The Brilliant Mesh of New Order and First Love
Wow, huge thanks to Joe for stumbling over this link and sending it my way! MP3’s of the entire New Order concert from July 5, 1989 at Blossom Music Center- a concert we both attended just weeks after graduating from high school. The sound quality is wonderful, too, quite possibly taken from the boards, and it’s both incredibly bizarre and moving to hear it again. This show meant a lot to me. How strange and astonishing it is to hear it again.
We had a friend who had gotten front row seats for this show. He and his girlfriend left about 4 or 5 songs into New Order’s set (his girlfriend had really just wanted to see Public Image Limited who had just played, and besides, they had her mom’s new car so best to get out before things got crazy in the parking lot) and they gave us their tickets. I can still remember with great clarity the giddy rush as Joe and I ran from the lawn into the pavilion, flashing various ushers our tickets until we entered the cordoned area directly in front of the stage-which had been entirely cleared of chairs so as to allow for manic dancing. And shit, I danced my ass off. I was just a few feet away from the band whose music was the soundtrack to my teenage years and I barely had time to look up on stage to see what they were up to (not that they were then, as now, revered for their stage presence, but at least Hook had at that point abandoned performing with his back to the crowd). I had to make the most of it, too, you know- ‘cause for roughly an hour, the soundtrack was live and loud and I was practically levitating.
This show also came at a time when I was breaking up with the first love of my life, something I went about with all the trademarked dumb histrionics of an 18 year old. The day before this show I was to have spent the 4th of July with her and her Dad on their boat, cruising Lake Erie and enjoying the fireworks, the very boat (Spindrift was its name) that we had spent the previous summer sailing for almost 3 weeks up North to the Georgian Bay in. I had arrived that morning of the 4th, we had gotten in an argument and I just up and left, the boat still tethered to the dock and a light rain falling. There’s still an undertow there, even now, this event, those that unfolded over the next few months, and I distinctly remember dancing to New Order that night and letting it all unravel- the joy of dancing and of feeling unbound and without burden. Hearing these songs (and I’ve been reading some of my old diaries of late) conjures up so many memories of that particular summer. If I could go back, with just a hint more sensibility, I would have let that first love down with far more tenderness and with a lot more affection. As it was, we were at odds, as most uncouplings are, with how to successfully navigate the transition from lovers to friends.
Still, I’m happy to change nothing and hearing this New Order concert again has definitely made my day!
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Hurtleberries, Huckleberries, Bilberries- It’s All Blueberry Shenanigans to Me
Alan Davidson’s big book of Food (The Penguin Companion to Food) is a dinner table favorite of ours. Just the other night we found ourselves reading aloud the entry on Cheese and this in turn led us to the entry on Rennet, a substance found in the stomach lining (the fourth stomach of a calf, for example) of numerous animals and used in the milk curdling phase of the cheese making process.
The stomach lining of human beings, like that of calves and other animals, contains rennin, which exerts its curdling effect on milk which has been ingested. Thus, although we swallow milk as liquid, we quickly turn it into a solid, like junket.
Oh!
The entry on Blueberries doesn’t offer anything quite so rich and strange. One of Davidson’s strengths as an author is his liberal quoting of other food specialists. In the preface he writes: “The fact that there are many quotations in the book and that the bibliography is so long, reflects my wish to give readers as much information as possible about where I found the information which I am passing on to them- and where they might look for more.” Which is another way of saying he loves food in all its multitude way too much to not share with his readers the wisdom others have yielded from their years studying the likes of Arabic cookery or the toothsome arts of confectionary. Still, the entry on Blueberries does offer an alluring nugget on the Blue Ridge blueberry and its status “of being superior to all other blueberries.”
The book is crammed with scrumptious looking entries like Buddhism and food, Elizabeth Raffald (“author of one of the finest 18th-century cooker books, 'The Experienced English Housekeeper'"), Hallucinogenic mushrooms, Éclairs, Poppadom and Squirrel (“The slight gamy taste present in most game meats is not so pronounced in squirrel”).
Alan Davidson’s big book of Food (The Penguin Companion to Food) is a dinner table favorite of ours. Just the other night we found ourselves reading aloud the entry on Cheese and this in turn led us to the entry on Rennet, a substance found in the stomach lining (the fourth stomach of a calf, for example) of numerous animals and used in the milk curdling phase of the cheese making process.
The stomach lining of human beings, like that of calves and other animals, contains rennin, which exerts its curdling effect on milk which has been ingested. Thus, although we swallow milk as liquid, we quickly turn it into a solid, like junket.
Oh!
The entry on Blueberries doesn’t offer anything quite so rich and strange. One of Davidson’s strengths as an author is his liberal quoting of other food specialists. In the preface he writes: “The fact that there are many quotations in the book and that the bibliography is so long, reflects my wish to give readers as much information as possible about where I found the information which I am passing on to them- and where they might look for more.” Which is another way of saying he loves food in all its multitude way too much to not share with his readers the wisdom others have yielded from their years studying the likes of Arabic cookery or the toothsome arts of confectionary. Still, the entry on Blueberries does offer an alluring nugget on the Blue Ridge blueberry and its status “of being superior to all other blueberries.”
The book is crammed with scrumptious looking entries like Buddhism and food, Elizabeth Raffald (“author of one of the finest 18th-century cooker books, 'The Experienced English Housekeeper'"), Hallucinogenic mushrooms, Éclairs, Poppadom and Squirrel (“The slight gamy taste present in most game meats is not so pronounced in squirrel”).
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Discreet Music
There aren’t many ambient sounds more evocative of a highly particular kind of nostalgia for me then that of children playing. It excites a distinct set of associations to place. My parents, for example, have lived for over 30 years in a house that sits roughly 100 yards from an elementary school playground (separated by a thin layer of woods, itself an influential part of my early landscape) and the ambient wash of children playing on its gravel playground is intimately intertwined with my ideas of home. Along with my siblings, I also attended this school.
On John Cale’s new one, HoboSapiens, he drops some whimsy into the final track, Set Me Free. It’s just for a moment, about two thirds of the way into the song- a nice instrumental stretch where Cale’s pining cello and a complimentarily winsome guitar seem to drop by the corner of a school playground. My own particular reaction to this often-used contrivance (and in Cale’s song, it’s both discreet and sensitive rather then some gooey sentimentalized good) taps into something substantially rooted in my own experience and oh,man- how it endures and resonates!
There aren’t many ambient sounds more evocative of a highly particular kind of nostalgia for me then that of children playing. It excites a distinct set of associations to place. My parents, for example, have lived for over 30 years in a house that sits roughly 100 yards from an elementary school playground (separated by a thin layer of woods, itself an influential part of my early landscape) and the ambient wash of children playing on its gravel playground is intimately intertwined with my ideas of home. Along with my siblings, I also attended this school.
On John Cale’s new one, HoboSapiens, he drops some whimsy into the final track, Set Me Free. It’s just for a moment, about two thirds of the way into the song- a nice instrumental stretch where Cale’s pining cello and a complimentarily winsome guitar seem to drop by the corner of a school playground. My own particular reaction to this often-used contrivance (and in Cale’s song, it’s both discreet and sensitive rather then some gooey sentimentalized good) taps into something substantially rooted in my own experience and oh,man- how it endures and resonates!
Saturday, September 04, 2004
Our People Deal In Absolutes
Part of what makes reading Lewis H. Lapham so much fun is the way he combines his fierce intelligence with a such a rich prose style. Lapham uses two sticks of butter where lesser prose stylists stuggle with one. Here's an excerpt from his long piece in this month's Harper's on the modern history of the Repuplican propaganda machine:
During the course of the 1990's I did my best to keep up with the various lines of grievance developing within the several sects of the conservative remonstrance, but although I probably read as many as 2,000 presumably holy texts (Peggy Noonan's newpaper editorials and David Gelernter's magazine articles as well as the soliloquies of Rush Limbaugh and the sermons of Robert Bork), I never learned how to make sense of the weird and too numerous inward contradictions. How does one reconcile the demand for small government with the desire for an imperial army, apply the phrases "personal initiative" and "self-reliance" to corporation presidents utterly dependent on the federal subsidies to the banking, communicaitons, and weapons industries, square the talk of "civility" with the strong-arm methods of Kenneth Starr and Tom DeLay, match the warmhearted currencies of "conservative compassion" with the cold cruelty of the "unfettered free market," know that human life must be saved from abortionists in Boston but not from cruise missiles in Baghad? In the glut of paper I could find no unifying or fundamental principle except a certain belief that money was good for rich people and bad for poor people. It was the only point on which all authorities agreed, and no matter where the words were coming from (a report on federal housing, an essay on the payment of Social Security, articles on the sorrow of the slums or the wonder of the U.S. Navy) the authors invariably found the same abiding lesson in the tale- money enobles rich people, making them strong as well as wise; money corrupts poor people, making them stupid as well as weak.
I also like the guy 'cause he espouses a point of view fairly parallel to my own, albeit with far more rhetorical finesse.
Part of what makes reading Lewis H. Lapham so much fun is the way he combines his fierce intelligence with a such a rich prose style. Lapham uses two sticks of butter where lesser prose stylists stuggle with one. Here's an excerpt from his long piece in this month's Harper's on the modern history of the Repuplican propaganda machine:
During the course of the 1990's I did my best to keep up with the various lines of grievance developing within the several sects of the conservative remonstrance, but although I probably read as many as 2,000 presumably holy texts (Peggy Noonan's newpaper editorials and David Gelernter's magazine articles as well as the soliloquies of Rush Limbaugh and the sermons of Robert Bork), I never learned how to make sense of the weird and too numerous inward contradictions. How does one reconcile the demand for small government with the desire for an imperial army, apply the phrases "personal initiative" and "self-reliance" to corporation presidents utterly dependent on the federal subsidies to the banking, communicaitons, and weapons industries, square the talk of "civility" with the strong-arm methods of Kenneth Starr and Tom DeLay, match the warmhearted currencies of "conservative compassion" with the cold cruelty of the "unfettered free market," know that human life must be saved from abortionists in Boston but not from cruise missiles in Baghad? In the glut of paper I could find no unifying or fundamental principle except a certain belief that money was good for rich people and bad for poor people. It was the only point on which all authorities agreed, and no matter where the words were coming from (a report on federal housing, an essay on the payment of Social Security, articles on the sorrow of the slums or the wonder of the U.S. Navy) the authors invariably found the same abiding lesson in the tale- money enobles rich people, making them strong as well as wise; money corrupts poor people, making them stupid as well as weak.
I also like the guy 'cause he espouses a point of view fairly parallel to my own, albeit with far more rhetorical finesse.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Don’t Hate Me Because I’m A Hyperpower
Fareed Zakaria has an interesting (and brief) article in the current issue of Foreign Policy. I used to subscribe to this magazine back in the late 90's when Zakaria was the managing editor and when it tended to lean a bit too far to the right for my tastes. I did, however, usually enjoy Zakaria’s editorials which seemed more ideologically nuanced. In this article, he asks us to consider, in this time of rampant anti-Americanism, what the world might look like if the U.S. wasn’t leading the way on issues such as trade and nuclear proliferation.
It’s a provocative question, especially for those of us feeling upset and shamed by the way our country is currently viewed throughout the world. (Is this shame I feel due to some unexplored undercurrent of nationalism I harbor, even if, in my better days, I want to claim I'm a universalist? But then, I can't create too much change in the far flung parts of the world- I do, however, have a small chance to change things here, damnit!) Certainly, my own feeling is that this countries trade policies in, for example, the area of agriculture (heavy subsidizing for U.S. agricultural interests, high tariffs on incoming goods, the charade of "free" trade when we dump our surplus on other countries), can and often do have ruinous consequences on struggling third world farmers. Or, certainly, when it comes to nuclear proliferation, the current administration has all but neglected the sensibility of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programs and virtually turned their back on the the numerous Russian nuclear facilities that remain under funded and in need of security upgrades, which is to say nothing about the potential nuclear threats of N. Korea and Pakistan. Zakara’s article begs the question, just how effective has the U.S’s leadership been in these crucial areas and who, if anybody, is better suited to take the leading role?
Nobody, I presume- at least not unilaterally. The best bet is a collective effort- a multilateral response to these challenges. This current administration, as Zakaria points out, by crudely asserting U.S. power and disregarding international institutions and alliances... has pulled the curtain on decades of diplomacy and revealed that the United States’ constraints are self-imposed: America can, in fact, go it alone.
At what price?
Fareed Zakaria has an interesting (and brief) article in the current issue of Foreign Policy. I used to subscribe to this magazine back in the late 90's when Zakaria was the managing editor and when it tended to lean a bit too far to the right for my tastes. I did, however, usually enjoy Zakaria’s editorials which seemed more ideologically nuanced. In this article, he asks us to consider, in this time of rampant anti-Americanism, what the world might look like if the U.S. wasn’t leading the way on issues such as trade and nuclear proliferation.
It’s a provocative question, especially for those of us feeling upset and shamed by the way our country is currently viewed throughout the world. (Is this shame I feel due to some unexplored undercurrent of nationalism I harbor, even if, in my better days, I want to claim I'm a universalist? But then, I can't create too much change in the far flung parts of the world- I do, however, have a small chance to change things here, damnit!) Certainly, my own feeling is that this countries trade policies in, for example, the area of agriculture (heavy subsidizing for U.S. agricultural interests, high tariffs on incoming goods, the charade of "free" trade when we dump our surplus on other countries), can and often do have ruinous consequences on struggling third world farmers. Or, certainly, when it comes to nuclear proliferation, the current administration has all but neglected the sensibility of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programs and virtually turned their back on the the numerous Russian nuclear facilities that remain under funded and in need of security upgrades, which is to say nothing about the potential nuclear threats of N. Korea and Pakistan. Zakara’s article begs the question, just how effective has the U.S’s leadership been in these crucial areas and who, if anybody, is better suited to take the leading role?
Nobody, I presume- at least not unilaterally. The best bet is a collective effort- a multilateral response to these challenges. This current administration, as Zakaria points out, by crudely asserting U.S. power and disregarding international institutions and alliances... has pulled the curtain on decades of diplomacy and revealed that the United States’ constraints are self-imposed: America can, in fact, go it alone.
At what price?
Monday, August 30, 2004
Little Norman Rockwell Towns Infused With Dread
We left Chicago on Friday afternoon- the city swampy with heat and humidity. A month previously Cathy had proposed a weekend away- a B & B maybe, somewhere not too far away, a town with hints of Norman Rockwell without being too phony. “Galena,” her parents suggested.
The drive there, with its fits of rush hour stopping and starting- the angry weave of commuters restless for openings and clearings to use to their advantage and escape the lethargic mass off all that metal, plastic and glass- was interesting in the way the passing landscape offers hidden meanings waiting to be plucked and understood.
Landscape denotes the interaction of people and place: a social group and its spaces, particularly the spaces to which the group belongs and from which its members derive some part of their shared identity and meaning.
-Paul Groth
About 40 or so miles West of the city, driving west on I-90, you reach Prairie Stone. This could also be called the outer limits of urban sprawl. It's here that the newest of the new office parks and the most abundant of affordable new housing bump up against cornfields and grain silos.
Low-density residential developments put several unique strains on our transportation infrastructure.
First, they often lack sufficient density to support any kind of efficient public transit service.
Second, they are often designed in ways- such as separating residential development from retail development- that leave residents dependents on the automobile for even the most basic errands.
And last, since new housing developments are often built just beyond the last new housing developments, low-density land use patterns put new homeowners further and further away from the region’s major job centers.
-from The Metropolis Housing Index: Housing As Opportunity
There’s a last gasp of sprawl in the form of an outlet mall, so new and sparkling as to seem antiseptic- free of germs or the taint of grubby hands.
Soon, however, we found ourselves on a two-lane highway, making our way past old red bars- gently worn old red barns, mind you, oozing a kind of folksy, mythological charm. Quaint. But this is shattered, these cozy rural/pastoral romanticisms, by a barn with a large sign draped on its side that read: “Kerry = taxes and TERRORISM.” A polemical shock- a reminder that beyond the myth there dwells the deep roots of farm raised animosities carefully cultivated in right wing Petri dishes. Kerry = TERRORISM- so simple, this unequivocally brutal statement pulsing through the heartland, or at least from the side of this particular barn, and offering a daunting challenge for those of us inclined to think otherwise.
The two-lane highway became a gravel road which in turn became a dirt road that led us to The Inn at Irish Hollow, the B & B we stayed at this weekend. We rented one of the Inn’s 3 cottages, the libidinously titled French Maid’s Cottage. There were chocolates waiting us in the kitchen, cookies on the bed and something contemporary, burnished and classical playing on the stereo. I went, dog that I am, immediately to the stock of accompanying CD’s, dutifully contemptuous of the Kenny G, the Yanni and the Kitaro and holding each briefly in my hand while I contemplated just what target demographic the French Maid’s Cottage was geared up for.
We made our way to downtown Galena, just a few miles of hills and valley’s away, parking on the town’s main street to prowl for some dinner. It’s a charming little town, untainted by the franchises proven systems of operation and riddled with independent stores hawking antique nick-knacks and grandchild wear- all seemingly pungent with aromas both lavander and waxy. We didn’t enter a single one, but the buildings themselves- the architecture- was old and graceful- detailed and attentive enough that we paused, pointed and appreciated.
There was a Lynch-like moment, too, when we first got out of our car. A nearby passing freight train, on the tracks just over the Galena River, was making an ominous, metallic squelch. It wasn’t sharp enough to be painful, rounded off as it was with a sighing hiss that infused our quaint surroundings with a curious and contradictory shade of industrial dread.
I won’t attempt to write about the incredible cuisine served at the Inn. Breakfast and a picnic lunch/dinner were included in the deal and most everything, we both agreed, was outrageously delicious foodstuff.
It rained for most of the afternoon on Saturday- a soft murmur of ambient pitter- patter that made sitting on the cottage porch with good books cozy and sublime. The late summer grass, the leaves on the trees and the occasional blooms of yellow, red or white seemed almost incandescent. Earlier we had put on our raincoats, hoods up over our heads, and taken a walk on the land owned by the Inn’s operators. We were deep in a valley, no cell-phone coverage, and we took a gentle sloop upwards for a few hundred yards- stopping to turn around and admire the view of the rolling hills- all static waves of numerous shades of green and dotted with farms. Our pastoral affinities were given a workout. We took some time to be still under a canopy of trees, the rain nicely muffled and drowsy, large drops plopping from the leaves and onto our palms to wash away the grit and realizing that our pants, our shoes and our socks had reached a point of unfortunate sogginess.
Later, the sun came out. It was there on Sunday, too. We had a great weekend.
We left Chicago on Friday afternoon- the city swampy with heat and humidity. A month previously Cathy had proposed a weekend away- a B & B maybe, somewhere not too far away, a town with hints of Norman Rockwell without being too phony. “Galena,” her parents suggested.
The drive there, with its fits of rush hour stopping and starting- the angry weave of commuters restless for openings and clearings to use to their advantage and escape the lethargic mass off all that metal, plastic and glass- was interesting in the way the passing landscape offers hidden meanings waiting to be plucked and understood.
Landscape denotes the interaction of people and place: a social group and its spaces, particularly the spaces to which the group belongs and from which its members derive some part of their shared identity and meaning.
-Paul Groth
About 40 or so miles West of the city, driving west on I-90, you reach Prairie Stone. This could also be called the outer limits of urban sprawl. It's here that the newest of the new office parks and the most abundant of affordable new housing bump up against cornfields and grain silos.
Low-density residential developments put several unique strains on our transportation infrastructure.
First, they often lack sufficient density to support any kind of efficient public transit service.
Second, they are often designed in ways- such as separating residential development from retail development- that leave residents dependents on the automobile for even the most basic errands.
And last, since new housing developments are often built just beyond the last new housing developments, low-density land use patterns put new homeowners further and further away from the region’s major job centers.
-from The Metropolis Housing Index: Housing As Opportunity
There’s a last gasp of sprawl in the form of an outlet mall, so new and sparkling as to seem antiseptic- free of germs or the taint of grubby hands.
Soon, however, we found ourselves on a two-lane highway, making our way past old red bars- gently worn old red barns, mind you, oozing a kind of folksy, mythological charm. Quaint. But this is shattered, these cozy rural/pastoral romanticisms, by a barn with a large sign draped on its side that read: “Kerry = taxes and TERRORISM.” A polemical shock- a reminder that beyond the myth there dwells the deep roots of farm raised animosities carefully cultivated in right wing Petri dishes. Kerry = TERRORISM- so simple, this unequivocally brutal statement pulsing through the heartland, or at least from the side of this particular barn, and offering a daunting challenge for those of us inclined to think otherwise.
The two-lane highway became a gravel road which in turn became a dirt road that led us to The Inn at Irish Hollow, the B & B we stayed at this weekend. We rented one of the Inn’s 3 cottages, the libidinously titled French Maid’s Cottage. There were chocolates waiting us in the kitchen, cookies on the bed and something contemporary, burnished and classical playing on the stereo. I went, dog that I am, immediately to the stock of accompanying CD’s, dutifully contemptuous of the Kenny G, the Yanni and the Kitaro and holding each briefly in my hand while I contemplated just what target demographic the French Maid’s Cottage was geared up for.
We made our way to downtown Galena, just a few miles of hills and valley’s away, parking on the town’s main street to prowl for some dinner. It’s a charming little town, untainted by the franchises proven systems of operation and riddled with independent stores hawking antique nick-knacks and grandchild wear- all seemingly pungent with aromas both lavander and waxy. We didn’t enter a single one, but the buildings themselves- the architecture- was old and graceful- detailed and attentive enough that we paused, pointed and appreciated.
There was a Lynch-like moment, too, when we first got out of our car. A nearby passing freight train, on the tracks just over the Galena River, was making an ominous, metallic squelch. It wasn’t sharp enough to be painful, rounded off as it was with a sighing hiss that infused our quaint surroundings with a curious and contradictory shade of industrial dread.
I won’t attempt to write about the incredible cuisine served at the Inn. Breakfast and a picnic lunch/dinner were included in the deal and most everything, we both agreed, was outrageously delicious foodstuff.
It rained for most of the afternoon on Saturday- a soft murmur of ambient pitter- patter that made sitting on the cottage porch with good books cozy and sublime. The late summer grass, the leaves on the trees and the occasional blooms of yellow, red or white seemed almost incandescent. Earlier we had put on our raincoats, hoods up over our heads, and taken a walk on the land owned by the Inn’s operators. We were deep in a valley, no cell-phone coverage, and we took a gentle sloop upwards for a few hundred yards- stopping to turn around and admire the view of the rolling hills- all static waves of numerous shades of green and dotted with farms. Our pastoral affinities were given a workout. We took some time to be still under a canopy of trees, the rain nicely muffled and drowsy, large drops plopping from the leaves and onto our palms to wash away the grit and realizing that our pants, our shoes and our socks had reached a point of unfortunate sogginess.
Later, the sun came out. It was there on Sunday, too. We had a great weekend.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Take a Load Off
Pauline Kael, writing for the New Yorker in 1977, on The Last Waltz:
No American movie this year has been as full of the “joy of making cinema” as Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, his film of The Band’s Thanksgiving, 1976, concert in San Francisco. He shot it while he was still involved in New York, New York- which was full of the “agony of making cinema.” In The Last Waltz, Scorsese seems in complete control of his talent and of the material, and you can feel everything going just right, just was in New York, New York, you could feel everything going wrong. It’s an even-tempered, intensely satisfying movie. Visually, it’s dark-toned and rich and classically simple. The sound (if one has the good luck to catch it in a theatre equipped with a Dolby system) is so clear that the instruments have the distinctness that one hears on the most craftsmanlike recordings, and the casual interviews have a musical, rhythmic ease.
Martin Scorsese possesses gifts- of movement and timing and color and texture. His is a redoubtable body of work. He also knows when not to intrude, to let his scenes take deep breaths and languorously exhale before moving on.
The casual interviews Kael refers to (where each member of The Band comes across as supremely cool- relaxed and wise with anecdotes from their nearly 20 years on the road together) act as perfect interludes to the concert footage and the many guests who joined them on stage for their farewell concert. A lumpy, avuncular looking Van Morrison does a rousing version of Caravan, high kicking across the stage and repeatedly calling out to the horns “Give it to me one more time!” as walls of brass cascade at his command. It’s pretty awesome, spine-tingling stuff and as Morrison histrionically drops his mic and exits the stage Robertson bows into his own and, with a trace of necessary awe, justly utters, “Van the Man!” Just as good is experiencing Joni Mitchell’s rendition of her beautiful song, Coyote, and the joy that comes with watching her effortlessly weave those splendidly strange lyrics all around her vocal idiosyncrasies. Or how about the studio version (three songs were filmed over the course of 5 nights on a sound stages- wonderfully designed, as were the live sets, by Boris Levan) of The Weight, with Mavis and Pops Staples taking turns on verses? As the song ends, the camera lingers on Mavis who we hear just barely whispering, “Beautiful.”
There’s another moment, maybe my favorite in the film, when Scorsese, sitting with Rick Danko in his studio, asks him what he’s going to do now that The Band were calling it quits. “Make music,” Danko says matter of factly, nervously fiddling with his hat and leaning into his mixing board as he slowly raises the levels of the song he’s currently working on. Scorsese, one of the most musical of American directors and one who has never shied away from expressing his own enthusiasm for rock and roll (the use of Van Morrison’s T.B. Sheets in Bringing Out the Dead, for example, is awesome), is genuinely moved and simply sighs an empathetic, “Yeah…oh, yeah,” as the camera moves in to linger, just a few seconds, on Danko. This moment is made even more poignant when one considers that Danko died in his sleep up in Woodstock, New York in the late 90’s.
Did I mention how incredible it all sounds?
Pauline Kael, writing for the New Yorker in 1977, on The Last Waltz:
No American movie this year has been as full of the “joy of making cinema” as Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, his film of The Band’s Thanksgiving, 1976, concert in San Francisco. He shot it while he was still involved in New York, New York- which was full of the “agony of making cinema.” In The Last Waltz, Scorsese seems in complete control of his talent and of the material, and you can feel everything going just right, just was in New York, New York, you could feel everything going wrong. It’s an even-tempered, intensely satisfying movie. Visually, it’s dark-toned and rich and classically simple. The sound (if one has the good luck to catch it in a theatre equipped with a Dolby system) is so clear that the instruments have the distinctness that one hears on the most craftsmanlike recordings, and the casual interviews have a musical, rhythmic ease.
Martin Scorsese possesses gifts- of movement and timing and color and texture. His is a redoubtable body of work. He also knows when not to intrude, to let his scenes take deep breaths and languorously exhale before moving on.
The casual interviews Kael refers to (where each member of The Band comes across as supremely cool- relaxed and wise with anecdotes from their nearly 20 years on the road together) act as perfect interludes to the concert footage and the many guests who joined them on stage for their farewell concert. A lumpy, avuncular looking Van Morrison does a rousing version of Caravan, high kicking across the stage and repeatedly calling out to the horns “Give it to me one more time!” as walls of brass cascade at his command. It’s pretty awesome, spine-tingling stuff and as Morrison histrionically drops his mic and exits the stage Robertson bows into his own and, with a trace of necessary awe, justly utters, “Van the Man!” Just as good is experiencing Joni Mitchell’s rendition of her beautiful song, Coyote, and the joy that comes with watching her effortlessly weave those splendidly strange lyrics all around her vocal idiosyncrasies. Or how about the studio version (three songs were filmed over the course of 5 nights on a sound stages- wonderfully designed, as were the live sets, by Boris Levan) of The Weight, with Mavis and Pops Staples taking turns on verses? As the song ends, the camera lingers on Mavis who we hear just barely whispering, “Beautiful.”
There’s another moment, maybe my favorite in the film, when Scorsese, sitting with Rick Danko in his studio, asks him what he’s going to do now that The Band were calling it quits. “Make music,” Danko says matter of factly, nervously fiddling with his hat and leaning into his mixing board as he slowly raises the levels of the song he’s currently working on. Scorsese, one of the most musical of American directors and one who has never shied away from expressing his own enthusiasm for rock and roll (the use of Van Morrison’s T.B. Sheets in Bringing Out the Dead, for example, is awesome), is genuinely moved and simply sighs an empathetic, “Yeah…oh, yeah,” as the camera moves in to linger, just a few seconds, on Danko. This moment is made even more poignant when one considers that Danko died in his sleep up in Woodstock, New York in the late 90’s.
Did I mention how incredible it all sounds?
My Shuffle Play Likes Love And Rockets
I love the iTunes Shuffle Play option. Love it. Here's a nice little article about 'dat.
I love the iTunes Shuffle Play option. Love it. Here's a nice little article about 'dat.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
I Don't Want Nothing Baby/But I Want A Sunday Kind of Love
Today’s special musical guest has been Dinah Washington and her album, What A Difference A Day Makes! I love the exclamation mark there, so very pick-yourself-up- and-brush-it-off hopeful. It’s quite an album too, full of Technicolor strings, PG-13 sexiness and Washington’s pebble graveled vocals. Her vocals are the finest, lightest grade of sandpaper. Sometimes they resemble Jimmy Scott’s, whose Sycamore Trees from the Fire Walk With Me soundtrack has always pleasantly freaked me out.
What I’m liking most about listening to Washington right now is how perfectly the mood of her album compliments my own. It’s perfectly complimentary to the winding down of the weekend, as 11:00 roles around.
Today’s special musical guest has been Dinah Washington and her album, What A Difference A Day Makes! I love the exclamation mark there, so very pick-yourself-up- and-brush-it-off hopeful. It’s quite an album too, full of Technicolor strings, PG-13 sexiness and Washington’s pebble graveled vocals. Her vocals are the finest, lightest grade of sandpaper. Sometimes they resemble Jimmy Scott’s, whose Sycamore Trees from the Fire Walk With Me soundtrack has always pleasantly freaked me out.
What I’m liking most about listening to Washington right now is how perfectly the mood of her album compliments my own. It’s perfectly complimentary to the winding down of the weekend, as 11:00 roles around.
from blossom to blossom
All the pictures I took yesterday never were actually taken. Little Lucy van Pelt has pulled the football away and I’ve landed flat on my back, visions of the lovely picture I took of Cathy and Julie looking absolutely fabulous in aprons, now lost to the ethers. Argh!
Cathy and I, along with our co-hosts, The Huston Family Singers, threw a little ho-down for the likes of Emily and Jason and the impending Green Bean. We had about 35 to 40 or so people over, 5 of which were 4 years of age and under, the youngest two being the irreparable Taylor, hovering at a little less then a year and Sadie, weighing in at just three months alive and kicking.
There was punch with floating strawberries served (of course!) out of a punch bowl that also morphed, with just a flip ‘o the lid, into a splendid cake holder. There was the painting of Onesies (photo’s forthcoming) outdoors and under the fully cooperative (and cloudless) participation of the mellowest of late-August suns, Baby Bingo played with great fervor in the sauna-like hothouse of shower gift unwrapping (Onesies are the Nerf Football of Baby Showers), and frequent and oftentimes rather feverish munching at the edges of numerous snack food stations.
I had a couple conversations, however lopsided, with both the aforementioned Taylor and Sadie. With Taylor, she was sitting on the floor wondering just how she should react to the fact that Dad was walking a few feet away to grab something or other. She let out a little squeak of dissatisfaction, and her right arm rose up in contemptuous exclamation. I quickly cooed some greetings her way, making eye contact while I joined her on the floor. She was wary at first, thinking, “Whoa, what do we have here? This guy is nuts! Look at him crawling towards me and making those dopey faces,” at which point she made a decision and thought, “well, he’s positively, hilariously loony-tunes genius!” and broke out into a big old grin accompanied, most endearingly, by several unabashed wiggles of delight.
Sadie was reclining on her pop’s chest, her legs lazily dangling over his arms. People were leaving so I leaned into her gaze and made sure she was aware of just how pleased Cathy and I were to have had the pleasure of her company on this fine August afternoon. Her response was to simply stare, eyes glistening with hypnotic intensity and her mouth forming an O that seemed to signal to me she had reached the very cusp of wonder and was about to spill over into making sense of it all. First, of course, there’d be drooling and that would be fine.
It’s all a part of the ever growing baby parade we increasingly seem to be in the good and thick of. It’s good to spend this kind of quality time with the under 4 set.
All the pictures I took yesterday never were actually taken. Little Lucy van Pelt has pulled the football away and I’ve landed flat on my back, visions of the lovely picture I took of Cathy and Julie looking absolutely fabulous in aprons, now lost to the ethers. Argh!
Cathy and I, along with our co-hosts, The Huston Family Singers, threw a little ho-down for the likes of Emily and Jason and the impending Green Bean. We had about 35 to 40 or so people over, 5 of which were 4 years of age and under, the youngest two being the irreparable Taylor, hovering at a little less then a year and Sadie, weighing in at just three months alive and kicking.
There was punch with floating strawberries served (of course!) out of a punch bowl that also morphed, with just a flip ‘o the lid, into a splendid cake holder. There was the painting of Onesies (photo’s forthcoming) outdoors and under the fully cooperative (and cloudless) participation of the mellowest of late-August suns, Baby Bingo played with great fervor in the sauna-like hothouse of shower gift unwrapping (Onesies are the Nerf Football of Baby Showers), and frequent and oftentimes rather feverish munching at the edges of numerous snack food stations.
I had a couple conversations, however lopsided, with both the aforementioned Taylor and Sadie. With Taylor, she was sitting on the floor wondering just how she should react to the fact that Dad was walking a few feet away to grab something or other. She let out a little squeak of dissatisfaction, and her right arm rose up in contemptuous exclamation. I quickly cooed some greetings her way, making eye contact while I joined her on the floor. She was wary at first, thinking, “Whoa, what do we have here? This guy is nuts! Look at him crawling towards me and making those dopey faces,” at which point she made a decision and thought, “well, he’s positively, hilariously loony-tunes genius!” and broke out into a big old grin accompanied, most endearingly, by several unabashed wiggles of delight.
Sadie was reclining on her pop’s chest, her legs lazily dangling over his arms. People were leaving so I leaned into her gaze and made sure she was aware of just how pleased Cathy and I were to have had the pleasure of her company on this fine August afternoon. Her response was to simply stare, eyes glistening with hypnotic intensity and her mouth forming an O that seemed to signal to me she had reached the very cusp of wonder and was about to spill over into making sense of it all. First, of course, there’d be drooling and that would be fine.
It’s all a part of the ever growing baby parade we increasingly seem to be in the good and thick of. It’s good to spend this kind of quality time with the under 4 set.
The Stories We Tell
For as long as I can remember I’ve always had various creative endeavors underway. Throughout my teenage years, for example, I channeled my emotional turmoil into overwrought poetry and short stories overwhelmed with dimly ironic pop culture references and phantasmagoric nonsense, vast amounts of which can still be found tucked away in my parents basement. In college, when the allure of writing poetry began to mysteriously fade (I’m unsure what caused this, but I suspect it had something to do with the sharpening of my own critical skills and the glaring disparity between my own work and that of some of the poets I was then studying) I found tremendous creative satisfaction and psychological equilibrium through making music. I’ve made three albums over the last decade and I’m currently in the final stages of a fourth, so clearly I’m getting something good out of it!
Foremost in all of this is satisfying some urge, deeply personal, followed closely by the desire to share whatever it is I’ve created with those closest to me. After all, there would be something sadly masturbatory if I was not to share, you know, and quite frankly I want to get everybody off. I need/want/crave affirmation, too- who doesn’t?
On the periphery of these creative pursuits has been the idea of working with video. Back in the later years of high school and early college, my friends and I filmed on roughly a dozen different occasions. Sometimes it was a party, other times we were making silly, nonsensical skits because it was something to do. As it stands, they’re some of the only documents of that time- conveying a level of context and nuance that photographs can rarely establish.
A few years ago my friend Mike edited together a brilliant 20-minute documentary that combined footage from a New Years party in the early 90’s with one in the early 00’s. Fortuitously, many of the same good folks were at both parties, and Mike had a lot of fun slyly comparing and contrasting who we were then with what were now. I found it all incredibly moving- not only because of the nostalgia- but because it took these otherwise rambling videos, made up of various, seemingly random moments and recontextualized them into something that struck deeper, more satisfying chords. It took these disparate lumps of raw video and alchemized them into something lovingly linear, framed by a supremely goofy-ass narrative involving an old trailer to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and the impending birth of a friends child. Mike’s mini-documentary has, ever since, served as my impetus to do something similar- especially now that I have no excuse not to. All the tools are in my possession- the digital camera, the basic editing bells and whistles- the only thing I lacked was a story that moved me enough to follow it.
(Pregnant Pause, cue swelling strings) Until now.
I had originally planned on making a documentary about summer in Chicago. When Memorial Day rolled around and I was preparing to launch, however, I realized it all felt way too amorphous and that other topics of interest were vying for attention without any sort of framework for how I might incorporate and sustain them. So I made a decision to put things on hold for a while until I could think more about how I wanted to approach it.
Here’s what I’m currently thinking:
-I’m hoping to make an essay-documentary. I think what this means is that I’ll probably occasionally narrate the proceedings via a script, with the hope being that this narrative device will create the necessary momentum and story arc and sustain the viewer’s for what I imagine will be a hour. I want final results to snap along with lot’s of humor and plenty of opportunities to think and interact with people in a way I wouldn’t maybe have the courage or opportunity to do otherwise.
-This brings up an important point. What this project is really about is giving myself the space and opportunity to use all these way-cool tools I now have at my disposal to interact with cool people, explore things that fascinate me in new and exciting ways and, in the end, hopefully create something that’ll be fun to watch. I might fail, but I’m pretty sure the end result isn’t the most important thing here.
-I still want to make a documentary about summer in Chicago, particularly the vitality of the city during that season and the nostalgia (or saudade) I have for this time of year but summer will be the pay-off. The first half will be about autumn and winter. Each season, it’s important to note, won’t be the primary focus- they’ll act more like chapters or frames for the exploration of other topics of interest. Autumn, for example, will be more ruminative, establishing things, and will probably detail our move away from Chicago to Berkeley and feelings of dislocation, of establishing community and roots, etc…
-It’s the "other topics of interest" that I’m still thinking a lot about. But I’m interested in exploring ideas of displacement, home, community, memories (particularly memories of summer) etc… If there’s a central theme, it’s the idea of home and community.
-Talking heads. I want to come up with, at most, 10 questions to ask a variety of people. For example:
-When you think of the idea of home, what do you think of?
-When do you know it’s summer?
-What’s your favorite place in Chicago?
(I need help with coming up with interesting questions that will engage folks and get them talking. I need to frame the questions with some context.)
-During the talking heads, which will be interspersed throughout, I plan on assembling accompanying visuals that are sympathetic to (or symbolic of) whatever the person is discussing. This will mean doing a lot of the talking head interviews over this coming autumn and winter, transcribing them and then making plans as to how to counter these visually. It might include using the actual person who did the talking, filming them in various contexts- or using old photographs or texts or maps or animated sequences. Really, the opportunities are pretty wide open- the important thing is keeping it manageable. I imagine planning and assembling this footage will be a ton of fun.
-I want at least 10 different scenes filmed from the same vantage point during each season. I have a few ideas so far: one of the boat harbors along the lake front (I imagine boats, no boats and colorful autumn leaves, snow and ice, Spring and some boats returned…oh, you get it…), one of a residential street, maybe single tree….what else?
-Some time-elapsed stuff.
-Old family Super-8 footage, which will probably be used to accompany my own family.
-Footage of my parents home in Bay Village, the same home where I grew up and probably the template for what constitutes the idea of home for me.
Obviously many of these ideas are still somewhat hazy, so any insight others may have is welcome. I’m excited about playing in a medium that’s always fascinated me and attempting to utilize it in a way other then just the usual, seemingly random collection of shots and trying to tell an interesting story. We’ll see.
For as long as I can remember I’ve always had various creative endeavors underway. Throughout my teenage years, for example, I channeled my emotional turmoil into overwrought poetry and short stories overwhelmed with dimly ironic pop culture references and phantasmagoric nonsense, vast amounts of which can still be found tucked away in my parents basement. In college, when the allure of writing poetry began to mysteriously fade (I’m unsure what caused this, but I suspect it had something to do with the sharpening of my own critical skills and the glaring disparity between my own work and that of some of the poets I was then studying) I found tremendous creative satisfaction and psychological equilibrium through making music. I’ve made three albums over the last decade and I’m currently in the final stages of a fourth, so clearly I’m getting something good out of it!
Foremost in all of this is satisfying some urge, deeply personal, followed closely by the desire to share whatever it is I’ve created with those closest to me. After all, there would be something sadly masturbatory if I was not to share, you know, and quite frankly I want to get everybody off. I need/want/crave affirmation, too- who doesn’t?
On the periphery of these creative pursuits has been the idea of working with video. Back in the later years of high school and early college, my friends and I filmed on roughly a dozen different occasions. Sometimes it was a party, other times we were making silly, nonsensical skits because it was something to do. As it stands, they’re some of the only documents of that time- conveying a level of context and nuance that photographs can rarely establish.
A few years ago my friend Mike edited together a brilliant 20-minute documentary that combined footage from a New Years party in the early 90’s with one in the early 00’s. Fortuitously, many of the same good folks were at both parties, and Mike had a lot of fun slyly comparing and contrasting who we were then with what were now. I found it all incredibly moving- not only because of the nostalgia- but because it took these otherwise rambling videos, made up of various, seemingly random moments and recontextualized them into something that struck deeper, more satisfying chords. It took these disparate lumps of raw video and alchemized them into something lovingly linear, framed by a supremely goofy-ass narrative involving an old trailer to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and the impending birth of a friends child. Mike’s mini-documentary has, ever since, served as my impetus to do something similar- especially now that I have no excuse not to. All the tools are in my possession- the digital camera, the basic editing bells and whistles- the only thing I lacked was a story that moved me enough to follow it.
(Pregnant Pause, cue swelling strings) Until now.
I had originally planned on making a documentary about summer in Chicago. When Memorial Day rolled around and I was preparing to launch, however, I realized it all felt way too amorphous and that other topics of interest were vying for attention without any sort of framework for how I might incorporate and sustain them. So I made a decision to put things on hold for a while until I could think more about how I wanted to approach it.
Here’s what I’m currently thinking:
-I’m hoping to make an essay-documentary. I think what this means is that I’ll probably occasionally narrate the proceedings via a script, with the hope being that this narrative device will create the necessary momentum and story arc and sustain the viewer’s for what I imagine will be a hour. I want final results to snap along with lot’s of humor and plenty of opportunities to think and interact with people in a way I wouldn’t maybe have the courage or opportunity to do otherwise.
-This brings up an important point. What this project is really about is giving myself the space and opportunity to use all these way-cool tools I now have at my disposal to interact with cool people, explore things that fascinate me in new and exciting ways and, in the end, hopefully create something that’ll be fun to watch. I might fail, but I’m pretty sure the end result isn’t the most important thing here.
-I still want to make a documentary about summer in Chicago, particularly the vitality of the city during that season and the nostalgia (or saudade) I have for this time of year but summer will be the pay-off. The first half will be about autumn and winter. Each season, it’s important to note, won’t be the primary focus- they’ll act more like chapters or frames for the exploration of other topics of interest. Autumn, for example, will be more ruminative, establishing things, and will probably detail our move away from Chicago to Berkeley and feelings of dislocation, of establishing community and roots, etc…
-It’s the "other topics of interest" that I’m still thinking a lot about. But I’m interested in exploring ideas of displacement, home, community, memories (particularly memories of summer) etc… If there’s a central theme, it’s the idea of home and community.
-Talking heads. I want to come up with, at most, 10 questions to ask a variety of people. For example:
-When you think of the idea of home, what do you think of?
-When do you know it’s summer?
-What’s your favorite place in Chicago?
(I need help with coming up with interesting questions that will engage folks and get them talking. I need to frame the questions with some context.)
-During the talking heads, which will be interspersed throughout, I plan on assembling accompanying visuals that are sympathetic to (or symbolic of) whatever the person is discussing. This will mean doing a lot of the talking head interviews over this coming autumn and winter, transcribing them and then making plans as to how to counter these visually. It might include using the actual person who did the talking, filming them in various contexts- or using old photographs or texts or maps or animated sequences. Really, the opportunities are pretty wide open- the important thing is keeping it manageable. I imagine planning and assembling this footage will be a ton of fun.
-I want at least 10 different scenes filmed from the same vantage point during each season. I have a few ideas so far: one of the boat harbors along the lake front (I imagine boats, no boats and colorful autumn leaves, snow and ice, Spring and some boats returned…oh, you get it…), one of a residential street, maybe single tree….what else?
-Some time-elapsed stuff.
-Old family Super-8 footage, which will probably be used to accompany my own family.
-Footage of my parents home in Bay Village, the same home where I grew up and probably the template for what constitutes the idea of home for me.
Obviously many of these ideas are still somewhat hazy, so any insight others may have is welcome. I’m excited about playing in a medium that’s always fascinated me and attempting to utilize it in a way other then just the usual, seemingly random collection of shots and trying to tell an interesting story. We’ll see.
Monday, August 16, 2004
All This Useless Beauty
I need to be better with taking our digital camera along with me when I’m out and about. Last week, with its near record lows (like August infested with October), offered some of the most beautiful play of light, cloud and water that I’ve ever seen. On both Tuesday evening and Wednesday evening, while biking the lake path, I was endorphin stunned by the beauty of it all- the emerald greens and the dusty blues, the mournful grays and the hints of witches purple. Particularly captivating were the white lifeguard chairs and how they took on almost mythological watchtower proportions when framed by the riot of colors smearing the water and sky. The lifeguards, wearing their flaming orange jackets, were also pretty amazing against this backdrop, almost phosphorescent.
This past Saturday I couldn’t quite get started. Do you know what I mean? There were numerous tasks vying for my attention and I haphazardly descended on each without the necessary discipline or curiosity to see any of them through. One of those days. A shot of welcome uplift was provided by watching Vincente Minelli’s Father of the Bride, with the best Spencer Tracy performance I’ve seen yet- suffused with just the right balance of fatherly tenderness and overwhelmed-by-wedding preparation and-where-has-the-time-gone wariness. And the ending is so very pitch perfect, with Tracy and his bride of over 20 years lovingly dancing alone amongst the ruble of their daughter’s reception as the camera gracefully glides back into a fade.
Enjoying Rogue Wave’s Out Of The Shadow, where hints of The Shins (especially on Kicking the Heart Out) and Elliot Smith (especially on Be Kind-Remind) play themselves out over the course of 12 songs that seem terribly familiar for being so brand new to my ears. It’s all very good, seductively crafted pop with off-kilter melodies and clever splashes of squiggly keyboard amongst all the guitar jangle. It’s familiar but certainly not mundane- it seems to be picking up on some of the abandoned trails of late 60’s and early 70’s American pop and going deeper. Definitely plugged into the same amps as The Shins, sharing their mastery of quirky chord changes that startle with their unexpected intensity and beauty.
I need to be better with taking our digital camera along with me when I’m out and about. Last week, with its near record lows (like August infested with October), offered some of the most beautiful play of light, cloud and water that I’ve ever seen. On both Tuesday evening and Wednesday evening, while biking the lake path, I was endorphin stunned by the beauty of it all- the emerald greens and the dusty blues, the mournful grays and the hints of witches purple. Particularly captivating were the white lifeguard chairs and how they took on almost mythological watchtower proportions when framed by the riot of colors smearing the water and sky. The lifeguards, wearing their flaming orange jackets, were also pretty amazing against this backdrop, almost phosphorescent.
This past Saturday I couldn’t quite get started. Do you know what I mean? There were numerous tasks vying for my attention and I haphazardly descended on each without the necessary discipline or curiosity to see any of them through. One of those days. A shot of welcome uplift was provided by watching Vincente Minelli’s Father of the Bride, with the best Spencer Tracy performance I’ve seen yet- suffused with just the right balance of fatherly tenderness and overwhelmed-by-wedding preparation and-where-has-the-time-gone wariness. And the ending is so very pitch perfect, with Tracy and his bride of over 20 years lovingly dancing alone amongst the ruble of their daughter’s reception as the camera gracefully glides back into a fade.
Enjoying Rogue Wave’s Out Of The Shadow, where hints of The Shins (especially on Kicking the Heart Out) and Elliot Smith (especially on Be Kind-Remind) play themselves out over the course of 12 songs that seem terribly familiar for being so brand new to my ears. It’s all very good, seductively crafted pop with off-kilter melodies and clever splashes of squiggly keyboard amongst all the guitar jangle. It’s familiar but certainly not mundane- it seems to be picking up on some of the abandoned trails of late 60’s and early 70’s American pop and going deeper. Definitely plugged into the same amps as The Shins, sharing their mastery of quirky chord changes that startle with their unexpected intensity and beauty.
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Tidbits- Now More Bite-Sized Then Ever Before!
My Morning Jacket’s Bermuda is like…like dust-covered peaches or a porch swing lit by nothin’ but candles and moonlight. Exquisitely forlorn.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s downright crass to be secretly rejoicing in the latest economic news- just 32,000 new jobs were added last month. We’re feeling so damn politically pragmatic these days that we wouldn’t mind wallowing in this so-called economic "soft patch" until November- anything to dampen the cannon fodder provided it doesn’t present too much undue hardship.
David Doucet’s Cajun Waltz from his album 1957 is like…the great pumpkin rising in Arcadia or beautiful girls and beautiful boys dancing on red clay and straw.
Sweetness and Light
I Can’t Go For That is like…the blue-eyed soul brother to Billy Jean…like somebody put slippers on the funk. We can now take Hall and Oates in very small doses.
Japanese Story, the commendably striving second film by Australian director Sue Brooks, never quite congeals and teeters perilously close to the downright silly. But, still, there was something there, just beneath the surface, wanting to rise above all the melodrama that bogs down the second half of the film and offer something special. Maybe it was Toni Colette’s performance, which seemed all together superior to the film surrounding her- it’s a performance that sets a standard Brooks never quite matches. The force of Colette’s performance, especially the feisty sensuality she exudes in the film’s first half, creates a disparity between her and everything else.
The film’s second half is one long dirge that aims for grace through a minimum of speaking, the ritual motions of grieving and a heavy lacquer of mournful musical accompaniment. It’s almost something special but it’s always crumbling along the edges, interrupted with blunt melodramatic pieties that destroy the elegiac mood. The pleasures of this film, however, ultimately resides in Toni Colette’s performance.
My Morning Jacket’s Bermuda is like…like dust-covered peaches or a porch swing lit by nothin’ but candles and moonlight. Exquisitely forlorn.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s downright crass to be secretly rejoicing in the latest economic news- just 32,000 new jobs were added last month. We’re feeling so damn politically pragmatic these days that we wouldn’t mind wallowing in this so-called economic "soft patch" until November- anything to dampen the cannon fodder provided it doesn’t present too much undue hardship.
David Doucet’s Cajun Waltz from his album 1957 is like…the great pumpkin rising in Arcadia or beautiful girls and beautiful boys dancing on red clay and straw.
Sweetness and Light
I Can’t Go For That is like…the blue-eyed soul brother to Billy Jean…like somebody put slippers on the funk. We can now take Hall and Oates in very small doses.
Japanese Story, the commendably striving second film by Australian director Sue Brooks, never quite congeals and teeters perilously close to the downright silly. But, still, there was something there, just beneath the surface, wanting to rise above all the melodrama that bogs down the second half of the film and offer something special. Maybe it was Toni Colette’s performance, which seemed all together superior to the film surrounding her- it’s a performance that sets a standard Brooks never quite matches. The force of Colette’s performance, especially the feisty sensuality she exudes in the film’s first half, creates a disparity between her and everything else.
The film’s second half is one long dirge that aims for grace through a minimum of speaking, the ritual motions of grieving and a heavy lacquer of mournful musical accompaniment. It’s almost something special but it’s always crumbling along the edges, interrupted with blunt melodramatic pieties that destroy the elegiac mood. The pleasures of this film, however, ultimately resides in Toni Colette’s performance.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Terror In the Morning…Terror In the Evening…Terror in Their Vitamins!?
The story leading both the Post and Times today reveals that the current terror threats on various financial buildings, breathlessly announced by Tom Ridge on Saturday and excitedly exploited by Bush and Cheney in their stump speeches, were actually based on information 3 to 4 years old. Nobody, in fact, is sure that any of the information is current.
Here’s an interesting tidbit from an article in today’s Post:
More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.
"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."
I think that quote probably gets right to the heart of the matter, and given the animosity between so many in the intelligence community and this current administration, probably fairly representative. It’s all about how the Bush administration chooses to “analyze” the intelligence given (or, more precisely, cherry-picked for) them, isn’t it?
The story leading both the Post and Times today reveals that the current terror threats on various financial buildings, breathlessly announced by Tom Ridge on Saturday and excitedly exploited by Bush and Cheney in their stump speeches, were actually based on information 3 to 4 years old. Nobody, in fact, is sure that any of the information is current.
Here’s an interesting tidbit from an article in today’s Post:
More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.
"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."
I think that quote probably gets right to the heart of the matter, and given the animosity between so many in the intelligence community and this current administration, probably fairly representative. It’s all about how the Bush administration chooses to “analyze” the intelligence given (or, more precisely, cherry-picked for) them, isn’t it?
Monday, August 02, 2004
Pictures of Home
For those who might be interested, there are now some pictures available of our home here. We’ve made a lot of progress over the last couple months endowing our place with little touches that give it the personal character that we hope to take solace in and magically impart to our visitors. We still have a ways to go but we’re definitely getting there.
I can also vouch for the excellence of Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March, the 1986 documentary about his relationships with half a dozen or so Southern women, General Sherman’s devastating march through the south during the Civil War, fears of Nuclear Holocaust (there’s an incredibly poetic moment where McElwee’s remembers being in Hawaii as a small child, standing on a beach in the early morning hour with hundreds of others in hopes of catching a glimpse of a Nuclear Bomb test taking place over 800 miles away), Burt Reynolds, his family and assorted other meanderings that are always interesting. There are numerous moments when folks yell at him to put his camera down (one woman, a former teacher, berates him: “Put that damn thing down…this is life!”) but for the most part they either talk freely to the camera or, perhaps more interestingly, allow for a certain camera-inducing histrionics to inform their delivery.
What surprised me the most were the moments of intimacy McElwee captures. In one scene he and a former girlfriend have a feverish conversation one room removed from a dinner party they’re both attending where she tells him why she can’t be his lover. In other scenes he records himself narrating to the camera late at night from the living room of his home, whispering for fear of waking up his father who is already deeply skeptical of the validity of his son’s chosen career as a first-person documentary maker. Other scenes show women primping in bathrooms, applying make-up or brushing their hair. Sometimes we see McElwee’s image captured in a mirror, camera held to his eye with one hand and while the other thrusts a microphone toward his subject. It seems absurd, but you end amazed by his audacity.
Luckily, too, he has an engaging personality. His voice is naturally melodious- soft and even-keeled with a wickedly dry sense of humor and delivery. His musings are always interesting and well observed and oftentimes genuinely moving.
Sadly, Sherman’s March is the only work of his currently available on DVD. It comes highly recommended.
For those who might be interested, there are now some pictures available of our home here. We’ve made a lot of progress over the last couple months endowing our place with little touches that give it the personal character that we hope to take solace in and magically impart to our visitors. We still have a ways to go but we’re definitely getting there.
I can also vouch for the excellence of Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March, the 1986 documentary about his relationships with half a dozen or so Southern women, General Sherman’s devastating march through the south during the Civil War, fears of Nuclear Holocaust (there’s an incredibly poetic moment where McElwee’s remembers being in Hawaii as a small child, standing on a beach in the early morning hour with hundreds of others in hopes of catching a glimpse of a Nuclear Bomb test taking place over 800 miles away), Burt Reynolds, his family and assorted other meanderings that are always interesting. There are numerous moments when folks yell at him to put his camera down (one woman, a former teacher, berates him: “Put that damn thing down…this is life!”) but for the most part they either talk freely to the camera or, perhaps more interestingly, allow for a certain camera-inducing histrionics to inform their delivery.
What surprised me the most were the moments of intimacy McElwee captures. In one scene he and a former girlfriend have a feverish conversation one room removed from a dinner party they’re both attending where she tells him why she can’t be his lover. In other scenes he records himself narrating to the camera late at night from the living room of his home, whispering for fear of waking up his father who is already deeply skeptical of the validity of his son’s chosen career as a first-person documentary maker. Other scenes show women primping in bathrooms, applying make-up or brushing their hair. Sometimes we see McElwee’s image captured in a mirror, camera held to his eye with one hand and while the other thrusts a microphone toward his subject. It seems absurd, but you end amazed by his audacity.
Luckily, too, he has an engaging personality. His voice is naturally melodious- soft and even-keeled with a wickedly dry sense of humor and delivery. His musings are always interesting and well observed and oftentimes genuinely moving.
Sadly, Sherman’s March is the only work of his currently available on DVD. It comes highly recommended.
Sunday, August 01, 2004
Ross McElwee
Both the current issues of Cineaste and Film Comment have fascinating interviews/columns with/on “American’s foremost practitioners of the first-person documentary, Ross McElwee.
I’m intersted in a lot of what he has to say, especially as I’m hoping to make my own first-person documentary over the next year, but he's also clearly thought a lot about how video can effect our memories and the stories we tell. Here are some excerpts taken from the Cineaste interview.
I.
McElwee:…So in a way it’s a question that may not come up for most people. But for me, it’s important to experiment with the reuse of footage, because that reflects a very human experience: replaying scenes from your past in your mind and having a very different reaction to them as the years go on. Specific moments, interactions I have with people I’m close to, ripen in different ways as time goes on. They take on different meanings, and I’m interested in how film can explore and convey the process.
Cineaste: Film is kind of magical that way, isn’t it? Don’t we all feel like we might remember things right? And there, twenty years later, is the same strip of film.
McElwee: I think it’s going to be very interesting, by the way, to see what happens with this digital generation of parents who have recorded their kids’ every footstep. People were shooting a fair amount of super-8 film in the Sixties and Seventies. But it was expensive and difficult to load, and editing it was extremely time-consuming. Most people didn’t edit their footage; most footage was not viewed more than once. Digital video, or video in general enables parents to keep a constant record of a family as it grows up. So that very question you raised- “Am I remembering this correctly?”- needn’t be an issue. People can just go back to the data bank and see exactly how little Jimmy spooned his peas into his mouth at age four. There’ll be a record of it. And how strange is that?
II.
McElwee: That’s such an interesting question: what is it that gives certain people the kind of presence that justifies their being in a nonfiction film, in a documentary film? Passion. Charisma. That edge of eccentricity perhaps. Somehow they’re able to convey some depth of sincerity and soulfulness about themselves that I wouldn’t describe as star power.
III.
Cineaste: Speaking of the power that these films have over us, I wonder about people in your movies over whom that power has obviously been exerted to an extreme degree- Barry, the video collector in your new movie, and you yourself. You are constantly talking about being overtaken by the power that filming has.
McElwee: There’s a pathology there that is not just a joking matter. Yes, this notion of constantly wanting to capture reality as much as humanly possible is a kind of neurosis. It’s also one that’s perhaps more pervasive that it ever has been. We have a proliferation of readily available digital, and now computer-based and web-based, technology, where making movies has become much easier than writing a novel or a poem. Now, technically speaking, almost everybody can make a movie. It’s interesting to think about the pathological aspects of this addiction to filming, this desire to interact with reality by filming it. It’s also a theme that I’ve played up or exaggerated slightly with my own filmmaking.
IV.
McElwee: I’ve often said about Sherman’s March (McElwee’s 1986 documentary, which I just got from Netflix, but have yet to watch) that, even if you were able to hire actors and actresses who performed all of the parts perfectly and shot them on location in the same places and directed it as though it seemed exactly like Sherman’s March, it wouldn’t work as a movie. There’s something about the fact that it’s nonfiction that ends up making a difference. There’s something that happens in the back of the viewer’s mind as you watch Sherman’s March or as you watch Bright Leaves, that’s constantly registering the fact that, in some way, this is really happening. and that’s very hard to recast as fiction in a way that’s successful. There are films that have tried, like Spinal Tap. It’s a kind of ‘mockumentary.’ It’s a joke that you accept. You just go with it, and it’s entertainment, but it’s not the same thing. It doesn’t have the crunchy edginess that comes with nonfiction.
Cineaste: You seem to be saying a version of that when you find the super-8 film of your parents’ wedding in Time Indefinite. It’s sui generis and could not be recorded.
McElwee: Right. Technically you could, especially these days with digital effects. You could create grain and light structure that would make it look exactly like that wedding film of long ago. But it wouldn’t be the same. the fact that I say it’s a roll of film that I found has a lot to do with how your react to the scene. A switch has gone on in the mind of the viewer, I think this happens because of what I say about the film, but it still has a lot to do with the quality of the filmed image- its grain, its somewhat awkward framing, its occasional unsteadiness, and the slight edge of self-consciousness readable in the person being filmed. Still, I remember very distinctly the numerous times, during a question and answer session after Sherman’s March, someone would stand up in the audience and say, “I love this film. Who wrote the script? Has Charleen acted in other movies?” There is a part of the viewing public who just take these films as fiction. though a title card explains at the beginning of the film that these are real people, it just doesn’t seem to register sometimes.
Both the current issues of Cineaste and Film Comment have fascinating interviews/columns with/on “American’s foremost practitioners of the first-person documentary, Ross McElwee.
I’m intersted in a lot of what he has to say, especially as I’m hoping to make my own first-person documentary over the next year, but he's also clearly thought a lot about how video can effect our memories and the stories we tell. Here are some excerpts taken from the Cineaste interview.
I.
McElwee:…So in a way it’s a question that may not come up for most people. But for me, it’s important to experiment with the reuse of footage, because that reflects a very human experience: replaying scenes from your past in your mind and having a very different reaction to them as the years go on. Specific moments, interactions I have with people I’m close to, ripen in different ways as time goes on. They take on different meanings, and I’m interested in how film can explore and convey the process.
Cineaste: Film is kind of magical that way, isn’t it? Don’t we all feel like we might remember things right? And there, twenty years later, is the same strip of film.
McElwee: I think it’s going to be very interesting, by the way, to see what happens with this digital generation of parents who have recorded their kids’ every footstep. People were shooting a fair amount of super-8 film in the Sixties and Seventies. But it was expensive and difficult to load, and editing it was extremely time-consuming. Most people didn’t edit their footage; most footage was not viewed more than once. Digital video, or video in general enables parents to keep a constant record of a family as it grows up. So that very question you raised- “Am I remembering this correctly?”- needn’t be an issue. People can just go back to the data bank and see exactly how little Jimmy spooned his peas into his mouth at age four. There’ll be a record of it. And how strange is that?
II.
McElwee: That’s such an interesting question: what is it that gives certain people the kind of presence that justifies their being in a nonfiction film, in a documentary film? Passion. Charisma. That edge of eccentricity perhaps. Somehow they’re able to convey some depth of sincerity and soulfulness about themselves that I wouldn’t describe as star power.
III.
Cineaste: Speaking of the power that these films have over us, I wonder about people in your movies over whom that power has obviously been exerted to an extreme degree- Barry, the video collector in your new movie, and you yourself. You are constantly talking about being overtaken by the power that filming has.
McElwee: There’s a pathology there that is not just a joking matter. Yes, this notion of constantly wanting to capture reality as much as humanly possible is a kind of neurosis. It’s also one that’s perhaps more pervasive that it ever has been. We have a proliferation of readily available digital, and now computer-based and web-based, technology, where making movies has become much easier than writing a novel or a poem. Now, technically speaking, almost everybody can make a movie. It’s interesting to think about the pathological aspects of this addiction to filming, this desire to interact with reality by filming it. It’s also a theme that I’ve played up or exaggerated slightly with my own filmmaking.
IV.
McElwee: I’ve often said about Sherman’s March (McElwee’s 1986 documentary, which I just got from Netflix, but have yet to watch) that, even if you were able to hire actors and actresses who performed all of the parts perfectly and shot them on location in the same places and directed it as though it seemed exactly like Sherman’s March, it wouldn’t work as a movie. There’s something about the fact that it’s nonfiction that ends up making a difference. There’s something that happens in the back of the viewer’s mind as you watch Sherman’s March or as you watch Bright Leaves, that’s constantly registering the fact that, in some way, this is really happening. and that’s very hard to recast as fiction in a way that’s successful. There are films that have tried, like Spinal Tap. It’s a kind of ‘mockumentary.’ It’s a joke that you accept. You just go with it, and it’s entertainment, but it’s not the same thing. It doesn’t have the crunchy edginess that comes with nonfiction.
Cineaste: You seem to be saying a version of that when you find the super-8 film of your parents’ wedding in Time Indefinite. It’s sui generis and could not be recorded.
McElwee: Right. Technically you could, especially these days with digital effects. You could create grain and light structure that would make it look exactly like that wedding film of long ago. But it wouldn’t be the same. the fact that I say it’s a roll of film that I found has a lot to do with how your react to the scene. A switch has gone on in the mind of the viewer, I think this happens because of what I say about the film, but it still has a lot to do with the quality of the filmed image- its grain, its somewhat awkward framing, its occasional unsteadiness, and the slight edge of self-consciousness readable in the person being filmed. Still, I remember very distinctly the numerous times, during a question and answer session after Sherman’s March, someone would stand up in the audience and say, “I love this film. Who wrote the script? Has Charleen acted in other movies?” There is a part of the viewing public who just take these films as fiction. though a title card explains at the beginning of the film that these are real people, it just doesn’t seem to register sometimes.
Morning Becomes Computer
It’s past midnight, contrary to what the time stamp of this post reads. (All post times still
adhere to Pacific Time.) Its been a long day.
I originally woke up around 2:00 am and wanted very much for the day to begin. It’s rare to awake at such an early morning hour and want to do anything but numbly eye the clock, gage the time and gratefully zonk back into the deepest of slumbers. But last night I felt anxious with unidentifiable expectations, as if in the wide expanse of a summer Saturday I was bound to fulfill things long unrealized. The night felt too long. I managed 3 more hours of sleep before 5:00 am rolled around and scooped me out of bed, handing me a Diet Coke with lemon for my troubles and sending me down to the computer.
But why, I have to wonder- and not without a tinge of guilt- the computer first thing? There was the obligatory scan of Yahoo’s news headlines, the cursory scanning of the Tribune weather page and the momentary suspense of checking my e-mail- all done between groggy sips of cola without any pause to wonder if this was what got me out of bed at 5:00 am feeling so much expectation.
And this expectation, it should be noted, wasn’t the fretful tossing and turning variety- it was more of a gee-whiz Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart meets Norman Rockwell kind of idiot glee- and it had me up and sitting dumbly in front of the computer so that it wasn’t until nearly 7:00 that I finally asked, “Is this all?”
Now, it’s 1:17 am, over 19 hours later and this very same expectation is running on fumes. What was it exactly and did I quench it? I think so. Tonight I intend on letting 5:00 am pass by unrecognized. I’m aiming for 7:00 am mixed with a couple heaping t-spoons of a mid-afternoon nap.
It’s past midnight, contrary to what the time stamp of this post reads. (All post times still
adhere to Pacific Time.) Its been a long day.
I originally woke up around 2:00 am and wanted very much for the day to begin. It’s rare to awake at such an early morning hour and want to do anything but numbly eye the clock, gage the time and gratefully zonk back into the deepest of slumbers. But last night I felt anxious with unidentifiable expectations, as if in the wide expanse of a summer Saturday I was bound to fulfill things long unrealized. The night felt too long. I managed 3 more hours of sleep before 5:00 am rolled around and scooped me out of bed, handing me a Diet Coke with lemon for my troubles and sending me down to the computer.
But why, I have to wonder- and not without a tinge of guilt- the computer first thing? There was the obligatory scan of Yahoo’s news headlines, the cursory scanning of the Tribune weather page and the momentary suspense of checking my e-mail- all done between groggy sips of cola without any pause to wonder if this was what got me out of bed at 5:00 am feeling so much expectation.
And this expectation, it should be noted, wasn’t the fretful tossing and turning variety- it was more of a gee-whiz Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart meets Norman Rockwell kind of idiot glee- and it had me up and sitting dumbly in front of the computer so that it wasn’t until nearly 7:00 that I finally asked, “Is this all?”
Now, it’s 1:17 am, over 19 hours later and this very same expectation is running on fumes. What was it exactly and did I quench it? I think so. Tonight I intend on letting 5:00 am pass by unrecognized. I’m aiming for 7:00 am mixed with a couple heaping t-spoons of a mid-afternoon nap.
Monday, July 26, 2004
Weekend Round Up
The Farrelly Brother's Stuck On You is, if not their funniest work (that honor still belongs to There's Something About Mary), definitely their sweetest. If all of their previous films (which also include Dumb and Dumber and Shallow Hal) have demonstrated a nice knack for straining their gross-out, taboo-bursting brand of humor through a charming brand of sweetness, Stuck On You seems to me a kind of apotheosis of their work in this area.
And we were on a bit of a Matt Damon kick this weekend. The Bourne Supremacy seems to have forgotten to balance its bad-assness with the kind of gee-whiz goofiness the first one managed so nicely. This one isn't necessarily bad, and bringing Peter Greenway, fresh off Bloody Sunday, was an inspired choice even if he does go a little haywire with the edits in a couple of the action sequences. (Whose getting a fist to the jaw there? Do I care?) Booting Franka Potente in the opening 10 minutes seemed cheap and the ricketedy cogs of the vegence plot it puts into motion gets the thumbs twiddling in ho-hum expectation. Still, there's an inspired, highly physical car chase to end the film where the right dude gets his necessary comeuppance, and we dug that. And Cathy gets the high five for spotting the lovely Oksana Akinshina, who makes her first screen appearance since she was put through the ringer of Moodysson's devastating Lilja 4-Ever, in a silly little coda where she's given about 4 minutes to fear for her life and then cry.
Moodymann's new one, Black Mahogani is his best since Silent Introduction. Kenny Dixon (a.k.a. Moodymann) trims the fat off of his previous and oftentimes tedious immersion into lengthy sound collages in favor of a seemingly newfound focus on his sublimely dusted house grooves. The album's first 4 songs make up a soulful sweet, led by the woozy vocals of Roberta Sweet (no pun intended) and culminating in the 12 minute track, Runaway, which builds up and winds down repeatedly. On first listen, Black Mahogani already seems like a classic- highly distinct, unabashedly accessible and laying down slice after slice of genuinely soulful house.
Also watched Elephant, Gun Van San'ts not so loose adaptation of the Columbine high school massacre. It's not entirely successful, but the first 40 or so minutes are near perfect, full of long, gliding tracking shots nipping at the shoulders of various students walking through high school. It all feels suspended- haunted and dense with tension. The sound design on the film is a marvel, as voices are constantly submerged only to come into sharp clarity and everywhere deep, cavernous thuds seem to ricochet off the hallways. And hallways haven't been this creepy, this infused with dread, since Lynch's Twin Peaks. At the 40 minute mark, the student killers enter the building and it's barely possible to watch the screen after this. We see the massacre, and it's horrific with a minimum of gore, though I'm not entirely convinced it was necessary for us to see. Still, as a piece of agitprop, this is probably more successful then Bowling For Columbine.
We leave you with this:
The Don Martin Dictionary!
The Farrelly Brother's Stuck On You is, if not their funniest work (that honor still belongs to There's Something About Mary), definitely their sweetest. If all of their previous films (which also include Dumb and Dumber and Shallow Hal) have demonstrated a nice knack for straining their gross-out, taboo-bursting brand of humor through a charming brand of sweetness, Stuck On You seems to me a kind of apotheosis of their work in this area.
And we were on a bit of a Matt Damon kick this weekend. The Bourne Supremacy seems to have forgotten to balance its bad-assness with the kind of gee-whiz goofiness the first one managed so nicely. This one isn't necessarily bad, and bringing Peter Greenway, fresh off Bloody Sunday, was an inspired choice even if he does go a little haywire with the edits in a couple of the action sequences. (Whose getting a fist to the jaw there? Do I care?) Booting Franka Potente in the opening 10 minutes seemed cheap and the ricketedy cogs of the vegence plot it puts into motion gets the thumbs twiddling in ho-hum expectation. Still, there's an inspired, highly physical car chase to end the film where the right dude gets his necessary comeuppance, and we dug that. And Cathy gets the high five for spotting the lovely Oksana Akinshina, who makes her first screen appearance since she was put through the ringer of Moodysson's devastating Lilja 4-Ever, in a silly little coda where she's given about 4 minutes to fear for her life and then cry.
Moodymann's new one, Black Mahogani is his best since Silent Introduction. Kenny Dixon (a.k.a. Moodymann) trims the fat off of his previous and oftentimes tedious immersion into lengthy sound collages in favor of a seemingly newfound focus on his sublimely dusted house grooves. The album's first 4 songs make up a soulful sweet, led by the woozy vocals of Roberta Sweet (no pun intended) and culminating in the 12 minute track, Runaway, which builds up and winds down repeatedly. On first listen, Black Mahogani already seems like a classic- highly distinct, unabashedly accessible and laying down slice after slice of genuinely soulful house.
Also watched Elephant, Gun Van San'ts not so loose adaptation of the Columbine high school massacre. It's not entirely successful, but the first 40 or so minutes are near perfect, full of long, gliding tracking shots nipping at the shoulders of various students walking through high school. It all feels suspended- haunted and dense with tension. The sound design on the film is a marvel, as voices are constantly submerged only to come into sharp clarity and everywhere deep, cavernous thuds seem to ricochet off the hallways. And hallways haven't been this creepy, this infused with dread, since Lynch's Twin Peaks. At the 40 minute mark, the student killers enter the building and it's barely possible to watch the screen after this. We see the massacre, and it's horrific with a minimum of gore, though I'm not entirely convinced it was necessary for us to see. Still, as a piece of agitprop, this is probably more successful then Bowling For Columbine.
We leave you with this:
The Don Martin Dictionary!
Monday, July 19, 2004
Paul Simon, Among Other Things
A.
My crotch is still snug after all these years.
The Paul Simon reissues are welcome with big, open arms. I’ve owned his first two post-Garfunkel albums for a while now, and love them- so it was a nice surprise to discover a few weeks ago that his entire catalog had been remastered, with the first half on the shelves this past Tuesday. I headed over to the Virgan Superstore on the Magnificent Mile (where the in-store DJs are almost always entirely successful in pricking me out of my browsing trance with their hyped up in-between songs chatter) on Friday and picked up Still Crazy After All These Years and Hearts and Bones.
I had heard Still Crazy After All These Years in its entirety sometime back in the early 90’s via the Columbus Library. It didn’t do much to me, other then offering the surprise of seeing Tony Levin in the credits, his lovely bass playing anchoring many of the album’s songs, including its big hit, 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover. Almost a decade later, I’m far more receptive to the album’s charms, which are substantial. Besides the fun of hearing Levin’s playing, the album also features some great backing vocals by the likes of the Jersey Dixon Singers and the Chicago Community Choir, the sweet-tempered harmonizing of Simon and Garfunkel on My Little Town and the soulful bossa-nova of I Do It For Your Love, probably the track I’m currently enjoying most on the album. The song features an absolutely lilting accordion and vocal solo by someone credited only as Sivuca! Maybe more-so then any other pop star, Simon’s voice captivates me with a soulful kind of gentleness similar to Joao Gilbertos. The album, like his first two, is also streaked with southern soul, Dixieland and mellow mid-life assessments.
Hearts and Bones, with its grainy video cover of Simon looking fiercely New Romantic or an extra from the film adaptation of Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, begins with a song titled Allergies. It was released in October of 1983. I’m pleased to say that Paul Simon is one of the rare artists to have successfully navigated unscathed through the otherwise ruinous threshold of the 70’s into the 80's, a journey that seems to have sapped a disproportionate number of artists who created classic albums throughout much of the 70’s, only to falter in the 80s with releases whose severe mediocrity glared against the backdrop of their previous efforts. I have, however, been thinking of late that maybe it's not necessarily the quality of the songs themselves that bothers me, so much as it might just be the way they were produced. Namely, that nearly everything sounds like it was recorded in modest sized rooms made entirely of porcelain.
Of course, I’m all for the clean sheen of the glistening reverb that seemed to coat so many of the tracks in the 80’s. When it’s done well it sounds great,and Simon, who’ve I’ve come to recognize as one of the great studio wizards, does it especially well-buffering all his tracks with the nicest feelin’ groovy kind of polish. It’s clean, but always soulful. On Train In The Distance, for example- one of the album’s stand-out cuts, Simon lays down one of his greatest vocal performances, a funky multi-layered doo-wop equal to any of Marvin Gaye’s sweetest, sexiest vocal beds. It practically shimmers.
The album’s last track, The Late Great Johnny Ace, nicely manages to eulogize both the 50’s R & B singer Johnny Ace and John Lennon, ending with a velvety and mournful Phillip Glass coda.
B
Our basement has come to, unfortunately, be known as “the TV room,” a title that, while definitely unfortunate (conjuring up, as it does, the prospects of Jay Leno, that sitcom starring Jim Belushi and repeats of Maude) is not entirely inappropriate given the size of the television that has only recently come to reside there. It’s a beast, rotund with screen and lush with surround sound.
We’re a little embarrassed about it, Cathy especially, it’s very size signaling a kind of consumption gluttony and presumably symbolic of our commitment to television. We fear others may conclude that we’re spending our leisure hours watching the boob tube. But hell no, my friends! We’re always quick to do our duty and offer assurances that it’s chief function is for movie viewing and its considerable girth and surround sound help to more closely approximate the film going experience. In Pauline Kaels’ old essay, Movies On Television, she talks about the diminishing effects of watching films on the TV:
Not only the size but the shape of the image is changed, and, indeed, almost all the specifically visual elements are so distorted as to be all but completely destroyed. On television, a cattle drive or a cavalry charge or a chase- the climax of so many a big movie- loses the dimensions of space and distance that made it exciting, that sometimes made it great. And since the structural elements- the rhythm, the buildup, the suspense- are also partly destroyed by deletions and commercial breaks and the interruptions incidental to home viewing, it’s amazing that the bare bones of performance, dialogue, story, good directing, and (especially important for close-range viewing) good editing can still make an old movie more entertaining than almost anything new on television.
So, you see, it’s all about giving all that space and distance its due.
Sadly, we haven’t watched too much that’s been worthwhile. Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai, the first film we waded through, was thick with inflated grandeur and hackneyed heroics. You are never, not once, given the opportunity to cast Cruise in anything but the most noble of 25 million dollars a picture lights. You see, his character was witness to the killing of American Indians, one of Custer’s soldiers and it is only through the way of the Samurai, a kind of surrogate for the noble Indians, that he can immerse himself in their own particular nativism and come out cleansed! And you, dear viewers, can behold The Cruise go all Samurai on your ass and witness The Cruise as the humble savior of The Way of the Samurai!
Then there’s the case of In America and Love Actually, both of which I really wanted to like but ended up feeling let down by. If forced to chose between the two, I’d say I enjoyed Love Actually more if only because the chances it was taking and the blunt mechanics of achieving them were far less ambitious and overburdened with the kind of pathos In America was steeped in. Neither film is exactly subtle, easily giving away to an undertow of distrust in the viewer’s ability to gleam emotional nuance from the story it’s telling. But Love Actually, given its frothy romantic veneer, makes no bones about its desire to provide you with lazy entertainment gussied up with decent actors handsomely paid. Emma Thompson is given roughly 12 minutes (in one of the flims 8 or 9 different subplots) to play a woman scorned. Liam Neeson, on the other hand, radiates an entire seasons worth of sitcom dad wholesomeness by assisting a cute nubbin (orphaned no less!) in the ways of love.
In America reminded me of Michael Mann's Ali, where Mann seemed to struggle with how to best capture and present Ali’s over-sized personae on the big screen. In the end, the film was overly reliant on its use of montage to compress time and capture evocative moments. It was overkill, the story never being given time to stretch out and the characters never given the opportunity to become something other then a collection of poses.
Whereas Love Actually nonchalantly drifts into its ending and surprises by simply abandoning some of its subplots or casually leaving others unresolved, In America’s ending offers us heaping spoonfuls of the unsparingly hokey. Cathy gets props for hopping on board the hopelessly inevitable and calling from way way out that Mateo (who is all of these things: noble, African, tortured artist, lover of cute nubbins, dispenser of wisdom, victim of Aids and wealthy- and I think that if he were any more of a gentle-dying-wise and giant black man his goodness would probably burst open and reveal a core of healing sunshine) would die just as the baby was born (or, show signs of life) and my props come from having called that he’d foot the families hospital bill. Kur Thunk!
C.
Not just that, but license to get blindingly drunk and pee on trees.
D.
In addition to Sekou Bembeya Diabate “diamond fingers,” I was pleased to recently witness his fine guttural prowess.
E.
Giving character to a new place is vital. Cathy and I finally had the opportunity to hang up most of our old family photos last weekend. We lined both walls of our upstairs hallway with pictures of people, without whom, we wouldn’t be around to be hanging up pictures on a Sunday afternoon. Stepping back, we eyed with satisfaction our gallery of bloodlines, their eyes looking back at us from something both familiar and forever removed. There’s one of Cathy’s grandmother in her ballerina outfit, dramatically posed in front of her house as her mom and sister look on with approving smiles from its windows. There’s another of my great-grandmother standing next to a small piano with her sister, coyly looking down. Another features Cathy's great-great grandparents grimly staring out at the camera. Just when did smiling for the camera become the norm? My favorite is the glamorous close-up shot of my grandma, the lightest trace of a smile on her lips and a fur elegantly wrapped around her neck. She couldn’t be more then 20, and looking at it, I find myself wishing I knew more about when and why and where it was taken.
A.
My crotch is still snug after all these years.
The Paul Simon reissues are welcome with big, open arms. I’ve owned his first two post-Garfunkel albums for a while now, and love them- so it was a nice surprise to discover a few weeks ago that his entire catalog had been remastered, with the first half on the shelves this past Tuesday. I headed over to the Virgan Superstore on the Magnificent Mile (where the in-store DJs are almost always entirely successful in pricking me out of my browsing trance with their hyped up in-between songs chatter) on Friday and picked up Still Crazy After All These Years and Hearts and Bones.
I had heard Still Crazy After All These Years in its entirety sometime back in the early 90’s via the Columbus Library. It didn’t do much to me, other then offering the surprise of seeing Tony Levin in the credits, his lovely bass playing anchoring many of the album’s songs, including its big hit, 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover. Almost a decade later, I’m far more receptive to the album’s charms, which are substantial. Besides the fun of hearing Levin’s playing, the album also features some great backing vocals by the likes of the Jersey Dixon Singers and the Chicago Community Choir, the sweet-tempered harmonizing of Simon and Garfunkel on My Little Town and the soulful bossa-nova of I Do It For Your Love, probably the track I’m currently enjoying most on the album. The song features an absolutely lilting accordion and vocal solo by someone credited only as Sivuca! Maybe more-so then any other pop star, Simon’s voice captivates me with a soulful kind of gentleness similar to Joao Gilbertos. The album, like his first two, is also streaked with southern soul, Dixieland and mellow mid-life assessments.
Hearts and Bones, with its grainy video cover of Simon looking fiercely New Romantic or an extra from the film adaptation of Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, begins with a song titled Allergies. It was released in October of 1983. I’m pleased to say that Paul Simon is one of the rare artists to have successfully navigated unscathed through the otherwise ruinous threshold of the 70’s into the 80's, a journey that seems to have sapped a disproportionate number of artists who created classic albums throughout much of the 70’s, only to falter in the 80s with releases whose severe mediocrity glared against the backdrop of their previous efforts. I have, however, been thinking of late that maybe it's not necessarily the quality of the songs themselves that bothers me, so much as it might just be the way they were produced. Namely, that nearly everything sounds like it was recorded in modest sized rooms made entirely of porcelain.
Of course, I’m all for the clean sheen of the glistening reverb that seemed to coat so many of the tracks in the 80’s. When it’s done well it sounds great,and Simon, who’ve I’ve come to recognize as one of the great studio wizards, does it especially well-buffering all his tracks with the nicest feelin’ groovy kind of polish. It’s clean, but always soulful. On Train In The Distance, for example- one of the album’s stand-out cuts, Simon lays down one of his greatest vocal performances, a funky multi-layered doo-wop equal to any of Marvin Gaye’s sweetest, sexiest vocal beds. It practically shimmers.
The album’s last track, The Late Great Johnny Ace, nicely manages to eulogize both the 50’s R & B singer Johnny Ace and John Lennon, ending with a velvety and mournful Phillip Glass coda.
B
Our basement has come to, unfortunately, be known as “the TV room,” a title that, while definitely unfortunate (conjuring up, as it does, the prospects of Jay Leno, that sitcom starring Jim Belushi and repeats of Maude) is not entirely inappropriate given the size of the television that has only recently come to reside there. It’s a beast, rotund with screen and lush with surround sound.
We’re a little embarrassed about it, Cathy especially, it’s very size signaling a kind of consumption gluttony and presumably symbolic of our commitment to television. We fear others may conclude that we’re spending our leisure hours watching the boob tube. But hell no, my friends! We’re always quick to do our duty and offer assurances that it’s chief function is for movie viewing and its considerable girth and surround sound help to more closely approximate the film going experience. In Pauline Kaels’ old essay, Movies On Television, she talks about the diminishing effects of watching films on the TV:
Not only the size but the shape of the image is changed, and, indeed, almost all the specifically visual elements are so distorted as to be all but completely destroyed. On television, a cattle drive or a cavalry charge or a chase- the climax of so many a big movie- loses the dimensions of space and distance that made it exciting, that sometimes made it great. And since the structural elements- the rhythm, the buildup, the suspense- are also partly destroyed by deletions and commercial breaks and the interruptions incidental to home viewing, it’s amazing that the bare bones of performance, dialogue, story, good directing, and (especially important for close-range viewing) good editing can still make an old movie more entertaining than almost anything new on television.
So, you see, it’s all about giving all that space and distance its due.
Sadly, we haven’t watched too much that’s been worthwhile. Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai, the first film we waded through, was thick with inflated grandeur and hackneyed heroics. You are never, not once, given the opportunity to cast Cruise in anything but the most noble of 25 million dollars a picture lights. You see, his character was witness to the killing of American Indians, one of Custer’s soldiers and it is only through the way of the Samurai, a kind of surrogate for the noble Indians, that he can immerse himself in their own particular nativism and come out cleansed! And you, dear viewers, can behold The Cruise go all Samurai on your ass and witness The Cruise as the humble savior of The Way of the Samurai!
Then there’s the case of In America and Love Actually, both of which I really wanted to like but ended up feeling let down by. If forced to chose between the two, I’d say I enjoyed Love Actually more if only because the chances it was taking and the blunt mechanics of achieving them were far less ambitious and overburdened with the kind of pathos In America was steeped in. Neither film is exactly subtle, easily giving away to an undertow of distrust in the viewer’s ability to gleam emotional nuance from the story it’s telling. But Love Actually, given its frothy romantic veneer, makes no bones about its desire to provide you with lazy entertainment gussied up with decent actors handsomely paid. Emma Thompson is given roughly 12 minutes (in one of the flims 8 or 9 different subplots) to play a woman scorned. Liam Neeson, on the other hand, radiates an entire seasons worth of sitcom dad wholesomeness by assisting a cute nubbin (orphaned no less!) in the ways of love.
In America reminded me of Michael Mann's Ali, where Mann seemed to struggle with how to best capture and present Ali’s over-sized personae on the big screen. In the end, the film was overly reliant on its use of montage to compress time and capture evocative moments. It was overkill, the story never being given time to stretch out and the characters never given the opportunity to become something other then a collection of poses.
Whereas Love Actually nonchalantly drifts into its ending and surprises by simply abandoning some of its subplots or casually leaving others unresolved, In America’s ending offers us heaping spoonfuls of the unsparingly hokey. Cathy gets props for hopping on board the hopelessly inevitable and calling from way way out that Mateo (who is all of these things: noble, African, tortured artist, lover of cute nubbins, dispenser of wisdom, victim of Aids and wealthy- and I think that if he were any more of a gentle-dying-wise and giant black man his goodness would probably burst open and reveal a core of healing sunshine) would die just as the baby was born (or, show signs of life) and my props come from having called that he’d foot the families hospital bill. Kur Thunk!
C.
Not just that, but license to get blindingly drunk and pee on trees.
D.
In addition to Sekou Bembeya Diabate “diamond fingers,” I was pleased to recently witness his fine guttural prowess.
E.
Giving character to a new place is vital. Cathy and I finally had the opportunity to hang up most of our old family photos last weekend. We lined both walls of our upstairs hallway with pictures of people, without whom, we wouldn’t be around to be hanging up pictures on a Sunday afternoon. Stepping back, we eyed with satisfaction our gallery of bloodlines, their eyes looking back at us from something both familiar and forever removed. There’s one of Cathy’s grandmother in her ballerina outfit, dramatically posed in front of her house as her mom and sister look on with approving smiles from its windows. There’s another of my great-grandmother standing next to a small piano with her sister, coyly looking down. Another features Cathy's great-great grandparents grimly staring out at the camera. Just when did smiling for the camera become the norm? My favorite is the glamorous close-up shot of my grandma, the lightest trace of a smile on her lips and a fur elegantly wrapped around her neck. She couldn’t be more then 20, and looking at it, I find myself wishing I knew more about when and why and where it was taken.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
But I Do Like Coke Better, Don’t I?
I first became aware and interested in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) about half a year ago while reading some of the various literature describing how it’s currently being used to (hopefully) unlock some of the secrets of those with learning disabilities. But according to the June 12-18th issue of the Economist, marketers are also using it to unlock the equally daunting secrets of our consuming habits. Here are some of the highlights:
Marketing people are no longer prepared to take your word for it that you favor one product over another. They want to scan your brain to see which one you really prefer. Using the tools of neuroscientists, such as electro-encephalogram (EEG) mapping and functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), they are trying to learn more about the mental processes behind purchasing decisions. The resulting fusion of neuroscience and marketing is, inevitably, being called “neuromarketing.”
Lieberman Research Worldwide, a marketing firm based in Los Angeles, is collaborating with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to enable movie studios to market-test film trailers. More controversially, the New York Times recently reported that a political consultancy, FKF Research, has been studying the effectiveness of campaign commercials using neuromarketing techniques.
Most people say they prefer the taste of Coke to Pepsi, but cannot say why. An unpublished study carried out last summer at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, found that most subjects preferred Pepsi in a blind tasting- fMRI scanning showed that drinking Pepsi lit up a region called the ventral putamen, which is one of the brain’s “reward centers”, far more brightly than Coke, which suggests that its stronger brand outweighs Pepsi’s more pleasant taste.
I first became aware and interested in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) about half a year ago while reading some of the various literature describing how it’s currently being used to (hopefully) unlock some of the secrets of those with learning disabilities. But according to the June 12-18th issue of the Economist, marketers are also using it to unlock the equally daunting secrets of our consuming habits. Here are some of the highlights:
Marketing people are no longer prepared to take your word for it that you favor one product over another. They want to scan your brain to see which one you really prefer. Using the tools of neuroscientists, such as electro-encephalogram (EEG) mapping and functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), they are trying to learn more about the mental processes behind purchasing decisions. The resulting fusion of neuroscience and marketing is, inevitably, being called “neuromarketing.”
Lieberman Research Worldwide, a marketing firm based in Los Angeles, is collaborating with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to enable movie studios to market-test film trailers. More controversially, the New York Times recently reported that a political consultancy, FKF Research, has been studying the effectiveness of campaign commercials using neuromarketing techniques.
Most people say they prefer the taste of Coke to Pepsi, but cannot say why. An unpublished study carried out last summer at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, found that most subjects preferred Pepsi in a blind tasting- fMRI scanning showed that drinking Pepsi lit up a region called the ventral putamen, which is one of the brain’s “reward centers”, far more brightly than Coke, which suggests that its stronger brand outweighs Pepsi’s more pleasant taste.
Friday, July 09, 2004
45 Second Delay
Of course, others have recorded in giant, empty cisterns. This was the sound of Columbus circa 1994.
Of course, others have recorded in giant, empty cisterns. This was the sound of Columbus circa 1994.
More Vapid Loveliness
Like a grand piano placed in a giant, empty cistern. It’s not The Pearl or The Plateaux of Mirror but it sustains just the same. The drift of ghost chords, empty rooms, big skies, streams after midnight, something suspended way up in the middle of the air…
Like a grand piano placed in a giant, empty cistern. It’s not The Pearl or The Plateaux of Mirror but it sustains just the same. The drift of ghost chords, empty rooms, big skies, streams after midnight, something suspended way up in the middle of the air…
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
I'd Dissolve Into Molecules
I’ve long been a fan of Eric Rohmer’s films: Claire’s Knee, Chloe In the Afternoon, Pauline At the Beach, Summer and especially his Tales of the Four Seasons. His work is infused with something so mellow, breezy and special that by the end of the aforementioned films I was almost always surprised and dazzled by how much they had affected me. They have the languorous quality of a summer day spent busily doing nothing. His characters always seem to be off on one of those 6 week vacations Europeans excel in taking, making use of a friends cottage in some sleepy resort town and they're either looking for love or running from it. And they talk. A lot. They gather around café tables, sit on beach towels, stroll dappled paths and rhapsodize on their longings, weaknesses, fears, triumphs and the general nature of things. Sometimes they even listen in on other conversations. (In one of my favorite Rohmer scenes, one Cathy tires of me repeatedly returning to, from Summer, Marie Riviere, a frequent cast member in Rohmer’s films, sits on a bench near the seaside and listens to an elderly man explain to his friends that sometimes, just as the sun sinks below the horizon, if you’re lucky enough you’ll see a flash of radiant green. In fact, the French title of the film is Le Rayon Vert, or The Green Ray. I mention this scene because it exemplifies the eminence Rohmer gives to the everyday, not by inflating such seemingly mundane scenes with unnecessary dramatic tension, but by happening upon them, as if by chance, and folding them delicately into his story so that they becomes necessary to the whole.) What’s important to note is that the talk is always delightful, full of insights and sly humor and how it always creeps up on me, its charms, perhaps dull at the beginning, taking on an accumulative power that almost always radiates by the end. In Rohmer's films, language is a floodlight, lighting out the territories of doubt and confusion in search of the sweetest, most luminescent of resolutions.
Jonathan Rosenbaum recently made a compelling connection between Rohmer's work and that of the American director, Richard Linklater, one of my favorite directors from the states. In his current review of Linklater’s masterpiece, Before Sunset, Rosenbaum writes:
And where Liklater’s cinematic models in Before Sunrise were Hollywood love stories such as Vincente Minelli’s The Clock (1945), they’re now more French New Wave, Eric Rohmer in particular.
Before Sunset, like Rohmer’s films, has that special languorous quality, at times almost dreamlike in its evanescence. (There are many exquisite moments of evanescence in the film, but none more so for me then when Jesse and Celine wind their way up the staircase to her room, a scene that radiates with the piquant luminescence of the present, of soaking it all in as it rushes by, of memory and longing becoming, magically and finally, manifest.) The characters talk in a café, while walking down leaf-strewn streets, through dappled gardens, on a boat ride down the Seine, in a car…an apartment. And it's the talk that captivates us, ripe as it is with hope and expectation and an undertow of bitterness and confusion that slowly rises up and threatens to overwhelm Jesse and Celine. In the years that have passed since the characters first met (the equally great Before Sunrise), their hopes and giddy expectations- the swooning romanticism they once so freely exhibited and acted on, have recoiled into a present world where fences have been built around such seemingly rash exhibitions of emotion. Linklater and his actor's do such a wonderful, nuanced job with casually displaying and stripping away those layers, through gestures (when Celine's hand reaches over to caress Jesse's hair when he's not looking, for example, only to pull away in doubt) and a conversation that moves from the rudimentary motions of reacquainting to the nearly desperate desire to "only connect." Shallows give way to depths in a conversation that feels so honest and truthful that one feels the desire the toss away any caution one may have about superlatives and heap them on. It's in that web of dialogue that we come to understand each character's vulnerabilities, regrets and and desires. It's in all that banter that we become aware of the subtle incredulity both feel toward their younger selves and it’s through their conversation that we witness the giddy reappearance of their mutual seduction- how they joke about sex and brush up against one another as they walk along or sit on a bench. Language is a floodlight and they're always on the cusp (sometimes it even brims over) of drowning or gloriously rising above the what could have beens and maybes.
If the movie has a theme, it's time and more essentially, time passing. It's the whiplash bitterness Celeine feels in reading Jesse's thinly disguised fictional account of their day in Vienna, how if stirs up and forces an introspection into who she was then and what she’s become. It's the regret Jesse feels in going through the motions of his loveless marriage all the while wondering "What if?" Time has caught up to both of them, its undercurrent taking them 9 years away from each other and suddenly, not entirely unexpectedly, they're given another chance. In each of the films 80 minutes you're aware of the delicious now of it all. Hawke's Jesse, who professes to Celeine that he's written his book to find her, practically radiates, not satisfaction, but gratefulness- he’s overwhelmed that his hopes have become flesh. Celine, perhaps the more confused of the two, must confront and reclaim the woman she once was if she too is going to take the chance given them. The things Jesse tells her about his loveless marriage, the dreams he's had of her, haunt and engulf her unexpectedly. It’s almost too much for her to recognize that both have continued to feel so much and so similarly. It’s a gift to any viewer, such as myself, who fell in love with these two characters a decade ago. It gives us hopeless romantics fodder. The day they spent in Vienna wasn't an idle fling- it was something far more profound, just as we hoped. It's become their hope and their desire and though they've each gone their own direction, its presence has haunted them. On Jesse's wedding day, he thinks he sees Celine in the streets of New York City (and, indeed, in a delicious aside, we learn that it may very well have been) and in the lovely waltz Celine sings in her apartment, the memory of their day in Vienna has lingered. (Note: Oh, my- is not every second in her room enchanted? It's romantic filigree, every nuance a garland and all of it given root and earth through the presence of Nina Simone! Oh, I tell you, it’s too much, this lovliness.)
Do you know (or even have) songs in your collection that are so short that the silence that follows their end practically aches? Songs that you wish would just go on forever but last, say, just under a couple minutes (The Smiths’ Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want is probably my template for what I’m getting at) before ending? Part of what makes them so special is their brevity- how they linger and reverberate in the tainted silence that follows. At 80 minutes, Before Sunset ends before you want it to, but it’s really just in time (which, by the way, is the name of the Nina Simone song playing in Celine’s apartment). I can’t possibly give words to just how special the ending is. Without much reservation I can say it’s the finest, most exquisite ending to any film I’ve seen. Territories aglow, it fades with the sweetest, most luminescent of resolutions.
I’ve long been a fan of Eric Rohmer’s films: Claire’s Knee, Chloe In the Afternoon, Pauline At the Beach, Summer and especially his Tales of the Four Seasons. His work is infused with something so mellow, breezy and special that by the end of the aforementioned films I was almost always surprised and dazzled by how much they had affected me. They have the languorous quality of a summer day spent busily doing nothing. His characters always seem to be off on one of those 6 week vacations Europeans excel in taking, making use of a friends cottage in some sleepy resort town and they're either looking for love or running from it. And they talk. A lot. They gather around café tables, sit on beach towels, stroll dappled paths and rhapsodize on their longings, weaknesses, fears, triumphs and the general nature of things. Sometimes they even listen in on other conversations. (In one of my favorite Rohmer scenes, one Cathy tires of me repeatedly returning to, from Summer, Marie Riviere, a frequent cast member in Rohmer’s films, sits on a bench near the seaside and listens to an elderly man explain to his friends that sometimes, just as the sun sinks below the horizon, if you’re lucky enough you’ll see a flash of radiant green. In fact, the French title of the film is Le Rayon Vert, or The Green Ray. I mention this scene because it exemplifies the eminence Rohmer gives to the everyday, not by inflating such seemingly mundane scenes with unnecessary dramatic tension, but by happening upon them, as if by chance, and folding them delicately into his story so that they becomes necessary to the whole.) What’s important to note is that the talk is always delightful, full of insights and sly humor and how it always creeps up on me, its charms, perhaps dull at the beginning, taking on an accumulative power that almost always radiates by the end. In Rohmer's films, language is a floodlight, lighting out the territories of doubt and confusion in search of the sweetest, most luminescent of resolutions.
Jonathan Rosenbaum recently made a compelling connection between Rohmer's work and that of the American director, Richard Linklater, one of my favorite directors from the states. In his current review of Linklater’s masterpiece, Before Sunset, Rosenbaum writes:
And where Liklater’s cinematic models in Before Sunrise were Hollywood love stories such as Vincente Minelli’s The Clock (1945), they’re now more French New Wave, Eric Rohmer in particular.
Before Sunset, like Rohmer’s films, has that special languorous quality, at times almost dreamlike in its evanescence. (There are many exquisite moments of evanescence in the film, but none more so for me then when Jesse and Celine wind their way up the staircase to her room, a scene that radiates with the piquant luminescence of the present, of soaking it all in as it rushes by, of memory and longing becoming, magically and finally, manifest.) The characters talk in a café, while walking down leaf-strewn streets, through dappled gardens, on a boat ride down the Seine, in a car…an apartment. And it's the talk that captivates us, ripe as it is with hope and expectation and an undertow of bitterness and confusion that slowly rises up and threatens to overwhelm Jesse and Celine. In the years that have passed since the characters first met (the equally great Before Sunrise), their hopes and giddy expectations- the swooning romanticism they once so freely exhibited and acted on, have recoiled into a present world where fences have been built around such seemingly rash exhibitions of emotion. Linklater and his actor's do such a wonderful, nuanced job with casually displaying and stripping away those layers, through gestures (when Celine's hand reaches over to caress Jesse's hair when he's not looking, for example, only to pull away in doubt) and a conversation that moves from the rudimentary motions of reacquainting to the nearly desperate desire to "only connect." Shallows give way to depths in a conversation that feels so honest and truthful that one feels the desire the toss away any caution one may have about superlatives and heap them on. It's in that web of dialogue that we come to understand each character's vulnerabilities, regrets and and desires. It's in all that banter that we become aware of the subtle incredulity both feel toward their younger selves and it’s through their conversation that we witness the giddy reappearance of their mutual seduction- how they joke about sex and brush up against one another as they walk along or sit on a bench. Language is a floodlight and they're always on the cusp (sometimes it even brims over) of drowning or gloriously rising above the what could have beens and maybes.
If the movie has a theme, it's time and more essentially, time passing. It's the whiplash bitterness Celeine feels in reading Jesse's thinly disguised fictional account of their day in Vienna, how if stirs up and forces an introspection into who she was then and what she’s become. It's the regret Jesse feels in going through the motions of his loveless marriage all the while wondering "What if?" Time has caught up to both of them, its undercurrent taking them 9 years away from each other and suddenly, not entirely unexpectedly, they're given another chance. In each of the films 80 minutes you're aware of the delicious now of it all. Hawke's Jesse, who professes to Celeine that he's written his book to find her, practically radiates, not satisfaction, but gratefulness- he’s overwhelmed that his hopes have become flesh. Celine, perhaps the more confused of the two, must confront and reclaim the woman she once was if she too is going to take the chance given them. The things Jesse tells her about his loveless marriage, the dreams he's had of her, haunt and engulf her unexpectedly. It’s almost too much for her to recognize that both have continued to feel so much and so similarly. It’s a gift to any viewer, such as myself, who fell in love with these two characters a decade ago. It gives us hopeless romantics fodder. The day they spent in Vienna wasn't an idle fling- it was something far more profound, just as we hoped. It's become their hope and their desire and though they've each gone their own direction, its presence has haunted them. On Jesse's wedding day, he thinks he sees Celine in the streets of New York City (and, indeed, in a delicious aside, we learn that it may very well have been) and in the lovely waltz Celine sings in her apartment, the memory of their day in Vienna has lingered. (Note: Oh, my- is not every second in her room enchanted? It's romantic filigree, every nuance a garland and all of it given root and earth through the presence of Nina Simone! Oh, I tell you, it’s too much, this lovliness.)
Do you know (or even have) songs in your collection that are so short that the silence that follows their end practically aches? Songs that you wish would just go on forever but last, say, just under a couple minutes (The Smiths’ Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want is probably my template for what I’m getting at) before ending? Part of what makes them so special is their brevity- how they linger and reverberate in the tainted silence that follows. At 80 minutes, Before Sunset ends before you want it to, but it’s really just in time (which, by the way, is the name of the Nina Simone song playing in Celine’s apartment). I can’t possibly give words to just how special the ending is. Without much reservation I can say it’s the finest, most exquisite ending to any film I’ve seen. Territories aglow, it fades with the sweetest, most luminescent of resolutions.
Saturday, July 03, 2004
Joe’s 33rd Birthday Data CD
I think I may have already mentioned how much I am loving the idea of MP3 Data CD mixes, what with all the time you have the luxuriate in stretching out and exploring certain genres and/or artists in addition to not having to fret about trying to fit all the music you want to share on a 90 minute tape, or as has been the case for the last several years, an 80 minute audio CD. (Note to self: Just what exactly is the difference between an MP3 and a Data CD- we’d look into this right now, but we’re feeling far too lazy.)
Of course, it’s also a ton of fun to wallow into all that music and spend, as I did, half a dozen hours grabbing CD’s off the shelf and ripping off songs that you think a good friend should hear.
I didn’t dwell on any particular order or go about creating a flow for the mix as I hoped Joe would just add the music to the random play of his current iTunes rotation. Here’s what made the cut, though I’m not entirely sure this is even the order they appeared on Joe’s copy:
001. Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story): !!!
002: But For You: Matthew Dear
003: Stay Hungry: Talking Heads
004: Bellona: Junior Boys
005: Pacific Theme: Broken Social Scene
006: Keeping Up: Arthur Russell
007: Cross Bones Style: Cat Power
008: Gentlemen Take Polaroids: Japan
009: Stick Around: Steve Burns
010: ILoveAcid: Luke Vibert
011: Have You Seen My Baby? Randy Newman
012: The Laws Have Changed: The New Pornographers
013: Your Silent Face: New Order
014: Pass In Time: Beth Orton
015: When Mac Was Swimming: The Innocence Mission
016: You Know More Than I Know: John Cale
017: Hard Life: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
018: I Wish I Was The Moon: Neko Case
019: Romulus: Sufjan Stevens
020: The Body Breaks: Devendra Banhart
021: Whispering Pines: The Band
022: Andorra: Colin Blunstone
023: Psalm: M.Ward
024: April The 14th (Part 1): Gillian Welch
025: Slow Down Old World: Willie Nelson
026: Who Knows Where The Time Goes: Fairport Convention
027: Trying To Find A Home: Tindersticks
028: A Heart Needs A Home: Richard & Linda Thompson
029: Laughing: David Crosby
030: Ms. Fat Booty: Mos Def
031: Just Biz: Diverse 1
032: Flava In Ya Ear (Remix): Craig Mack Featuring, Biggie, Rampage, LL Cool J & Busta Rhymes Hip Hop/Rap
033: Hana: Jun Ray Song Chang
034: "Sounds From The Village" Morgan Geist-Rollerskate Mix: Phil Ranelin:
035: Do Dekor: Jan Jelinek
036: Tanzglätte: Sense Club
037: Because: Ulf Lohmann
038: So Weit Wie Noch Nie: Jürgen Paape
039: If She Wants Me: Belle & Sebastian
040: The World Is Against You: The Sea And Cake
041: You Got To Be A Man: Frank Williams And The Rocketeers
042: The 15th: Wire
043: I Love N.Y.E.: Badly Drawn Boy
044: Slow Life: Super Furry Animals
045: Your Heart On Your Sleeve: Colleen
046: I Want You To Know: Masha Qrella
047: Tälkn: Starfænn Häkon
048: Believer: Susanna And The Magical Band
049: Strange Power: The Magnetic Fields
050: You Don't Care: Terry Callier
051: Le Grand Dome: Biosphere
052: Time To Find Me (Afx Fast Mix): Aphex Twin
053: Everything You Do Is A Balloon: Boards Of Canada
054: Moistly: LFO
055: Rest: Isolée
056; To Berlin With Love: Deadbeat
057: Sann Sann: Clatterbox
058: NYC: Interpol
059: Best Drop: Spiritual Vibes
060: Future Tiger: Susumu Yokota
061: Souvenir: Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
062: Alvin's Theme: Angelo Badalamenti
063: Untitled: Supersilent
064: Slice Of Cheese: Plaid
065: Detektiv Plok: Brothomstates
066: Cardiology: Recloose
067: Folk Song For Cello: Savath & Savalas
068: To Know You Is To Love You: Syreeta
069: On And On: Aril Brikha
070: Leave Me Now: Herbert
071: Gone Forever: Ulrich Schnauss
072: Kleiner Ausschnitt: Barbara Morgenstern
073; In A Ditch: Scud Mountain Boys
074: No-One In The World: Locust
075: Shisheido: Fennesz
076: Curse of Ka’zar: Lemon Jelly
077: Wandering: Brooks
078: Nebula: Urban Tribe
079: Voodoo Ray: A Guy Called Gerald
080: Let's Push Things Forward: The Streets
081: The Plum Blossom: Yusef Lateef
082: I'm Just A Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin'): Candi Staton
083: You Said You Want Me: The Other People Place
084: John Cassavetes (2): Ekkehard Ehlers
085: One Day: RJD2
086: Gravity Rides Everything: Modest Mouse
087: Mine's Not A High Horse: The Shins
088: Before We Begin: Broadcast
089: Sonia: Robert Wyatt
090: Let Me Down Easy: Rare Pleasure
091: Bonny: Prefab Sprout
092: I Blow You Kisses: The Aluminum Group
093: M Traxx: Moodymann
094: The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker: Prince
095: United: Music Makers
096: Pass the Hatchet: Roger & The Gypsies
097: You and Your Sister: Chris Bell
098: You And I (Vocé E Eu): Jon Hendricks
099: When You Wake Up Feeling Old: Wilco
100: Endlessly: Mercury Rev
101: Starlight No 1: Mojave 3
102: Kein Trink Wasser: Orbital
103: Dexter: Ricardo Villalobos
104: Tamagnocchi: Mouse On Mars
105: Happiness: Superpitcher
106: Disk Three: CiM
107: Reiseslått: Nils Okland
108: Sequoia: Fridge
109: Someday We'll All Be Free: Donny Hathaway
110: Double Dutch: Malcolm Mclaren
111: Come And Play In The Milky Night: Stereolab
112: Hello Walls: Faron Young
113: Dang Me: Roger Miller
114: Wolverton Mountain: Claude King
115: Naked, If I Want To
116: You Don't Know My Name (Reggae Remix): Alicia Keys
117: (This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan (Superpitcher Remix): Dntel
118: At The Waters Edge: Roger Eno
119: Flight Over Africa: John Barry
120: In The Reeds: Brokeback
121: Soft Pink Missy: Soft Pink Truth
122: Magpie (Morgan Geist Remix): Morgan Geist & Darshan Jesrani
123: Peer Pressure: Jon Brion
124: Care Of Cell 44: Zombies
125: I Don't Know What I Can Save You From (Royksopp remix): Kings of Convenience
126: Adidas: Killer Mike
127: I'm A Cuckoo (Avalanches Remix): Belle & Sebastian
128: Christine: Siouxsie and the Banshees
Mike Kraus, I owe you a copy as well.
I think I may have already mentioned how much I am loving the idea of MP3 Data CD mixes, what with all the time you have the luxuriate in stretching out and exploring certain genres and/or artists in addition to not having to fret about trying to fit all the music you want to share on a 90 minute tape, or as has been the case for the last several years, an 80 minute audio CD. (Note to self: Just what exactly is the difference between an MP3 and a Data CD- we’d look into this right now, but we’re feeling far too lazy.)
Of course, it’s also a ton of fun to wallow into all that music and spend, as I did, half a dozen hours grabbing CD’s off the shelf and ripping off songs that you think a good friend should hear.
I didn’t dwell on any particular order or go about creating a flow for the mix as I hoped Joe would just add the music to the random play of his current iTunes rotation. Here’s what made the cut, though I’m not entirely sure this is even the order they appeared on Joe’s copy:
001. Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story): !!!
002: But For You: Matthew Dear
003: Stay Hungry: Talking Heads
004: Bellona: Junior Boys
005: Pacific Theme: Broken Social Scene
006: Keeping Up: Arthur Russell
007: Cross Bones Style: Cat Power
008: Gentlemen Take Polaroids: Japan
009: Stick Around: Steve Burns
010: ILoveAcid: Luke Vibert
011: Have You Seen My Baby? Randy Newman
012: The Laws Have Changed: The New Pornographers
013: Your Silent Face: New Order
014: Pass In Time: Beth Orton
015: When Mac Was Swimming: The Innocence Mission
016: You Know More Than I Know: John Cale
017: Hard Life: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
018: I Wish I Was The Moon: Neko Case
019: Romulus: Sufjan Stevens
020: The Body Breaks: Devendra Banhart
021: Whispering Pines: The Band
022: Andorra: Colin Blunstone
023: Psalm: M.Ward
024: April The 14th (Part 1): Gillian Welch
025: Slow Down Old World: Willie Nelson
026: Who Knows Where The Time Goes: Fairport Convention
027: Trying To Find A Home: Tindersticks
028: A Heart Needs A Home: Richard & Linda Thompson
029: Laughing: David Crosby
030: Ms. Fat Booty: Mos Def
031: Just Biz: Diverse 1
032: Flava In Ya Ear (Remix): Craig Mack Featuring, Biggie, Rampage, LL Cool J & Busta Rhymes Hip Hop/Rap
033: Hana: Jun Ray Song Chang
034: "Sounds From The Village" Morgan Geist-Rollerskate Mix: Phil Ranelin:
035: Do Dekor: Jan Jelinek
036: Tanzglätte: Sense Club
037: Because: Ulf Lohmann
038: So Weit Wie Noch Nie: Jürgen Paape
039: If She Wants Me: Belle & Sebastian
040: The World Is Against You: The Sea And Cake
041: You Got To Be A Man: Frank Williams And The Rocketeers
042: The 15th: Wire
043: I Love N.Y.E.: Badly Drawn Boy
044: Slow Life: Super Furry Animals
045: Your Heart On Your Sleeve: Colleen
046: I Want You To Know: Masha Qrella
047: Tälkn: Starfænn Häkon
048: Believer: Susanna And The Magical Band
049: Strange Power: The Magnetic Fields
050: You Don't Care: Terry Callier
051: Le Grand Dome: Biosphere
052: Time To Find Me (Afx Fast Mix): Aphex Twin
053: Everything You Do Is A Balloon: Boards Of Canada
054: Moistly: LFO
055: Rest: Isolée
056; To Berlin With Love: Deadbeat
057: Sann Sann: Clatterbox
058: NYC: Interpol
059: Best Drop: Spiritual Vibes
060: Future Tiger: Susumu Yokota
061: Souvenir: Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
062: Alvin's Theme: Angelo Badalamenti
063: Untitled: Supersilent
064: Slice Of Cheese: Plaid
065: Detektiv Plok: Brothomstates
066: Cardiology: Recloose
067: Folk Song For Cello: Savath & Savalas
068: To Know You Is To Love You: Syreeta
069: On And On: Aril Brikha
070: Leave Me Now: Herbert
071: Gone Forever: Ulrich Schnauss
072: Kleiner Ausschnitt: Barbara Morgenstern
073; In A Ditch: Scud Mountain Boys
074: No-One In The World: Locust
075: Shisheido: Fennesz
076: Curse of Ka’zar: Lemon Jelly
077: Wandering: Brooks
078: Nebula: Urban Tribe
079: Voodoo Ray: A Guy Called Gerald
080: Let's Push Things Forward: The Streets
081: The Plum Blossom: Yusef Lateef
082: I'm Just A Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin'): Candi Staton
083: You Said You Want Me: The Other People Place
084: John Cassavetes (2): Ekkehard Ehlers
085: One Day: RJD2
086: Gravity Rides Everything: Modest Mouse
087: Mine's Not A High Horse: The Shins
088: Before We Begin: Broadcast
089: Sonia: Robert Wyatt
090: Let Me Down Easy: Rare Pleasure
091: Bonny: Prefab Sprout
092: I Blow You Kisses: The Aluminum Group
093: M Traxx: Moodymann
094: The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker: Prince
095: United: Music Makers
096: Pass the Hatchet: Roger & The Gypsies
097: You and Your Sister: Chris Bell
098: You And I (Vocé E Eu): Jon Hendricks
099: When You Wake Up Feeling Old: Wilco
100: Endlessly: Mercury Rev
101: Starlight No 1: Mojave 3
102: Kein Trink Wasser: Orbital
103: Dexter: Ricardo Villalobos
104: Tamagnocchi: Mouse On Mars
105: Happiness: Superpitcher
106: Disk Three: CiM
107: Reiseslått: Nils Okland
108: Sequoia: Fridge
109: Someday We'll All Be Free: Donny Hathaway
110: Double Dutch: Malcolm Mclaren
111: Come And Play In The Milky Night: Stereolab
112: Hello Walls: Faron Young
113: Dang Me: Roger Miller
114: Wolverton Mountain: Claude King
115: Naked, If I Want To
116: You Don't Know My Name (Reggae Remix): Alicia Keys
117: (This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan (Superpitcher Remix): Dntel
118: At The Waters Edge: Roger Eno
119: Flight Over Africa: John Barry
120: In The Reeds: Brokeback
121: Soft Pink Missy: Soft Pink Truth
122: Magpie (Morgan Geist Remix): Morgan Geist & Darshan Jesrani
123: Peer Pressure: Jon Brion
124: Care Of Cell 44: Zombies
125: I Don't Know What I Can Save You From (Royksopp remix): Kings of Convenience
126: Adidas: Killer Mike
127: I'm A Cuckoo (Avalanches Remix): Belle & Sebastian
128: Christine: Siouxsie and the Banshees
Mike Kraus, I owe you a copy as well.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Saturday, June 26, 2004
Bush/Cheney Unveil New Campaign Slogan: “Go Fuck Yourself Kerry!”
From Today’s Washington Post:
Cheney said he "probably" used an obscenity in an argument Tuesday on the Senate floor with Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and added that he had no regrets. "I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it," Cheney told Neil Cavuto of Fox News. The vice president said those who heard the putdown agreed with him. "I think that a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue."
I adore this line of reasoning, I really do. It’s okay because everybody else said it was. And it felt good. Ahh, there’s such sweet satisfaction in the vulgarity expressed of necessity! Next time I hope he sucker punches Leahy.
And now let’s turn our attention to Mr. Go Fuck Yourself’s continued assertions of an al Qaeda-Iraq connection. The Administration has quietly confessed that there was no al Qaeda-Iraq connection in regards to 9/11 because to make any bigger deal of it, to have unequivocally confessed that they’ve been conflating things, would run the risk of bringing untimely truths to those 69 percent of the public (according to a recent Harris poll) who believe Saddam Hussein was supporting the terrorist organization al Qaeda, which attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.
The administration is now making a new and desperate attempt to show a “collaborative relationship” between the two. Not directly related to 9/11, of course, but a relationship to that great and all ecompassing amorphous: terror. Al Qaeda and Iraq were, no doubt, planning other (9/11) things, other (9/11) acts of terror. And should you choose to believe otherwise, even after Cheney mentions 9/11 in sentences both before and after making such assertions, then you've misunderstood him. Unfortunately, those pesky bastards over at the 9/11 Commission recently released a report, after reviewing all the information given to them, and were unable to find any evidence of a "collaborative relationship." So Mr. Go Fuck Yourself and his 'lil buddy had this to say:
This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.
Ah, yes, "contacts." They’ve met. They had tea. But what about the actual levels of coooperation? Meeting is one thing. Meeting and then actually cooperating is yet another. But for Bush and Cheney, the validity of their pre-emptive war against Iraq (Iraq=the central front of the war against terror) now hinges on this "collaborative relationship." Saddam Hussein was, we're to believe, busy contacting al Qaeda and the two were planning horrific acts that would have eventually, had we not intervened with overwhelming force, led to acts of terror against us the likes of which not even 9/11 would compare.
Here’s Cheney on Fox from the other night:
CAVUTO: So, in your eyes, as well there is an unmistakable link between Al Qaeda and Iraq?
CHENEY: Absolutely.
CAVUTO: That seems to be — the vice president (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and John Kerry has been saying that has not been proven.
CHENEY: Well, they're wrong. And the fact is, if you go look at George Tenet's testimony before the Senate intel committee in the fall of '02, he talks about a relationship going back 10 years, to the early '90s.
There's a story on the front page of The New York Times this morning that talks about a link between Iraq and al Qaeda when Saddam Hussein was operating in the Sudan, which he did for many years before and moved to Afghanistan. We have the whole case of Zarqawi, who is today probably the biggest terrorist operating in Iraq, and the ongoing conflict there.
He originally was Jordanian. He was an associate, an al Qaeda associate. He was operating training camps in Afghanistan. He fled to Baghdad after we took Afghanistan.
Saddam Hussein knew he was in Baghdad because we arranged to have that information passed to — to a third country intelligence service. In Baghdad, he ran the poisons facility, largest poisons facility we've ever found that al Qaeda was operating up in northeastern Iraq. He had about two dozen associates with him in Baghdad from an outfit called Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which had merged with al Qaeda.
First, let’s take a look at that New York Times article Cheney mentions and draws from. He’s using the Times and its status as “the paper of record” to continue to bolster the Administration’s conflation/distortion campaign of an al-Qaeda-Iraq-9/11 collusion- hey, if the Times says this, its gotta be true! But the information source Cheney is really drawing from (and the Times article is reporting on) actually comes from a document obtained by the Iraqi National Congress, the organization led by neo-conservative favorite Ahmad Chalabi and "part of a trove that the group gathered after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government last year." It’s important to note here that much of the information passed on to us by the Iraqi National Congress has since been discredited and that the organization, with all its links to the Administration’s neo-conservative wing, has dramatically fallen from favor and was recently raided with the help of US forces. Cheney wants this information to seem like its a revelation, something the 9/11 commission, for whatever reason, wasn’t privy to. But the Times article goes on to say that the IRC document Cheney is drawing from seems to have already been reviewed by the 9/11 Commission and their conclusion, in regards to the al Qaeda-Iraqi meeting, was that no collaborative relationship resulted. Tom Shanker, the author of the Times article, writes:
The document provides evidence of communications between Mr. bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence, similar to that described in the Sept. 11 staff report released last week.
"Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime," the Sept. 11 commission report stated.
The Sudanese government, the commission report added, "arranged for contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda."
"A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan," it said, "finally meeting bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded."
The Sept. 11 commission statement said there were reports of further contacts with Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan after Mr. bin Laden's departure from Sudan, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," it added.
It is not clear whether the commission knew of this document. After its report was released, Mr. Cheney said he might have been privy to more information than the commission had; it is not known whether any further information has changed hands.
Cheney, in the Fox interview quoted above, then breathlessly moves on to Zarqawi, who now seems to be the Administration’s new number one evil guy. Hell, with over 100,000 troops operating in Iraq, there’s even a good chance we’re going to kill him soon, so it’s wonderfully expedient to inflate him into “probably the biggest terrorist operating in Iraq,” and make sure everybody knows it. But as Peter Bergan points out in an editorial in today’s Times:
The central question the administration has failed to answer is: Was there guidance or direction from the Al Qaeda leadership to Zarqawi?" Mr. Cressey, the former counterterrorism official, told me. "The evidence presented so far is there was not." At a briefing on June 17, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seemed to agree with that assessment, saying of Mr. Zarqawi that "someone could legitimately say he's not Al Qaeda."
And what about that poisons factory Cheney mentions?
What Mr. Cheney described as the "poisons factory"Mr. Zarqawi ran was actually in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, an area protected by American jets since 1991. Mr. Rumsfeld had more control than Saddam Hussein over that part of Iraq.
And when Zarqawi was in Baghdad?
As for the medical treatment Mr. Zarqawi supposedly received in Baghdad, for some time American officials thought it was a leg amputation. However, the footage of Mr. Zarqawi in the video of Mr. Berg's execution seems to show a man in possession of both limbs. And last week Mr. Zarqawi released an audiotape on a jihadist Web site containing a blistering critique of Saddam Hussein, whom he described as a "devil" who "killed the innocent."
If all else fails, you can always shroud your sources in secrecy.
Asked if he knows information that the 9/11 commission does not know, Cheney replied, "Probably."
And so it goes.
From Today’s Washington Post:
Cheney said he "probably" used an obscenity in an argument Tuesday on the Senate floor with Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and added that he had no regrets. "I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it," Cheney told Neil Cavuto of Fox News. The vice president said those who heard the putdown agreed with him. "I think that a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue."
I adore this line of reasoning, I really do. It’s okay because everybody else said it was. And it felt good. Ahh, there’s such sweet satisfaction in the vulgarity expressed of necessity! Next time I hope he sucker punches Leahy.
And now let’s turn our attention to Mr. Go Fuck Yourself’s continued assertions of an al Qaeda-Iraq connection. The Administration has quietly confessed that there was no al Qaeda-Iraq connection in regards to 9/11 because to make any bigger deal of it, to have unequivocally confessed that they’ve been conflating things, would run the risk of bringing untimely truths to those 69 percent of the public (according to a recent Harris poll) who believe Saddam Hussein was supporting the terrorist organization al Qaeda, which attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.
The administration is now making a new and desperate attempt to show a “collaborative relationship” between the two. Not directly related to 9/11, of course, but a relationship to that great and all ecompassing amorphous: terror. Al Qaeda and Iraq were, no doubt, planning other (9/11) things, other (9/11) acts of terror. And should you choose to believe otherwise, even after Cheney mentions 9/11 in sentences both before and after making such assertions, then you've misunderstood him. Unfortunately, those pesky bastards over at the 9/11 Commission recently released a report, after reviewing all the information given to them, and were unable to find any evidence of a "collaborative relationship." So Mr. Go Fuck Yourself and his 'lil buddy had this to say:
This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.
Ah, yes, "contacts." They’ve met. They had tea. But what about the actual levels of coooperation? Meeting is one thing. Meeting and then actually cooperating is yet another. But for Bush and Cheney, the validity of their pre-emptive war against Iraq (Iraq=the central front of the war against terror) now hinges on this "collaborative relationship." Saddam Hussein was, we're to believe, busy contacting al Qaeda and the two were planning horrific acts that would have eventually, had we not intervened with overwhelming force, led to acts of terror against us the likes of which not even 9/11 would compare.
Here’s Cheney on Fox from the other night:
CAVUTO: So, in your eyes, as well there is an unmistakable link between Al Qaeda and Iraq?
CHENEY: Absolutely.
CAVUTO: That seems to be — the vice president (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and John Kerry has been saying that has not been proven.
CHENEY: Well, they're wrong. And the fact is, if you go look at George Tenet's testimony before the Senate intel committee in the fall of '02, he talks about a relationship going back 10 years, to the early '90s.
There's a story on the front page of The New York Times this morning that talks about a link between Iraq and al Qaeda when Saddam Hussein was operating in the Sudan, which he did for many years before and moved to Afghanistan. We have the whole case of Zarqawi, who is today probably the biggest terrorist operating in Iraq, and the ongoing conflict there.
He originally was Jordanian. He was an associate, an al Qaeda associate. He was operating training camps in Afghanistan. He fled to Baghdad after we took Afghanistan.
Saddam Hussein knew he was in Baghdad because we arranged to have that information passed to — to a third country intelligence service. In Baghdad, he ran the poisons facility, largest poisons facility we've ever found that al Qaeda was operating up in northeastern Iraq. He had about two dozen associates with him in Baghdad from an outfit called Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which had merged with al Qaeda.
First, let’s take a look at that New York Times article Cheney mentions and draws from. He’s using the Times and its status as “the paper of record” to continue to bolster the Administration’s conflation/distortion campaign of an al-Qaeda-Iraq-9/11 collusion- hey, if the Times says this, its gotta be true! But the information source Cheney is really drawing from (and the Times article is reporting on) actually comes from a document obtained by the Iraqi National Congress, the organization led by neo-conservative favorite Ahmad Chalabi and "part of a trove that the group gathered after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government last year." It’s important to note here that much of the information passed on to us by the Iraqi National Congress has since been discredited and that the organization, with all its links to the Administration’s neo-conservative wing, has dramatically fallen from favor and was recently raided with the help of US forces. Cheney wants this information to seem like its a revelation, something the 9/11 commission, for whatever reason, wasn’t privy to. But the Times article goes on to say that the IRC document Cheney is drawing from seems to have already been reviewed by the 9/11 Commission and their conclusion, in regards to the al Qaeda-Iraqi meeting, was that no collaborative relationship resulted. Tom Shanker, the author of the Times article, writes:
The document provides evidence of communications between Mr. bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence, similar to that described in the Sept. 11 staff report released last week.
"Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime," the Sept. 11 commission report stated.
The Sudanese government, the commission report added, "arranged for contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda."
"A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan," it said, "finally meeting bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded."
The Sept. 11 commission statement said there were reports of further contacts with Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan after Mr. bin Laden's departure from Sudan, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," it added.
It is not clear whether the commission knew of this document. After its report was released, Mr. Cheney said he might have been privy to more information than the commission had; it is not known whether any further information has changed hands.
Cheney, in the Fox interview quoted above, then breathlessly moves on to Zarqawi, who now seems to be the Administration’s new number one evil guy. Hell, with over 100,000 troops operating in Iraq, there’s even a good chance we’re going to kill him soon, so it’s wonderfully expedient to inflate him into “probably the biggest terrorist operating in Iraq,” and make sure everybody knows it. But as Peter Bergan points out in an editorial in today’s Times:
The central question the administration has failed to answer is: Was there guidance or direction from the Al Qaeda leadership to Zarqawi?" Mr. Cressey, the former counterterrorism official, told me. "The evidence presented so far is there was not." At a briefing on June 17, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seemed to agree with that assessment, saying of Mr. Zarqawi that "someone could legitimately say he's not Al Qaeda."
And what about that poisons factory Cheney mentions?
What Mr. Cheney described as the "poisons factory"Mr. Zarqawi ran was actually in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, an area protected by American jets since 1991. Mr. Rumsfeld had more control than Saddam Hussein over that part of Iraq.
And when Zarqawi was in Baghdad?
As for the medical treatment Mr. Zarqawi supposedly received in Baghdad, for some time American officials thought it was a leg amputation. However, the footage of Mr. Zarqawi in the video of Mr. Berg's execution seems to show a man in possession of both limbs. And last week Mr. Zarqawi released an audiotape on a jihadist Web site containing a blistering critique of Saddam Hussein, whom he described as a "devil" who "killed the innocent."
If all else fails, you can always shroud your sources in secrecy.
Asked if he knows information that the 9/11 commission does not know, Cheney replied, "Probably."
And so it goes.
Seven of Nine Assimilates Ryan
Could there be other, more fantastical reasons why Ryan had to step down yesterday? By this I mean a certain cybernetic life-form originating in the Delta Quadrant. The man was previously and disastrously married to a Borg! He’s clearly been assimilated. Long live Obama!
Could there be other, more fantastical reasons why Ryan had to step down yesterday? By this I mean a certain cybernetic life-form originating in the Delta Quadrant. The man was previously and disastrously married to a Borg! He’s clearly been assimilated. Long live Obama!
Friday, June 25, 2004
More Polemical Slops, Please!
Cathy scored some free tickets for showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. Working for Ritchie has its perks! The film has the big buzz right now, with all sorts of press being generated from a variety of angles. The best review of Moore’s documentary I’ve read over the past few days is Ray Pride’s. I also enjoyed, as I usually do, Jonathan Rosenbaum’s review. He writes:
Of course, objectivity in a documentary (or a film review) is not only impossible but undesirable. The merit of Fahrenheit 9/11 lies in its ability to enrage you- or conversely, to clarify some of the rage you already feel- without abandoning the capacity to entertain that has always been Moore’s trump card. As a popular entertainment, it provides the kind of emotional and conceptual counter-myth we sorely need to replace the Bush administration’s crumbling version of reality.
Right on, my man.
Does Moore undermine himself? Yes, a number of times. Do you take it with a grain of salt? Of course you do. The opening half hour and its inquiry into Bush family/House of Saud relations is a sprawling mess. There's truth there, no doubt, but the manipulative mechanisms of Moore's bias are never more transparent then here. Does his sense of righteousness grate? Yeah, but I figure that’s mostly ‘cause it’s such a reflection of my own. We/I, and it seems large swaths of the rest of the world, know we’re right. This administration is a creepy as fuck disaster. Does the film have more then a few poignant moments? Sure does. Do we get to see things our mainstream media have all but refused to show, write or talk about? Yes, and it’s heartbreaking. Is it a masterpiece? Not even close, Moore is still a sloppy documentary maker. Is the outrage valid? Damn straight. It’s the best piece of agitprop Moore has accomplished yet. Why not go see it and judge for yourself.
Cathy scored some free tickets for showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. Working for Ritchie has its perks! The film has the big buzz right now, with all sorts of press being generated from a variety of angles. The best review of Moore’s documentary I’ve read over the past few days is Ray Pride’s. I also enjoyed, as I usually do, Jonathan Rosenbaum’s review. He writes:
Of course, objectivity in a documentary (or a film review) is not only impossible but undesirable. The merit of Fahrenheit 9/11 lies in its ability to enrage you- or conversely, to clarify some of the rage you already feel- without abandoning the capacity to entertain that has always been Moore’s trump card. As a popular entertainment, it provides the kind of emotional and conceptual counter-myth we sorely need to replace the Bush administration’s crumbling version of reality.
Right on, my man.
Does Moore undermine himself? Yes, a number of times. Do you take it with a grain of salt? Of course you do. The opening half hour and its inquiry into Bush family/House of Saud relations is a sprawling mess. There's truth there, no doubt, but the manipulative mechanisms of Moore's bias are never more transparent then here. Does his sense of righteousness grate? Yeah, but I figure that’s mostly ‘cause it’s such a reflection of my own. We/I, and it seems large swaths of the rest of the world, know we’re right. This administration is a creepy as fuck disaster. Does the film have more then a few poignant moments? Sure does. Do we get to see things our mainstream media have all but refused to show, write or talk about? Yes, and it’s heartbreaking. Is it a masterpiece? Not even close, Moore is still a sloppy documentary maker. Is the outrage valid? Damn straight. It’s the best piece of agitprop Moore has accomplished yet. Why not go see it and judge for yourself.
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Turns Summers In My Mind
There has been an embarrassment of musical riches of late, not the least of which was my first MP3 CD, put together by my Akwaabian brother, Joe, and including an incredible batch of new and interesting musical biscuits, much of which happens to be crumbly and delicious. It includes the stunning track I’m currently listening to, Usman Achmad and Diswansoni’s Strambul Naturil from the compilation Indoesian Gutars (Music of Indonesia). Based on this track alone, Usman Achmad & Diswansoni are the Sea and Cake of Indonesia. More importantly for our dancing shoes, this song is practically begging for housification!
The mix also includes Johnny Dyani’s album, Afrika off of which I’m particularly enjoying the track, Grandmother’s Teaching Take 1. What immediately demands attention here is the marvelously assertive bass riff and earthenware groove that lay down a nice introductory groove for the first couple of minutes. Around the 2:10 mark things suddenly cool off. There’s a brief pause before the bass reasserts itself, even bolder and more opinioned this time. The groove really begins to sway now, with more swagger and discipline, but still loose. There are saxophones that come on like an angry Grandma Greek chorus. Steel drums keep popping up and doing nice Steve Reich like pirouettes and it’s eventually what piques my interest most. Around 10:39 everything else recedes except the steel drums and the bass. Perfect. The bass comes back ‘round again to its opening riff. The horns return for one more finger shaking and I figure they simply gotta be Grandma’s Teachings, whatever they be, if only due to the authority of their command and the discipline with which they oversee the closing proceedings. The whole thing ends with an obligatory cacophonous sigh.
In other news:
The new Harry Potter film is 10 times more fun then the first two combined. It’s the difference between Home Alone and Y Tu Mama Tambien, isn’t it? More grit in all the fairytale dust. More poetry, too. Chris Columbus took the first couple books and carefully, ploddingly replicated them on the big screen using the burger flipping franchise techniques he picked up crafting all those John Hughes scripts into proven systems of operation. There was so little that was wide-eyed in those films because every aspect, every detail was chipped and worn down into something numbingly safe and within the market tested boundaries of audiences expectations. Cuaron, however, dishes up both product and delight. He sidesteps plastic charm and revels in something far more mature and fulfilling. It goes down well with popcorn and Cherry Coke.
It is now Summer. We have our soundtrack.
There has been an embarrassment of musical riches of late, not the least of which was my first MP3 CD, put together by my Akwaabian brother, Joe, and including an incredible batch of new and interesting musical biscuits, much of which happens to be crumbly and delicious. It includes the stunning track I’m currently listening to, Usman Achmad and Diswansoni’s Strambul Naturil from the compilation Indoesian Gutars (Music of Indonesia). Based on this track alone, Usman Achmad & Diswansoni are the Sea and Cake of Indonesia. More importantly for our dancing shoes, this song is practically begging for housification!
The mix also includes Johnny Dyani’s album, Afrika off of which I’m particularly enjoying the track, Grandmother’s Teaching Take 1. What immediately demands attention here is the marvelously assertive bass riff and earthenware groove that lay down a nice introductory groove for the first couple of minutes. Around the 2:10 mark things suddenly cool off. There’s a brief pause before the bass reasserts itself, even bolder and more opinioned this time. The groove really begins to sway now, with more swagger and discipline, but still loose. There are saxophones that come on like an angry Grandma Greek chorus. Steel drums keep popping up and doing nice Steve Reich like pirouettes and it’s eventually what piques my interest most. Around 10:39 everything else recedes except the steel drums and the bass. Perfect. The bass comes back ‘round again to its opening riff. The horns return for one more finger shaking and I figure they simply gotta be Grandma’s Teachings, whatever they be, if only due to the authority of their command and the discipline with which they oversee the closing proceedings. The whole thing ends with an obligatory cacophonous sigh.
In other news:
The new Harry Potter film is 10 times more fun then the first two combined. It’s the difference between Home Alone and Y Tu Mama Tambien, isn’t it? More grit in all the fairytale dust. More poetry, too. Chris Columbus took the first couple books and carefully, ploddingly replicated them on the big screen using the burger flipping franchise techniques he picked up crafting all those John Hughes scripts into proven systems of operation. There was so little that was wide-eyed in those films because every aspect, every detail was chipped and worn down into something numbingly safe and within the market tested boundaries of audiences expectations. Cuaron, however, dishes up both product and delight. He sidesteps plastic charm and revels in something far more mature and fulfilling. It goes down well with popcorn and Cherry Coke.
It is now Summer. We have our soundtrack.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan...
Happy Bloomsday! It was 100 years ago today that Joyce met Nora and Leopold Bloom took his everyman walk through the streets of Dublin.
Happy Bloomsday! It was 100 years ago today that Joyce met Nora and Leopold Bloom took his everyman walk through the streets of Dublin.
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