"When Iraqis speak to Iraqis - and not to western journalists - they say different things."
Barbara Ehrenreich echoes what I was thinking today when I read the Declaration of Independence today. (It was in the Friday edition of the Washington Evening Journal.)
NY Times Editorial on independence
"With
an open, rolling countryside and fairways cut by roughly 30 million
grazing animals, Mongolia is ideal for the casual backyard duffer." The intrepid travel-golfer also has his own website.
Amazon is being stupid so I won't display the covers of all the
albums I picked up on Friday, instead I've posted my favorite Pedro the
Lion album. At the Iowa City Public Library, I got Neu! by Neu!, Tangerine Dream's Rubycon, and Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air. At the Record Collector I got The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place from Explosions in the Sky, the Kinski/Acid Mothers Temple split LP, and the third disc of William Basinski's Disintegration Loops.
I asked the cashier if he'd heard any of the four discs in the set, and
he said he thought the third disc was the best while his co-worker
claimed that number four was better. I went with number three, and am
enjoying it even as I type this. I'm hoping Katie Gately can burn disc
one for me this fall, and then I will have to figure out how to obtain
the other two without actually paying for all of them.
I bought The Histories by Herodotus at Barnes & Noble, where I'd
decided to spend my dead time between record shopping and the rock
show. I enjoyed the first thirty pages or so, and it was pretty cheap
so I figured I'd pick it up. Besides, I don't have that many books on
my shelf written more than, say, one thousand years ago.
As to the show, I thought John Vanderslice was good but for some
reason failed to really get into the music. It was partly because my
ears were too close to the speaker on the left, but it seemed like more
of an existential dilemma to me at the time.
Pedro the Lion was solid musically, but what struck me more was his
respect for the audience. [Note: the Radiohead cover, "Let Down" from OK Computer
was good but the Randy Newman cover, "Political Science," was even
better.] This was one of those obnoxious crowds that's clearly more
about the drinking than about the listening, and even the real fans
were a little boisterous, but he still fielded questions from the
audience in as honest a fashion as he could. He even came out for a
clearly unplanned solo encore because the people toward the front
shouted enthusiastically enough for one.
The greatest thing, though, was when he attempted to get across his
feelings toward the current political situation. I think what he
actually said was that current policy is favorable toward only the rich
and that that, among other reasons, should encourage young and mostly
impoverished college student-types to vote this year; also, the
internet is the greatest alternative information source ever and the
only way to save ourselves from the domination of media giants.
However, as he apparently has a lot to say on these sorts of issues and
didn't want to use his presence on stage as a bully pulpit, you could
see him attempting to find a way to say what he wanted without being a
boorish Bush-hating blowhard. He wanted to motivate people to take an
interest in their lives politically, but didn't know how to navigate
the polarized state of two-party American politics, which he also
criticized. For me, the moment just crystallized the current widespread
frustration at the Bush administration as well as the lack of real
discourse between the two political factions and the bizarrely high
number of unaffected young people who seem either to not notice or not
care that, for example, the Patriot Act is currently on the books as
law or that, on its current course, the Federal government is set for
financial catastrophe, not to mention ethics or morality.
Other bands on stage, not to mention other people in general, would
do well to exhibit even half as much genuine humanity as David Bazan.
Also, this recent review from Pitchfork struck me as very enjoyable.
Today I watched the first ten minutes of WWE Raw on the Spike
Channel ("The First Network for Men!") and I thought to myself, this
reminds me a lot of the bawdy physical comedy typical of vaudeville and
other "lowbrow" traveling stage acts of decades past. The exaggerated
gestures, the rigid character/type roles each person played, the
physicality of it, the appeal to the baser instincts and desires, the
way they attempt to rile the audience up with their antics, it all made
sense in that context. I think if I were an American Studies major I
would definitely try to do my comps on that.
I watched Tarkovsky's The Mirror recently. I thought the
images were beautiful, but had to spend most of my time reading the
Russian at the bottom. I liked bits and pieces but overall wasn't able
to get past how personal and idiosyncratic it was.
My favorite part of Fahrenheit 9/11 was where the military
recruiters were trying to con poor kids into joining the military, soon
followed (or maybe preceded by) awful images of the disaster of a war
the US got itself into in Iraq.
Tonight I saw Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, and really liked
the use of black & white versus color. The movie entails an angel
who decides to become human, and the black and white scenes depict the
world through the eyes of the angels, and color is used for human
perspectives. It seemed to me a good parallel because black & white
films, to me, have a timeless (angels--eternal) sort of aura about
them, whereas color films can usually be dated within a few years by
the quality of the coloration; to be human is to be enslaved to time.
The first part of this post is not angry. It's about how at work on
Saturday, I was riding in a truck out to the cornfield where I spend
most of my time, when the driver looked in the mirror in utter dismay.
The portable toilet in the rear of the truck had somehow fallen out
onto the road. It was quite a sight. We managed to get the thing back
on the truck, and drove very carefully out to the field. This was funny
because my supervisor is a very painstaking sort of guy, yet he tends
to forget things, like strapping down the toilet in the truck. He also
doesn't have a personality, so it's always a great time when he has to
deal with something out of the ordinary. Now for the second, angry part
of the post.
Have you seen the Wal-Mart commercial where this guy is talking
about how great his employer is because they paid for his son to be
treated for some awful ailment, and you don't know it's Wal-Mart until
the end when the corporate logo flashes on the screen? Is this the same
Wal-Mart that refuses to allow employees to unionize, just got nailed
with a sex-discrimination suit, and besides their ALWAYS low wages
refuses to provide health insurance? Because that would be really
confusing.
Also, at my church today, two people decided to tell the rest of the
church that we ought to be really worried about homosexual people
getting married and should contact our senators immediately. The one
guy was actually very tactful: he only mentioned that he thought it was
important and that perhaps we should contact said congresspeople to let
them know "how you feel." See how neatly he avoided coming right out
and being homophobic? Relative to the other person who decided to
hammer the issue home, I felt like applauding activist #1 for his care
and precision.
Activist #2 felt the need to warn us all about the terrible
consequences that could and would arise if the Federal Marriage
Amendment didn't pass. She even went so far as to proclaim that it
would be a financial crisis because of the increased pressure to
support gay married couples with regard to insurance coverage, etc.
This annoys me for a whole lot of reasons. The first is simply that
you can't argue in favor of this amendment with a point that doesn't
boil down to gay bashing. However, what annoys me here is not even
particularly the politics of the issue. My second reason for being
annoyed is that my church isn't supposed to be a fundamentalist
institution; I could maybe expect and understand it if I were, say, a
Southern Baptist or some crap like that, but I'm not, so I feel more
justified in taking issue with the ignorant, provincial blowhards
there. It's not even like the Mennonite church sent down a message from
headquarters that this was "Stop the Homos" Sunday, because they
wouldn't do something like that. If the people in my community want to
be fanatical right-wing evangelicals, I guess they're going to do so,
but they could at least find the proper place and time to vent their
spleen. We don't hang the American flag, we don't vote as some sort of
monolithic theocratic bloc, and we're even pacifists, although some of
the people here tend to ignore that when they get all excited about
blowing stuff up and capturing Saddam Hussein. I don't want to get up
and dispute what they have to say because that would simply be sinking
to their level, but if anybody even so much as hints at votemongering
for George W. Bush on Sunday morning, I might just have to up and leave.
I've mostly written up a feature for next week's Professor Yeti. I
enjoyed Chris Leslie-Hynan's piece about lyrics this week, and felt it
necessary to mention that, on a less literary level, I've lately
enjoyed the lyrics to "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and Drive-By Truckers' Decoration Day.
I have been working in the cornfields a lot. I ordered some new
shoes on the internet because my other shoes are real dirty from
working in the cornfields.
I watched Ted Leo perform in Iowa City. I thought his new songs
sounded kind of like his last album, but not in a bad way. I couldn't
figure out why the bassist had a microphone, because Leo sang both lead
and backup vocals.
I finally canceled Movieline. Luckily I will not get charged for
auto-renewal. That has to be about the worst magazine in existence. I
sort of want to order Film Comment, because it's so good, but then I
also want to read it at the library and spend that twenty-five dollars
on something else.
I also can't remember exactly why I thought it would be fun to pay
for this website. I mean, it's pretty nice and all, but I can do
everything except comments at my Carleton site. I could do the images
for books, music, and even movies. I can't really figure much out from
the Stats and Referrers part of the site, except that sometimes people
search for things and click here mistakenly. I suppose I have about
three weeks to decide whether to cancel or not, since that's the next
time I'll get billed.
Also, it's really hot out in the cornfields. Accuweather says it
felt like 116 degrees out there this afternoon. I believe it. Tomorrow
it will luckily feel thirteen degrees cooler at the hottest part of the
day.
The good news is that RJD2 and Explosions in the Sky are both coming
to the Twin Cities area this fall. The bad news is that both shows are
on the same day. The good news is that Explosions in the Sky will be
free at the Cave, so it's not that hard a decision to make.
The Beach Boys played the Great Jones County (Iowa) Fair last night
and boy, are they old! Mike Love made "jokes" about how they were old
all night long; the "jokes" weren't really that funny, though. He also
managed to put down people too young to have purchased popular new
music on vinyl in their prime, and offhandedly dismissed hip hop as a
musical form. It was probably all great fun for the fiftysomethings who
made up the majority of the crowd, but that and Love's moronic pointing
and winking at random spots in the crowd all night were really annoying
to me. The music was good, because it was the Beach Boys, even though
they were more of a cover band than anything else since I think only
two original members were there. In the end, I think I'd prefer
listening to the mono and stereo versions of Pet Sounds to
another evening with the geriatric and unfunny reality that is the
Beach Boys circa 2004. Afterward we promptly ran out of money while
staring a half-mile strip of fair food vendors in the face, so we had
to wait another hour and a half for Taco Bell. I also received one of
those special moments I am afforded every once in a while by the hairy
disguise I wear around nowadays where somebody I know at first ignores
me, then stares at me for about ten seconds when the dawn of
recognition finally hits them and they figure out who I am. So that was
enjoyable.
Tonight I watched Life Is Beautiful on TV, and liked it a
lot. I considered writing an extended analysis of how the film depicts
a man mediating a difficult experience for his son as he
simultaneously, in his guise as actor and filmmaker, mediates the
experience for the audience, and about how this is representative of
the cinema in general. This is encapsulated in the scene where his kid
is hiding in a box with a viewing slot and the camera takes his point
of view, thus treating the viewer to an extreme widescreen view of
Roberto Benigni cavorting with his concentration camp captors, making
life more palatable through his elaborate ruse. But it won't be an
extended analysis, because a short analysis will suffice.
I helped my brother plastic wrap his driver's side door today
because his power window motor quit, much like mine did six months ago.
It's a lot classier than mine was, with stronger tape and no shopping
bags involved.
You lucky people may get treated to a list of my favorite albums in
the near future, since I went through and rated all that I have on a 1
to 4 scale, with 0 being undecided. Most are zeroes, and I will list
just the fours and then proceed to narrow them down to what will
hopefully be an exciting final winner. Once I decide on the best way to
put my databased lists into HTML, you will have an ungodly information
overload to deal with.
Other notes: there is no need for me to spend time figuring out who
my favorite band is. No one has been able to unseat My Morning Jacket
for about 14 months, but good luck to the rest of the music industry.
I hope the music directors do a good job of getting terrific new
music in the record library this year, because I'm going to have about
seven dollars and forty-three cents to spend on non-necessities this
coming year. If I'm really lucky, I'll be able to come up with a theme
or an idea or something for my show one of these terms, but it will
most likely just be the same old stuff.
This weekend was a momentous one, as one notorious 1981 Volkswagen
Vanagon was camped in for the first time since its purchase more than
one and a half years ago. Pictures may come later. George drank plenty,
we ate marshmallows and natural casing weiners, and threw a pathetic
frisbee by flashlight and moonlight. Racoons spoiled the Funyuns,
cupcakes for breakfast, the Vanagon finally started and we headed back
to civilization.
I just re-discovered John Darnielle's Last Plane to Jakarta (at least I think it's Darnielle) and remembered that it is pretty good. It also reminded by that I'm tempted to purchase Last Exit by Junior Boys, and will probably do so in the next month unless something else tempts me more.
I got all excited thinking about radio (KRLX, mainly) last night and
some other time when I was thinking about it, because it's a lot more
fun to think about than cornfields or whatever else it is I think about
during the summer months.
Oh yes, John Darnielle is the mostly lo-fi, spare, indie rock Mountain Goats, who are terrific.