Friday, March 12, 2004

Underwater Times is just what it says! thanks as always to the mighty Metafilter
body in my neighbourhood goes undiscovered for 3 years: "Gyger had watched since the spring of 2001 as the high plywood fence around Ekonomides' bramble-covered land weathered and greyed. He'd noticed the gate never opened any more, and that the Ford pickup truck and Lincoln Continental inside the compound were caked with mould."

Thursday, March 11, 2004

Lost Brooklyn
Al Qaeda bombed Madrid trains, claims email
Terry Southern reports from the 1968 Democratic Convention (thanks ::: wood s lot ::: )

"I wonder what can be in the mind of a politician," someone mused. Seaver translated it for Genet, but he was not intrigued. "I wonder," he said, staring at the dashboard of the Ford car we were in, "what can be in the mind of someone who names an automobile Galaxie?"
Scores die in Madrid bomb carnage:
"The Basque regional president, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, stressed that Eta does not represent the Basque people.
'When Eta attacks, the Basque heart breaks into a thousand pieces,' he said. "

Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Film Comment: Joseph Losey
blissbog hits a nerve on "record collection aesthetics":

"Sonically, it's a movement that isn't really moving: people scrabble around to shuffle together some fresh-seeming (meaning slightly-less-stale) combination of established elements from the last 20 years of electronic dance music's rich history(probably the most disheartening dance experience last year for me was watching Luke Vibert live dusting off the 303 again--acieeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzz). With all the period sounds being juggled and obscure archival sources coming in and out of favour, it's at the point of there being a 'record collection dance' just like there's been 'record collection rock' since the Jesus & Mary Chain. Retro-Dance to match Matt's Retro-Rock TM. (For what it's worth, I think electronic non-dance is probably in even less impressive shape--when was the last really head-rearranging new sound to come out of IDM?). "
Sub-Masters at the Anthology "Trippy fact-fiction remixes, Baldwin's movies play with history by plundering the celluloid dumpsters of decades past, and embracing seemingly outre frameworks for understanding existence and power: Spectres of the Spectrum (1999) grooves on fringe science; Sonic Outlaws (1995) documents copyright fighters Negativland via Baldwin's own poaching from The Wizard of Oz; and Tribulation 99 (1992) links alien invasion to American meddling in Latin America. Each took years to make; Baldwin begins from massive accumulations of ideas and footage around a central topic, then whittles down his materials into episodic collages of sound and image. 'My movies are very much like pulp serials,' Baldwin notes, 'because there's cheap special effects, starts and stops, graphic interludes, and no pretense to realism.' "
for the Vinegar Hill demographic, The Note's take on what Kerry can learn and not learn from Dean

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

"Unknown Soldier" Speaks Out To Bring Troops Home :

"What did you think about President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Iraq?

--I was there when President Bush came to the [Baghdad] airport. The day before, you had to fill out a questionnaire and answer questions, that would determine whether they would allow you in the room with the President.

What was on the questionnaire?

--"Do you support the president?"

Really!

--Yes.

Members of the military were asked whether they support the president politically?

--Yes. And if the answer was not a gung-ho, A-1, 100 percent yes, then you were not allowed into the cafeteria. You were not allowed to eat the Thanksgiving meal that day. You had an MRE."
More on Arthur Russell

"It sounds balmy but provisional, with its cheap synths and half-swallowed guide vocals. Russell's singing always seemed to be mostly for his own enjoyment (when it creeps into 'Is It All Over My Face,' late in the song, the effect is like Glenn Gould humming along with The Goldberg Variations), but hearing it here almost feels like eavesdropping. 'Wild Combination' and 'Arm Around You' could have been demos for much-better singers' pop-soul hits around 1985--but we don't have those hits; we only have these sketches, thin with erasures and additions and re-erasures. Sometimes there's nothing more to them than a pitter-patter drum machine, a fluttering keyboard, Russell's tentative murmur. It's imperfect. Live with it. "

Russell is a terrific singer though--his "half-swallowed guide vocals" closer to John Martyn than Glenn Gould.
Not Coming To a Theatre Near You terrific movie site (via Metafilter)
more Julianne Swartz, w/ more little Quicktime movies
excellent site (with movies!) of NYC artist Julianne Swartz --I was luckily able to live among her work for a week while staying with Lee Ann in Williamsburg a couple of years ago.
Happy birthday Ornette! (flash)
sad to hear about the passing of Paul Winfield but good to see a recognition of his moving and memorable performance in the underrated Mike's Murder
lovely images of The Art of Reading, including the Virgin Mary reading to the toddler Jesus. Made me think of Mina, who's been photographing & painting everyone reading her worn-out & yellow post-it buntinged Penguin "Capital".
no looking at this until you try the quiz below--
Peter Quartermain posts some Basque Zukofsky on the Poetics list--

"Zatoz itzal, zatoz, eta jaso itzal hau gora,
Zatoz itzal itzal, zatoz eta jaso hau gora,
Zatoz, itzal, zatoz, eta jaso itzal hau gora,
Zatoz, zatoz itzal, eta jaso itzal hau gora,
Zatoz, zatoz eta itzal, jaso itzal hau gora,
Zatoz, gora, zatoz itzal eta jaso itzal hau,
Eta gora, zatoz, jaso itzal, zatoz itzal hau,
Eta gora, zatoz, zatoz itzal, jaso itzal hau,
Eta zatoz itzal, zatoz gora, jaso itzal hau,
Zatoz gora, zatoz hau itzal, eta jaso itzal,
Gora, hau itzal, zatoz eta jaso itzal, zatoz
Hau itzal, jaso eta zatoz gora itzal, zatoz
Jaso eta zatoz, itzal, zatoz gora, hau itzal,
Gora, zatoz eta jaso itzal, zatoz itzal hau,
Zatoz gora, jaso itzal, eta zatoz itzal hau,
Zatoz eta jaso itzal, zatoz itzal hau gora,
Itzal, itzal zatoz, zatoz eta jaso hau gora,
Zatoz, itzal, jaso, eta zatoz itzal hau, gora,
Zatoz itzal, zatoz, eta jaso itzal hau gora,
Zatoz, itzal, zatoz, eta jaso itzal hau gora."
Audrey Brown & much more at <$Xvarenah$>:

"'What were his thoughts, as in the meagre room
Poured full of waning lilac-silver air,
He strove to cheat the velvet-fall of gloom?
What were his thoughts, as she, her glowing hair
Latticed with trembling pearls, her joyous feet
Buckled and shod with gold,
Trod cream-whitre marble nine good centuries old?'"

Monday, March 08, 2004

thanks ::: wood's lot for Colin Piquette's "The Haiti Coup Coalition"

"It looks like Paul Martin is already putting his mark on foreign affairs, with a shameful pandering to America in this. It was interesting to watch the hesitation in Foreign Affairs as the old hands working to save democracy in Haiti got the rug pulled out from under them by what Jamaica is already calling 'new Canadians' - not meant to imply an improved version. I guess the business at any price types in the Liberal party have finally gotten their way."
Jacket 25 - Leo Edelstein reviews "Memoir 1960-63" and "Nine Immaterial Nocturnes" by Tony Towle:

" Hudson and Worth

As the car alarms disconcertingly
respond to each other's pitch
I look down the former Anthony Street,
a former Anthony myself, where the moon
is full on the ears of Leon the donkey
and the hibiscus tree remains untamed
but picturesque and leaning a little forward
as if to peek between the curtains to the asphalt below
where a diagram of the 1943 Battle of Kursk has been laid out
in myriad notations of red and orange.
Notice the arrows near the parking lot. They
are Rossokovsky's T-34's, which will pierce the German salient.
At sunrise, faculty from the military college
will utilize jackhammers to simulate the clamor of battle
and trace the route of the attack. We ruminate in our bunkers
until the lesson is complete."
Polls Show Electoral Map Favoring Kerry
MONTAGUE TERRACE
Scott Walker

Sunday, March 07, 2004

A 'Shocking' Stumble

"Another less-publicized aspect of the ad flap: the use of paid actors--including two playing firefighters with fire hats and uniforms in what looks like a fire station. 'Where the hell did they get those guys?' cracked Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, which has endorsed John Kerry, when he first saw the ads. (A union spokesman said the shots prompted jokes that the fire hats looked like the plastic hats 'from a birthday party.') 'There's many reasons not to use real firemen,' retorted one Bush media adviser. 'Mainly, its cheaper and quicker.'"
The Surrealist Compliment Generator
Haiti in perspective - CBC's Counterspin
Franz Kafka Selected Shorter Writings fine translations of a Nanaimo teacher
Bonzo and George Studdy
Ginger Geezer
Nostalghia