Local trees

Tasty Spam...

(303) 280-8689 / 3032808689

Just called and interrupted the "major essay"I'm supposed to be working on...
Glad I didn't pick up!

"I got a call from this number
and happened to answer it.

animal grunting
(believe it or not)

on a loop.
Out of morbid curiosity

I stayed on the line
as I too am on

the Do Not Call list
and wanted to find out

who it was so I could report.
After about a minute

and a half the automated voice
came on and stated

to press one for yes and 2 for no...
then the grunting returned."

check out this nice little film (via Adidas) about---YouTube - Theo Parrish - Detroit DJ / Producer---one of the most inspirational artists working in any medium right now...

The Blog of War--historian Anne Applebaum on Nicholson Baker's new book--

"Human Smoke, in other words, is not a conscientious pacifist tract. It is not a clever contribution to today's debate on warfare, and it does not add anything to what we know about World War II. It is a cheerful contribution to the movement against scholarship--a movement which has advanced so far, in fact, that I fully expect these observations, too, to be condemned as "elitism." As one who does contribute (it's pathetic, I know) to the mainstream media on a regular basis, I know that any author who expresses a sliver of doubt about the wisdom of amateurs risks bringing down a torrent of recrimination and insult upon his head. But if we have arrived at the point where a solemn and excited individual can cobble together anecdotes from old newspapers and Nazi diaries, and write them up in the completely contextless manner of blog posts, and suggest that he has composed a serious critique of America's decision to enter World War II, and then receive praise from respected reviewers in distinguished publications, then maybe it is time to say: Stop."

todays Youtube--Vivian Stanshall - Crank (Part One) a documentary about the English comedian & hero of mine since seeing him on UK TV as a lad, hosted by the late John Peel (the other parts are there)...

further study--Ginger Geezer

The TPM DOCUMENT COLLECTION - Excerpts from DOJ IG Report on FBI Role in Detainee Interrogations

at home, on the road or in the office--The Age of Briggs & Stratton...

terrific Alissa Quart onLost Media, Found Media

"It was always hard for nonfiction writers, but something seems to have changed. For those of us who believed in the value of the journalism and literary nonfiction of the past, we had become like the people at the ashram after the guru has died..."

Tsawassen trees

farewell John Phillip Law (on right)

Thirty Tables of Contents

Turner-prize winning artist Steve McQueen's film about Bobby Sands opens at Cannes...

"I'm not interested in left or right [wing politics]. I am interested in what happens to people in those kind of conditions. It is about the smell, the atmosphere, the texture of those events; about the things between the words in history books. These are things that have to be shown rather than written about."

Local trees, black slug, shrew

I warmly recommend the 2002 "To Be and to Have" a documentary set in a small school in the French countryside--unmissable for anybody connected with children or education...

farewell Robert Rauschenberg

The Godfather & foreign policy--

Tom Hagen, the liberal institutionalist: “We oughta hear what they have to say.”

Sonny, the neocon: “No, no more. Not this time, consigliere; no more meetings, no more discussions, no more Sollozzo tricks. . . . And do me a favor: no more advice on how to patch things up—just help me win alright?”

Ramp season is almost over...

a few ramp festivals left for devotees of this Smoky Mountain delicacy...

Bird-watcher

"Not long ago, I listened to him play a recording of “Okiedoke,” a tune that Parker recorded in 1949 with Machito and His Afro-Cuban Orchestra. Schaap, in his pontifical baritone, first provided routine detail on the session and Parker’s interest (via Dizzy Gillespie) in Latin jazz, and then, like a car hitting a patch of black ice, he veered off into a riff of many minutes’ duration on the pronunciation and meaning of the title—of “Okiedoke.” Was it “okey-doke” or was it, rather, “ ‘okey-dokey,’ as it is sometimes articulated”? What meaning did this innocent-seeming entry in the American lexicon have for Bird? And how precisely was the phrase used and understood in the black precincts of Kansas City, where Parker grew up? Declaring a “great interest in this issue,” Schaap then informed us that Arthur Taylor, a drummer of distinction “and a Bird associate,” had “stated that Parker used ‘okeydokey’ as an affirmative and ‘okeydoke’ as a negative.” And yet one of Parker’s ex-wives had averred otherwise, saying that Parker used “okeydoke” and “okeydokey” interchangeably. (At this point, I wondered, not for the first time, where, if anywhere, Schaap was going with this.) Then Schaap introduced into evidence a “rare recording of Bird’s voice,” in which Parker is captured joshing around onstage with a disk jockey of the forties and fifties named Sid Torin, better known as Symphony Sid. After a bit of chatter, Sid instructs Parker to play another number: “Blow, dad, go!"

Okeydoke, says Bird..."

thanks LB for this bit of Shakey news--Neil Young gets new honor -- his own spider

An East Carolina University biologist, Jason Bond, discovered a new species of trapdoor spider and opted to call the arachnid after his favorite musician, Canadian Neil Young, naming it Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi.

"There are rather strict rules about how you name new species," Bond said in a statement.

"As long as these rules are followed you can give a new species just about any name you please. With regards to Neil Young, I really enjoy his music and have had a great appreciation of him as an activist for peace and justice."

another gem--YouTube - Karen Dalton, It Hurts Me Too

this'll wake you up--Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Volunteered Slavery

also: a friend to poets--

"She got up and did a really dumb poem about her cat. It was really out of place, but the band tried to do something behind it. Some guy in the audience starting insulting her with half-sexist, half-racist hippie-dip comments. Rahsaan suddenly stopped the band and said, 'You can think whatever you want to about this lady's poem. But she's doin' somethin'! What can you do brother? You got an instrument? Bring it up here and play it! Can you sing? Come on up here and sing. Can you tell a joke? Come on up and tell one. Can you fight? Then come on up here and box with me!!!"