more on 'The Golden Morning Breaks', including a video

samples of Colleen's wonderful new album the golden morning breaks here
 

James Wolcott

"George Costanza, furious that a pigeon didn't get out of the way of his car (in the stellar 'Merv Griffin set' episode), vented to Jerry that we have 'a deal' with the pigeons, a deal that Jerry elucidated upon.

The deal is, they get out of our way when we're walking or driving, and we overlook the statute defecation.

Simple as that. The pigeon George ran over didn't honor he deal.

The neocons had a deal with Pat Robertson and his followers. As long as Pat and company cleaved to Israel, the neocons would overlook that old Protocol Elders nonsense.

In short, Pat Robertson was their pigeon. They were willing to countenance his occasional poop."

guy who looks after the Tower Ravens--

Gwylum (male), aged 17
Thor (m), 14
Hugine (f), 10
Munin (f), 10
Branwen (f), 3
Bran (m), 2
Gundulf (m), 5 months
Baldrick (m), 5 months--


"'The fact it's an unusual job does give me a little bit of a fillip. There's no one else who can say 'I'm the only Ravenmaster Yeoman Warder in the world'.' "



 

over the Rockies and across the Strait comes the new TOLLING ELF with poems by Edmund Berrigan & cool linocutlets from the fabulous Sophia Warsh & a Tim Atkins Horace supplement--weighing less than a catbird--

10 Best Plumage by Edmund Berrigan

elegiac catbird
mercenary hedgehog hoecakes
as I crawls across my cheek
how's the new infection
a breeze sort of
wash the modal straw evaporate
bereaved touch of class
element pigment
anonymous sty hung
form of icebucket



 

buona sera to my favorite cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli

"'You've got to understand the sunlight, the contrast between light and shade. For Italians, who are familiar with the southern sun and the fog of the north, it's difficult to get things wrong.' "


 

How BC Trimmed 107,000 People from Welfare Rolls:

"The month he died, he was just one of 161 people who went out that way, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Between June 2002 and January 2005, a period of 32 months, 6,065 people on welfare died.

(To put that in perspective, in 2003, the latest for which statistics are available, 443 people reportedly died in traffic accidents in the province.)

For comparison, during that period, 37,404 people left welfare by Campbell's preferred route, because they obtained employment. Put another way, for roughly every six people on welfare who got a job, one died."

Frank Rich--The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan

"The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan. The president can keep trying to ration the photos of flag-draped caskets. But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq."



 

listen to 44 seconds of The Ivory-billed Woodpecker

"It is the largest of all woodpeckers found in the United States and has been nicknamed "The Lord God Bird", from the usual expletive uttered whenever one appeared on the wing."

(via the recently-returned robot wisdom weblog)

work of Lateral Argument poet Kevin Davies irks Local Media (though you're told where to get it):--

"The magazine closes on the ridiculous, about 20 pages of deliberate and worthless nonsense by Kevin Davies, who may well be unaware..."
 

Happy Birthday to me. Daph got me the 1913 first edition of the giant Funk & Wagnall's New Standard Dictionary, edited by Frank Vizetelly, printed on 3000 pages of limp, heavy bible paper. 450,000 headwords, numerous engravings, occasional childish scrawls, numerous pressed plants...

"Alfred E. Smith's ''baloney dollar'' could not swerve Dr. Vizetelly from ''bologna.'' But he was quick to favor President Roosvelt's ''chiseler'', which he said actually had attained dictionary rating in England in 1808. He found ''whoopee'' went back to A.D. 450, discovered grammatical imperfections in Noah Webster and dismissed 1935's ''Oakie-doke'' as a moron's ''Yes.'' 

Cascadia Terminal Bucket Elevator, Vancouver


Portland filmmakers Bill Daniel and Vanessa Renwick are back in the van and touring the Pacific Northwest with new work.

Contact: Bill Daniel, www.billdaniel.net, billdaniel@hotmail.com, 503 939 6916 mobile
Vanessa Renwick, www.odoka.org, odoka@hotmail.com

“Daniel and Renwick make some of the liveliest work on the microcinema circuit, wherein film, video art, and music collide with edgy, confrontational, unpredictable and often exuberant intensity”--- Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

Headlining is Daniel’s just-completed 56min documentary on the secret history of hobo and railworker graffiti, called WHO IS BOZO TEXINO? Shooting over a period of 16 years, Daniel rode freights across the west gathering interviews and clues to the identities of many of the most legendary boxcar artists while discovering a vast underground folkloric practice that has existed for over a century.

Also on the bill is WALDO POINT, by Saul Rouda, 1970, a 20 min. stoned and song-filled documentary shot in Sausalito’s hippie houseboat community. An utterly unique and authentic snapshot of ‘60’s freedom set in a floating utopia of hand-made houseboats.

Vanessa Renwick (the Oregon Dept. of Kick Ass) presents two shorts: BRITTON, SOUTH DAKOTA, a series of haunting images of depression-era children, and CASCADIA TERMINAL, a mesmerizing portrait of Vancouver’s towering industrial facility.

TOUR SCHEDULE

Aug 12 Santa Cruz, Guerilla Drive-In, www.thespoon.com/drivein
Aug 18 Arcata, HSU, Goodwin Forum in Nelson Hall East, 9pm $5 707-822-9531
Aug 19 Eugene, Museum of Unfine Art, 8:23 pm, 541-683-7357
Aug 24 Anacortes, Dept. of Safety, 8pm, $4, www.departmentofsafety.com
Aug 25 Victoria BC, 50/50 Arts Collective, 2516 Douglas, 9pm, $5
Aug 26 Vancouver BC, The Butchershop, 195 E 26th Ave, 9pm,$5, www.butchershop.ca
Aug 27 Bellingham, 3B Tavern, 122 N State st, 8:30pm, $5 www.3btavern.com
Aug 28 Port Townsend, The Boiler Room, 8pm, $5
Aug 30 Olympia, tba
Aug 31 Seattle, Central Cinema, (runs thru Sept 4) 6:30,8:15, 10:00 nightly,
1411 21st Ave, central-cinema.com,
Aug 31 special opening night event, live music by Spectratone International (featuring Lori Goldston and Kyle Hanson of Black Cat Orchestra) at 9pm, screenings at 7 and 10. (filmmaker in-person only on the 31st)
Sept 3 Astoria, Columbia Theatre, 503-325-2233


INFO FOR BRITTON, SOUTH DAKOTA BY VANESSA RENWICK

SYNOPSIS:
Ivan Besse was the Strand movie theater manager in Britton, S. Dakota during the Depression. He had a 16mm camera and went about town shooting people at their various activities during the day. He would show the footage before features and newsreels as a way to lure the people into the theatre.
Most of the 2 1/2 hours of footage that he shot is of people walking down the street, there are also scenes of a barn being moved, a corn husking contest and kids running out of school.
The footage that really stood out to me was these 8 minutes of portraits of children. They had no idea of what a movie camera was.

CREDITS:
Director: Vanessa Renwick
Music: Johnne Eschleman
Cinematographer: Ivan Besse (shot in 1938)
Footage obtained from The Prelinger Archives / Rick Prelinger
for the DeComposer Film and Music series programmed by Bill Daniel and Vanessa Renwick in Portland, Oregon

“Not only found footage, but a found film made 60-some years ago directly addressing contemporary structural concerns. I wish I had made this film today. Oh, it was made today.”
James Benning, judge NWFF 2003, awarded Britton, S.Dakota† Best Experimental Film
“The lack of narrative invites dressing these cinematic dolls with futures, now histories. The melancholic drone of the accompanying organ music tends to lead them into sad tragic finery.” NWFF

Gecko Prize, Cinematexas 2004

Gus Van Sant Award Best Experimental Film, Ann Arbor Film Festival 2005




"Portrait #1: Cascadia Terminal'
by Vanessa Renwick
sound by Tara Jane O'Neil
16mm hand processed and tinted to video
6 minutes 2005


A mesmerizing stare at the most efficient grain terminal at the port of Vancouver, B.C.
The terminal is serviced by the Canadian Pacific Railway and can unload up to 300 cars in 24 hours which is equal to approximately 25,800 tons of prairie.

Books Do Furnish a Room

"The story of Anthony Cima is the book lover's nightmare: The 87-year-old stuffed 10,000 books into a one-room San Diego apartment, and when a 5.4-magnitude earthquake hit just off the coast of Oceanside in July 1986, he was buried beneath them and barely survived."
 

farewell Barbara Bel Geddes, Miss Ellie on Dallas, "Midge" in Vertigo, "Maggie the Cat" on Broadway, the wife who does in her husband with a leg of lamb and then feeds it to the cops on Alfred Hitchcock Presents...

 

The Bacon Show

One bacon recipe per day, every day, forever...

(via Metafilter) 

(Popular Characteristics 1800)

(Henry Adams)


"Good country this
for lazy fellows,
(wrote Wilson from

Kentucky); they plant
corn, turn their
pigs into the

woods and in
the autumn feed upon
corn and pork.

They lounge about
the rest of the year."
But sometime between

then and now,
despite flip books,
Jack Spicer bootlegs,

Miltown, Motown, Milton
the race of tavern
loafers, customs-house flaneurs

wall holder-uppers
& Virginia eye gougers
died out, wagons

full of keeners,
enthusiasts, stereoptical
estimaters & paint-chip

matchers darkened
the passes, planting apples
for roughage not cider.

*

"That free-born
Rhode Islanders ought
never to submit

to be priest-ridden,
nor to pay for
the privilege

of travelling
on the highway."
Better indeed stranded

up to our
rusticated Yankee necks
in yellow shit

than travel
to Providence
under such pretenses;

wearing a horse collar,
a T-shirt reading
"Citizen X"--

better a beanie,
a New Year's diaper,
a Brownie uniform,

and the bones
of any shiny Hussar--
uncowed by Miranda v. Arizona

or the Second Amendment
or the by-God
Yosemite Sam mudflaps

hanging from my ears--
attempts to stroll unbidden
into my library,

garage or sugar shack
will end up as struts
in the drug tunnel

that gently winds
between Lasqueti
and Narraganset:--

Canadians Hate Freedom, Too

"And if you want to blue-sky a little bit, if that eventuality was to occur, the government would probably move in with some pretty stiff measures and not meet much public resistance."

(when bees are in hives)

(cont.)


Just but one bee
on the paler
other kind of

sweet-pea, orange
chevron very
circa '83, &

you'd think the boys
at Last Call Towing
would be glad to

see their girlriends
(Wednesday PM
half-cloudy

scented August)
but they won't climb
down or let go

their pneumatic
bolt-tighteners
long enough

and won't discuss
who said what to
who last weekend

on innertubes
that flattered them
but made us look

like our dads, tits
up on the couch
and these maroon

uniforms itch
more and more as
threadbare summer

wears out its buzz
and welcome mat
and baseball hat.

UK's oldest fountain restored

"Minister for tourism Patricia Ferguson MSP said: "I think this was built to show the power and the confidence that James V had, and I think he very much wanted to say to people "I'm here, look at me". I suspect that now that it's been restored, it will actually have the same effect in Linlithgow.""

thanks to Daphne for this one 

Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir

"All of a sudden, he pulled out of his pocket a string of firecrackers and asked, 'Where can we set these off?' "