Battle Royale 2

...by damn, this film is a strange experience. It's one of the most singularly confused works of art I've seen, but confused in such oddly charming (and somehow uniquely Japanese) ways that I feel kind of fond of it. The first film, if you happened to miss it, is set in a dystopian future in which, every year, a select group of junior high school students are taken off to a desert island and forced to play a game in which they murder each other. The last one left alive is the winner; if anyone tries to escape or opt out of the game, or if there is no winner, students are fitted with exploding collars, which kill them in rather garish ways. You play or you die; student is pitted against student, paranoia and mistrust are encouraged, and the system inevitably rewards the most ruthless among the kids. The lack of any sensible explanation for why teachers and adults would want their children to murder each other forces us to read the film as an antiauthoritarian parable, siding with children against corrupted, murderous "adult" values (and who gives a damn why a code of values is screwed up, when it's enough to point out that it is). It's a fun experience; it tries hard, for a work of exploitation cinema, to sympathize with its youthful audience and to encourage them to resist the things they see around them that are wrong. I'd always feel happy to see students of mine reading the book that the film was based on during class, when I taught in Japan.

Battle Royale 2 changes the tale a little bit. (If you're set on seeing the film, you might not want to read what follows, that surprises may be as fresh as possible). The students in the class that are chosen for the contest aren't pitted against each other, but set on a mission to find a survivor from the previous film, who has organized with other survivors and become a terrorist devoted to killing adults and opposing the Battle Royale system. The film resembles a conventional war film in ways -- and in fact lifts scenes and visual effects straight from Saving Private Ryan, particularly when the students land, under heavy fire, on the beach of an island where the terrorists are hiding. After suffering heavy casualities along the way, they finally confront the terrorists (who didn't realize that the people they were defending themselves against were fellow students, fitted with collars, fighting only under the threat of death). As will be obvious to anyone watching the film, so it's not much of a spoiler, the students, with minimal convicing, abandon their mission and, freed of their collars, join the terrorists' ranks.

Sounds like a straightforward follow-up, but where the film becomes a truly weird experience is that the terrorist "heroes" are equated very clearly with Al Qaeda; their initial act of terror which they are being hunted for is decimating two towers in Tokyo; and their hiding place, when not on the island, is, believe it or not, Afghanistan. There is ample speechifying about oppressed people standing together against their common enemy, and a list, cited twice, of all the countries in the world that America has bombed in the last 60 years; and even though the direct enemy in the film is the Japanese government/ educational system/ etc, there is ample reason to think that "killing adults" is a figure for resisting American global domination, which is made the target of a couple of choice tirades. The film is clearly on these kids' side, too; it seems to be meant to appeal to any Japanese kid who rooted for Osama bin Laden during the initial round of the war on terror, who wished they too could take up arms against America.

And some did, too; I have firsthand knowledge, talking to a disaffected, pot-smoking 20something high school drop out and shoplifter named Teru, who I briefly was buddies iwth over there, about how he was so happy Osama wasn't caught, how glad he was that America had been attacked. For all the more highly-advertised emulation of American pop culture that one finds in Japan, for all their overt subordination to American political power, under the surface, resentment of America is extremely strong there, and in Teru's case was coupled with a complete ignorance about the realities of what life is like under fanatical Islamic dictatorships. I mean, Afghanistan under the Taliban is hardly an icon of freedom from oppression (particularly given that half the survivors in the film are women). So what we're witnessing in Battle Royale 2 is pure fantasy of the queerest sort; innocent kids who, knowing very little, but wanting some hero to identify with, are choosing to identify with terrorists resisting America. Well. What could be a cooler fantasy, really? (for an angry 15 year old who is profoundly ignorant of the world, in the special way that, among first world nations, only the Japanese are insular and mis-educated enough to be).

So this is a phenomenally confused film, but like I say, I'm fond of it. There's a desire to believe in something, to have some sort of cause that can be identified with; in that the film goes so far off the mark in finding an acceptible one, it reveals more about the sincerity and naivete of the filmmakers than it does about its alleged subject, and it's hard not to feel just a bit protective of them and of their work, however grotesque it is. It's not unlike the protective feelings I get when I see people praying in church, the odd times I end up in one: I get sentimental about belief, and somehow, the more misguided it is, the better.

What else can I say? The film has ample violence, an excess of Japanese sweetness and a dozen too many declamatory, posture-filled speeches designed to prove the intensity and more-makoto-than-thou sincerity of their speakers. It has cameos by Beat Takeshi and, get this, Sonny-fuckin'-Chiba. There are strangely compelling images of 15 year old Japanese girls, cute as pie, firing machine guns at attacking soldiers. There's a really strange scene involving a teacher who also is fitted with a collar, turning up in the midst of battle wearing a rugby uniform. I don't know how to justify it, but I really quite enjoyed this experience, dizzy as it left me.

In case you're curious, you can read other reviews of it, mostly bad, here.

By the way, you can find bootlegs of the film on DVD, if you know where to look, in Chinatown. They cost under $10 each, are region free, and, as far as I know, are the only way to currently see it in North America. (I also scored the Korean blockbuster Silmido and the late Fukusaku Kinji's Battles Without Honour or Humanity there today; he directed Battle Royale and co-directed Battle Royale 2, which his son Kenta took over after he died. Oh, and I found Miike Takashi's Izo, but alas, there are no subtitles for the wonderful songs by Tomokawa Kazuki, which were my favourite part of the film. Oh, and I found the classic Chinese propaganda/horror film The Men Behind the Sun, I think it is -- there's no English on the case, just Chinese characters and the numbers 731, but it looks right. That's a film I've always been scared of seeing... Hint to videophiles: go spend the day in Chinatown).

Post script: with thanks to Dan, I thought I should point out that the IMDB discussion on the America-bashing in this film is somewhat entertaining to read...

Standing Panda

Hm.

Punched by a Corpse

Again, some time-biding trivial amusement for y'all.

Winks-related: Tights at Blim

Wow! The Tights show at Blim tonight, as part of the Lamb's Wool uhh revue, was really very exciting! Having seen the Winks about six times in the last year, it was really great to see Todd and Tyr do something quite different, to see how well they interact with each other in a completely other mode. Andy Dixon, aka Secret Mommy, added live electronic manipulations to their improvisations, which ranged from fairly loud and noisy to fairly quiet and textured, with Todd at one point bringing in a theme from "Armagideon Time," by Willie Williams (or so I learned after the gig, having always previously associated it with the Clash -- tho' Todd got detoured into a blind alley briefly and tried to tell me it was by Wesley Willis, which is a very different matter indeed). I liked the set far better than the previous Secret Mommy gig I'd seen, and bought two copies of the limited Tights CDR with hand-drawn art by Tyr (one for me and one for a cello-playing friend). She tells me they have a split Winks/Tights CD coming out in September...

There was much else to the night, but the high points were all Winks-related. Tim Sars, the baritone sax guy, did very cool improvisations over recordings he laid down live, creating lovely layered sounds, his sax playing reminding me of, oh, Albert Ayler playing a really subdued dirge. On a baritone sax. Tyr did some solo cello stuff (Bach with distortion!), too; she's really a very very GOOD musician. Their performances were punctuated by dance bits, my favourite of which was by Patricia Kim, I think -- doing something quite expressive to what sounded like a Tom Waits song I don't know (or the vocals from a Tom Waits song -- something to the effect of "What the hell's he building in there?" -- recontextualized in the context of minimal electronic music). A night like tonight fills me with protective feelings for our Vancouver scene. It seems the way of things that half of the people I saw perform on tonight's showcase will probably be doing straight jobs by the time they're 30 -- with their art under their beds (like me), unrealized writing projects in long-unopened files on their computer (like me), lyrics to songs without music set to them (like me), forced to content themselves with the consumption of art, since work takes up most of their day. The Winks seem like they just might have a chance to make a career for themselves at this, though; they're good enough, passionate enough, unique enough, dedicated enough, nice enough that it just seems like they might have a kick at this particular cat, and I'll do whatever I can to encourage that: fuck dayjobs! (fuck straight jobs! Or as a poster in Vancouver's forgotten anarchist paper, Open Road, used to read:

Fuck Work
Before it Fucks You

It's soooo cool that they're going to be touring Australia, too. It just makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

Anyhow, one funny moment I wanted to relate: Todd and Tyr brought glow-in-the-dark goalie-type masks to wear on the dark stage as they performed. Todd put his on, but Tyr was reluctant. I considered starting a chant of "Put It On! Put It On!" (not because I cared about whether she was wearing a mask, which is why I didn't bother, but because it would have been a pleasing reversal of a more usual phrase sometimes directed at women on stage). Such things amuse me, anyhow. They may not translate to the page.

Hey: are you from Vancouver? Do you want to support the local arts scene? If so, have you gone to Blim yet? If not... Well, uh, you should go. Really. It's a nice little venue, way up in the Penthouse of an office building near Tinseltown. There's almost always neat stuff going on. Just take a chance...

PS: Oh: I chatted with Tim, too, and he tells me that he'll be doing big-band kinda stuff at the Commercial Drive Legion on Saturday night, with a project called Sweet Pea. If y'all happen to need something to do. Lee Hutzulak plays Blim, meanwhile. I think I'm stayin' home, myself. Broke again.

When Snakes Fly, plus DOWN BY LAW anecdote

I didn't know that snakes fly, or if I knew, I forgot it.

Also: a wonderful anecdote appears in Jim Jarmusch's reflections on the making of Down by Law, which appear on the Criterion DVD. In the section, "Roberto's English," he explains that, mostly under the instigation of John Lurie, Lurie, Tom Waits, and Jarmusch collaborated on consistently misinforming Roberto Benigni about the meaning of various English words. Benigni, Jarmusch relates, is a very serious, devoted learner, currently apparently in the process of learning The Divine Comedy by heart. Lurie and co. would teach him things like that some item -- a cup, or such -- was called a "wedgebow," so that (and Jarmusch, in relating this, adopts an Italian accent) Roberto would say things to waiters like, "Excuse me, could I have another wedgebow?" They also taught him that that the verb for urinate is "to flame," so that (apparently to this day) Benigni says things like "excuse me, I must go to flame." Benigni did eventually figure out the pranks that were being played upon him, tho', and so, when he was being interviewed with John Lurie for Italian TV, he got him back by volunteering to act as a translator. The TV reporters would ask Lurie things like, "Could you explain your creative process in writing music," and Benigni would translate it as, "They ask what style of underwear you are wear," which Lurie would then respond to, making him look like an utter idiot, we gather.

Lovely DVD -- great extras, including a little-seen Tom Waits video directed by Jarmusch and ample interviews and such. Currently Virgin Music Vancouver have a buy-two-get-one-free Criterion DVD sale on, in case anyone out there is a film buff inclined to shop. By Brakhage is the really essential item they have (well, aside from the Cassavetes box). Apologies to Ray Carney for continuing to buy Criterion (see below).

The Odd Rodents of Laos

For fans of cryptozoology, rodents, or Laos, a minor little news article.

Nomeansno at Mesa Luna

Nomeansno are the only band I've seen who exhaust me. Twice now, of four gigs I've seen, I've left, spent, before they finished playing -- their last show at Richards on Richards, I snuck out while they were grinding out the Ramones' "Beat on the Brat;" tonight, I left just after a cover of the Clash's "I'm So Bored with the U.S.A.," hearing them start up again with "Angel or Devil" as I walked down the stairs to the sidewalk, ears ringing. They played for over two hours, with considerable energy and enthusiasm. Not bad for a bunch of old farts.

...and speaking of farts, I'd like to apologize to the moshers for letting a couple go during "Body Bag." Given the lyrics to the song ("they say the eyes are the windows of the soul/ but I love all of the little dark holes/ in the body bag"), I suppose it's understandable that my own dark holes would want to sing along. Besides, the smell of the skunk that was wafting in from outside seemed to cover most of it (...or was that a different kind of skunk?).

Anyhow, what's to say? John has more hair, and has added a goatee to his controversial moustache, which works a bit better. Rob, over at the merch table before the show, indulged my pestering question about his favourite book by recommending Joyce's Ulysses ("it'll take a coupla or three months , but it's worth it," he said, when he could see the recommendation was a daunting one). Tom sang "Dad" and one or two others and looks like he may have put on five pounds or so. None of their bald spots are any bigger than they were last time. The pit was intense and mostly something I avoided; but some young kid in a brush cut and a Mama t-shirt kept stage diving, and I bore him up for awhile, just like St. Christopher. I was pleased to see girls moshing -- this odd tribal ritual of violent ecstacy and self-annihilation seems to mostly attract men. It's especially nice to have female flesh smashed up against you every now and then, tho'.

Me, I am too old, too fat, too slow, too cerebral to really mosh anymore, to mosh completely, but I managed to participate a bit when the band did "The River," my favourite o' theirs. Rivers as that which flow, but also that which divide ("rive"). A "time destroys all things" kind of song. A song about life, separation, pain. If Nietzsche were alive, "The River" would probably be his favourite Nomeansno song. He'd speak about the need to affirm even the most painful aspects of life and maybe offer a comment or two on the nature of the Dionysian. Mosh pits are very Dionysian. It's a song I need to try to lose myself in from time to time, and moshing is a good way to do that.

I still wish they'd put "Joyful Reunion" and/or "The Tower" in their set. I'd mosh to those, too.

Anyhow, cheers to Nomeansno for continuing to do what they do. I'll look at Ulysses someday, Rob, I really will.

The Winks at the Railway

...in which the Winks discover a new sort of professionalism, and, under Tyr's lead (since it was Tyrsday), call slightly short a set of not particularly engaged (but perfectly acceptible, professional) renditions of their songs, since, I'm guessing:

a) there were only 25 people in the audience at the Railway to begin with
b) 10 of them were there for the alcohol and wouldn't notice anyhow
c) of their fans, one of them (guess which) was getting kinda drunk too
d) one of the other drunks (with whom I shared my hickory sticks) was shouting non sequiturs about Phil Spector (and sometimes dancing -- not badly, actually, compared to other Drunk Guys Dancing that I've seen, but still...) (Trivially, he later claimed to be recording with Buddy Miles).
d) ...and, I mean, they're going to Australia anyhow, and really don't NEED to impress 25 people at the Railway tonight. Really. As an ESL teacher, I know. There are some classes where I just don't get that enthusiastic myself, knowing there will be classes in the future. Like on the 13th, at Blim. I plan to be there.

Really, it was a fun set. I listened to their drummer, Paul, more carefully and decided that a buddy of mine who didn't like him at a previous gig was kinda WRONG; I liked what he did, it fit perfectly. (I got into a pee race with him in the men's room later, but that's a whole other story). Plus tonight was good in that I was moved to meditate for awhile on the line "the uniform fits my head like a monarch's tie," which reminded me of the following passages I'd been reading earlier from Jacques Attali's Noise: A Political Economy of Music:

All music, any organization of sounds is then a tool for the creation or
consolidation of a community, of a totality. It is what links a power center to
its subjects, and thus, more generally, it is an attribute of power in all its
forms... Everywhere we look, the monopolization of the broadcast of messages, the
control of noise, and the institutionalization of the silence of others assure
the durability of power... The monologue of standardized, stereotyped music
accompanies and hems in daily life in which in reality no one has the right to
speak anymore. Except those among the exploited who can still use their
music to shout their suffering, their dreams of the absolute and freedom.

(Italics mine). Really, I don't know if that's what the band was thinking of, but that's how it felt at the moment, eating my hickory sticks, drinking my Grasshopper, and nodding my head like a drunk to the music. As the drunk guy beside me danced and felt sorry for Phil Spector, and I drank and felt sorry for myself (it had been a slightly painful day).

Finally got me a Winks T-shirt, tho'! Thanks, Tyr! And black is the perfect colour for me! Have fun in Australia! I'll e-mail my friend there about you...!

Irreversible Meets Rat Pfink A Boo Boo in the Rectum

There's a rather legendary cult film called Rat Pfink A Boo Boo, directed by Ray Dennis Steckler, shown to me once awhile back by my friend Blake, who is hereby invited (he probably won't post but we might as well issue the invitation) to comment on the film at greater length by clicking "Add a Comment," below, since I defer to him in all things Steckler (he can run rings around me about Herschell Gordon Lewis, too, and can truly enhance one's appreciation of Forbidden Planet, particularly the soundtrack, if given the opportunity). The film, as I recall, was initially going to be a sort of sadistic rape-revenge film or such, and begins with really rather nasty (and surprisingly skillfully crafted) sequences in which evil male characters stalk women. We get lots of creepy voyeuristic stalker's-eye-view shots of sexy women and the film builds considerable tension as we wait for a seemingly inevitable rape sequence. Apparently, however, at midpoint, just before the rape was about to occur, Steckler got bored of making this movie, and decided to shift his narrative focus just slightly. Two of his "good" male characters, being menaced by bad guys, leap into a closet to hide, or such; when they emerge -- they've transformed into fully costumed superheroes, Rat Pfink and Boo Boo (this was supposed to be the original title, but an error in the titling had the "and" rendered as "a" and Steckler decided to go with that, too: one senses something of a coherent aesthetic at work). The film takes a lighthearted tone as the two happy-go-lucky superheroes whisk about the city, righting wrongs and having fun. What I added to our viewing of the film, when Blake showed it to a small selected audience out in the suburbs, was the reading that the whole film had something to do with a kind of heterosexual panic, and that the first half of the film and second were more significantly related than one might suppose: clearly the sexual menace and anxiety generated by the first half of the film got too intense, and Steckler decided, perhaps unknowingly, to have his male characters REJECT said heterosexuality and GO GAY. Yes, I'm convinced, folks: Rat Pfink and Boo Boo were gay -- they veritably leap out of the closet, transformed (and dressed in far more feminine/sexy superhero garb, with flowing capes and tights and such); consider their names, even -- what straight superhero would call himself Boo Boo? There is no reason to think Steckler intended this reading, of course, but once it's applied to the film it's very difficult to not see the movie this way. The two men have escaped the uncomfortable tensions and anxieties of straight life, formed a pair, and are thus transformed. (One wonders about homoerotic aspects of Batman's relations to Robin... I'm sure there's been a gay porn take on it by now -- maybe something along the lines of those Star Trek erotic stories that have Kirk and Spock as lovers.) (My link only leads to a small sample of such material, so feel free to suggest more, folks -- searching for "Star Trek" +erotica or +porn leads to a staggering number of sites, many of which are scams. So I'll stick with the sample I've found. I like the one where Kirk and Spock discuss Kirk's masturbation).

Thing is, I'm watching Gaspar Noe's really upsetting but rewarding film Irreversible at the moment, and I'm wondering if there isn't a Rat Pfink a Boo Boo aspect to it that isn't quite as apparent. Part of this is obscured by the film's backwards structure -- we see episodes in reverse order, a la Memento, but I think this is not in fact as thematically significant as some would have it. Some critics have talked about the film as having profound insights into time and experience, taking the structure as thematically relevant. It's certainly an angle worth considering but it doesn't really get at any of the aspects of the film that interest me, which concern the characters relation to each other and the somehow glaring but transparent homophobia of the film (exactly one IMDB reviewer writes about this, seeing the film in light of Leo Bersani's excellent article "Is the Rectum a Grave?," which considers homophobia and cultural construction of the ass as a source of pleasure and desire -- more on this below). It's interesting that a film could be this overtly homophobic without it being one of the first things people would comment on...

I suppose I should recount a bit of the story of the film; I'll try to avoid spoilers, tho' I don't think knowing what the film deals with will interfere all that much in the experience. The "climax" of the movie, which occurs close to the beginning, shows two men entering a gay bar, The Rectum, where, amidst intense, dark, S&M inflected scenes of sex and invitations to suck and fist the male clients, they seek out a character known as La Tenia, for reasons unknown -- clearly revenge is on their mind (La Tenia means "the Tapeworm," by the way -- they're looking for the Tapeworm in the Rectum, dig?). One, Marcus, is more passionate than the other, Pierre, who tries to convince his friend to abandon his quest and leave. Marcus plows on, finally bullying and abusing one of the gays into telling him where La Tenia is. He momentarily loses Pierre in the heat of the hunt. Confronting the men he believes might be La Tenia, Marcus, alone, finds himself overpowered and forced to the ground, where his arm is broken and one of the men he'd been questioning prepares to anally rape him. Just as he gets his fly open, Pierre appears wielding a fire extinguisher, and batters the man's head into a pulp, rescuing Marcus through this act of brutal murder.

There's actually a lot I don't want to say about the film, in case anyone out there hasn't seen it, but what interests me is this: having seen it twice, I am absolutely certain that the actual murder is not entirely as revenge-driven as it appears to be: that Pierre's burst of rage is not about protecting his friend or avenging the crime that they'd entered the Rectum to right, but rather is about both expressing and suppressing his own homosexuality. Seeing Marcus fucked up the ass would be too close to his own inexpressible, repressed desire; he has to subordinate this desire with a burst of violence, which is what, ultimately, the point of Irreversible seems to me to be. I mean: the two men throughout call each other fags and insult each other, and Pierre, the softer-spoken and more civilized of the two, is shown as having a less than fulsome sexual life, unable to give women orgasms, unwilling to surrender to the animal in himself. Both men are also bound in an oddly-framed triangle of sorts (Pierre is the former lover of Marcus' current girlfriend, whose rape is what motivates the drive for revenge). Pierre is sensitive enough to be horrified by the violent, brutalizing aspects of heterosexual intercourse, as symbolized the rape; like Rat Pfink and Boo Boo, he is forced into previously uncharacteristic behaviour, tho' he chooses to murder his newly discovered homosexual self, in the symbol of the would-be rapist he batters, rather than joyously express it. (Too bad; he would have looked cute in a superhero costume). The battering's violence is the violence of homosexual panic, directly confronted, but much obscured by the film, which forbids us from understanding the action in light of what comes before it -- it's like Noe is hiding something in the film he himself is scared to face. But he's consciously hiding it, if so; unlike Steckler, there seems some indication that Noe intends at least some of this reading, as, after the murder (but actually "seen" beforehand, given the backwards structure of the film), two mercenary-types they'd previously encountered (though we don't know this at the time) stand at the door of the Rectum, yelling homophobic insults at the two men (even though said mercenary figures know that Marcus and Pierre are allegedly straight). There would be no reason to call Pierre and Marcus gay, unless it somehow related to the events of the film. The sheer number of homophobic epithets in the film further argues for the centrality of homoeroticism/homophobia to the film's "real" theme; plus there's another scene where Marcus threatens a transsexual, and the rapist himself is depicted as mostly gay, with the the rape being explicitly made anal...

Anyhow, I'm watching the movie yet again -- it's a fascinating thing. I wonder if the disturbing sound design of the movie has anything to do with how unsettled physically I feel these last couple of days, having seen the movie twice? (The movie uses low frequency sounds sometimes employed by riot police to disperse crowds, which have an apparently negative effect on the human body -- I believe that's discussed in the Salon interview with Noe, which you may need to view an ad to be permitted to read).

Need to see I Stand Alone, next, Noe's previous film about a man who has sex with his daughter...

--

Addendum: I can't link to "Is the Rectum a Grave?" because it's not on the internet. It's one of the few works of theory that actually have had a direct impact on my life -- for about a year, I attempted to overcome what I decided, based on Bersani's theories, were enculturated anti-anal attitudes and "claim" my rectum as a source of erotic pleasure (without having gay sex, that is: but why should only gay men get to enjoy their assholes?). Anyhow, I hope that I'm allowed to do this by fair use laws, because I'm going to provide a brief encapsulization of Bersani's article as it appears in a gender studies journal:

The essay begins with angry reflections on the intense homophobic mobilization against gay men that attended the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the United States (it is helpful to remember that people seriously proposed "chemical castration" and quarantine of gay men to protect "the general population" from the virus) and finds both in them and in gay male sexual desire a homophobic and misogynist association of gay male anal receptivity with female sexual subordination. Bersani is interested to show that, in misogyny, in anti-gay-male homophobia, and in gay male erotic longing, the vagina and the anus are figured as sexually insatiable and as animated erotically by a desire for annihilation.

How exactly that relates to Irreversible I can't quite manage at the moment (there's a lot of annihilation of one sort or another that occurs in the film), but I thought it would be useful to offer a quote.

Snakes Got Legs

...and then the workweek starts, and blogging entries thin out. But here's something to keep you folks entertained, in an idle kind of way, of course.

Gang of Four

Solved the problem of leisure this evening by seeing the Gang of Four at the Commodore.

Standard mistrust to begin with: why am I paying money to see this? What am I buying, exactly, and why? (I just don't trust rock music very much these days). I warmed to the show, though, as did the band and the rest of the audience. Highlight of the evening: Jon King demolished a microwave oven during one song, pounding on it with a baseball bat, treating it as a percussion instrument. It made a big, sharp, metallic sound (it was miked) and the experience of beating it into rubble seemed quite cathartic.

I really don't have anything interesting to say about the experience, though... Felt obliged to at least note that it took place.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon

Watched Peter Watkins' Punishment Park earlier this week. It's an amazing film, one of the most passionate pieces of political filmmaking I've seen. I actually agree with some of its detractors that it seems somewhat masochistic -- feels rather like jamming a pin into the meat and decay of one's own rotten tooth -- but in its honesty, the vitality of its form, and the force of the director's belief (in something, tho' we'll leave aside the question of what for the moment -- perhaps simply that truth, perception, and engagement matter, that the filmic transaction is worth taking seriously), it manages to inspire no less. Perhaps there's some force to be gained from the pain of the poke it offers, too. Sometimes painful experiences can be motivating, as was the case with Cassavetes Faces... Or maybe I just enjoy certain kinds of pain. (Coincidentally, Watkins, in his director's introduction, reminds one of no one so much as Sade as played by Patrick Magee in Marat/Sade...). In any event: I was going to say that The Assassination of Richard Nixon probably seems as weak and ridiculous as it does to me (at midpoint; I've paused it to vent a bit of bile, so I can actually finish the film) because I can't but compare it to Punishment Park. I realized as I began to write this paragraph, however, that even if I hadn't seen Punishment Park this week, The Assassination of Richard Nixon would still be somewhat embarrassing.

Initially, it seems to have promise. Sean Penn plays a disappointed man, a divorced furniture salesman lost in a life too large for him, betrayed (he comes to feel) by America; in the heart of his failure, he decides to take up arms, to try to do something about the things that are wrong around him (or really, with his life) -- by flying a hijacked plane into the White House and killing the person he feels comes to symbolize most clearly the evils of the time. Given the relevancy of the means of assassination, and the fact that any presidential assassination film, released into this current climate, must on some subconscious level interface with the un-publically-speakable wish some may have to assassinate a more current Republican, I'd probably want to be kind to it on principle alone -- if only it were a little less condescending, the music a little less syrupy; we need works of art that grapple with the current state of political disenfranchisement and choked-down rage that's simmering out there, like Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint, for instance. To even approach this realm of discourse earns one a merit badge for courage. Unfortunately, the sympathy the film has for its main character isn't a matter of politics, doesn't stem from a perception of any actual inequities in American life (let alone any of the horrors of American foreign policy -- Vietnam is barely even mentioned); the filmmakers are clearly comfortable people who lack any rage or political convictions of their own (other than the everyday reactionary sort that watching a lot of TV tends to inculcate in people). They want us to feel compassion for Penn, but not because he's angry at things worth being angry at; rather, because he's a loser, a victim, a failure, whose every pathetic attempt to get by at work or win back the affections of his ex-wife serves to explain why he wants to kill Nixon. He isn't even allowed to deludedly express his fixations in political language at any length -- the film isn't courageous enough even for that, to at least make Penn articulate in his rage; instead, we're offered an ultimately self-serving and self-reassuring opportunity to squeeze out a little condescending sympathy for the little guy, without ever having to really examine power imbalances in American life or to think that there's anything fundamentally wrong going on out there. The film's thesis is not unlike the post 9/11 American supposition that Al Qaida hate the US because they resent their freedoms; the anger of the disenfranchised that the film purports to deal with is ultimately used simply as a tool to congratulate American viewers on how great they are, to reassure them that all is well, really (and that they can even afford to feel a little sorry for the people who hate them!). Bleh. It's tripe. It will look just fine spliced up for TV to make room for commercials.

But then, I'm only forty-five minutes into it. I should at least finish the film. If you need further reading, here's a link to Peter Watkins' current website. Nothing to do with the Nixon film, but his views on the media are quite interesting. It looks like several of his films are going to be distributed in North America on DVD over the next little while. Really, Punishment Park is necessary viewing, and very relevant to the current, uh, state of things -- right up there on the must-watch list with The Battle of Algiers.

Doesn't it suck how the war in Iraq has kind of quietly faded into the background? Become just another part of the way things are, like the homeless people on the street and the job you have to go to in the morning...?

Post-script: actually, the film becomes a little more interesting in the second half, but not so much so that I'm going to substantially revise anything I've said. Nice final shot, though. Best thing about the film.

Mel Goes to Vegas

Female friend Mel went to Vegas last week, and she had rather amusing reactions, so I'm posting them on my blog as a bit of a departure. I keep tellin' her she should read James Ellroy:

vegas...the big fat american money making circus in the middle of the desert. Its everything to make you forget about your regular life....gambling, food, booze, and sex...lots and lots of sex. There's enough strippers and prostitutes in vegas to kill even the most virile horse.The thing i found out about myself and going to american tourist traps...is that i'm always very underwhelmed...yet i still get wrapped up in everyone elses excitement once or twice. I ended up gambling 70 dollars american one night....in the matter of about 2 hours...it was gone. Poof, no more money. When i came down from my gambling high...i realized that 70 dollars american is enough money to buy myself a couple weeks worth of groceries...a cool pair of shoes...or a considerably dangerous night of drinking.....and yet it had flowed from my fingers so quickly...it made me nauseous. Literally. So i gathered myself up from the video slot machine and got myself to the bar next to the casino and had myself a nice stiff drink....choking down my tears ( i was on the verge of getting my period...and losing that much money is enough to make any hormonal woman cry....especially one as broke as i've been lately)anyways...i had fun mostly, when i finally stopped gambling, and just stuck to what i know best. Drinking, lounging and making fun of american tourists. didnt get laid, didnt see tom jones...didnt even see Wayne Newton...

(End of guest blog by Mel).

Ray Carney appreciation week

For the film buffs out there: Ray Carney is a film scholar and writer who is singlehandedly responsible for tracking down rare versions of John Cassavetes' Shadows and Faces, as well as writing some of the best books about Cassavetes that have ever been written, including Cassavetes on Cassavetes, which he edited. (By the way, most of these links will lead you to Carney's writings on these topics, and if you have time to spend, they're quite interesting). He's a passionate guy, as one would expect of a Cassavetes devotee. He also was badly fucked over by Criterion in the preparation of their recent Cassavetes box set, which he laboured on for months, only to have his name removed at the insistence of Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes widow, who has been pissed off at him for screening said rare versions of Cassavetes films and for resisting the attempts to sanitize and canonize the man, now that he's safely dead. I corresponded with Carney briefly, and tried to stir up some help for him in his struggles with Criterion by writing Roger Ebert (who never wrote back) and Jonathan Rosenbaum (the only result of which, aside from an e-mail response by Rosenbaum saying he didn't want to get involved, may have been the following Chicago Reader review, not written by Rosenbaum but mentioning the Criterion debacle; since Rosenbaum is the head critic at the Chicago Reader, it's reasonable to assume he was aware of this piece of writing and perhaps influenced it; Jeff Economy sounds an awful lot like a pseudonym, too, but it ain't) . Anyhow, I'm about to send Professor Carney some unsolicited money to help him in his legal struggles to keep said rare versions of Shadows and Faces out of the hands of those who would suppress them; and I'm encouraging y'all to do the same -- or at least to buy one of Professor Carney's books. (He's also written on Dreyer, Mike Leigh, and Frank Capra, and has at least one damn great title to one of his works, namely What's Wrong with Film Books, Film Courses, and Film Reviewing—And How to Do It Right -- an excerpt of which can be found here). Actually, the money I'm sending won't be enough to buy one of his lawyer's toenail clippings but it might buy a lunch (or two, if he eats cheap). Thanks for your hard work, Ray.

The Winks go to Australia

The Winks have been invited to tour Australia! They're trying to put together enough money to pay for expenses. They've set up a Paypal account for donations and there'll be a fundraisin' concert this Saturday, for those of you not going to Gang of Four (or Wolf Eyes, or Frozen Rabbit at Blim, or any o' the other Saturday shows). Godspeed Winks!

Oldboy

God, what a grim, depressing movie this is. The whole film fairly rolls around in its own darkness. I normally can enjoy dark art, but this film seems so extreme in its bleak vision of humanity that I left the theatre wondering what possible purpose it could serve. Thematically, it's ultimately similar to Memento, showing us how morally compromised we all are, how eager we think we are to learn the lessons of life and, once we've learned them, how desperate we can become to forget; there may be truth in that, but why one would want to consume it is another matter.

The story revolves around a man, Dae Soo, imprisoned in a mysterious room for 15 years for a crime he does not remember, and his attempts to investigate his own past and bring justice to the person who did this to him. "Pyrrhic" is too mild a term for his ultimate "victory," which leaves him as broken a character as I've encountered in cinema. The film is crafted well enough and rich in psychological detail, tho' it does constantly stretch credibility -- it feels like a comic book at times, which is understandable, as it was adapted from a Japanese manga for adult readers (and no, I don't mean hentai manga, though the film is more frank in its depiction of sex -- even taboo sex -- than I'd expected from Korea, since they often censor that sort of thing from foreign releases -- the homemade porn scene from Love, Actually, I'm told, was completely cut from the South Korean release). The film also contains the most disturbing, gut-churning scene that I've seen in a movie; in a way, it's more disturbing, even, than Brakhage's autopsy film, The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (which at least seems instructive, and which did not involve the filmmaker having to kill any of the people whose bodies he films): Dae Soo stumbles into a sushi bar, shortly after his release, thirsty for revenge and understanding. He tells the chef, a young woman, that he wants to eat something alive. She places a live octopus, apparently real, on his plate. She asks him if he'd like her to cut it up. He picks it up, bites the head (tentacles of the creature wriggling), and then stuffs the rest of it whole into his mouth, the tentacles squirming. I can only hope it was CGI, but I don't think so.

(People know that cruelty to animals is more acceptable in Asian countries, right? I once watched a perfectly ordinary Japanese man use meat shears to cut the legs, one by one, off a live crab, and split them open; he sucked out the meat while the crab sat on the kitchen counter, watching. He offered me some, but I declined... There are also Japanese fish dishes that involve the cutting open, cooking, etc. of live animals -- the more lively they are when they're prepared, the fresher the meat, is the theory. I mean, we have veal and that exploding goose dish to answer for, and the everyday ugliness of factory farm practice, but most people here find these things revolting, and many seek refuge in vegetarianism, while eating live things is pretty much completely culturally acceptable in Japan and vegetarianism is seen as an aberration, even among many Buddhists. I can't say about Korea -- one student did once relate a story about how her pet puppy, which she gave to the neighbors to look after, ended up in their kitchen -- but given how real the octopus looks, I expect the situation is much the same).

Oldboy is the newest major import from South Korea's rapidly developing cinema. It's already a couple of years old, there, and won honours at Cannes (I forget exactly which). I'm hoping Silmido also makes the screens here -- a North vs. South war/action film, I gather, which has been a blockbuster throughout Asia. As interesting as it is to see films of this caliber emerging from Korea, I can't enthusiastically recommend Oldboy -- it's just a bit too grim and I'm not sure it will help better anyone's life. I'm feeling my life needs some bettering lately...

Jazz Festival lineup announced

The lineup for the 2005 Vancouver International Jazz Festival has been announced. Since it's what I know and get excited about, here are some avant garde and free jazz performers coming to take note of (links take you to musical samples and descriptions):

Lol Coxhill (avant-sax)
Free Fall with Ken Vandermark (avant-clarinet)
The Marks Brothers (double bass duo feat. Mark Dresser)
Roscoe Mitchell (of the Art Ensemble of Chicago)
Phil Minton (experimental vocalist who's worked with John Zorn, Fred Frith, Paul Dutton, and more)
Louis Moholo's Dedication Orchestra (check out the wild minute long MP3 of that one!)
Evan Parker (legendary sax player who didn't actually excite me much last time I saw him, but he's a big name, so I'm including him on the list).

Tho' it's not entirely free jazz, Eric Boeren and the Bad Plus are both going to be fun to see (the latter link leads also to a sample for the Scorch Trio, who also sound promising). In terms of local music, I'll possibly check out Bernie Arai and Mike Allen, both of whom I've seen play really, really well. Brad Turner I didn't mind, either, the one time I saw him. I'm mostly not that enthusiastic about local jazz -- there are more artists I make a point of avoiding these days (having seen them play in contexts that were embarrassing, even if they weren't themselves that bad... tho' sometimes they were) than I try to see. There's a lot more life on our pop music scene than our jazz scene, it sometimes seems to me. But I don't want to run down anyone, lest I be run down by someone, so I'll leave it at that.

Death Clock

Anyone else know this site? They calculate the day and year of your death, based on a variety of factors (it's the BMI that kills me). As of today, my death is foretold as happening on Friday, December 17, 2038. Helpfully, they link to a site that teaches one how they can delay their day of death; unfortunately, it seems oriented around the consumption of longevity drugs.

The hardest Free Cell yet

29596. Have I mentioned that number before? It's a really hard Free Cell.

Battle of Algiers

Just watched Gillo Pontecorvo's film, The Battle of Algiers. One I'd highly recommend -- an essential film, and I can readily understand, finally having seen it, why the film has become so popular in recent years. The film deals with the (ultimately successful) insurgency in Algiers in the 1950s and 60s, which saw Muslims fighting the French colonial government. Though the film is obviously on the side of the insurgents, and seems to have been made as an attempt to offer hope and strength to those who would take up arms against their oppressors, it is complex and intelligently-crafted enough that it doesn't fall into the rather easy trap of demonizing the French -- which itself is no easy task, since the French used torture, which is a very difficult thing to show on screen without one identifying absolutely with its victims (consider Salo). The film has a grainy, documentary-style feel and stars non-professional actors; it's an intense and complex film experience of considerable relevance, raising questions of whether terrorism can be successful, how a government should respond to it, the legitimacy of torture, and so forth. Most interestingly, the people at Criterion -- at whom I'm still a little pissed about over their rough handling of Cassavetes scholar Ray Carney, but I guess I'll let that slide for now -- have organized some really exciting extras, including an Edward Said -narrated documentary on Pontecorvo and a special-for-this-disc interview with "former counterrorist experts" Richard A. Clarke (who I believe turns up in Fahrenheit 9/11, saying none-too-kind things about the Bush administration) and Michael A. Sheehan. Christopher Isham of ABC interviews both men, asking them their opinions of the film and the lessons its offers; what's fascinating is the extreme delicacy with which the three men approach criticising the Bush administration. They engage in this odd task of drawing lines to read between; one almost wonders if the interview was scripted in advance, since they manage to constantly imply that the US reaction to 9/11 has been heavy-handed and misguided without every directly saying as much. The care with which they speak is extremely revealing of the current political climate in the US.

Anyhow, the film is a must-watch, and its actually available at some Rogers Video locations and other large local chains. Too bad Pontecorvo has made so few films; he's approaching 90, now, so I'm guessing there'll be nothing else from him. Burn!, with Marlon Brando, is also a great film -- a new print was screened a few months ago at the Cinematheque, which, we hope, means that eventually it will come out on DVD. There's only one other film of his available in that format at present, The Wide Blue Road, about class struggles among fishermen. Sounds a little less compelling, but it's highly praised, so I guess it's one to seek out...

bill bissett to read at pulp fiction

Canadian sound poet bill bissett, who performed as part of an xcellent series of readings in Maple Ridge that my friend Liz organized, will be reading at the Main Street location of Pulp Fiction on Thursday, April 28 (2o05!) at 6 pm. bill is playful, eccentric, freer than free (tho' his books, CDs, and paintings cost money) and apparently (tho' in his 60s) is growing taller -- from 5' 11" to 6' 1" in the last couple of years. My favourite bit from the reading in Maple Ridge was a charming singsong lyric to the effect of "I don't want to suck empire/ I just want to suck you..." I liked his shaker stuff, too, tho'. Anyhow, I'll be there, and some other people prolly will be too...!

Haven't Forgotten The Winks

Okay, so I've been a bad Winks groupie lately. I missed their CBC performance and I didn't even know about Tyr's cello recital until after it happened. I might go see them play live on Saturday, tho' it's in North Vancouver and I'm a non-driver, so I'm making no promises. I'm still really fond of the Winks. Hi, Winks.

Finger Food; James Toback

...no doubt the above lame joke has surfaced elsewhere, along with various riffs about giving Wendy's the finger, but the finger story has finally gotten interesting: the woman who found the finger in the chili at Wendys in the US has "a litigious history" and, or so the story seems to imply, possibly planted the finger herself as part of a scheme to sue. She was arrested today.

If I were the head of Wendy's, I'd cash in and add a new item to the menu, so that clerks could ask, "Would you like fingers with that?"

I always liked the word finger, too. Especially as a verb. And then there's that Harvey Keitel movie. I'm kinda a minor-key James Toback fan. I'm out of touch but damn, I liked The Gambler, and there's lots in Fingers and even Exposed that I was fond of. Did anyone who knows who he is see that new one...? Does anyone else at all even follow James Toback?

Dreams of Chomsky

Yesterday's brief chat with Attila Richard Lukacs appears to have influenced an odd dream I had last night, where Noam Chomsky gave a speech and was sitting answering questions from an audience. It was also at a movie theatre and Chomsky had talked about some foreign film he admired; one of the questioners -- a former friend of mine from high school, blustery, intense, and not particularly articulate, who had once attended an event at SFU with me, wherein two people debated whether God was real, and also participated in the Q&A -- tried to accuse Chomsky of political inconsistencies as revealed by his tastes in film. The question was ridiculous and barely coherent, in fact, but it was delivered with such passion and such a conviction of the speaker's rightness that the whole audience cheered, and Chomsky, uncharacteristically, blushed and couldn't respond. I was sitting in the second row, very close to Chomsky, so I gave him a little covert thumbs-up-it's-okay signal and he grinned. I believe a child of his (but not a grown one, as I imagine his children are) was in attendance on the table next to him. I think the child was drawing pictures...

Attila Richard Lukacs at the Cinematheque

I discovered Attila Richard Lukacs (pronounced Lukash, by the way, in the Hungarian manner) on a high school field trip to the Vancouver Art Gallery. They had a mediocre touring exhibition of Dutch masters paintings -- the worst, least interesting examples of van Gogh and Rembrandt and such -- and I was wandering around, wondering what the big deal was (I didn't ever really get to appreciate art galleries until I was living outside Tokyo, which has some amazing ones). Then I stumbled onto a gigantic canvas -- I remember it as towering above me, being of truly formidable size, dominating the wall it was on -- of Henry Rollins (or so the tatoos suggested -- this was in his skinhead days, by the way), sitting naked in a cage, surrounded by cherubs, grapes, and the entrails of a disembowelled minotaur. He was looking out at the viewer impassively. This must have been during or shortly after the Young Romantics show that really got Lukacs his start. Even then, the painting floored me. Not just because, as it happened, I was a Black Flag fan -- but because of how it represented the male body, as a source of erotic power, but one hemmed in, constricted, shot through with a sort of fascism; it affected me physically, and I don't mean it gave me a hard on. Anyhow, Lukacs is in attendance at the Cinematheque tonight, for a screening of a biographical documentary about him, Drawing Out the Demons; I'll be there, assuming that the lineup doesn't stretch to Richmond.

Postscript, post-film:

So I got to ask Attila a question! He's lanky, skinny, giggly, quite full of life. I related my punk rock teenhood introduction to his work and asked about the guy with the Black Flag tattoos -- if it was a member of the band, etc.; he explained that it wasn't, that in addition to art historical references he wanted to include in his work a contemporary reference, for which tattoos were ideal. Other answers to questions from the Q&A: the stuffed German Shepherd is still in a box in storage somewhere; his paintings are back from New York and in storage on Denman Island, which required the use of the "largest ever truck" to make it to Denman; the kids in the film almost burned down his studio in Hawaii; and -- well, he had no comment to the question about who upholstered his Mom's couch, but he giggled a lot at the question. His detox time in Hawaii with a straight surfer roommate did not lead to the artist attempting to surf, we also learned; but it did inadvertently influence a series of paintings done on surfboards. Apparently it is quite cheap to fly surfboards to and from Hawaii -- they get a special rate, or such, so common they are; so he used them to send paintings back, wrapping six paintings around one surfboard, for a total of seven surfboards, saving hundreds of dollars on shipping. So now he has these surfboards and nothing else to do with them, so he's painting on them... Someone also put him through answering a question about how he felt about looking back on his crystal meth use, but the answer is what one would expect: grateful to have survived it and thankful for the support of those who helped him out. We only had ten minutes with him, though, since the Cinematheque lined up another show.

There's a whole other anecdote that I won't tell in detail; a bearded, well-dressed gay man who seemed to know Attila (and who I briefly took for the filmmaker) gave me his ticket, just as I was being turned away from the sold-out theatre. I felt a little suspicious of it -- because I'd taken him for the filmmaker, because he was giving me something for free, and because the ticket looked like it was old and wrinkled, like it might have been a year or two old. I didn't thank him as effusively as I should have, mostly because I felt like I was slinking into the theatre illegitimately; but I made it in, so -- bearded gay man, thank you! (Now I can do something else with the rest of my evening).

Good film, by the way -- intimate, perceptive, more interested in the artist than his art, but definitely an interesting show. It plays Saturday night as well, if you missed it. Maybe Attila will show up for that show, too. I suspect he kinda likes attention...

Hurt Birds

Just had my second encounter with the realm of bird rescue... My first was when I rescued a parakeet that had escaped from its owner's apartment. I was in Burnaby, on the way to SFU, when I noticed this clearly displaced bird sitting on it's owner's patio. I approached and tried to catch it. It had had its wings clipped somehow, so it was easy enough to get my hands on -- it could only fly a few feet at a time and, panicked and out of its element, eventually gave up, exhausted. It tried to bite my hand with its little hooked beak as its heart raced in its tiny chest, but eventually it accepted that it was being held and calmed down a little. I walked along the sidewalk trying to figure out what to do with it, wondering to myself what a bird in the hand was really worth. The clerks at the Seven Eleven wanted nothing to do with it, looked at me like I was insane, some guy walking around with a bird in my hand; they treated me like I might be dangerous. It made me a little angry, but as my mood blackened, I could feel the bird starting to struggle, so I tried to calm down. I tried to approach someone in the parking lot, but, appearing as I did ("he's got a bird in his hand and he seems to be containing a certain amount of anger") they rolled up their windows and drove away quickly. I finally found a guy who would listen to me ("Look, this bird needs help; we need to get it to an animal shelter or something; do you know if there is one near here?"), and he drove me to an "animal actor's" establishment, a place where some guy was training and renting animals for use in movies; he phoned the SPCA, and made a deal that if they couldn't find the owner they'd give the bird back to him. The amount of indifference and self-interest I encountered -- even the guy who gave me the ride insisted on giving me a business card and explaining that he was involved in some sort of multi-level marketing scheme -- seemed disgusting; my compassion for the bird marked me as some sort of freak, seemed to require more justification than the selfishness of the people I appealed to for help.

Well, either things have gotten better in the world, or Vancouver is markedly different from Burnaby. I was on the way to pick up a presecription (Topicort for my eczema) at Shopper's Drug Mart today when I encountered another bird -- a small, sparrow-sized creature -- that had apparently flown into their window. It was sitting, panting on the sidewalk, obviously in distress, making no move to get away. I went into the store and approached the first clerk I saw, a guy about 25, with a blonde goatee, glasses, and kind eyes.

"Hey, uhhh... This is a bit weird and has nothing to do with Shopper's Drug Mart, but there's this hurt bird on your sidewalk... I was hoping we could phone, like, an animal shelter or something?"

"Damn!" he stood up. "I am not the guy you want to tell about this sort of thing. I wish you hadn't told me. I can't take it!" He immediately started looking through the phone book. "I don't even know who to call..."

"You could call 411, ask for an animal shelter..."

"No, I'm blocked out... Uh... Let's see. The SPCA." (He started looking for a listing for the SPCA, muttering how he can't stand to see animals suffer.

"If it's any consolation," I offered, "the bird looks like it'll be allright. It's not that badly hurt... Hey, do you have a box or something we could put it in? You make the call, and I'll get the bird."

He set down the phone and speedily began lining an open cardboard box with paper towels.

"Is that for the bird?" a female clerk asked as she passed us. "Because I've got it. I'll take it to the vet up the street." She walked by with a box, bird inside.

The transaction ended there, and I went to the back of the store to pick up my scrip. On the way back, I noticed that the clerk looked markedly relieved, and was laughing with a customer. I felt like I should say something to him, but I couldn't think of what, so I left.

Shopping Blues: A Rant

Signs everywhere, shops everywhere: downtown, almost everywhere one goes there's an opportunity to spend money. To confirm your power as someone who can spend; to comfort you that however meaningless your life may be, you have the economic stature to gratify desire. Whether you buy a CD, a DVD, a piece of clothing, a slice of pizza: the comfort of it, to go in, to select what you want, to hand over cash (or slide that bit of plastic, so powerful-feeling between your fingers) and be given exactly what you ask for (and doesn't it almost always seem like you're getting a good deal?). Then back into the street to wander along until desire hits you again...

Having one of those epiphanal weeks where all the shit I own seems vaguely alien to me. Why do I need so much shit? What does any of this shit mean? Why have I spent my money on it at all? It all seems like so much distraction, a vast wall of shit that I've built up to keep me from looking at the fact that I'm almost completely morally disengaged from life. I do nothing real -- I produce product (as an ESL teacher or bookstore clerk, that is), which, sure, makes money for me and for someone else; and I consume the products of others; but what difference do I make in the world outside of being someone who buys and sells, what identity do I have as a non-consumer? Mostly with friends I'm just compulsively sharing the stuff that I buy, burning them CDs, lending them movies -- as if to validate, justify, give communal meaning and purpose to my acquisitiveness. Otherwise, what effect do I have, really? I blog, and I write, and I rant about movies with those who will listen -- I grasp for attention, howevermuch of it I can get, but what does any of it mean? What am I looking for it for? Why do I want anyone to acknowledge me -- what is it that I'm doing that's special or different or even remotely interesting?

I mean, what would I have to do in order for my life to feel meaningful? Producing art -- more product, more cries for attention? To what moral end? Helping the poor, so they can become consumers too? Pushing friends to put their own house in order, since mine is a complete disarray? What would putting my own house in order look like, exactly?

I know that I'm going to spend more money today. I've just got paid and have designs on a new pair of speakers (I don't think setting them up counts as putting my house in order, do you?). Plus there are those CDs by the Ex that I want to order (and how critical they are of our all-consuming consumerism), and that John Zorn/Eugene Chadbourne/Tom Cora collaboration I won on eBay, and that maybe-bootleg of Antonioni's Red Desert... I know how to consume for pleasure extremely well, and much of what I consume is tacitly or explicitly anti-consumption. It's still a poor substitute for meaning...

I feel a very old restlessness stirring in me, something I haven't felt for a long time, back during my period of religious fanaticism, when I alienated so many of my friends, made so many difficult but brave decisions, and ultimately changed my life a bit. Of course, I had guidance then; I'm a little shakier at the moment. But it's like I'm being given an opportunity to look at myself, to maybe do something with my condition...

...or to just distract myself and allow myself to sink back into my mediocrity. There's an element of self-mistrust here, a bit of fear; and long-standing habits of spiritual laziness.

Strange days. But now if you'll excuse me I've got to go see how much money I have in the bank. It's payday, after all.

Requia for God and Satan

As I promised, "the next time I'm stoned..." Tho' I been drinkin', too.

(Actually, I did this exercise with my ESL students today -- it's a bit daring -- where I encourage them to ask me personal questions. It's one of those rare opportunities for exhibitionism and excessive communication -- two staples of my psychological diet -- that is actually written into the course material, so that if I ever get in trouble for it, I can point directly to the materials I've been given and say, "Look! Here it is!" ...unlike, say, the zombie movie clips, Abu Ghraib torture photos, and lessons on Rodney King, Ice-T, and "Cop Killer" that I also sometimes bring into the class, I mean I wanna keep it interesting... Anyhow, the students are taught phrases that facilitate asking personal questions -- empowering them to pry, featuring such favourites as "can I ask a personal question" and "I hope you don't mind my asking, but, uhh..." This one brave girl -- was it Sayaka, Yuko, or Haruka? They're all short, apple cheeked, straight-haired, painfully cute-and-innocent looking Japanese girls in their early 20's, so I sometimes, uh, get these three confused, true to the cliche -- asked me if I'd ever done drugs. I told her that I'd done plenty in my 20's; I lied outright when they asked if I was still doing them now and couched it all in Comforting Cultural Generalization #67, that it's very common here. But really, they got to practice their "personal questions" phrases, so who gives a damn whether I gave them the 100% real deal or not -- they couldn't take the real deal).

I get to thinking about Satan lately (I'm listening to Einsturzende Neubauten as I type this, to briefly tip me hat). Is Satan a useful concept? I mean, imagine how productive He used to be. (...there's a screenplay idea, God and Satan applying for unemployment benefits). The idea that the more trivial, base, unhealthy, unwholesome, corrupted influences in ourselves could be the product of an evil half of our nature, a prideful half that rejects God's "authority," as externalized and made comfortingly other (with Satan's pride as our pride, him a symbol and figure for our own rebellious nature)... Identification (as with a character in a movie) has a role in religious text as well; Satan's fall and condemnation are all elements in our own psyches, and hell is internal... It's all internal, it all happens in our mind as we read the text: we can't but find ourselves in it. And isn't it useful to have a Satan, that we can make scapegoat and representative of our own basest, coarsest impulses?

How, drunk and stoned, does Satan figure into my night, then? If I were to force a reading him into my night, Satan is present:

a) in my getting stoned and drunk in the first place
b) in my fat belly, product of indulgence
c) in my decadent, unnecessarily entertaining CD and DVD library
d) in the content of much of my library, as well as in the very size of it
e) in the porn by my bed and the tingle in my cock
f) in the momentary respite from all cares that I am perceiving
g) in the despair that temporarily is informing it
h) in the indifference to all others beyond this room that I presently feel, this selfish self-pitying self-indulgence
i) in the music of Einsturzende Neubauten, too (currently playing "Selfportrait with Alcohol).

Hey: didja know, the "new buildings" referred to in the Neubauten name are actually an architectural style, a sort of modernist human-storage-unit style popular in the 1960's, I think it was? So it's not just any new buildings that are collapsing, but those built at a certain time and period; inside Germany the name has a reference we generally miss here. Thanks to G42 frontman Dan for the explanation. Watch these pages for news of a G42 gig.

Actually, it may be awhile, I'm just trying to put some pressure on.

I like this song for the line (now playing), "Life on other planets is difficult." But then, I'm in a relationship at the moment.

P.

Skull Bong

A 17 year old has been arrested for stealing a skull, allegedly planning to make some sort of water pipe out of it.

I'd like to see what this kid puts together for school science projects...

Rushdie on the US, Attila Richard Lukacs

Salman Rushdie on how US unilateralism aids international terrorism.

Culture consumed this week: Kira Muratova, Borodin Quartet, Nurse with Wound, New Model Army. Highlight of the upcoming weekend: Attila Richard Lukacs will be in attendance at the Cinematheque's Friday screening of the film about him, Drawing out the Demons.

Life and work continue to make much blogging difficult. Next time I smoke pot, I promise...

Bird with Big Feet

Okay, so it's not that inspired a posting, but check out the feet on this bird!

Nomeansno gig coming up!

Well, a combination of personal issues, other writing projects getting underway, and a busy work schedule have kept me from blogging much, but I thought I'd mention that there'll be a Nomeansno gig soon. From the Georgia Straight:

NOMEANSNO: Legendary punk-prog trio performs an all-ages show to celebrate its 25th anniversary, with guests Removal and the Feminists. May 11, 8 pm, Mesa Luna (1926 W. Broadway). Tix $12 (plus service charge) at Zulu, Scratch, Noize, and Red Cat Records, info 604-733-5862.

Also exciting: the Gang of Four play in May, and cellist Erik Friedlander.

What else can I write during the remainder of my lunch break...? Actually, I'd rather take a walk for fifteen minutes, while the sun is shining. Sorry!

The End of Academic Freedom

A bill is being passed in the US whereby students can sue professors for not teaching them what they want to be taught, not respecting the students' own opinions, and... actually, I feel too dazed by this and life in general this week to comment. The planet is insane and I'm no better. I need a good night's sleep.

Jandek to Play Another Live Gig!

If anyone has a whole lot of money and wants to fly me to England to see Jandek play live on May 22nd, I will gladly assent to give up my self-determination on non-working nights and serve as their slave for the next year; please do contact me with specific terms.

I guess he enjoyed playing the Glasgow gig!

Feeding Tube Blues

You know, I've been idly following all the rather predatory media hype over Terry Schiavo and her feeding tube, and I have to put in my own two cents here: the "liberal left" (which I consider myself more or less a part of) is fucking up. Or perhaps it's the American judiciary. Something grotesque is happening here, and it's going to do nothing to bring the American right -- drifting into an hysterical, militant Christianity -- back towards sanity, or to aid the cause of people who believe in the "right to die." How can anything good come from this at all? Terry Schiavo is a day or two away from full fledged martyrdom, and her death is going to turn into a cause for mourning and grief for a good percentage of the United States -- mostly the same people who voted for Bush. Nevermind whether Terry Schiavo would want to continue to stay alive in these circumstances; if she was a decent, intelligent person, she wouldn't want to be turned into another victory for the Bush people, another tool they could use to convince the electorate that the Republican party represent them. Something singularly cruel is being done to this woman's parents, too. It's a rather heartless spectacle, depressing all around, not aided by the fact that the most frequently circulated photograph of Schiavo shows someone who apparently is capable of emotion, care, recognition, and probably some form of thought. What the fuck is wrong with the United States, anyhow? I don't understand.

Spielberg and Cloning

...I just rewatched the sequel to Jurassic Park this weekend. It's my "favourite" Steven Spielberg film; it seems his most misanthropic -- you genuinely want to see some characters get eaten -- and in a way it most perfectly embodies the contradictions of his work, overtly praising and celebrating the family and human emotional integrity while at the same time being ruthlessly manipulative to the point of heartlessness. It seems his most auteur-like film, the most essential distillation of what he's doing -- basically a Jaws remake, but much, much more revealing (however unintentionally) of the true nature of his work. Plus there are some wonderfully fun little details. The video store poster for Arnold Schwarzenegger as King Lear is as hilarious a jab at Hollywood as I've seen (screen capture on this page, if you scroll down). I wonder if Spielberg is self-hating enough to have the mock-up identify the movie as "a Steven Spielberg film"...? Also, the cut from the mother screaming to Jeff Goldblum yawning, early in the film, somehow merits some sort of respect, makes Spielberg worthy of inclusion in the filmic fraternity sometimes referred to as "the cinema of cruelty." And what can I say, I like Pete Postlethwaite, and I admire the blatant Gorgo ripoff (sometimes ripoffs can induce a feeling of intimacy with the thief in charge). Anyhow, here's some fun trivia about the film.

But that's not what I was blogging about -- I just happened to bump into a couple of interesting links on articles on cloning. Russian scientists are apparently gearing up to clone a mammoth; and organic matter, tho' nothing likely to have DNA, has possibly been found inside a tyrannosaurus skeleton (does anyone else out there find the shortened moniker "T-rex" to be kind of offensive, a tacit admission that no one can spell?). On the heels of a viewing of The Lost World, it was kind of neat to read these stories.

I really should write something about the Jurassic Park films... The first two, anyhow. They're fascinating.

On the Simulacra of Ikea

Hey, I never noticed this before: the TVs, stereos, VCRs, and so forth in the Ikea showrooms, illustrating how their various TV stands and cabinets look when occupied, are all fakes -- empty plastic shells, props. You can pick them up, shake them -- they're hollow. The wine bottles in the wine racks are all sealed, corked, and empty -- there was never wine in them, I guess. I found this quite odd and interesting. Somewhere there's a company manufacturing these things...

Checking in with Iraq

Nothing to say on the matter, but here's a useful summation on the current situation in Iraq.

Hank Williams vs. Nurse with Wound

My upstairs neighbour is blasting the Hank Williams again.

Understand: there's something I really like about the idea of listening to Hank Williams through the ceiling of my apartment (aka my upstairs neighbour's floor). Not just the idea of it, not just its creation of a pleasantly basement-below-the-honky-tonk environs, which I admit has some sorta folksy conceptual appeal; but rather, because there's something about the intervening floor/ceiling's set of filters and baffles and mutes that quite improves the sound quality, bends and softens and spreads it out in a kind of interesting way. If I close my eyes and listen I can make it do interesting things in my brain. Hell, it's so good that the next time I feel like listening to Hank Williams -- and do realize that I sometimes do and can sing the whole damn lyric to "Lost Highway," and not because I have a passing regard for Jeff Buckley or Townes van Zandt or someone else who might've covered it -- I may just go upstairs and ask my neighbour to put some on. I might even buy him or her something a bit more interesting than his Greatest Hits for Christmas -- maybe they'll take the hint, if I leave a note, "If I have a choice, I like this one better. Fondly, the guy downstairs" -- maybe something with "I Heard My Mother Praying For Me," say. I could get him/her American Music by Johnny Cash, too, which, again, I find more appealing than interminable repetitions of "Ring of Fire" and "I Walk the Line." Hell, maybe I'll buy them some Woody Guthrie and the Smithsonian Fucking Folkways Classic Mountain Music compilation, while I'm at it -- I'm getting to know their tastes pretty well and they just might dig it. The key, though, really, about being able to appreciate this kind of music, is that listening to it must be VOLUNTARY.

Right now, I'd really rather be listening to Nurse with Wound. Finally bought (rather than request a burn of or download) my first one this week (yes, I know, I'm way late, I came late to Zoviet France, too). It's Drunk with the Old Man of the Mountains. "Swamp Rat" is definitely a keeper. Put the headphones on and turned it up quite a bit and was able briefly to not hear the Hank Williams competing with it. Oh, but here's "Jambalaya!" My father used to always sing this one... Hell, he still may sometimes. And that mean’s “Kaw-liga” is next…

Buying Furniture off the Homeless

...so there I am, sitting in my buddy's car, parked in the alley behind my building. I have my pipe in my pocket and a nicely oddened mind, which is being entertained by his interminable struggles to secure something like decent customer service from the head offices of Fido (a tale fraught with many troubles, for which we have arrived at the tentative title of "Bitten by Fido;" but it's not a tale I intend to tell tonight). I imagine that in a normal state of mind I would be more impatient to get on with my evening, since I have to hear him explain his situation several times over, as the stalwart phone people (who can do nothing themselves but talk) find new and creative ways to refuse to let him speak to their supervisors (who could actually resolve the situation). Stoned, this steadfast resistance on the part of the phone reps, and my friend's dogged insistence on negotiating the obstacles they place in his way, begin to form into somewhat of an epic narrative, with dramatic tension provided by the various unresolved questions that arise as I listen, like whether my buddy will lose his cool, flip out, and start screaming; if the phone people will actually ever just hang up on him if he continues to press his point; if they will, if he remains determined and civil, ever provide him with anything like satisfaction; and if so, how much work exactly it will take on his part. It's fascinating to see a wealthy corporation protect itself so adamantly from dealing with the customers it allegedly is serving. I sit and listen for half an hour or more before my mind starts to wander.

Looking out the windshield, I notice a homeless guy dragging some furniture down the alley. He's got a 8"X4" sheet of some sort of wood and a large-backed chair with ripped grey upholstery that he's juggling, shifting about, dragging, picking up, dropping. Clearly he's just dragged these from a dumpster. I gather these guys prefer to be called "binners," that "dumpster diver" is politically incorrect (perhaps because it suggests jollity and sport, rather than a grim struggle for survival; "binner" has more dignity, I guess). My first thought is that the guy is having a bitch of a time, and I observe his efforts rather neutrally, as one might watch an ant dragging a dead beetle along the sidewalk, feeling, if anything, only an idle admiration for its gumption, when I realize that I've been intending to buy another chair for my apartment for quite some time, in case guests come over. This chair looks potentially comfortable enough for someone to sit and watch a film in, say, while being slim and small enough to fit in my bachelor pad; plus I imagine I can get a fairly good deal on it. My final thought is the first and only marginally altruistic one that flashes through my mind, offered as justification for spending money: I'll be sparing said binner from his labours, doing him a good turn. We're just behind my building, after all; it's easier for me to carry it to my place than for him to carry it to... wherever exactly he's carrying it. His doorway, his stash, his niche in another alley.

I get out of the car. He has just lost control of the sheet and the chair and half-toppled over with them, cursing. He is covered in grime, appears to be in his early 40's, and has dark facial hair and a wiry build. His first glance at me conveys suspicion and fear.

"Hey, buddy, are you planning on selling that thing?" I say, indicating the chair, and his face immediately flushes with relief.

"You bet!"

"How much do you want for it?"

"Anything you want to give me!"

Well, he's clearly not much of a capitalist, but I figure a shop might offer him five bucks for it. I offer him seven, and he takes it, grinning. He explains that the plywood is for a buddy who is building something, and lets me know -- nice guy! -- that there's an easy chair down the alley, too, in case I want it. I consider it. Somehow, the idea of liberating furniture from the garbage myself seems less legitimate, more of an indignity, than buying it off a binner; by his claiming it and dragging it down the alley, by the sweat of his labour, he has transformed it from garbage to commodity, whereas for me to take a chair from the garbage myself... it would remain garbage.

I briefly meditate on this as he drags his plywood out of the way of an oncoming car. As we prepare to part, he presents me with a blackened fist, raised in some sort of apparent handshakelike gesture of completion. I don't know what to do with it, though. Do I punch it, knuckles to knuckles? I look at my own hand in obvious confusion and then briefly place my open hand over his fist.

Sensing my confusion, he explains, "I do it like this because you don't know where my hand has been."

This strikes me for a moment, and then I shoulder the chair and begin to haul it towards the back door of my building.

"It cuts off your circulation," he calls. "Be careful." He continues on his way with the sheet of wood.

"It's okay, I live right here," I say. I feel a bit guilty about that, afterwards -- like maybe he might feel a flicker of resentment at being reminded that of the two of us, I'll be sleeping indoors tonight. But probably he was just happy to have gotten rid of the chair and made a bit of cash...

When I get back downstairs, chair safely in my apartment (where I pause to take another hit off my pipe) my friend is still on the phone with Fido. I meditate on all these hierarchies we're implicated in, hierarchies of wealth, of power. How we tend to concentrate so much more on the shit that flows down on us from above, the injustices and inequities that we are the victims of, rather than the shit that flows out from behind us, and the effect it has on those even lower in the chain, spattered with it, rummaging through the stuff we throw away.

It's not a bad chair, anyhow. Wonder how the rest of his night went...

Black Fucking Mountain, Man; plus Thoreau

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. What a show, folks.

The aggressive bouncers of Richards on Richards finally cleared the place around 1:30 AM, while my guitarist buddy networked with the Black Mountain keyboard player, trying to make connections. My interaction with the keyboard player, one Jeremy Schmidt, when I stumbled up, went like this:

Me: I really liked what you were doing, man. Some really nice textures in there. It kept being the instrument that I stood out and noticed...

Jeremy: Thanks!

Me: Do you guys listen to the Acid Mothers Temple a lot?

Jeremy: I sure do!

We went on to talk about AMT's last Seattle gig, which I missed; Kinski, tonight's first opening act, were apparently there, as well. The conversation confirmed, as if the music still left anything that required confirmation, that these guys are onto some very cool stuff. A heavier, more melancholy, more jam-oriented atmosphere infused much of tonight's set than one would necessarily have expected from the CD, but that, for me, was a very very good thing. Everything that I really like about their recording was augmented, and there was lots of space opened up for creating swirling, druggy soundscapes (hence the question). The band have a definite we-don't-care-how-we-look ambience that may restrict their, uh, marketability, but maybe that's the point -- and who doesn't want to jam their middle finger up the market's ass, these days?

But it's 2 AM and I gotta work in the morning. And on that topic, check out this Thoreau quote, folks:

...the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he
cannot afford to sustain the manilest relations to men; his labor would be
depreciated in the market. He has no time to be any thing but a machine. How can
he remember well his ignorance -- which his growth requires -- who has so often
to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and
recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him...

Reading it for the second time tonight, a bit twisted, I rebelled against something that I felt was somewhat classist in this sentiment, some presumption that workers are less cultured or such, which I hadn't noticed before; but I kept coming back to the one sentence, "How can he remember well his ignorance -- which his growth requires -- who has to so often use his knowledge?" That's my life in a nutshell, folks. I have no time or energy to really open myself up, to attain humility, to remember how ignorant I am; I have to play expert all goddamn day. I don't know very much about life at all -- except that as long as I have to work full time, this condition will not change much. To even lie back, exhale, and take the time to connect to my situation emotionally -- to ask myself where I am, let alone how I feel about it -- seems a luxury.

Ah, work. At one point, the bassist for Black Mountain stepped up to the mike to suggest that they'd play the encore we were demanding, but we were the ones "who had to work in the morning." I shouted in reply: "Fuck work!" I may be eating those words, oh, about five hours from now, but sometimes one needs to rebel just a little, even if in thoroughly harmless ways.

Please God, make the hangover mild.

To my audience: GO SEE BLACK MOUNTAIN.

Post Script: well, as God would have it, I had to duck out of class once my students were working on a grammar exercise to lock myself in the staff toilet and vomit. It's now 4:20 in the afternoon and I still have a mild headache, and I think I'm about to have another bout of diarrhea (one of the very few words the correct spelling of which remains a constant issue for me). Unless they noticed how red my eyes are and said nothing, tho', I think I passed for a sober, functional ESL teacher today. What does not kill me makes me... well, kind of tired and sore, in this instance. I will survive.

Work Sucks (on a) Black Mountain (in a) Cow Freakshow

Ah. I like my job, really, except lately I have this new class I have to prepare materials for, which is sapping most of my energy for doing other things, like drinking, smoking pot, going to concerts, watching movies, and, most significantly, writing. It's been awhile since I've had the time/energy/inspriration to write anything substantial at all -- even my blog is suffering. I'll try to make time to write about tonight's Black Mountain gig at Richards on Richards (a cause of some excitement, thus far; I've never seen Mr. McBean perform live, under any alias). Meantime I just have to try to keep people amused here however I can, noting whatever trivial amusements I encounter in my cyberschelppings.

So here's an article about the world's first recorded cow freakshow. What can I say, it amuses me.

John Lurie website developments

Well, here's some news. John Lurie, erstwhile leader of the Lounge Lizards and soprano sax player, has removed the "tour" section from his rather infrequently updated website, Strange and Beautiful, and replaced it with an "art" section. For the last five years, anyone visiting his site has seen an announcement that "John will be taking a hiatus from music while he works on a book," supposedly entitled What do you Know about Music, you're not a Lawyer. The "live archive" only stood as a reminder of how long it had been since Lurie and co. had performed -- not since 1999. Over the last few years, while dealing with (apparently) a period of illness and deep disillusionment with the music business, and whilst doing some work acting -- on the series Oz, I hear, for one, tho' I've never seen any of his work there -- Lurie has been busy reinventing himself as a painter. Don van Vliet he's not, but his paintings are still rather pleasing, and make for amusing temporary desktops. I still am fondest of the "One Bird Wants to Fuck Two Snakes; Snakes are Appalled" painting that graced the cover of the Lounge Lizards final (?) recordings, Queen of All Ears, but it's fun perusing Mr. Lurie's art. Pardon me if I don't try to say anything particularly articulate about it.

By the way, the story goes that when Lurie was founding Strange and Beautiful as a label, he considered naming his company "I'm naked," so his employees, when answering the phone, would have to say "Hello, I'm naked." Haw.

Homosexual Duck Necrophilia on the Internet

The Fortean Times just provided me a link to a Guardian article on duck necrophilia. What interests me is that I saw the original some months ago: there's a PDF file out there on homosexual duck necrophilia -- probably the most fun phrase I've ever entered into a search engine. I wonder if someone was just surfing the web, bumped into this particular story, and decided to make a news report out of it...? Kinda like I'm doing now. When news is news...

By the way, animal necrophilia has been made illegal in Oregon, though assumedly the law is not designed for ducks.

Another Really Hard Free Cell

23424. Sheesh.

One Small Step for a Blogger; Happy Birthday to Me

I turned 37 today. Crank up "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan," someone, willya?

Also: a blogger was admitted to an official White House press briefing this week. Does this mean I'm a member of the press, too? How can I get perks out of this, I wonder...?

Fantomas vs. Naked City

With apologies to Mike Patton, I just listened to the first Fantomas album back to back with Naked City's Torture Garden today, and you know what? I don't think I'll ever bother with the first Fantomas album again; why would I, when I can just listen to Torture Garden? It's amazing how much better that album is -- nothin' to do with issues of authenticity or originality or anything; it's just flat-out more musically exciting.

I'll still listen to Fantomas' Director's Cut disc, though... another matter entirely. Actually, I think I'll spin it now.

See y'all at tomorrow's Bukowski movie at the Ridge.

Synaesthesia

I remember well from my acidhead days the way sounds had colour and taste equivalents; browsing for interesting reading as per my morning rituals, I have encountered the story of a 27-year-old woman who has this ability in spades (without chewing up little bits of paper, apparently). How fortunate she seems to me! Someone should come up with a designer drug that does nothing but enhance one's experience of synaesthesia -- put me down for a hundred lot.

Dog Dreams, Dog Suicides, plus Reverse Culture Shock

I dreamed of dogs last night. The narrative was unclear, but I was going through doors and alleyways, trying to get somewhere important, when I was surrounded by dogs -- all of them very friendly, nuzzling me, licking me, wanting my attention. All big, confident, intelligent-seeming dogs -- just the kind of dog I'm fond of. I remember feeling a bit of fear at being surrounded by so many, and gratitude that they were all so nice to be around. I delayed myself, held up the person I was with, because I was having so much fun saying hi to the dogs.

Browsing the Fortean Times this morning, then, looking for interesting headlines, this story caught my eye, of a bridge in Glasgow where five (unrelated) dogs have apparently leaped to their death. It's all quite mysterious... Why would dogs kill themselves, and why at this particular spot?

Hey, if anyone reads this: overseas correspondent Jetbert is considering a return to Vancouver. What should he be ready for when he gets back here, after years of teaching in Japan? How can we help soften the transition? What Vancouver news does he need to know? I've already told him that Gordon Campbell is probably on the way out and reminded him that he should get here for the jazz and film festivals... and that parking is a bitch downtown. What else?

Corpse Art Factory

One wonders if this guy (one Gunther von Hagens) , who makes art out of plasticized corpse bits, has any friends among the Viennese Aktionists (whose performances often involved ritualistic use of steaming animal organs, blood, and such)?

It's probably just as well that I'm not that interested in these matters, tho' it's oddly pleasing to know that it's going on out there, somehow.

DDT linked to Frog Hermaphroditism

Frog mutations interest me, what can I say?