You may know that I love subways and/or "the underground". For anyone who's been to my place, you will see a large framed map of the London Underground that's been on my wall since 1991. It's sort of essential to have it nearby, like a talisman of sorts. Here's a neat little blog entry over on Design Observer about that other classic subway map, Mr. Vignelli's Map of New York.
« September 2004 | Main | November 2004 »
October 28, 2004
The Subways of New York
October 26, 2004
Frank Lobdell
The strange art of Frank Lobdell. Kooky, jazzy stuff, like relatives of that Dave Brubeck album cover. You know the one...who's the painter of that?
John Peel Dead at 65
I'm absolutely stunned. I woke up to the sad news this morning that John Peel died while on holiday in Peru. Just like many of his fans will say, Peel introduced me to a whole new world of music when I was in my teens in the U.K. Without John Peel, I wouldn't have known about The Fall, or The Smiths, or more obscure bands like Fats Comet, Scraping Foetus off the Wheel, Hypnotone, and (the record I'm still searching for) Colonel Kilgore's Vietnamese Formation Surf Team.
But what made Peel's show special to me was not so much the music, but his in between breaks patter. Unpolished but never at a loss for words, Peel was a friendly voice there to guide you through some of the noisy patches of alt-rock. Good at popping pretensions and self-deprecating to a fault, he didn't try to hide mistakes--like playing a record at the wrong speed, or not knowing when a song would start ("This one fades up a bit" he'd say as the music faded up).
When I had a radio show for a brief period in college, Peel was the model, and his chatty, casual style, like a best friend who couldn't wait to play you the new records he bought, was quite hard to pull off. You realised it came from years and years of work, total comfort at the DJ station, and a humility that kept his ego in check. For someone who broke nearly every major music genre of the past 30 years, he never wore it like a badge.
I remember his glee over certain records. One was "Sidewalkin'" by the Jesus and Mary Chain. He had just got the single and opened the show with it. He loved it so much, he said that he played it again almost immediately afterwards. Then two hours later he closed the show with it, just like a giddy teenager.
Though I found it hard to listen to him here in CA (even with streaming radio), he is still the yardstick I measure other radio shows by.
After Peel, what else is there?
Goodbye John, you will be sorely missed.
October 25, 2004
James Wolcott: Feets, Do Ya Stuff
Wolcott's commentary on the Coulter Pie Attack needs to be quoted in full.
James Wolcott: Feets, Do Ya Stuff
Ann Coulter may be a travesty of humanity, as unacceptable a hank of flesh draped on a hanger ever to be foisted upon an ignorant populace hungry for more ignorance. Her racism, her character slurs, her whirlwind talent for rewriting history, her ability to leave a glossy coat of slime on any issue she discusses (when she licks a stamp, it curls up and dies), these are condemnable.But credit where credit is due. The skank can shift ass on a dime.
When a pair of hooligans tried to attack her with pies during a speaking appearance, an episode broadcast on cable news today, Coulter didn't freeze like a deer in the headlights. She showed lightning reflexes, ducking away from the lectern and running backstage on high heels, which any woman will tell you is difficult to do. Because of her quick getaway, the flying pies wildly missed their target, sparing her a humiliating cream pie bukkake facial that would have made the papers and been downloaded millions of times on the internet.
Perhaps she was a dodgeball champion in school, or perhaps her nerves are so permanently on edge she can sense danger while the rest of us are in our usual fog. One can only conjecture. But I do know that if it had been Jonah Goldberg up there trying out new comedy material, he'd have been wearing dessert.
Boo-ya!
They Nearly Got Her
Better aim next time, guys. Horrific propagandist, hate-filled lunatic, and all around nappy-ass bizotch Ann Coulter nearly gets pied.
October 22, 2004
Betelmania
No trip to Taiwan would be complete without the ever-present Betel Nut Girls, the puddles of red chaw-spit on the sidewalk, and personally being offered a betel nut by my father-in-law. The whole thing is terrible for your teeth, and you can guarantee nobody will want to kiss you. Plus, the tree's shallow roots leads to major hill erosion and mudslides. Oops! Read all about the little chewy bastard here.
Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004
Hunter S. Thompson endorses Kerry, in only the way he can.
"'I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago,' he said, 'and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next President of the United States.'"
The whole article tells it like it is, man.
October 21, 2004
What if Kerry and Bush were roommates?
Let's have the wonderful Sims2 sort it out. Features cameos by Saddam and Osama.
Non-negotiable
Apparently this story has been around since 1995, but this is the first time I'd read it. Man Deposits Junk Mail Check. The bank cashes it. Quite a hilarious and long story with many twists and turns. The title "Man 1 Bank 0" gives you only a small indication how this ends up.
October 20, 2004
Fla-a-sh, Master of the Universe!
Rather like the minions of the Emperor Ming (or maybe the Emperor Misha), some flacks have a, shall we say, thankless task.
In this election cycle, many woeful things have already occured. And many sad and silly things have been said. This one, however, may win the 2004 Bulwer-Lytton prize for pitiable maundering:
From the Chicago Sun-Times, today:
Already well-known
Axelrod said most voters know what office Obama is seeking and suggested other ads over the next two weeks could include a direct appeal for support.
Keyes has enough money to run television commercials, but his team is keeping mum about when they will begin.
"We're waiting until we can see the whites of their eyes," said Bill Pascoe, Keyes' campaign manager.
"Alan Keyes is making sense!" Well, in Urdu, perhaps.
Man, it must suck to be the press guy who has to go talk to the media for Keyes. Do you think Pascoe drew the short straw today?
Tokyo Story
Dir: Yasujiro Ozu
1953
I can't remember when I first watched Tokyo Story, but I know it was on crumb-bum video and I hadn't lived enough.
So here comes Jon Crow shoving DVDs in my hand, shaming me for not watching Mizoguchi and Ozu enough. Fortunately, Criterion are finally getting around to releasing Ozu's films on DVD. A good transfer of an old film is essential to its enjoyment, I think.
Anyway, "Tokyo Story" is a masterpiece, and not just because everybody says so. It has the emotional cruelty and sparse interior landscape of Chris Ware, but the sort of heart that Ware is only beginning to attain.
The story of an aging couple making a rare trip from their countryside home to the big city, only to be treated as mostly a nuisance by their grown children, doesn't offer easy explanations to the conflicts on the screen, but suggests much more beneath the surface. That is, we could blame Shige's bad treatment of her parents to being obsessed with making money, but there are hints that she has some sort of reason, some issues that she hasn't worked out, something she hasn't forgiven.
Not that "Tokyo Story" is a post-modern "everything's opposite" twist-o-rama text, just that the film's handling of character is so well-drawn that multiple viewings are bound to bring out the numerous levels on which these people think. The father, Shukichi, was apparently a bit of a drunk (as was the deceased son), and may explain the children's differing responses to him.
The film asks a lot of questions about the parent-child bond, what motivates the breaking of that bond, reality vs. a parents' expectations, and whether there's anything to be done about it. When the youngest daughter vows at the end that she'll never be as selfish as her older sister, there's no way to say if she'll be able to keep her word. "Tokyo Story" leaves the viewer wanting to know what will happen to so many of the characters. What will happen to daughter-in-law Noriko, (Setsuko Hara, an Ozu regular), now a struggling widow still young enough for remarriage? What will happen to Shukishi, especially after he is cheerfully damned in a way by the neighbor at the end of the film? ("You will be lonely" she says to him, which could be the film's brutal message).
Milly and Rupe Go For a Stroll
I wonder if the makers of Photoshop ever thought their app would mostly be used to make silly things like the Milly and Rupe Gallery?
October 19, 2004
Buy Me This for Christmas
As blogged on BoingBoing this morning, this keychain remote will turn off all TVs in a room, regardless of make.Wired News: Inventor Rejoices as TVs Go Dark
Altman's key-chain fob was a TV-B-Gone, a new universal remote that turns off almost any television. The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first.
For Altman, founder of Silicon Valley data-storage maker 3ware, the TV-B-Gone is all about freeing people from the attention-sapping hold of omnipresent television programming. The device is also providing hours of entertainment for its inventor.
After lunch I went to grab some coffee in a local shop here. One TV above the counter had the insufferable "Crossfire" on mute and another one above the door was showing soap operas. And nobody was watching either. This is why I want this keychain...
Giant Robots Attack Canada
Giant wind-up robots, that is. "The Dream" is Trevor Cawood's music video that mixes the mini with the huge, and uses seamless CG to do so. (Cawood did effects for the Matrix, so this is what he does on his days off.)
October 15, 2004
Jon Stewart will save us all...
I wish I could have heard this, instead of just reading the transcripts. This is amazing stuff. Jon Stewart goes on Crossfire and lets both of 'em have it, for downgrading American political discourse. Wow. And again: Wow!
UPDATE: QT Video clip is hereSTEWART: But the thing is that this -- you're doing theater, when you should be doing debate, which would be great.
BEGALA: We do, do...
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: It's not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. And I will tell you why I know it.
CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you're accusing us of partisan hackery?
STEWART: Absolutely.
CARLSON: You've got to be kidding me. He comes on and you...
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.
(LAUGHTER)
STEWART: What is wrong with you?
(APPLAUSE) CARLSON: Well, I'm just saying, there's no reason for you -- when you have this marvelous opportunity not to be the guy's butt boy, to go ahead and be his butt boy. Come on. It's embarrassing.
STEWART: I was absolutely his butt boy. I was so far -- you would not believe what he ate two weeks ago.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.
CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.
STEWART: You need to go to one.
The thing that I want to say is, when you have people on for just knee-jerk, reactionary talk...
CARLSON: Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny.
STEWART: No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey.
The man has integrity. One of the few! ("Butt boy"? Real classy, Tucker)
Thanks, Ted
Ted's gracious welcome means that I may let him look in the Palantir, if he continues his fulsome praise of my beard and my style!
I am honored to be here, and will attempt to contribute much of a muchness. I'd like to try something, in terms of uploading a file. We'll see if it takes.
Most readers of the Left Sphere of Darkness in blogging terms will remember George Bush's disastrous appearance at the Unity Conference, the minority Journos annual get-together. Bush got handed a quite good question on the role of sovereignty in the 21st century as it applied to Federal/Tribal issues. He responded with a 4th grade Social Studies definition of the term sovereignty as opposed to answering the quite nuanced question itself. Well, we know that Bush doesn't do nuance, but his clear lack of anything resembling a policy clue is just startling. So here's the clip.
So, what's the deal with this clip, why does it matter?
The clip itself is representative of the degree to which Bush is NOT the master of the town-hall format, that's what. The whole 'Bush will do better in debate #2' meme really pissed me off to no end. That meme was generated by pundits (I won't call them people) who felt very strongly that the scripted love-fests Bush has been attending all year on the campaign trail were somehow 'real' public appearances. Odd that these pundits should be so convinced by all this Parlockian nonsense and frippery. Really quite peculiar.
This clip from the Unity conference, however, is Bush at a real townhall-style meeting. To get any comparison, you'd have to go back to New Hampshire 2000 and find footage of Bush doing pre-primary meetings. Who won? John McCain by 16%. Ouch.
I post this not just to point out the staggering obviousness of Bush's unnuanced answer to the sovereignty question, but also to illustrate the point that I made in my (dare I say) virgin post: the cable media, and most of the network punditocracy in this election cycle, are simply in the tank for Bush. They have bolstered his credibility at every opportunity, and have then stuck their fingers in their ears and gone 'lalalalala' whenever reality intrudes.
March of 2003, less than a month before the invasion of Iraq , E.J. Dionne wrote a column in the Washington Post in which he asserted that the President was on medications to control anxiety and affect. The White House did not deny it. The SCUM, however, continues to ignore all evidence to the contrary, and plays in its happy sandbox.
To anyone reading this:
I fear an Australian outcome for this election. Let's work as hard as we can to avoid rewarding not simply the secrecy, mendacity, and belligerency of the Dry Drunk Presidency, but let's also KICK THE SCUM in its useless butt.
Now, I need mead.
Welcome Saruman! Nice beard.
Folks, I want to extend a warm welcome to our new co-conspirator in justice, Saruman, who has beaten me to the punch and blogged his first entry below. Mr. S is a good friend of mine and was sharing his writing skills with the world over at Media Whores Online. Was it under the same name? I can't say. Much like Dr. Who regenerating, he's now in a different body, but the same chap underneath.
I will also say that the S-Man knows his stuff and will surely put me to shame in his analysis. Onward! We have nothing to lose but democracy itself!
My Friend
Today my good friend, going under the name Saruman, begins sharing my political blog with me. This is excellent news, and I know you'll groove on his writing style. Let's welcome him aboard!
Bush Like Me
Liberal journalist goes undercover and infiltrates the Republican party in Florida. What he finds may or may not surprise you. But first, the set-up
My cover story was a travesty, an idiotic tissue of halfhearted lies. I said I was a New York City schoolteacher named Tom Hamill, in Orlando to spend a summer with a girlfriend who was from the area. It was the best thing I could come up with to explain my Northern accent, my lack of local connections and all that free time.
The story's only saving grace was that the truth was so much more unbelievable. Republicans are paranoid enough to expect a mole from the Kerry campaign, but I was far worse than that -- a dissolute, drug-abusing anarchist who reads the battle diaries of Vietnamese generals on rainy days, roots for Russia at the Olympics and once published an article titled 'God Can Suck My Dick.' I was, in short, the most offensive individual who could conceivably be planted in the campaign of George W. Bush. I was tempted to feel guilty about this. But in the end I figured that it was only fair. Since John Ashcroft has made it easy for FBI agents to infiltrate anti-war groups, it seemed to make sense that an anti-war journalist should infiltrate Ashcroft's party.
My Grief
So anyway, I've been transferring these old tapes of mine from back when I was a kid, recorded with my partner in crime at the time, Gabe. I'm surprised and happy to say that these tapes are still in pretty good condition, at least listenable. I have about 35 or so and hold them very dear to me, as you might expect.
But last night I flipped over a tape and found that one side was completely blank. It somehow had been erased...when? I couldn't figure it out. The tabs were popped out to protect against that sort of thing, so this must have happened years ago. But how? If I had done it, I surely would have remembered my complete stupidity and chastised myself accordingly. But I didn't or haven't.
What can I say? I just lost another 30 minutes of my childhood. Weep! This makes me nervous to go through the rest of the tapes. What other surprises lay in store?
Hello, World!
Ted has invited me to join the fun, and baby, will he be sorry!
So, anyhoo, here I am writing my very first post of what I hope to be quite a few.
Let me say, from my position atop the loftiest of the Spires between Rivendell and Gondor, that things seem pretty outrageous to me. Thousands of Orcs busily shredding Democratric Party voter registrations, and no one in the SCLM or SCUM (So-Called Liberal Media or So-Called Unbiased Media) can bother to lift a finger to cover this story seriously? USA Today's coverage is a perfect example of this he-said/he-said nonsense.
And it's just way, way past time to really start turning over the rocks on people like Nathan Sproul, Ralph Reed, and John O'Neil. Almost all these people that the GOP is using in its 2004 smear campaigns are connected. They have ties via the Nixon administration, the Christian Coalition days of the 1980s, Falwell's Moral Majority, and on into Texas politics in the 1990s, thus finally putting them at Karl Rove's disposal.
The defection of Robert George from movement conservative circles (see The New Republic) hardly fills me with Schadenfreude, as I think George is a fairly tedious small-government conservative. Nonetheless, his defection points up the fact that the more sensible members of the Right are beginning to perceive the problem in being part of the Party of Amway. Eventually, pyramid schemes collapse, and the movement conservative GOP is beginning to look a bit unstable on its foundations. Rove may be a genius of a kind, but he is not an architect.
In fact, he is a gravedigger. In his career, Rove has specialized in both unearthing the buried bodies of his enemies' secrets, and in interring their political careers. Like that fellow who ran the fraudulent crematory in Georgia, however, the stench of Rove's work is starting to nauseate many of his erstwhile allies.
We have not reached the point, however, at which our 'on the one-hand, on-the-other' blow-dried and Botoxed media can bear to pull back the shroud on Rove's Burke and Hare operations. Karl wields a great deal influence, as he has simply no limits, and the media knows this. Is there a solution?
Well, the Sinclair boycott presents a new model. If it succeeds in making a real impact, especially if it results in Sinclair being forced to adhere to equal time issues, then I think that we need to up the ante. 'Working the refs,' in Eric Alterman's lingo, is gaining traction on the Left side of the media aisle. It seems to have yanked GOP pollster Luntz from MSNBC.
The ballot-ripping scandal, however, has yet to become center stage. The SCUM must realize that they will pay a price when they let direct-mail fraudsters and lying Nixonian dirty tricksters commit election fraud in full view. We have to continue at every opportunity to make them all accountable. If we can out Rove's grave digging, the pyramid above it may totter and crumble into ruin.
October 14, 2004
Is Our Bush Learning?
Although I still can't grok the idea of a gay Republican, period, Andrew Sullivan's analysis of Bush's routing in Tempe is evenly handled for a conservative. And then he follows by printing this email from a reader:"I agree with your assessment of the humanity conveyed by Bush this evening. But for me this was a transition from loathing an arrogant man who isolates himself to seeing a man who finally has realized that he may lose and has to answer to the American people. I question whether he has ever truly felt that before. Tonight he almost seemed overcome by it. The recent article in TNR, “Legend in His Own Mind”, by Noam Scheiber, portrays Bush as man manipulated by those around him who play to his egotistical and ritualistic tendencies. I saw a different Bush tonight. A Bush, who perhaps for the first time since the beginning of his presidency, was truly questioning himself. He seemed unsure of himself and because of that open to new ideas. To me, that made him stronger. But he is four years too late. Kerry questions himself all the time. Call it flip-flopping if you like. I call it strength. And I am voting for Kerry."
Although I can't groove on the "humanity" part, the Bush I saw last night was, well, sort of sad. He certainly didn't get a rise out of me like usual (especially his off-the-handle rudeness in the second debate). He was silly too, cackling like Dana Carvey's impression of Poppa Bush, starting one response with "Wooo!", and saying "Freedom is on the march!!" like a 10-year-old would say "We're going to Baskin-Robbins!" I've seen more Bush than...let's not go there, okay...I've seen more Bush over these last three weeks than I have over the last four years I think. If you add up all the sound bites and clips, it probably wouldn't eclipse the 270 minutes spent in his company in October. And I'm tired. And I get the feeling Bush is tired too. Kerry is just warming up.
What I also thought last night was: If Bush loses, we won't see him again. Whereas Clinton loves the crowds and Carter keeps a busy public profile, rich folk like Bush disappear off the map when they leave office. They generally aren't interested in the people. Yet, knowing how badly his leadership has been, will they want him on any boards as anything more than a token name?
Who am I kidding?
Bend It Like Bellinger
I just noticed my friend Jesse Bellinger has a site up on the net. He used to work with me at the Independent, and now he's got a little archive of his writing up. Here's a sample of his work which just so happens to feature an illustration by moi that I'd completely forgotten about. Now all the man needs is a blog.
"Jacques" "Derrida" "Dead" "at" "74"
I was quite surprised at the comments in the Guardian over Derrida's death. A few writers have some interesting things to say about him, but most come off as flip or ignorant. Why bother?
Deconstruction was the part of literary criticism that I least understood in college, and was the one I could never write. It was a sort of quantum physics of literature and meaning, and seemed to require much more background knowledge going in than even New Historicism. Our instructors brought it up, and made us read an essay or two, but didn't insist too much on it.
One day, Derrida came to speak at UCSB and we all felt the obligation to go hear him, as one would a rock star or a poet. And he certainly did look cool in his suit and his brilliant white hair.
He spoke on the Balkan war, in his heavily accented English. I began to take notes, to try to help me make sense of what I knew would be a dense talk. By minute 15 I was lost. Was he even talking about the Balkans any more? I looked over at my instructor, whose critical faculties I admired, and even he was nodding off. People started to yawn, give up, walk out.
Derrida made no effort to connect to the audience, did not offer up analogies for us to grasp. He just plowed ahead. It was lit theory as performance art, as atonal feedback music. He must have seen these walkouts all the time and knew he was onto something. He couldn't preach to the choir. There was no choir. And what do we mean when we say "choir"? He was a man unto himself and I suspect most people who admired and followed him only understood 15% of what he was laying down.
I had class and had to leave after 30 long long minutes. And that's all I remember about Derrida.
Falafel? No, I feel pretty good actually.
Exhibit A: They're looking out for you
Oh man, these Bill O'Reilly sex tapes have put me off eating falafel for a while. Someone cut his mic, please. And clean the desk while you're at it.
October 13, 2004
Bullet in the Head
Dir: John Woo
1990
"Bullet in the Head" is often hailed as one of John Woo's best, because it springs from his own memories of growing up rough on the streets. And after he sends his three heroes off to Saigon in 1967, determined to lay low from the police and make some money in the process, the film turns into his own version of "The Deer Hunter."
The leads are Ben (Tony Leung), Frank (Jackie Cheung), and Paul (Waise Lee), and their character types are wistful/sensitive, well-meaning/unhinged, and realistic/selfish respectively.
All three, we see in an opening sequence that combines dancing with fighting (Woo's tribute to West Side Story), are good at fighting. This comes in handy later when they go up against a crime boss and his minions with all sorts of firepower, from sub-machine guns to exploding cigars (!).
The three are poor, but Ben seems to be starting off well, getting married to a rather drippy girl in the neighborhood. But soon Frank's problems with a local gangster cause all three to have to leave the country. Will they make a drop off of pharmaceuticals in Saigon while they lie low? Easy!
In the first of many well-executed set pieces, the three have just barely arrived in Saigon for five minutes when they wind up in the middle of an assassination attempt and have their important package blown up. Desperate, they decide to team up with a CIA op called Luke (Simon Yam) are wipe out the crime boss.
Another great set piece of ridiculous violence follows as the three take on the entire building.
So far we are safely in Woo territory. Then the three get captured by the Vietcong, who know nothing of gangland honor, and the movie gets very dangerous, refreshingly so.
At the center of the tale is a US army box full of gold. Paul insists on keeping it at all costs, destroying the friendship. There's also a substitute for Ben's drippy wife, a similarly drippy Canto-pop star turned captive druggie whore who Ben tries to rescue. Woo, who is never really that interested in women except when they are abstract plot elements, does away with her too.
I was with the film up until the final act, when Ben returns to Hong Kong to see vengeance on Paul for what happened to Frank. (What happens to Frank results in one of Jackie Cheung's scenery-chewingest performances. He even got nominated for it.)
The ending, it turns out, was not the original, though that survives on the expanded, remastered DVD as an outtake. Like so many Hong Kong action films, any strides made by the drama are ditched for absurdity. The missus gave up on this film when the skull appeared.
Still, the transfer looks wonderful on this FortuneStar remaster, and is exciting for much of its length. But for those who want to build a case against Woo, there's plenty fodder here too.
Bring on the FEAR
This just posted on Boing Boing
Law enforcement memo of 'imminent' terror attack?
Sean Bonner blogs, 'I have a friend with a job that makes certain Police Department memos things he needs to take note of. This is the one he got this morning. I've known this person for a very long time and I'm vouching for it's authenticity:'
Subject: FW: Terrorist Attack on US Soil is Imminent Importance: High
LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE
At the meeting of the Southern District of the Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council (ATAC) that was held yesterday in Houston, US Attorney Michael Shelby informed the group that a terrorist attack of 09/11/01 proportions was going to be carried out on US soil within the next 6 weeks.
Mr. Shelby stated that on 09/13/04, US Attorney General John Ashcroft had a conference call with all 93 US Attorneys, an event which is extremely rare. The US Attorneys were informed that without a doubt an attack was going to be perpetrated in the US within the next 6 weeks, prior to the elections. Mr. Shelby urgently requested that all law enforcement be aware of any situation that may be out of the ordinary and report the activity immediately. Mr. Shelby urgently requested that all law enforcement be aware of any situation that may be out of the ordinary and report the activity immediately. Mr. Shelby also requested that we get the word out to patrol officers and detectives to talk to their informants and report anything odd or remotely suspicious. Mr. Shelby ended this warning by saying that unless we get a bit of "luck" and the attack can be detected and prevented, that another attack of 9/11 scale will be carried out.Please disseminate to all of your law enforcement contacts ASAP.
New Mexico Investigative Support Center
Direct Line: 505-541-7000
Fax: 505-541-7006John E. Vinson, Director
Link to Sean's blog post.
Mike Outmesguine says, "I called the number at the bottom of the email and told them I'd seen this notice, and wanted to find out more about the source of the warning. A representative from the New Mexico ISC told me that they forwarded the notice along after having recieved it from the Southern District Anti-Terror Advisory Council in Houston. They gave me a contact at that organization, whom I phoned, but I only got voicemail. I've also contacted the public affairs department of my local FBI office. My question is if it is a regional notice for TX and NM, or if it's something much bigger and LA and other areas will be advised to go on notice."And in related news, CNN reports:
A Democratic senator said he will close his Capitol Hill office until after the November 2 election, fearing a possible terrorist attack that could harm his staff or visitors.
Sen. Mark Dayton of Minnesota issued a statement Tuesday, citing a "top-secret intelligence report on our national security" provided to congressional members by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee "Based upon that information," Dayton wrote, "I have decided to close my office in the Russell Senate Office Building until after the upcoming election.
Three weeks and counting...Gee, it's good that we put so much money into homeland security, I feel much safer.
October 12, 2004
My T-shirt Folding Technique is Unstoppable!
Boris Artzybasheff
In a recent Jim Woodring interview, the artist names two art books that changed his life. One, unsurprisingly, was on Surrealsim. The other was a book called As I See by Boris Artzybasheff. Before you could even say "Google", I found a page on him. Not only did he do 200+ covers for Time Magazine in the '50s, but his style is similar to Basil Wolverton and others. In fact, his range is very wide, from cartoony to realistic, from oils to woodcuts.
A Tiny Revolution: Uh Oh
When is Hersh going to release another one of his damning exposes? He doesn't have many weeks left. Meanwhile, it's massacre-tastic in Iraq...
A Tiny Revolution: Uh Oh
HERSH: I got a call last week from a soldier -- it's different now, a lot of communication, 800 numbers. He's an American officer and he was in a unit halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. It's a place where we claim we've done great work at cleaning out the insurgency. He was a platoon commander. First lieutenant, ROTC guy.
It was a call about this. He had been bivouacing outside of town with his platoon. It was near, it was an agricultural area, and there was a granary around. And the guys that owned the granary, the Iraqis that owned the granary... It was an area that the insurgency had some control, but it was very quiet, it was not Fallujah. It was a town that was off the mainstream. Not much violence there. And his guys, the guys that owned the granary, had hired, my guess is from his language, I wasn't explicit -- we're talking not more than three dozen, thirty or so guards. Any kind of work people were dying to do. So Iraqis were guarding the granary. His troops were bivouaced, they were stationed there, they got to know everybody...They were a couple weeks together, they knew each other. So orders came down from the generals in Baghdad, we want to clear the village, like in Samarra. And as he told the story, another platoon from his company came and executed all the guards, as his people were screaming, stop. And he said they just shot them one by one. He went nuts, and his soldiers went nuts. And he's hysterical. He's totally hysterical. And he went to the captain. He was a lieutenant, he went to the company captain. And the company captain said, "No, you don't understand. That's a kill. We got thirty-six insurgents."
You read those stories where the Americans, we take a city, we had a combat, a hundred and fifteen insurgents are killed. You read those stories. It's shades of Vietnam again, folks, body counts...
You know what I told him? I said, fella, I said: you've complained to the captain. He knows you think they committed murder. Your troops know their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Just shut up. Get through your tour and just shut up. You're going to get a bullet in the back. You don't need that. And that's where we are with this war.
Subtle - F.K.O
Directed by somebody or something called SSSR, this is just lovely, lovely stuff. Subtle - F.K.O (.mov file)
Laura - Diary of a White Trash Girl
The always non-awful Something Awful has a long-running thread I've just noticed. Essential reading for this afternoon...Working at Goodwill, one procures not only a loathing for the greater parts of their local community, but a great many interesting oddities as well. I came across one of my more curious souvenirs today as I cleaned out old drawers: A diary detailing the depressing life of perhaps the most white-trash girl I have imagined. I have been in possession of said book for about a year and a half, and I read through it once at work to give my boredom a kick. However, it wasn’t until I further analyzed the journal that I realized how utterly depressing and hopeless the track of her life was/is (this diary is from the ‘93 period, of which time she must have been a teenager). However, despite all this, parts of this journey into Laura are nothing short of utterly hilarious. Part of me feels bad about posting all this, but then again, I don’t know this person at all and someone donated it anyways. For the time being, enjoy the shenanigans of this complete stranger. I’ll be typing entries as well as linking to the actual journal, and if people like the first bits I’ll definitely do more. This stuff just gets better and better, and it’s LONG. Plenty of hilarious details. On with it. I am making no spelling or grammatical corrections. Everything is as written.
You can continue the diary on page 20, as the in between pages are comments. There's even an audio book being made, read in a posh British accent, along with an accompanying Flash cartoon. Ah, the Web.
The Internet Cat Photo Collection
If there's a better gallery of funny cat photos, I haven't seen it. The first photo on page one is a winner. Amazing Cat Collection
Vinyl Junkies by Brett Milano
Following on from my earlier post about rare record dealers, here comes what looks like and interesting book on record collecting.
Paste Magazine :: Review :: Vinyl Junkies
Every guy with a record collection and a girlfriend should read Brett Milano?s Vinyl Junkies with her as relationship therapy. The book follows die-hard collectors from different walks of life?from R. Crumb?s country and blues 78s to several vinyl addicts in Milano?s native Boston, where he writes for the Boston Phoenix and the Boston Herald. The book presents an engaging look at a diverse subculture?from the rabid nerd completists to the musicians and industry types you would expect to have a serious relationship with their records (including R.E.M.?s Peter Buck and Sonic Youth?s Thurston Moore). But Milano also writes about ?normal? people with jobs and relationships and whose fashion choices range outside jeans and obscure punk T-shirts.
October 11, 2004
Wonder Twin Powers ACTIVATE!
Ah, with a little time on my hands, I have successfully migrated the contents of my front page, never-updated blog into my alive-and-postin' blog "Stone Cold Pimpin'" and made the latter my front page. So now, going straight to tedmills.com will bring you here! Cool, eh?
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Dir.Mamoru Oshii
2004
As far as I know, this isn't based on a manga by Masamune Shirow, but a film-only sequel to one of the best post-Akira sci-fi anime on the last decade.
With "The Major," the female cyborg hero of the first film, living inside the 'net/Matrix/computerverse, the sequel focuses on her partner, Bateau, a cyborg with a human brain, and his rookie partner, Togusa, a human with a synthetic brain.
The plot is police-procedural--investigate the homi- and suicidal impulses of pleasurebots (called gynorgs here), who have taken out their wealthy industrial johns. What is causing this breaking of one of the three robotic laws?
As GITS2 (great acronym!) progresses, it becomes apparent that the suicides, as well as Bateau's outre responses to them (taking on an entire yakuza den with clever holography and a bloody great fun) are chess moves to draw protag and antag together. The solution to the mystery is a nice inverse on the idea that prostitution--in particular child prostitution--destroys the soul.
In between GITS2 delivers some of the most beautiful set pieces and animation so far in animation. Blending 2D and 3D animation, a painter's eye for light, an otaku's attention to techie detail, the film demands repeat viewing. Certain sequences deserve a mention: Bateau's paranoid attack in a convenience store brings us fully into the subjective view of its cyborg brain; Kosuga's brain-viral attack that leads into a Moebius loop of a nightmare narrative sends the film off into a Borgesian dimension.
It's a very restrained film, and chilly in its diagnosis. Yes, the "soul" might be what separates the humans from the borgs (even when that line is blurry), but when soul becomes rare it turns into, in a capitalist system, a commodity
Puffy live!!
Last night I went down to L.A. to see Puffy (known in the States as PuffyAmiYumi) play the House of Blues. My companion: the estimable Jonathan Crow, who says he remembers the day I first played him their debut single (the never-bettered "Ajia no Junshin") in the car while driving around Tsuchiura. So, amazingly, it has come to this, eight years later. Tamio Okuda's "idol" group kept on keeping on, and now is poised to go American pop-sub-culture mainstream with the premiere of their Cartoon Network show next month. They've scored a hit with the theme song to the Teen Titans cartoon, a level of American saturation most Japanese bands would only dream about.
It helps that they have good songwriters and producers (Tamio, Andy Sturmer, Velveteen), a crack back-up band (known as Dr. Strangelove, aka Tamio's backing band), and they can actually sing in tune (in harmony), something not often called up in the 'gambatte' culture of Jpop.
This concert ended up costing a lot of money. Sure, tickets were $20, but after Ticketbastard service charges, that went up to $32. Then because it was at the House of Blues on Sunset ("located in a cool part of town with no parking") we had to valet park, a whopping, criminal $15. Fortunately, the tour T-shirts blew and I felt no need to get one.
We waited in a line that stretched down Sunset, and got in just after Puffy had finished their second song. And we turned up on time, too!
Anyway, the band just focused on their most rockin' numbers. "Jet Police" is a good 'un, as is "Akai buranko". In between patter was written up on crib sheets and they were cute in an exchange student way. I expect most new fans assume the two are in their 20s, whereas they're crackin' on into their 30s.
They encored with "Ajia no Junshin" which just capped off the night for me. Ahh, pop satisfaction. Who woulda thought I would have ever seen this live?
Because they are promoting their Cartoon Network show, they came back on after and taped a song for a New Year's Eve concert for the network. We were asked to pretend it was now Dec. 31, 2004 and we counted down to one. A net full of balloons hanging above the crowd failed to break and instead, like a giant white sausage, floated down on to the crowd. It will be interesting to see how that gets edited...
UPDATE: If you're curious about the "service charges," here's the breakdown, for the two tickets I bought:
FULL PRICE ADULT US $20.00 x 2
Total Building Facility Charge(s) US $2.00 x 2
Total Convenience Charge(s) US $7.70 x 2
Order Processing Charge(s) US $3.75
ticketFast Delivery US $2.50
TOTAL CHARGES US $65.65
I won't even pretend to know what the difference is between the "convenience charge" and the "ticketFast" charge. You mean I should pay you money for the use of an online database and sending me a pdf file? It's not like you even had to use ink to print it out. Nobody helped me, so who had to process this? My judgement? These are bullshit charges that Ticketbastard makes up.
October 08, 2004
Don Hertzfeldt...poet?
Apart from being the master of stick figure animation, Don Hertzfeldt has been posting poems on his blog made of nothing but spam text. Enjoy. enjoy the status of platinum today
building vicodin shut
enhanced penis pill is amazing
why arent you watershed goblet
if pizza be the food of love
i can hardly feel the device under my pants
and
what would your family do if you died?
Allow us to show you our quality operation
see the fish come alive!
mature lesbians rubbing their armpitsFind that special someone!
Tooth whitening of the stars
With exclusive peeing Belgian girls
if you don't wish to receive these offers, go here
Really, you should check out the rest of the blog. Can't wait to see the new film, four years in the making!
October 07, 2004
Shaun of the Dead
Dir. Edgar Wright
2004
After many a year of bad, bad, bad zombie films (running zombies=wrong! Resident Evil=where's the gore?), "Shaun of the Dead" gets it so right, and understands its genre so well, that I immediately want to put it up in my list of Top 10 zombie films (including the first two Romero films and Jackson's "Dead Alive").
The key is that the filmmakers aren't making fun of the genre--they're placing characters from another genre (slacker comedy) into a zombie film. Big difference. I don't usually like comedy in my horror, but here it works, because the makers are sniggering "Aren't horror films stupid?"
Shaun (Simon Pegg) and his useless friend Ed (Nick Frost) spend most of their days lounging about the house they rent, playing XBox, going down the pub, assaulting each other with farts. Shaun has a dead end job in an appliance store, at least, and has a girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), but his idea of a good time is...taking her down the pub. With Ed.
No time is wasted setting up the zombies--taking his idea straight from Romero, the zombies are activated by a satellite re-entering the atmosphere--and much of the pleasure of the opening third is seeing how long it takes this workaday drone to cotton on to the fact that the dead now walk the earth. ("Sorry mate, I don't have any change") he says to one young flesheater as he walks home from the shops. Anyway, Shaun is too wrapped up in his heartache from being dumped to notice.
The rules have been studied well. There's a rescue attempt (girlfriend, her friends, his parents), a journey across familiar-now-hostile territory, then refuge in a safe haven (the pub) that slowly turns into a trap. Members of the team get bitten, and slowly turn into zombies. There's a finale of humans vs. overwhelming numbers of zombies.
The television acts as a reality check and a framing device for the horror elements, like in the original Night. There's a nice scene where they channel surf and we get to see all the cable channel logos, all with the same "standing by" message. In the end, television culture turns out to be as resilient as the humans.
There's no holding back on the gore in the latter half of the film, and we get a nice homage to Day of the Dead's stomach-buffet scene. Thank goodness for that--I had nearly given up all hope.
Apparently, Romero loved the film enough that its said the lead and his writing/directing partner will appear in the upcoming fourth installment of the director's series, called Land of the Dead.
For sheer pleasure and laughs, you gotta go see this.
(If you have a multi-region DVD player, you can already buy this from Amazon UK. I doubt if the American release will retain its many extras.)
How much caffeine?
Starbucks must be banking on the theory that the people who buy its coffee don't just need coffee, they need Starbucks coffee, which packs a higher caffeine punch than many competitors. The Wall Street Journal earlier this year sent samples of coffee from Starbucks, 7-Eleven, and Dunkin' Donuts to Central Analytical Laboratories. The lab reported that a 16-ounce Starbucks house blend coffee contained 223 milligrams of caffeine, compared with 174 and 141 milligrams in comparable amounts of Dunkin' Donuts and 7-Eleven coffee, respectively. According to the Journal, the average Starbucks coffee drink contains 320 milligrams of caffeine. (This chart from the Center for Science in the Public Interest shows different measurement levels, including the scary finding that a 16-ounce Starbucks grande has nearly three times as much caffeine as a No-Doz.)
October 06, 2004
Pop Surrealism? Lowbrow Art? Whatever you say, we likes it.
You won't be surprised that I'm looking forward to this book, which may already be out.Last Gasp Online Catalog - POP SURREALISM: THE RISE OF UNDERGROUND ART. I'm curious at how much is "surrealism" and how much is wanting a better label. Artists include Anthony Ausgang, Glenn Barr, Tim Biskup, Kalynn Campbel, The Clayton Brothers, Joe Coleman, Camille Rose Garcia, Alex Gross, Don Ed Hardy, Charles Krafft, Liz McGrath, Scott Musgrove, Niagara, Marion Peck, The Pizz, Lisa Petrucci, Mark Ryden, Isabel Samaras, Todd Schorr, Shag, Robert Williams, Eric White, and XNO.
I don't know if Shag is exactly "surreal" so we'll see.
Anyway, here's an interview with the author Kirsten Anderson, who runs the Roq la Rue gallery in Seattle, which done started it all.
James Wolcott Gets Some Zingers In
Remind me to blog my Dennis Miller story from the other weekend. In the meantime,