"In conjunction with the Or Gallery's ongoing exhibition "Why I'm So
Unhappy," the Music Appreciation Society presents:

The Saddest Music in the World...Ever.
Thursday March 9, 8pm

Panel discussion and listening event with:

Jade Blade
Peter Culley
Tim Lee
Laura Piasta
Mathew Sawyer

Admission $5



Or Gallery
103.480 Smithe Street
Vancouver BC V6B 5E4
T 604 683.7395
F 604 683.7302

Nice to see Dennis Haysbert up and around --after catching a bullet as President Palmer in "24"--as the true blue smiling gung-ho team leader in the David Mamet penned "Unit" on CBS, which is promisingish (if he can steer it in a "Spartan" direction) but only one real classic Mamet line, spoken by one of Haysbert's colleagues when she's told a friend's husband is "very handy" around the house--

"My husband couldn't pound sand with a plastic shovel."

farewell Glaswegian poet Ivor Cutler. All I have on CD is his very memorable cameo on Rbt. Wyatt's "Rock Bottom", should dig around in my cassette boxes...

"The earth meets the sky over the hill, I was told by a sparrow with a lump on his head."
 

farewell Kirby Puckett...

"In his retirement press conference, Puckett made a point of speaking directly to Dennis Martinez. Martinez had brutally (and unintentionally) beaned Puckett with a fastball to the face in his final at bat and as a result had been subject to the scorn of many fans. "I just want to say I love you," Puckett told him. "He didn't do it on purpose. I was hanging out over the plate cheating." "

 

JG Ballard on the book and film Empire of the Sun

"With them was a brilliant child actor, Christian Bale, who uncannily resembled my younger self. He came up to me on the set and said: "Hello, Mr Ballard. I'm you." He was followed by an attractive young couple, Emily Richard and Rupert Frazer, who added: "And we're your mum and dad.""

 

round-up of books on Wee Beasties

"At a time when our rat-sized ancestors were still cowering in the shadows of the dinosaurs it is probable that certain insects had already created cities, farms, and skyscrapers, and today their descendants have become highly sophisticated indeed."
 

Rubbercat and yr humble blogger celebrate 3000 posts with hand-delivered Krispy Kremes. Thanks Jo, Alister, Liam and my beloved readers! 

mix your own version of Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question!

"Now imagine you are Charles Ives at the mixing board. Where would you place each instrumental grouping for maximum effect? How does each combination sound different? How do you bring an eternal piece to a satisfying end?"
 

enjoyable musical Les Girls at 2100 PST on TCM tonight, made more so by the rare presence of Kay Kendall (above) with Mitzi Gaynor & Gene Kelly, directed by Cukor, songs by Porter....

(found later in "George Cukor: A Double Life" by Patrick McGilligan, a quote from Francois Truffaut in Cahiers de Cinema "To give an account of "Les Girls" is a task which by no means can be compared to that required from seventh grade pupils when made to write a theme in French on the following subject: 'You have spent Sunday in the country; the weather was fine, the sun brilliant, you picked some flowers. Describe your impressions.'")



 

"My Father Pretending to be Old Growth" by Cynthia Lahti, from disappearing zine (thx Vanessa)
 

essay on the Trailer Park Boys

"This discourse of cinematic representations of the male Canuck may appear to be no more than a bitter cup of Tim Horton's coffee, but if we roll up the rim, there may be a silver lining. This incarnation of characters can not easily be reduced to a product of our film industry's inadequacy in the face of the big American brother and its culture machine; there is something more important at work. The paradoxically engendering nature of the series lies in its militant opposition to the standards of American film and television production. Coupled with the influence of the depressing duos of historical hoserdom, is the desire to take possession of something rightfully belonging to the Canadian experience, negative or not."



 

The Hype Machine - latest from the finest mp3 music blogs!

In case you haven't seen this very good music blog roundup, with search, etc...
 

James Schuyler: Letters from Italy, Winter 1954-55, to Frank O'Hara, on Laird Cregar and Edward Gorey...

"My dear, I'm depositing your letter in a vault, so that if you are murdered in a water front hotel, the police will know who to arrest. Ted Gorey has not thought since 1948 that you would be stabbed, he's simply been planning to kill you. Why do you think he wears that Laird Craiger (Creger?) beard? And reads those flocks of unreadable detective stories? Because he thinks he's Alpha and Omega come to save the world from beauty's snare: and you, you see, are too beautiful! So swear you'll never ever see him unless accompanied by at least three stout friends..."


 

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

"Bush was the principal author, along with his straight-shooting Vice President, and now he is hoisted by his own fear-mongering propaganda. The basic hysteria was invented from risks of terrorism, enlarged ridiculously by the President's open-ended claim that we are endangered everywhere and anywhere (he decides where). Anyone who resists that proposition is a coward or, worse, a subversive. We are enticed to believe we are fighting a new cold war. But are we? People are entitled to ask. Bush picked at their emotional wounds after 9/11 and encouraged them to imagine endless versions of even-larger danger. What if someone shipped a nuke into New York Harbor? Or poured anthrax in the drinking water? OK, a lot of Americans got scared, even people who ought to know better.

So why is the fearmonger-in-chief being so casual about this Dubai business?


Because at some level of consciousness even George Bush knows the inflated fears are bogus. So do a lot of the politicians merrily throwing spears at him. He taught them how to play this game, invented the tactics and reorganized political competition as a demagogic dance of hysterical absurdities, endless opportunities to waste public money. Very few dare to challenge the mindset. Thousands have died for it..."

"I am half distracted, Captain Shandy, said Mrs. Wadman, holding up her cambric handkerchief to her left eye, as she approached the door of my Uncle Toby's sentry box; "a mote, or sand, or something, I know not what, has got into this eye of mine; do look into it," said she.
I see him yonder, with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes falling out of it, looking and looking, then rubbing his eyes and looking again, with twice the good nature that ever Galileo looked for a spot in the sun.
In vain, for, by all the powers which animate the organ, Widow Wadman's left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right; there is neither mote, nor sand, nor dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor particle of opake matter floating on it. There is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but one lambent, delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in all direction, into thine. "



very much enjoyed Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story yesterday, though maybe 5% less Steve Coogan & more Shirley Henderson would have been nice, but really good withal, certainly hope it helps to create a new generation of Shandeans, who are advised to start-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------here-------------
 

a fine oak by William Turner of Oxford in a nice set from the Art& Architecture wing of the Courtald Institute...
 

THE WAR ON HYPE

"What is the effect of this? For one, it creates a domestic state of war, a creeping authoritarian ethos that affronts the openness and relaxation of a liberal society richer and healthier than nearly any in history. This state of affairs might be acceptable if the threat were greater, but because most Americans are safe, it becomes show business, a set of policeman and analysts in every state that buy equipment and hold press conferences to announce the success of drills for disasters that will probably never come. "

The Kootenay School of Writing have a big new PDF of "W" up with work by Derksen, Robertson, Wah, Luoma etc and an essay on Billy Budd (as played by Terence Stamp above) by the late Charles Watts, who taught me how to sound out some of the rhymes in CLA-rel...


 

good luck tomorrow to our ladies team against Denmark, in the meantime I'll brush up on these animated Curling Basics
 

Europe's contempt for other cultures can't be sustained

"Europe has never had to worry too much about context or effect because for around 200 years it dominated and colonised most of the world. Such was Europe's omnipotence that it never needed to take into account the sensibilities, beliefs and attitudes of those that it colonised, however sacred and sensitive they might have been. On the contrary, European countries imposed their rulers, religion, beliefs, language, racial hierarchy and customs on those to whom they were entirely alien. There is a profound hypocrisy - and deep historical ignorance - when Europeans complain about the problems posed by the ethnic and religious minorities in their midst, for that is exactly what European colonial rule meant for peoples around the world. With one crucial difference, of course: the white minorities ruled the roost, whereas Europe's new ethnic minorities are marginalised, excluded and castigated, as recent events have shown..."

Seattle's Stranger has two pieces on glass artist Dale Chihuly--

"The Bridge of Glass is terrible. And I never wrote about it when I was in Tacoma because I was worried that someone would try to kill me. It has completely revolutionized downtown Tacoma, but as art it is a complete failure. It is a concrete slab with some art thown up on it. The art has nothing to do with its location. It's all recycled work. You're looking at a wall of Venetian vases, these bong-like things, and there's like 70 of them, so you end up with this kind of Baskin-Robbins mentality, like, Today I'll have that one. This is glass, outdoors, and it�s completely covered, with video camera surveillance, and air control so that no steam gets in there, because if steam gets in there you can't see the glass, but it's not outdoor work. The one piece that is outdoor work is this plastic thing that looks like giant aqua rock candy, so gift shops have been making and selling aqua rock candy as souvenirs. This is what downtown Tacoma is supposed to mean? After going through the humiliation of losing the railroad terminus to Seattle, and being the laughingstock of Puget Sound--this aqua rock candy is what represents the rebirth of Tacoma? I don't know what happened there. I think Dale just wanted to experiment with aqua rock candy looking shit, and no one talked him out of it, because no one is powerful enough to talk him out of it. Akron, Ohio, recently purchased some rock candy towers for their city from Chihuly Inc. The good thing is you can shoot them, and the bullets will just sort of glance off, the art won't break. So feel free to shoot them."


 

special Saturday night treat: a sneak preview of Kevin Davies' "One-eyed Seller of Garlic" (excuse mild-reformatting)--

17.

Nothing to do
but study the architecture
of the abandoned Recluse
And examine the way Bill
deletes Dot
from various poems
containing daffodils and not
But I have stood
and stared, if not stooped
to labour
And I have introduced
a new and crucial content into verse
Defending the dalesmen and their ways
Making
visible certain devices
But I won't be translated
into French
until 1949
And I am surrounded
by trick questions, which I avoid
As I would a papist, or a Fenian
A terrible hangover one Grasmere morning
Smack dab in the middle
of literary history
Is one fucking
cup of tea too much to ask?
I ask you,
bending into the head throb
Is it all a waste
The mere ante-chamber of the chapel
In two, thirteen,
finally fourteen books
I will describe the terror beyond god
Waiting in
downtown Bangor
for the bus that connects to the mall-hopper



 

review of a novel about Gilbert White's tortoise Timothy--

"So it is with humans," Timothy explains. "Quickness draws their eye. Entangles their attention. What they notice they call reality. But reality is a fence with many holes, a net with many tears." Just as Melville revealed the ambivalence of the natural, Timothy sees ambivalence in the human: "The truth of my time among humans. As subject to their neglect, their forgetfulness, their most trivial intentions, as I am to their malice. As vulnerable to their wonder as their loathing." Yet there is cause for hope, even sympathy. "Sense of wonder rising within him," Timothy observes of the aging White. "Not at the beauty of nature alone. But at what it knows."

 

Chapter xxxii - CETOLOGY

"But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post- office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after them; to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this Leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job might well appal me. "Will he (the Leviathan) make a covenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain!" But I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do with whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will try..."

 

Ahab gives up smoking, from chapter XXX "The Pipe" of Rockwell Kent's Lakeside Press Edition of Moby Dick (Victor Levy-Bealieu's "Monsieur Melville" very effectively uses cropped close-ups of many of these among its many illustrations)--


"Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his mouth in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. "How now," he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, "this smoking no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring, - aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll smoke no more - "

He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made..."




 

another review of Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge

"Then, of course, there were the white people. Branch very deftly documents the ways in which the careers of an entire generation of conservative politicians depended upon managing the rhetoric of racial backlash. Here, for example, is Ronald Reagan's voice playing over an ominous film of riots in a commercial for his 1966 gubernatorial campaign: “Every day the jungle draws a little closer.... Our city streets are jungle paths after dark.” And Branch notes that the man who would become Reagan's presidential successor, then-Houston congressman George H.W. Bush, gave a 1968 speech criticizing “miscellaneous purchases under the federal anti-poverty program” in which he charged that seven new microscopes the government had bought for schools in his Houston district were in fact “rifle scopes secretly retooled for insurrection.” But if there's a failure in Branch's book, it's that he dwells too briefly upon this theme. For all his great characters, Branch decides not to create even one iconic figure of what would become the great white backlash—the defining feature of politics for the next quarter-century."

Rockwell Kent's Casanova, from a nice little portfolio...
 

lured temporarily from the deck of the "Pequod" this week by the (since superseded oh well) Arthur Machen translation of the Memoirs of Casanova (here online) acquired in a bargain near-mint boxed version of the three-volume 1960 Dover (with that smooth paper they used to use still snowy white) edition with Rockwell Kent illustrations...



 

John Kricfalusi (above, with Bjork) of Ren and Stimpy fame has a cool new blog...