On Audio Cassette:
Primus: Frizzle Fry
Bjork: Debut & Post
I've figured out that my taste itself isn't all that unconventional for the genres themselves, I think that it's the juxtaposition of many different styles and genres that makes it slightly more unusual than the next person. It's just that I'm so darn curious about music, and have been ever since my heady undergrad days when I was introduced to something new all the time. So if you're ever interested in sharing or trading - look me up.
Well - that's all good and fine, but yesterday, I think that my voracious appetite for music cost me a half-spent monthly metro card. I was walking home through the oppressive humidity when I happened to see a few open boxes of books and audio tapes out on the street, presumably for public consumption, should the public be so inclined to consume forthwith and so forth. So of course, I lean over and dig through the box, and find a dubbed version of Bjork's first 2 albums (which was opportune timing, considering that I'd just finished reading an excellent article about Bjork in the New Yorker, which I thoroughly enjoy reading, by the way (that will have to be another entry on another day, or perhaps - if this prolonged fit of procrastination reaches olympic proportions - later today)). I also found an original of Primus' debut album.
At any rate, I picked up my new acquisitions and skipped merrily homeward. Well perhaps the mode of transportation didn't happen quite like I said, but close enough. I got home, emptied my pockets, and stared at the place where my MetroCard wasn't. DAMN IT. It must have slipped out of my top pocket when I leaned over to root through someone else's garbage without bending my knees. Man, and I'm always warning my loved one (maybe she would use a stronger word) not to lose her monthly. I hate losing money like that. Or through the stream of parking tickets that we've been getting this year. Anyways - so the way I look at it, these tapes cost me about $25, since that's about how much time, pro-rated, I had left on the card (since it was a TransitCheck dealy). So THAT's why I'm gonna KEEP playing these tapes till the sun don't shine!
Speaking of which, it's finally raining in NYC, after 2 days of humidity so heavy it felt like gravity was sitting on your shoulders. The hard afternoon downpour is more welcome music than anything I could be playing right now, the caress of the breeze more refreshing than the sweetest summer cocktail. I love rainy summer afternoons. I can finally turn off our A/C and just sit with the windows open and lights out. Oh yeah. Lemme shut this thing off t...
Aug 21, 2004
How Free Music Cost Me $25 Yesterday
Aug 20, 2004
The Living Room Candidate
This is a fantastic online exhibit at the American Museum of the Moving Image - I'm really impressed by the array of ads. Check out some of the Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson ads... also - there's an amazing ad with Jackie Kennedy speaking pretty good Spanish - I am amazed that they did an ad in Spanish in 1960!
Memoirs of an Orientalist
In My Ears:
Judas Priest:
"Green Manalishi"
"Painkiller"
"Electric Eye"
and a SLAMMING version of Ozzy's "Mr. Crowley"
OK - so granted, I haven't read the novel Memoirs of a Geisha so I shouldn't be doing what folks on the right are always doing to controversial artists, but come on. It's written by a white man, they've been schlepping around to find a lead actress, and I just think that it's catering to severely orientalist fantasies. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Well - it seems they've found their girl. Zhang Ziyi, best known for her breakout role in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is going to play the part.
All I can say is:
Dubya speaks 8/18/04
From our wonderful chief-of-statefuddery...
"Let me tell you an interesting story, and then I promise to answer some questions. If Laura were here, she'd be giving me the hook. That's the way it is. Anyway, the Oval Office door opens up and in walks seven men from Iraq, all of whom had had their right hands cut off by Saddam Hussein. They had been to Houston, Texas, where a newscaster had -- a quite famous newscaster -- raised money and set up a foundation to help people. ... Anyway, so these guys walk in, you know, and I was emotional, they were emotional. And I said, why you? He said, that Saddam dinar had devalued and -- he was a merchant, a small businessman. I don't know if he was a sub-chapter S corporation or not, but he was a small businessman. And he had sold dinars on a particular day to buy another currency, euros or dollars, so he could buy gold to manufacture his product. And because the Soviet Dinar had devalued, Saddam Hussein plucked this guy out of society to punish him, and six other small merchants, for the devaluation of their currency. He just summarily said, you're it, come here -- and cut his hand off."
-- Featured here is inappropriate goofiness in relation to the subject of people losing their limbs under repression in Iraq, culminating in a completely unnecessary reference to sub-chapter S corporations, and just for fun, Dubya invents a new currency: The Soviet Dinar. Hudson, Wisconsin, Aug. 18, 2004
Quote and commentary courtesy of DubyaSpeak. Read More......
Aug 18, 2004
Aug 17, 2004
Revelation
it's a gorgeous, glorious day outside - the kind that makes you just feel like it came about solely to remind you of how beautiful the world is, and how lucky you are to be a member of it. I may be a bit bleary-eyed from my exhaustion, a bit downcast about my current situation outside of home, but I am blessed otherwise. Keep the sun in focus, and the clouds on the horizon may seem more behind you than in front.
Read More......Iz Beautiful
Digital Rotation:
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole: "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World"
This song was featured in the ER episode in which Dr. Mark Greene died. It was also in Meet Joe Black, though I haven't seen it. And finally, I have heard that it was featured in a commercial recently. I heard it this past weekend at the friend's wedding that we went to - as part of the home video they created from bits and pieces of old videos (I would be really surprised if it weren't created on iMovie, because our friend is a big Mac head too). It's just achingly beautiful, like a song sent into the wind with a yearning that reminds me of only a few other songs that I have loved so dearly (David Gray's "Please Forgive Me" ranks in this category, and "Why Should I Cry For You" by Sting). I strongly recommend that you buy this song from iTunes, or at least make me give it to you - it's a keeper.
Aug 16, 2004
The Olympics and Socially Conscious Athletes
Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos
raise fists for Black Power in 1968. (Source: AP)
It was the most popular medal ceremony of all time. The photographs of two black American sprinters standing on the medal podium with heads bowed and fists raised at the Mexico City Games in 1968 not only represent one of the most memorable moments in Olympic history but a milestone in America's civil rights movement.
The two men were Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Teammates at San Jose State College, Smith and Carlos were stirred by the suggestion of a young sociologist friend Harry Edwards, who asked them and all the other black American athletes to join together and boycott the games....
Still impassioned by Edwards' words, Smith and Carlos secretly planned a non-violent protest in the manner of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 200-meter race, Smith won the gold medal and Carlos the bronze. As the American flag rose and the Star-Spangled Banner played, the two closed their eyes, bowed their heads, and began their protest.
Smith later told the media that he raised his right, black-glove-covered fist in the air to represent black power in America while Carlos' left, black-covered fist represented unity in black America. Together they formed an arch of unity and power. The black scarf around Smith's neck stood for black pride and their black socks (and no shoes) represented black poverty in racist America....
This image, and the story behind it remind me to ask: where are the athletes nowadays who are willing to forego their millions in advertisement and movie deals (while masterfully dodging resposibility as role models to America's youth) and take the risk to speak about social injustice and civic engagement in some meaningful way.
What do we have nowadays? Carlos Delgado isn't on the field during "God Bless America" to protest the American invasion of Iraq. But that's a personal choice that's getting blown out of proportion - he's not an activist, just like other athletes in faith who don't tell the world about their praying habits aren't preachers.
In 1995, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf of the Denver Nuggets was ostracized for not being around for a stretch of 60 games when the National Anthem was played. His career never recovered from the criticism that rained upon him at that time.
Where are our Muhammad Ali's, Paul Robeson's, and others of that deep professional skill and depthless personal conviction for speaking truth and pushing for what is right?
Aug 13, 2004
Collateral Damage from Loquacious Company
Digital Rotation:
Nina Sky: "Move Ya Body Girl" (it's just so catchy!)
Entertaining a guest from India for the weekend. Ends up that it's D's nephew through a cousin. He's a good kid, but seems to have an opinion on every topic. Sometimes, I have patience. Other times, I act out. He got to me about 24 hours after staying here. I told him flat out that he was wrong about why India had to use chemicals to grow crops. Why do I get into these arguments? Maybe next time, I should just smack him, and claim generational privilege when he thinks to retaliate.
We saw Collateral by default (I, Robot had already started). Good flick - Tom Cruise turns in a great performance as a steady and intense anti-hero. I think that he should go more for these roles. For some reason, I think that it really suits him now. It was believable (sorta like when Brad Pitt plays different characters than usual - ie: Fight Club).
Made me think a bit about existence and purpose - made me think about stopping all this thinking, and just doing.
Felt like a circular argument.
Brain froze up.
Had to reboot.
Think I'll keep thinking about it, in a background printing (background thinking?) kind of way.
Aug 12, 2004
RUSH!
So I got to see Rush last night, even though there were storms all around the NYC area, and getting there was a 2 hour ordeal. It was a great show - which I sorta expected, but they had more in them than I had pegged them for, which was a pleasant surprise. I didn't find anyone to take D's extra ticket, but it was okay in the end, and it was great to see some old friends from my hometown after a long time.
It seems that everytime I see someone at Jones Beach, there's a storm brewing and just about to break. More crazy lightning effects, as I've had in the Sting/Annie Lennox show last month, and the Seal show in 1995. Woah. Let's see - I also saw Tori Amos there, and The Cure.
Well - just doing some reading on Rush's 30th Anniversary, and HERE'S something trippy for you:
Geddy Lee didn't know it at the time, but on his 21st birthday -- July 29, 1974 -- he and his bandmates hit a career lottery.
That was the day Neil Peart joined Lee and Alex Lifeson in their band Rush. When Peart replaced drummer John Rutsey, he cemented a lineup for the Toronto-based trio that has lasted for 30 years, with Lifeson on guitar and Lee on bass and lead vocals.
I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!! Neil Peart joined Rush the day before I was born, and that is the birth of the line-up that's stuck through for the past 30 years. I can't believe the coincidence... reminds me of how I used to think that it was weird that Bruce Lee died the same year that I was born (don't ask me why), but THIS - THIS is something else.
So here's a list of some of the songs Rush played... Between the Wheels, Tom Sawyer, Red Barchetta, Spirit of the Radio, YYZ, Subdivisions, Roll the Bones, Animate Me, The Trees, Bravado, Dreamline, Vapor Trails, The Seeker, EarthShine, Secret Touch, Red Sector A??, Mystic Rhythms...
There was just no way that I could write the songs down - and it was a 3.5 hour show - so come on! But they were good, and the end segment of the show (last hour or so) was really quite enjoyable - the setlist is below in order...
19. drum solo
20. resist (acoustic)
21. Heart of Soul (acoustic)
22. 2112 overture & sphinx
23. La Villa Strangiato
24. bytor and the snowdog
25. xanadu
26. working man
*encore*
27. summertime blues
28. crossroads
29. limelight
Really something else that they can still kick it, and fill the sound out with just the three of them. Read More......
Harold and Kumar go to White Castle
UPDATE:
I received this article from someone about another reading of Harold and Kumar... I see the point here, and have to rethink some of what I saw (not all of which I was comfortable with when I was watching, but I see that I was more willing to put it on the back burner, perhaps because of the lack of funny Asian American (hetero) males on the screen angle)... but at the end of the day, that's not good enough. Reminds me of Better Luck Tomorrow, in which I was perturbed about the senseless Asian on Asian violence (especially baseball bat to the head, which just brought up strong feelings about how so many hate crimes against Asian Americans involve blunt objects and our heads (shout to TD for always reminding me of that, and of those who have fallen just trying to live their lives)). I think that got to me immediately and tainted the rest of the film experience for me.
Maybe this is all about John Cho. He's the missing link.
Holla if you have thoughts on all of this...
*********************
FROM JULY 26, 2004
Yo - I just saw this flick, and I definitely recommend it. It's not that deep, but who the hell cares? It's funny, and there's enough ruminating on the -isms in the books in my library, so I want to have a laugh once in a while. If you haven't gone, fork over the $10 and support our peeps on celluloid!
New York TimesRead More......
'Harold and Kumar': A Dumb Stoner Comedy for a New American Century
July 25, 2004
By A.O. SCOTT
THE plot of "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,"
succinctly summarized in the movie's title, consists of an
amusing, anarchic grab-bag of road-picture mishaps and
low-comedy gags. Many of the comic elements are predictable
(dumb stoners doing dumb, stoned things, sexual come-ons
and gross-outs of various kinds) while others are less so,
like the part when Neil Patrick Harris, playing himself,
starts licking the headrests on a Honda.
But a clever bait-and-switch early in the film signals its
sly subversive intentions. Its director is Danny Leiner,
who made "Dude, Where's My Car?," and he seems at first to
pick up more or less where that movie, or any of its
illustrious predecessors going back to "Porky's," left off.
An ex-frat boy type, with a roomy office in a New York
high-rise, is finishing up his work week. His pal,
immediately recognizable as the wilder half of a classic
buddy-movie pair, shows up proposing a fun-filled weekend
of babes, booze and bong hits. But what about that big
report due on Monday? No problem: just dump it on the
Korean guy in the far cubicle. Our hero is free to pursue
the carefree debauchery that is his birthright.
Except, of course, that the pale-skinned frat boy type is
not the hero at all. He and his friend (who happen to be
played by the screenwriters, Hayden Schlossberg and Jon
Hurwitz) are walk-on doofuses who pretty much walk out of
the movie, leaving it in the hands of that unassuming
Korean guy, Harold. He turns out to be the more uptight
half of a classic buddy-movie pair - the wilder half is his
roommate, a South Asian former pre-med named Kumar - intent
on claiming their own share of carefree debauchery. In the
process, they pretty much revolutionize the
slacker-stoner-comedy genre.
Well, perhaps that's a bit grandiose, given that what
Harold and Kumar really want to do, after a few Friday
night tokes, is satisfy a powerful case of the munchies, an
urge that leads them deep into the wilds of New Jersey and
lands them in all kinds of trouble. But the movie's
apparently simple shifts of racial and generational
emphasis - replacing the traditional white (or, in recent
variants, black) teenagers or undergraduates with
Asian-Americans in their post-college years - at once upend
the conventions of youth-oriented goofball comedy and
revitalize them. "Harold and Kumar" is as delightfully
stupid as "Friday" or "Road Trip" or "Wet Hot American
Summer," but it is also one of the few recent comedies that
persuasively, and intelligently, engage the social
realities of contemporary multicultural America.
In some ways, Mr. Leiner, Mr. Hurvitz and Mr. Schlossberg
and their stars, John Cho and Kal Penn, are broadening a
venerable tradition of ethnic humor, trafficking in
stereotypes and sending them up with equal verve. The
stoners down the hall, for instance, are a pair of
fast-talking former yeshiva boys who fire up a shofar for
some Sabbath eve toking. On a pit stop in Princeton, Harold
is dragooned into attending a meeting of an Asian-American
student group, whose painfully earnest members pepper him
with geeky questions about his investment banking job.
Harold, confronted with the specter of his own squareness
and conformity, manages to flee, only to miss out on the
group's subsequent activity - a raucous, uninhibited party,
with drugs courtesy of the geekiest kid in the bunch. (The
spectacle of good students behaving badly presents a tamer
version of the studious Asian-American teenagers gone wild
in "Better Luck Tomorrow," Justin Lin's 2001 drama of
honor-roll hoodlums, which featured Mr. Cho and which is
name-checked in "Harold and Kumar.") The filmmakers are
happy to laugh at Harold's buttoned-up careerism and
cautious deference to authority, and also at the fact that
Kumar's immigrant family, obsessed with the need for him to
get high marks and make good impressions, seems to be
composed entirely of physicians. But they also lash out -
in remarkably good humor, it must be said - at the lazy,
bigoted perceptions that bedevil Harold and Kumar in the
course of their all-night odyssey.
The prejudice that Harold and Kumar encounter - expressed
by a carload of extreme-sports headbangers and by doltish
New Jersey law enforcement officers, among others - is more
a matter of inconvenience, of moronic uncoolness, than
oppression. And in fighting back against it, Harold and
Kumar are motivated less by a sense of wounded pride or
profound injustice than by a familiar individualist
exasperation. They just want hamburgers (and sex, and
decent weed and a good time) - which is to say they want
what is theirs by birthright as young, affluent, reasonably
good-looking American consumers. Though they are
occasionally abused and insulted, they also carry with them
assumptions of social privilege, intellectual capital and
economic opportunity. They share a decent apartment in
Hoboken. Harold has a spiffy silver Honda (at least until
Doogie Howser gets a hold of it) paid for by his white
collar, Wall Street job, while Kumar dawdles on the way to
medical school, supported by his father while he indulges
in a bit of late-adolescent rebellion.
At first glance they could be poster children for early
21st-century American diversity (either that or marijuana
legalization), except that the very word would totally kill
their buzz. The impressive thing about "Harold and Kumar"
is that it takes such blithe account of the fact of
multiculturalism while having very little use for the
concept. Or really, given its proud adherence to the
standards of its genre, for any concept at all. It's not
quite that ethnic differences don't exist, or that they're
no big deal - being insulted or mocked or made to feel
invisible has a way of turning into a big deal. It's more
that belonging to a certain group has no inherent meaning
and brings with it no particular obligations of behavior.
Whether confronted with racial taunts or with group
expectations, Harold and Kumar tend to react by rolling
their eyes. This stuff just gets in the way. In college
campuses across the country, students today are carefully
taught about the dangers of demeaning, negative imagery and
about the historical marginality of nonwhite groups in a
popular culture that has seen them as villains, clowns or
nameless extras. The trailers for "Harold and Kumar" take
satiric note of this tradition, identifying Mr. Penn as
"that Indian guy from `Van Wilder' " and Mr. Cho as "that
Asian guy from `American Pie.' " The movie itself picks at
a few political scabs, as when the heroes share a jail cell
with a racially profiled African-American lawyer who
serenely schools them in the hierarchies of American social
injustice.
But the baggage of victimhood isn't really part of Harold
and Kumar's nightlong road trip. Nor is the identity crisis
that is a virtual requirement of immigrant literature. The
kinds of books that Harold and Kumar would have been
assigned to read in college, whether about Jewish-, Asian-,
Italian- or Latino-Americans, feature a conflict between
the traditions of the old country and the alluring freedoms
of the new world, between customs that offer both
confinement and continuity and choices that promise both
liberation and loss. It's a durable tradition, stretching
back to David Cahan's tales of Lower East Side striving in
the early 19th century, through the anxious early novels of
Saul Bellow and Philip Roth into the work of writers like
Gish Jen and Sandra Cisneros, and it has become a staple of
the post-Dead White Males literary curriculum. The dominant
flavor in the melting pot is bittersweet, as the comedy of
cultural collision is anchored in the pathos of yearning,
betrayal and loss. In the movies, this predicament plays
out in popular English domestic comedies like "Bend It Like
Beckham" and "East Is East" and in warm, inspirational
American dramas like "Real Women Have Curves" and "What's
Cooking?"
In most cases, those conundrums of assimilation are happily
resolved, as the young protagonists of those films - and of
the novels that tread over similar ground - find a way to
balance the demands of home and the lure of the world, to
move on without forgetting where they came from. What is
striking about "Harold and Kumar" is not that these issues
are resolved differently but that they never really come
up. The drama of hyphenation does not interest Harold and
Kumar at all. They have more important things to worry
about, like escaping from group sex with a hideous,
boil-covered tow-truck driver, fending off a rabid raccoon
and, above all, finding that elusive fast-food restaurant
where all desires can be satisfied. In the future, a term
paper will no doubt be written about the racial
connotations of the name White Castle, about the way in
which its elusiveness represents the mirage of
assimilationist aspirations and its ultimate attainment
suggests the terrible double-bind of American pluralism -
all of which is fine. But really, the thing is - dude,
they're hungry.
And why should they be any different from anybody else? Why
shouldn't they crave a sack of sliders, dabble in hip-hop
slang and sing along with bad 80's pop songs on the
tapedeck? Why shouldn't Harold have a crush on the lovely
young woman (Latina, by the way) who lives down the hall
and with whom he shares silent, longing-filled elevator
rides? The slap-happy conventions of youthful lowbrow
comedy and the easy inclusiveness of consumerism conspire
to dispel the stale clouds of identity politics.
Which is not to say that "Harold and Kumar" is altogether
unconcerned with matters of identity. Comedies of young
male recklessness situate their humor on the perennial
anxieties attached to growing up, and their celebration of
regression - all those wild weekends and crazy,
misadventurous road trips - is a way of fighting off that
anxiety. Harold and Kumar's journey is an ordeal of
embarrassment and frustration, of evaporating sexual
opportunities, humiliations and miscommunications, that
ends, in keeping with the rules of the genre, with
reassurance, satisfaction and the acceptance of
responsibility. The bullies get told off, the burgers get
eaten and that frat boy who thought he was the hero learns
that that big report is still due first thing Monday
morning.
Aug 11, 2004
Things to tell Greenpeace Volunteers
Digital Rotation:
Rush (whatever I've got - Concert TONIGHT)
Red Hot Chili Peppers: By The Way
RATM: The Battle of Los Angeles
The Killers: "Somebody Told Me"
OK... so this isn't relevant to anything that I've lived through in the last couple of weeks, but you ever see those folks canvassing for support for Greenpeace? For some reason, they hit the Financial District area pretty regularly. My pal and former co-worker ABgie once walked by them and after speaking with them for a bit, pulled out his wallet, saying "you know what? you've convinced me, and I want to donate". They backed away - "we can't take cash". Well - they lost a supporter right there!
Anyway - I sorta get annoyed, even though I like that they are canvassing down here, because the granola college students that they have working may not know that not EVERYONE isn't hip to the progressive and radical environmental movements. And with the support of pop stars like Sting and Bono, they have had more play than some of the other groups (except, perhaps, for the Sierra Club, who in a bold move by some members who showed their true xenophobic colors early this year, had a very public internal debate about US population stabilization and its relationship to immigration control, for which these members came forward as supporting, and ended up getting support letters and statements across this great land from Neo-Nazis, xenophobes, and racists who said "welcome aboard the S.S. Know-Nothing!").
Anyway - so I get annoyed sometimes, and being the wise-ass that I am, I've come up with a new response. When I'm accosted by Greenpeace who ask "do you have a minute for Greenpeace?", I tell them "I think that Greenpeace is too conservative. You should quit this gig and work for E.L.F."
So far (used 2 times) it hasn't really elicited much meaningful repartee, but I'm always hopeful. Yup. That's me. Opening up the younger generation to new ways of looking at things.
****
In other news, back in my bad habit, working the 9 to 6 shift for the sub-Man. Hey - I know I shouldn't complain and that I'm lucky to be in this racket at all, but hell - I'll complain if I want! I think that I'm scaring some folks into thinking that I'm growing a bit bitter, but I don't think that's a real problem here. I went through a bit of a rough patch a whiles back, but I've got my head on straight - If I don't know where exactly I'm headed, at least I see the open road stretching out before me, as I walk to leave the dark dismal gloom of Mirkwood behind me.
Going to see Rush tonight with an old friend. Getting excited about the show. Just have to survive another 2.5 hours before I can get out of here.
Aug 6, 2004
Bruce Springsteen op-ed in the NY Times this week
What can I say? There is only one Bruce Springsteen. I'm proud to call myself a fan, and blessed to have been more fully introduced to him through D. Read on...
NY Times
August 5, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Chords for Change
By BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
A nation's artists and musicians have a particular place in its social and political life. Over the years I've tried to think long and hard about what it means to be American: about the distinctive identity and position we have in the world, and how that position is best carried. I've tried to write songs that speak to our pride and criticize our failures.
These questions are at the heart of this election: who we are, what we stand for, why we fight. Personally, for the last 25 years I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics. Instead, I have been partisan about a set of ideals: economic justice, civil rights, a humane foreign policy, freedom and a decent life for all of our citizens. This year, however, for many of us the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out.
Through my work, I've always tried to ask hard questions. Why is it that the wealthiest nation in the world finds it so hard to keep its promise and faith with its weakest citizens? Why do we continue to find it so difficult to see beyond the veil of race? How do we conduct ourselves during difficult times without killing the things we hold dear? Why does the fulfillment of our promise as a people always seem to be just within grasp yet forever out of reach?
I don't think John Kerry and John Edwards have all the answers. I do believe they are sincerely interested in asking the right questions and working their way toward honest solutions. They understand that we need an administration that places a priority on fairness, curiosity, openness, humility, concern for all America's citizens, courage and faith.
People have different notions of these values, and they live them out in different ways. I've tried to sing about some of them in my songs. But I have my own ideas about what they mean, too. That is why I plan to join with many fellow artists, including the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks, Jurassic 5, James Taylor and Jackson Browne, in touring the country this October. We will be performing under the umbrella of a new group called Vote for Change. Our goal is to change the direction of the government and change the current administration come November.
Like many others, in the aftermath of 9/11, I felt the country's unity. I don't remember anything quite like it. I supported the decision to enter Afghanistan and I hoped that the seriousness of the times would bring forth strength, humility and wisdom in our leaders. Instead, we dived headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq, offering up the lives of our young men and women under circumstances that are now discredited. We ran record deficits, while simultaneously cutting and squeezing services like afterschool programs. We granted tax cuts to the richest 1 percent (corporate bigwigs, well-to-do guitar players), increasing the division of wealth that threatens to destroy our social contract with one another and render mute the promise of "one nation indivisible."
It is through the truthful exercising of the best of human qualities - respect for others, honesty about ourselves, faith in our ideals - that we come to life in God's eyes. It is how our soul, as a nation and as individuals, is revealed. Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is time to move forward. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.
Bruce Springsteen is a writer and performer.
Jul 29, 2004
Refuse and Resist!
I wasn't sure of what role I wanted to play in the circus that's coming to town at the end of next month, but reading the article below by Chisun Le, who's work in the Village Voice has been consistently to the point, on point, and point perfect on a bunch of social justice issues, has written a wonderful reminder of what importance public protest and expression of dissent play in this nation. I'm very interested in doing something more than sit at home in front of the PC and write about what's been happening. I hope that we find folks to join during that time.
In other news... tonight I'm celebrating my b-day!! I'm very excited to see good friends and new friends come out. I'll have pics to post, I'm sure - if not here, then at ImageStation.
Protest, Democracy, and the Republican Convention
American Splendor
by Chisun Lee
July 20th, 2004 1:45 PM
Nothing is more American than protest. Protest is what enables this nation, in its angriest moments, to progress, not self-destruct. It converts the despair of minorities into demands, turning the rage against oppression into an impetus for transformation. It makes a nation of individualists come together in struggle against exploitation and injustice. It keeps presidents from becoming monarchs and people from becoming subjects. Protest is the essence of American democracy.
Next month, when the Republican convention comes to New York City, protest will get put to the test. The sitting president will accept his party's nomination to run for re-election to the highest office in the nation. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people will join their voices in a united, public cry: Get George W. Bush out.
Democracy doesn't get bigger than this.
Not that anyone would know it at the moment. Somehow the debate over protest at the convention has dwindled to squabbles over lawn upkeep and police efficiency. Officials have masterfully reduced the discussion to the bureaucracy-speak of "negotiation," trapping protest organizers, who are trying to secure people enough space to avoid mass arrests, into the same prosaic terms. Many otherwise politically active New Yorkers are even plotting to skip town, and a whole segment of the population seems to have grown accustomed to e-dissenting from the comfort of home.
Which would be a tragedy: Not in a generation has the need for protest been so great.
Since the last presidential election, the U.S. has lost nearly a thousand young lives in a deeply controversial war with no certain end. Civil rights and civil liberties—won through some of the most pitched protests in the nation's history—are being revised in the name of security. Problems of poverty, education, and health care remain dangerously acute.
The nation is emerging from a period of post-9-11 crisis, ready to declare affirmatively, not just reactively, what it wants to be. The key question is: How much say will ordinary people have in setting the nation's course?
The power of protest is a funny thing to try to describe. You know it when you see it. You only really get it if you've done it. Once you taste it, you never forget it. And you tend to remember your first.
You might have shown up full of fury, ready to defy the police. You might have been nervous, afraid one of those crazy anarchists you'd heard about would set off a pipe bomb. You might have known it would be huge, since it was for a popular cause, but still you were stunned once you got there, awed by the incomparable feeling you never could have imagined that comes from standing together with thousands of strangers in a single rally for a better world.
Or you might have shown up to discover you were just one of a few. You might have felt silly at first, thinking you should never have come. But then you saw the grief in the eyes of the mother whose son was killed by a cop, or the fatigue of the immigrant worker who just couldn't be pushed anymore, or the quiet dignity of a blue-collar crew handing out flyers to save their jobs. And a few people shook your hand and were happy to meet you. And then you were glad you showed up, because you knew for the first time how solidarity feels.
The power of protest is its incredible optimism. Authoritarian types like to paint protesters as outsiders, as antisocial troublemakers who can't live within the lines. But protest is really an almost miraculous expression of faith in the human spirit and in democracy. It is proof that people still believe, despite an abundance of signs to the contrary, that if they just keep trying, the system eventually will work.
It is a miracle of optimism that people protest when a man becomes president without a majority of their votes, rather than storming the halls of government in revolution. It is a miracle of optimism that people protest when they lose loved ones in a war they believe was corruptly conceived, rather than taking up arms themselves. It is a miracle of optimism that people protest when innocent people keep getting killed by the police, or when the friends of the leaders keep getting richer but everyone else stays poor.
It is the miracle of protest that, despite the undemocratic advantages that wealth and connections bestow in this country, the people sometimes win.
If the dispute over the convention demonstrations goes through the courts, it is unlikely that protest will be discussed as the democratic miracle that it is. Judges are not typically populists, and precedents concerning the right to protest are conservative if not outright hostile. The law generally says that, if the authorities offer some kind of arguable Plan B and utter the words "public safety," they win.
That's what happened when United for Peace and Justice—the huge umbrella organization of protest groups currently making news in its negotiations with city officials—sued over the denial of a permit to march against the invasion of Iraq on February 15, 2003. The court opinions spoke of parade formations and contact people and advance notice of numbers of attendees—all areas where organizers evidently fell short. It was impossible to tell that a desperately urgent question of national policy hung in the balance, and that people were bursting to convey a tremendous message of opposition to the commanders in power.
But the wonder of that moment was, the protesters lived by the rules. Instead of marching, hundreds of thousands dutifully jammed into metal pens and dodged police horses in the stationary rally that officials allowed—one that stretched practically the length of Manhattan. These were democrats, not rebels.
The war still happened. President Bush gave the protests on that day, which numbered 6 million participants worldwide, as much consideration as he might have a postcard sent to the White House by a fourth-grader.
That kind of disdain only adds to the fire. Such is the miracle of protest and democracy: Ignored, the people keep coming. They never give up.
Jul 23, 2004
If this were a brown man...
...she'd have been shot so full of holes for her little stunt, she would have looked like a picture of Michael Moore at an NRA rally. Give me a break. She tried to get into the cockpit. That's not a security risk? I'm sure that they'll penalize her for it - but can you imagine if a hot-shot business tycoon who's brown decided that he wanted to get off the plane because he didn't trust mother nature... What would have happened? White privilege pisses me off.
July 23, 2004
Fisk president escorted off flight
Airline staff said she became abusive
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- Fisk University's new president, Clinton administration Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, was escorted off a flight and questioned by the FBI after she became abusive and tried to get into the cockpit while the plane was delayed on the tarmac, authorities said.
O'Leary said she simply wanted to get off the plane.
Read More......
Jul 22, 2004
Arrested Development
Digital Rotation:
Beatles: Abbey Road
In other news... I saw Arrested Development in a free show that they give last night in Brower Park in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I was there about 5 minutes after 7 PM, and they'd already started (fighting the power and the preconceived notions of C.P.T. all in one svelte move, it seems). It was a great show, actually - much the better since it was so close to home, there weren't millions of people there, it was a mixed crowd, and it was free. The set list was as follows, from when I got there:
...
1. Teach a Man 2 Fish
2. Dawn of the Dreadz
3. Fishin’ 4 Religion
4. Thank You (For Letting Me Be Myself Again) – Sly & the Family Stone cover
5. Ease My Mind
6. Afrika’s Inside Me/Tennessee
7. JAM
8. Natural
9. Redemption Song - Bob Marley cover
10. Raining Revolution
11. Revolution
12. Music, Life, Dance, Up!
13. Nighttime Demons?
14. Mr. Wendall
15. JAM w/ New Song
16. Song by group Lifesavers
17. Bass Solo (w/ cover of Billie Jean)
18. Mama’s Always on Stage
19. Everyday People
It was a good time, actually, and I'm really glad that I got to go and check it out. I think they just finished restoring Brower Park, and you kinda got the feeling that it would be a nice site for events like this - and that it was a community that could really use a solid public space. There was a good mix of local residents with obvious outsiders; the casual hipster and hip-hop peacenik mingling (could we call it "hipster-hop"?) with the resident community - mainly black, but there were also some latino, asian, and even arab american mothers in the audience.
It has been 14 years for AD as a unit, they went through their own drama and break-ups (would have been great to see dionne farris join in, but some cuts don't heal so quickly, or even at all). I don't think that they bring something incredibly new and exciting to the stage, but it's good to hear songs that you can sing along to, good to feel somewhat connected to others in the great and mixed congregation that music so often convenes in public spaces. And when Speech sang Redemption Song, I could feel a new appreciation for a song that already speaks to me, and I thought about how is so much more music about freedom, liberation, and hope than just the freedom rock of the 60s that I've been thinking about over the past few months.
Osama
I don't usually bite when it comes to these things, but I played along, and it fits in generally with what I've been feeling about the whole elections and "hunt for the elusive Osama". Think of Saddam's capture as a pilot for a new sit-com... when is the right time, the right context, the right set of conditions for your next feature to be a smash hit? It's a good question... so why don't you check out Osama bin Lotto for yourself, and think about it a bit...
Jul 21, 2004
NWA Flight 327: June 29, 2004. What's the buzz all about?
Digital Rotation:
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings OST
The Smiths: The Queen is Dead
I was forwarded this article from the NY Times today today (thanks ACDC), and it made me want to dig a little deeper, since they said that there are a lot of theories online and elsewhere about what "really happened" on this flight. I have my own thoughts on this, but first I'll post up the article, and then I'll write about it. I should have a link in here somewhere to the original piece that's referenced.
New York Times
July 20, 2004
ON THE ROAD
What Really Happened on Flight 327?
By JOE SHARKEY
There is no doubt that something out of the ordinary happened on Northwest Airlines Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on June 29. The plane was met at the airport by squads of federal agents and police responding to radio messages from the pilots about concerns that 14 Middle Eastern male passengers had spent the four-hour flight acting suspiciously.
But was the episode a dry run for a terrorist attack, as is now being widely suggested on the Internet and on talk radio, or an aborted terrorist attack? Or was it an innocent sequence of events that some passengers, overcome by anxiety and perhaps ethnic stereotyping, misinterpreted as a plot to blow up their plane?
The story of Flight 327 was first told in a 3,300-word online article, "Terror in the Skies, Again?" by Annie Jacobsen, a 37-year-old freelance writer from Los Angeles. Ms. Jacobsen's report was published last Tuesday on a Web site for women. It is compelling reading.
I have since spoken at length with Ms. Jacobsen, and also with an official of the Federal Air Marshal Service, who confirmed the gist of Ms. Jacobsen's narrative, if not her interpretation.
On June 29, Ms. Jacobsen; her husband, Kevin; and their 41/2-year-old son were returning home from a family visit in Rhode Island when they boarded a connecting flight in Detroit, Northwest 327. While boarding, both she and her husband became aware of a group of six men of Middle Eastern appearance who followed them on board. One wore a large orthopedic shoe. Two carried what appeared to be small musical instrument cases. One wore a yellow T-shirt and was carrying a big McDonald's sack.
As the Jacobsens settled into their seats, they watched a second group of Middle Eastern men board. These men were in communication with the first group "absolutely from the get-go," Ms. Jacobsen said. Furthermore, she said, "they all seemed to be checking in with the guy in the yellow shirt," who was sitting across the aisle from her.
Mr. Jacobsen, 38, who is the president of an import-and-design company as well as an actor in television commercials, was already feeling uneasy. "When I first got on the flight, my instincts said that something was wrong,'' he recalled. "I did turn to my wife and say, 'We must get off this flight.' " He didn't follow through on that, however, because he didn't want to create a commotion based on a whim, he said.
In great detail, Ms. Jacobsen's article describes the "unusual activity" the men engaged in during the flight. Other passengers and the flight attendants became alerted to it, also. Ignoring the "fasten seat belt'' signs, the men went frequently and in succession to the lavatories, and congregated near the galleys in pairs or threesomes. The man in the yellow shirt gave her a "cold, defiant look" when she caught his eye, she said.
About two hours into the flight, with tension building, her husband decided to approach a flight attendant with his suspicions. The flight attendant said the crew were already aware of the odd behavior, including the fact that parcels like the McDonald's bag were carried into the lavatories.
"She said I was 'right on schedule' with what I was feeling was happening, that she was aware of it, that they were passing notes to each other, that the pilots were aware of it, and that there were people on board who are 'higher up than you or me' that were watching them," Mr. Jacobsen said. He presumed, correctly, that this was a reference to undercover federal air marshals.
Later, as the plane was in its final approach to Los Angeles, at the stage of a flight when even the flight attendants are strapped into their seats, "suddenly, seven of the men stood up in unison," Ms. Jacobsen said. Some walked toward the back lavatories and some toward the front. Two stood by the aircraft door. The flight attendants remained silent, she said.
"I don't have any words to explain how terrified I was" at that point, said Mr. Jacobsen, who added that he clutched a pen in his hand to use as a weapon, while thinking: "I hope I'm not the only one who will react. I hope I don't choke and get scared."
Then the plane landed without a problem. Waiting at the door were officers from the Federal Air Marshal Service, the F.B.I., the T.S.A. and the Los Angeles Police Department. The 14 men were questioned at length and released. The Jacobsens also were questioned for over an hour.
Yesterday, a Federal Air Marshal Service spokesman, Dave Adams, a law enforcement officer for 30 years, said that the suspicious characters on Flight 327 were musicians. The man in the yellow shirt was a drummer, he said.
"We interviewed all 14 of these individuals,'' Mr. Adams said. "They were members of a Syrian band" traveling to a gig at a casino near Los Angeles, he said, adding that their names were run through "every possible" data bank and terrorist watch list. "They were scrubbed. Nothing came back."
Mr. Adams said he spoke by phone to Ms. Jacobsen for 90 minutes on Friday night. "This is an individual's perceptions," he said of her account of the flight. "Obviously, since 9/11, everybody's antennas have risen, and people are very concerned when they see something like this." He said that onboard air marshals did not intervene because the men weren't "interfering with the flight crew."
Even so, he said, he had no doubt that "most of the stuff did happen" as Ms. Jacobsen described it.
Aware of recent reports that the F.B.I. is worried that teams of terrorists may be practicing ways to sneak explosive device parts onto planes and assemble them in flight, Mr. Adams said, air marshals aboard Flight 327 "checked out the lavatories, and nothing looked like it was in disarray after these people went inside; everything was thoroughly inspected."
Ms. Jacobsen isn't convinced. No one has disputed any of her facts, she said, and in an article that she posted on the Web site yesterday, she asked why the Syrian band hadn't been identified. (I couldn't locate them, by the way). She wrote of receiving numerous e-mail messages from airline crew members, several of whom said they believed that terrorist-team dry runs had happened on flights. She said that "political correctness" had become a "major roadblock for airline safety."
I asked her about the inevitable charge that ethnic stereotyping was driving her narrative. "I am simply not a racist," she said. "I travel everywhere. I was just in India, working in a Muslim village. I'm not afraid of any culture. This situation was entirely different. I have never been so terrified."
Imad Hamad, the regional director of the Michigan office of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said that he knew nothing more about this incident than what Ms. Jacobsen had reported. "I think this level of high anxiety has been implanted in our hearts and minds, and even those who are good people with good intensions cannot help but to look at things in a very suspicious way," he said. "We've got to be vigilant as citizens, but we also have to be calm."
As for the Syrian band, "They gave their little performance in the casino and two days later they flew out on a JetBlue flight from Long Beach to New York," Mr. Adams said.
Jul 7, 2004
A Note About Indian Weddings
Amit Bhatia (left) and Vanisha Mittal celebrate at the exchange of rings ceremony during their wedding festivities at Versailles in Paris, June 20
Take a good look at the couple first.
They look reasonably happy.
She's pretty, and he looks like a space cadet.
But hell, that's what my wedding photos look like.
However, click the picture to see the price tag on this one. But hold onto your lunch.
OK, so I've heard about weddings in which the parents go all out - but this is RIDICULOUS. I don't even know what to say to this. I'm completely and utterly speechless. I can't even win that much on Lotto on a good day (meaning that it doesn't go that high that often), and here it is - blow it all on less than a week. *sigh* What an endowment that could have been for the Church of Rage. And the guy looks like he's barely smiling. Is he on CRACK?!
****
