The Online Film Critics Society's "Top 100 Overlooked Films of the 1990s" this is pretty good

warm review of the Joe Brainard memoir and the James Schuyler letters--

"Dear Americans, love, The Perkins Rose People. Dear Prisoner in a Chinese Laundry, love, Josette Day. Dear Kewpie, Ever-thine, Hilton Kramer. Engel, love, Bettina. Dear Glen Tetley, love, Pachita Crespi. Dear Lad of Sunnybrook Farm, love, Fran Hagood, Ye Ed. Dear Purvis, Love, The Hookers of Kew. Dear Hosty with the Mosty, love (Mrs) Birdsey Youngs. Dear Tempest Storm, love, Norma Vincent Peel. Dear Rich Freeze-Dried Coffee Chunks, love, Stubborn Stains." 

Torture and Truth

"It’s become a kind of cliché that, if in the struggle against terror, we forget our values, the terrorists will have been victorious. My question is, what do we mean by this? What exactly would constitute our having lost this battle and making changes in the way we live and our attitudes towards human rights and civil liberties that would actually constitute a kind of defeat? It’s hard to think of something more obvious than American troops and American intelligence officers torturing prisoners. And doing it not only as an act of desperation in the field, but doing it as a matter of policy which has been developed at the highest level of the administration. My question is, when we say the terrorists cause us to dispense with our values -- our belief in human rights, our adherence to laws we have passed that commit the U.S. not to torture -- if we have abrogated those, doesn’t that constitute the victory of the other side that we talk about? And if it doesn’t, what is the line you have to cross so that it does? "

hearing Tami Lynn's "I'm Gonna Run Away From You" for the firtst time since then brought back the glories of the UK chart for July 1971 into sharp relief--I tend to forget how different the British charts still were in those days...John Kongos! Slade! Jim Reeves! Hurricane Smith! Herman covering Bowie!--

UK Top 40 Hits of July 1971
1 Middle Of The Road Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep
2 T Rex Get It On
3 Sweet Co-Co
4 Hurricane Smith Don't Let It Die
5 Lobo Me And You And A Dog Named Boo
6 Greyhound Black And White
7 Blue Mink Banner Man
8 Dave & Ansil Collins Monkey Spanner
9 New World Tom-Tom Turnaround
10 John Kongos He's Gonna Step On You Again
11 Temptations Just My Imagination
12 Tami Lynn I'm Gonna Run Away From You
13 Supremes & Four Tops River Deep, Mountain High
14 Bob & Marcia Pied Piper
15 Tony Christie I Did What I Did For Maria
16 White Plains When You Are A King
17 Move Tonight
18 New Seekers Never Ending Song Of Love
19 Smokey Robinson & The Miracles I Don't Blame You At All
20 St Cecilia Leap Up And Down (Wave Your Knickers In The Air)
21 Mungo Jerry Lady Rose
22 Atomic Rooster Devil's Answer
23 Dawn Knock Three Times
24 Rolling Stones Street Fighting Man
25 Medicine Head (And The) Pictures In The Sky
26 Delfonics La-La Means I Love You
27 Who Won't Get Fooled Again
28 Slade Get Down And Get With It
29 Elgins Heaven Must Have Sent You
30 Gordon Lightfoot If You Could Read My Mind
31 Family In My Own Time
32 Jim Reeves I Love You Because / He'll Have To Go / Moonlight And Roses
33 Bob Dylan Watching The River Flow
34 Neil Diamond I Am ... I Said
35 Fascinations Girls Are Out To Get You
36 Diana Ross I'm Still Waiting
37 Judy Collins Amazing Grace
38 Elvis Presley Rags To Riches
39 Elvis Presley Heartbreak Hotel / Hound Dog
40 Peter Noone Oh You Pretty Thing  

interesting book round-up from Jed Perl features Rothko, Levertov & Duncan, Schuyler, Berkson...

visualisation of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" (thanks Metafilter) 

Smug Canada

"The rush to make comparisons sometimes prevents meaningful examination of the very real problems that Canada faces. As a Canadian social advocate once told me, when her compatriots look at their own societal problems, they are often satisfied once they can reassure themselves that they're better off than the United States. As long as there's still more homelessness, racism and income inequality to the south, Canadians can continue to rest easy in their moral superiority."

listening to the ambient folk (?) of Argentina's Juana Molina 

preview of a graphic novel about Thomas de Quincey (Thanks Bookslut) 

"Wise Man" (Mexico) from this Advent Calendar

"Featuring daily meditations and pieces from the creche exhibit at Washington National Cathedral." 

Carla Bley article/interview--

"Q. You started playing at an early age, didn't you?

Carla: At three.

Q. Church music?

Carla: Yeah. One of the first songs I did was "This Little Light of Mine." I would go around afterwards, collecting coins.

Q. Your parents encouraged you?

Carla: I had no choice. They gave me the cup and taught me how to play "Three Blind Mice." That's so weird. I just realized that was the first piece I played in public. Now I've written a very lengthy arrangement of "Three Blind Mice." B flat, A flat, G flat. It was very effective. I got a lot of coins." 

The Barren Lands extensive site about J.B. Tyrell's expeditions for the Geological Survey of Canada 1892-94 

review of fine book on Picasso's Guernica

"When in February 2003 Colin Powell went before the United Nations in a last-ditch attempt to win approval for an aerial bombardment of Baghdad to be code-named Shock and Awe, a blue 'shroud' was thrown over the 'Guernica' copy hanging before news cameras in the corridor. 'Painted as a passionate protest against senseless violence,' van Hensbergen observes, 'it was once again succeeding only too well.' "

Fallujah/Guernica

"The defining image of Fallujah - for Iraqis, for the Arab world, for 1.3 billion Muslims - is the summary execution of a wounded, defenseless Iraqi man inside a mosque by a marine. This execution, caught on tape, suggests 'special' rules of engagement were applying. Marine commanders have been on the record telling their soldiers to 'shoot everything that moves and everything that doesn't move'; to fire 'two bullets in every body'; in case of seeing any military-aged men in the streets of Fallujah, to 'drop 'em'; and to spray every home with machine-gun and tank fire before entering them. These 'rules' are all confirmed by residents of Fallujah who managed to escape. "

David Thomson on Scorsese's Aviator--

"That is why it's so hard to sell the story of Howard Hughes. He was a downer; he preferred not to in the end. But it wasn't just that he agreed that there are no second acts in American history. No, he said, there are second acts--and they are as prolonged, as inert and vacant, as the best medical research can manage. He left most of his money to medicine, don't forget, and I suspect that was because he'd guessed how that unending second act of life barely sustained was our just reward. So I encourage the kids to carry on oblivious of Howard Hughes. He is not for you. That way lies dismay, the thoughts that fill the early hours of any morning when the drug has worn off, or the times of day when no one can believe in just being American any longer."

Crash Bonsai (thanks R.) 

The Brothers Quay and Bruno Schulz

"On the contrary, the Quays' 'aesthetics of degraded reality' finds beauty in industrial decay, moldering fabric, rust, dirt, grime, the discarded, the broken, the derelict, the deformed, human and non-human abnormalities, pathologies, and anomalies. Beauty lies precisely in that which contemporary mainstream society neglects and discards. "

How an Original Velvet Underground Acetate Wound Up in Portland (And Could Be the Most Expensive Record in the World!) 

Shree Ganesh !!! (via Plep) 

Pepys Dec 1 1662

"Thence I to my Lord Sandwich's, to Mr. Moore, to talk a little about
business; and then over the Parke (where I first in my life, it being a
great frost, did see people sliding with their skeates, which is a very pretty art),
to Mr. Coventry's chamber to St. James's, where we all met to a venison pasty, and were very merry, Major Norwood being with us, whom they did play upon for his surrendering of Dunkirk."