome, post-Katrina:

Tens of thousands filled the Superdome and were living in subhuman conditions. Food and water quickly ran out. The toilets stopped working. Corpses lay unattended.“We were treated like this was a concentration camp,” Audrey Jordan told Agence France Presse.

Outside, corpses were floating in the floodwater and lying on the city streets. And the images were being broadcast around the world.

On CNN, Anderson Cooper reported he had seen a body being eaten by rats. On NBC, photojournalist Tony Zumbada reported from the Convention Center: “There’s nothing offered to them, no water, no ice, no C-rations. Nothing for the last four days.” In the corridors of power, the focus shifted from saving the victims to targeting them. On the state level, Governor Blanco issued an order to “shoot to kill” looters, even though many of the so-called looters were starving residents seeking food and water.

In Washington, the New York Times reported that President Bush’s chief advisor Karl Rove began plotting a PR campaign to shift blame to local and state officials. Soon “the blame game” became the GOP catchword of choice.

Meanwhile, the people kept dying.

(More here, if you need to be reminded.)

Key words: poor, black.

Qualcomm Stadium, post-wildfires:

At Qualcomm Stadium, where the San Diego Chargers play, thousands of evacuees were camped in the parking lot in their cars and RVs, and in tents and on cots. Tables were piled high with food. There were pallets of apples and bananas, and semitrailers filled with ice. You could make your own sandwich -- or a volunteer would make one for you. There were stacks of cookies. Coolers brimming with icy-cold sodas. Volunteers offered coloring books and crayons to the kids.

In the land of plenty, there was plenty to offer.

[. . . ]

At the stadium, there were mountains of clothing and bedding. One man was trying on a pair of leather pants. A local pizza maker told a radio reporter that his pies were turned away because there was too much food. A cellphone provider was offering free calls to anywhere in the United States. An air-conditioned medical tent was erected. Doctors and nurses circulated. A sign advertised crisis counseling for "grief, loss, group or individual."

(Full story here.)

Key words: wealthy, white.

Sure, there is a vast discrepancy in the scale of these disasters. But how long do you think it will take for those hilltop homes in San Diego to be rebuilt? Meanwhile, years after the fact, most of the affected areas of New Orleans are still vacant.

(Mormon) Life in a Southern (Idaho) Town

2007-10-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

Sarah Hepola presents interviews with two Mormon teenagers living in Southern Idaho. Some choice quotes from the first interview:

I can't quite get inside Joseph Smith's head. I don't know if he was truly crazy and believed his own hype, or if he was just a con artist.

Mormons are so nice because they are trying to entice you into being one of them. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Once I made these really tasty brownies that had COFFEE in the recipe for a Church young women's function. (I rode my bicycle to a town 15 miles away to buy the coffee so no sales clerk would tell my parents. I live in a police state.)

and the second interview:

The craziest thing about Mormonism is the garbage that supposedly educated and intelligent people will believe.

[My mother] had 10 kids. It is therefore safe to assume that she has had sex exactly 10 times in her life. I know that all kids think this of their parents, but it is the gospel truth in my mother's case.

I've never met a nice Mormon over the age of 21. . . If they seem nice, it's an act. They have ulterior motives.

I might consider smoking a cigarrette, but they're not sold in my town, and I can't afford to buy them anyway.

Mitt Romney looks like a corpse.

I'm to the point in my life where I regard religion itself as a crock of hooey. The Mormons are no more or less misguided or "curious" than any other denomination. Still, I found the interviews entertaining. I applaud the ability of these young women to think for themselves. But I'm still waiting for the day when an atheist can openly run for national office and be a viable candidate.

Chazzbot

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