Random thoughts on a busy day

Busy again – manos will again have to wait for a calmer time – the rush to finish every damn thing by Labor Day continues apace.

There is a rising chorus for Larry Craig – the bathroom guy – to resign among the GOP oddly enough – although since Idaho has a Republican Governor if Larry quits the gov. seems sure to appoint a GOP party member to serve out the term.

This however is not the case of the diaper wearing hooker using Senator from Louisiana (also a member of the GOP) since the gov of Louisiana is a democrat and not after Katrina (and the constant sliming of him and the Mayor of New Orleans by GOP hacks saying at the State was responsible for Katrina) very enamored of anything republican is would be pretty likely to appoint a democrat to the Senate

Which would for one thing render Lieberman a moot point. I’ve noticed a) some idiot suggested him for Attorney General which proves that glue sniffing among pundits is still huge problem and b) he seems to be less the TV flavor of the month these days after his hell let’s bomb Syria speech. Guess there are limits. Even for TV.

Band has a gig at the Luna Lounge again – Oct 21st 8:30 pm get the word out. Yeah it’s a Sunday but hell you never were out late Sunday? Sheesh. Come you’ll have a damn good time. We will why not you? You deserve it.

Looking forward to the weekend – tomorrow will be of course madness but at about 2 pm New York will just empty out and well I won’t be able to get anything done after that. I’ll be spending the rest of the day e-mailing people “I’m sorry X is out until Tuesday – X will handle that when X is back in the office).

I think actually the Mets have an excellent chance of utterly blowing it by the end of next week. We’ll see but I’m not optimistic – they have never gotten the élan of last year back. I don’t know why they just haven’t. I know a bit about baseball but I don’t know that much. And to quote Louis Tiant pitcher for the expos and red sox “about this game you don’t know nuthin’”. Baseball keeps me humble because I’m wrong so often.

Speaking of wrong – W is banging the war drum about Iran. Well why not? Why not complete the cluster fuck and have done with it. spare us the suspense of wondering if you are going to follow the invasion of Iraq (the worst foreign policy decision made by the United States as in well fucking ever) with attacking Iran (which would then take first place from the Invasion of Iraq).

I don’t get this – the army’s breaking down before our eyes – we can’t keep the troops supplied with the proper equipment (I don’t know how when we spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined we have shortages of equipment but we do. Being a cynical person I suspect we’re being robbed. Like a lot). Iraq’s a complete disaster (a leaked GAO report paints a grim pic – it was leaked cause someone at the GAO was convinced that W and his thugs would blue pencil the damn thing to make it sound better – wonder why anybody would think that?) We don’t even have England in our corner anymore – and yet the beltway establishment is pondering attacking Iran like it is a reasonable idea rather than the bat shit crazy ravings of a group of mad men, who in order to prevent them from doing further harm should be taken away and put in a hospital and have thorzine squirted down their throats with a turkey baster.

And I expect congress to show as much backbone as a slinky pull toy – the only thing I’ve noticed that maybe will change that is that several congressmen have gone home to their voters and have been read the riot act. Yeah nice lunches from lobbyists are fun but you have to get re-elected to keep them. Who knows? It might help – I don’t think it will but I’d like to be wrong here.

Word has come that Hillay Kristal the founder of CBGB's has passed away. I don't have the time to say enough now other than he remembered the first time the Ramones came in he wasn't sure if they were there to play or to try and fence the stuff.

Got to go – another crisis.

Pic is from New Orleans art collective.

Peace Love when the hell is Saturday?

New Orleans, Iraq & Viet Nam, Manos (pt3)

It’s the 2nd anniversary of the flooding of New Orleans – and W is going there for a photo op. What he should be doing is going there and apologizing one at a time to each and every resident of the city – including the thousands still in trailer parks run by FEMA . What a worthless bunch of clowns he and his cronies are. There seems to be a sense inside the beltway that repairing New Orleans is too big a job for the government – the same government (with different folks in charge by the by) that rebuilt Europe after World War 2, went to the moon etc. Can do has been replaced by lethargy and corruption that wouldn’t seem out of place in a third world country.

Meantime there is much hooing and hawing about the current Iraqi prime Minster and the accepted wisdom of the beltway is that he has to go to be replaced by a more secular leader – with Saddam (who, while he was a monster, was at least a secular monster) not an option, a former PM is making noise that he should be the man. He’s more western than the current PM (having lived most of his life outside of Iraq) and has even gone to hiring lobbyists from K Street.

Which reminds me of what happened in Viet Nam – just before JFK”s death. The US had by 1963 become disenchanted with the current leader of South Viet Nam, Diem. It’s a little hazy – but a coup was launched against Diem in late 1963 that had the tacit if not the active support of the US – Diem was shot and a series of strong men took over South Viet Nam. This whole ‘the current pm must go’ noise is oddly similar to this – one hopes the current Iraqi PM will get out with out being shot in the back of the head but Iraq’s a pretty violent place.

Manos – part 3

We watch Torgo stagger into the building. Like he drunk he staggers – It doesn’t help much with the luggage and the Torgo theme.

Inside you get the sense that Mike should have just trusted the car’s lights would work or maybe sleeping under the desert stars wouldn’t have been that bad an idea. The place is a shithole. The couch is something you really don’t want to have touching your body and there is a firepalce, with scupture of a head and some hands and a mostly empty book case and that’s it for the room – (we’re going to spend a lot of time in this room alas).

On the couch Debbie is playing with the poodle (or trying to keep it from running out of the shot – which is more likely) Mike comes in and takes his wife’s hand and points her attention to the painting over the fireplace.

The painting looks like it is of a pissed off Frank Zappa or Bill Buckner wearing some kind of robe – there is a dog.

We look at the painting for a long time – at least 32 seconds – while Mike and his wife talk about how mean looking he and the dog is – we finally get back to mike and his wife (as they watch Torgo labor with their bags – again nice Mike like what you’re king? The man’s having problems but help nahhhhhhhhh.) and then back again to the painting. I suppose they must have thought that some folks might have missed it the first time (yeah mostly those who were running out of the danm theater).

You know – paintings aren’t really scary – even if they are of scary things – so lingering as long as they does nothing, except amp up the tension as when anything was going to happen.

Eventually Torgo returns and there is a conversation about the man in the painting – He is, like we all guessed, is the Master – who is dead but not dead “not dead the way you know it” Torgo says “he is with us always”

The wife is a little freaked out by the painting, Torgo and the awful music and being in this movie – Mike tries to calm her down but come off as a patronizing jerk – any surprise here.

There is a howl and Mike’s wife flips out again (the two actually deserve each other you know?) and the poodle gets off the couch and runs after the sound. Mike and Mike’s wife follow (Debbie has gone from being wide away to sleeping like a log on the couch – or maybe somebody hit her or drugged her while she wasn’t looking. Not matter) Mike yells at his wife then gets a flash light and a gun out of the glove compartment of his car and goes after the poodle.

There is more yelling between Mike and Mike’s wife who says “Oh Mike what kind of place is this? “ I always wanted Mike to say “It’s a bed and breakfast at the mouth of hell, now get back inside” but he doesn’t – he just yells some more, wanders around with the flashlight and then finds the poodle.

The poodle is dead. Mike carefully takes the carcass and moves it out of the light – yeah that’s the thing nobody will ever see this in the morning no. Not at all.

He comes back to his wife (her name we learn is Maggie – Mike and Maggie – you wonder if they had fancy monograms of two M’s merged together on their wedding invitations and what not, probably not given Mikes jerkiness). Freaks out (yet again – like I say they do deserve each other) and then Debbie wakes up and wonders what happed to her dog – at which point both wife and child are crying. Mike decides okay, since you’re so for it we’ll leave. (He sounds like he’d rather stay) Mike then yells at Torgo to put the bags in the car (close up of Torgo looking exasperated) and then he goes out to the car.

Which doesn’t start.

Like nobody saw that happening. It was that or a flat tire.

Got to go – things to do

Peace Love Poodles

Sorry No Manos -but Piltdown and stuff.

No time for Manos today. (Maybe later)

Very short and to the point.

Another rat over the side: Alberto Gonzales is gone. I’m honestly not sure why – he seemed invulnerable to all of the standard pressures – like being caught telling lies and not remembering anything at all about anything, which for most people would be enough but not Gonzo. Up until a week ago it looked like a dead sold cert he was staying. What happened? Who knows maybe without the support of King Rat (Karl) he got pushed over the side to feed the wolves. Indeed the current MSM lullaby is now that W has removed the evil and so so bad Karl and Al, his pure at heart and noble instincts will again come to the forth and Hawk Cough choke – sorry even I can sustain that level of sarcasm.

File under – what the hell is wrong with these people: A US Senator is just revealed pleaded guilty back in June to public solicitation in a men’s bathroom. – the Senator Larry Craig (R – Idaho) was busted back in June in Minneapolis – I won’t go into details cause it’s pretty damn skevey – but god in hell is every GOP Senator who goes railing about family values and the dangers of gays marrying a huge closet case? Or is it just safer to assume this?

Almost finished with Ivan T. Sanderson’s Abominable Snowman book and I’m disappointed – it’s a pretty scatter shot book – and in the end requires us to swallow that there is not one but no less than 4 Bigfoot type beasts wandering out there in the wild places of the world. Pretty hard to take – even if one of the proposed groups is a pygmy version said to be in the same areas in Southeast Asia where the (still controversial) prehistoric dwarf human nicknamed the Hobbit has been found. Even so 3 large (6-8 ft tall) bipedal hairy ape-men wandering the landscape was a bit hard to take in 1960 when he wrote the book, now in 2007 it’s even harder – it’s been 47 years and not a sausage.

Still the thing that killed it for me was his discussion of Piltdown – for folks who don’t know the Piltdown man was a fraud – a bunch of bones treated and altered and broken to look very very old – which was ‘discovered’ in 1912 or so – I forget the exact date – it wasn’t uncovered as a hoax until 1953 – but Ivan still uses some of it (the skull parts he said were 50,000 – 100,000 years old – but the skull is early medieval at best) to boost his claim that proto-humans are wandering about.

Frankly I’d like as much as the next person to discover that the Yeti do roam the high valleys in Asia – I just think using a known fraud to support your point makes a reader doubt everything else you write. I mean if your judgment is that bad on this, what about the other things?

Disappointing.

Later

Peace Love, Yeti

Manos Pt 2 - Torgo and big Knees

So when we last left Mike, Mike’s wife and Debbie and the poodle dog they come to the end of the road.

We then flash to a couple that we saw briefly before, they are sitting in a sports car and making out – it doesn’t look too comfortable to be honest – a bigger care would give them some room at least. They seem to be drinking – at least they are drinking something out of a brown bottle – but it could be stake sauce for all we know – no labels there.

As they are sucking face, the sheriff’s deputy who was in the meaningless little scene early shows up and shoos them away. He and his partner will do this what seems to be 23 times during the film – either there is no crime in El Paso or the thought of premarital sex obsesses the sheriff so he keeps following the couple around.

So they turn back. As they do so we flash on some weird looking dude – beard what looks like a bums hat with a rope tied around it. We’re not sure why we’re looking at him but he’s in the shot for a second and then we’re back with the family. They pull onto the side of the road. There is a house there.

The house is supposed to have sudden shown up (spoookkkyyyyy) but considering the way Mike drives he could have just passed by with out seeing it.

They pull into the driveway, we flash to the guy – this time he’s leaning on a staff whit some kind of metal thing on the end of it – like it’s a really really tiny rake. And there’s something wrong with his posture but you can’t quite tell what.

Mike parks the car – he, his wife and his kid get out of the car with him. It’s an uncomfortable looking scene and again we wonder why? Why are we watching this, why did he drag his wife and kid out the car, why did they film the whole thing? What the hell is going on here?

After a long silence – there are a lot of those in this film, the guy (after twitching like he’s getting small electric shocks) speaks.

“I am Torgo; I take care of the place while the master is away.” The voice has a badly dubbed quavering quality like it’s done in stereo but not quite in sync. It’s very strange sounding full of gaps and spastic pauses.

Mike asks directions (you can see it’s killing him to do this) to Valley lodge, Torgo says, after twitching – there is no place like that here. Mike, unlike in his dealing with his wife instantly believes Torgo and asks for a way out (how about back down the damn road you came on nitwit?) and is told (after a pause you can drive a truck though)

“There is no way out. It will be dark soon. There is no way out of here.”

Okay now, a normal human being upon finding he is dealing with some kind of freak/bum/lunatic would slowly put his wife and kid back in the car and leave. Not Mike.
He wants to stay the night. His wife doesn’t’ like the idea. Torgo doesn’t like the idea either – he says the Master would not approve and that the master does not like children.

Mike insists they have no choice (why do the lights on his car not work? In the 20th century dark isn’t the horrible problem it was to folks in the days of stage coaches. I mean just go back up the damn road you came on get back on the highway and find a damn Howard Johnson’s – and stay there.

But no – Mike starts browbeating Torgo – saying the Master wouldn’t throw them out. (How the hell does he know?)

We are now treated to a sequence of no dialogue where the camera jumps from Mike to Torgo to Mike’s wife back to Mike and back to Torgo, back to Mike, back to Mike’s wife and back to Torgo – piano music is played in the background – some kind of foreshadowing is going on here – of more suffering by the audience.

Finally Mike says again “How about it Torgo?” and Torgo says fine (maybe just to shut Mike up) “but the master will be disturbed”

Mike – now back in charge since he got Torgo to agree to let them stay waves that off and tells Torgo to get the bags out of the car – I mean come on – you’re crashing in someone else’s place and you start ordering the caretaker, who has told you his Boss wouldn’t like you staying, start ordering him around like he’s a damn bellhop?

So Torgo heads for the car – and now we see why he was standing funny – Torgo has big Knees. Like really really big knees – which don’t seem to bend much so he staggers around like he’s on the deck of a pitching ship– almost a visual echo of how his voice sounds.

The sound track plays what Tom Servo refers to has the haunting “Torgo Theme” (it sounds like an organ or something going doot doot doot da doot doot do – I’m sure they are using at Gitmo) Finally Torgo manages to get to the car and open the trunk and take out the bags (why take out all the bags guys – you’re just staying overnight. Mike offers no help of course, he’s the man and even though Torgo walks like he’s been hit over the head a lot, he’s not going to help him out.

About Torgo’s Knees – per a couple of websites, the idea was that Torgo was supposed to be a Satyr a half man half goat and that he actually had goat legs (and I’m told hooves). There was some kind device made of wire and foam rubber that was strapped to the actor (John Reynolds – who came to a sad end later) which gave him the look he had.

The story is a bit confused – in one website is says that Reynolds built the device himself in the other is says that someone else (the man playing the master) built the device and Reynolds damaged his knee caps wearing it backwards (which puzzles me a bit – surely at some point he would have said something like – this is killing me guys – is there a way we could fix this up at which point they’d discover it was on backwards).

I’m told that we couldn’t see the hooves in the MST3K version (which is really the only one to watch just trust me on this) because Joel and the Bots block the shot – still the other times we see Torgo’s feet he’s wearing normal shoes. )I’ve yet to see a screen shot of the hooves either. )

Anyway – it’s time to stop – we enter the lair of the master Tuesday.

Peace, Love, Knees

STUFF AND MANOS (Pt. 1)

French Insult for the day: Espece de chochon (species of pig) – means you are a pig, I like the specificy of ‘species’ here.

Gaping hole found in the universe - Astronomers have a found a part of the universe a billion light years across with nothing in it, no stars, Galaxies dust, dark mater nothing, nada, zippo, zilch.

No they are not sure why it’s there.

Current theory says that the lumpiness of the universe (lots of clumps of stuff, like stars planets, quasars and the like) is due to quantum fluxuations in the universe during the inflationary period (sounds of heads hitting desks) but this big a hole is very very unexpected.

Speaking of gaping holes in the universe.

Manos -

The film opens with a shot of cars driving – a flute solo is going on the back - gradually we focus in on one car, a blue convertible. Inside the car are Mike (Played by Hal Warren, the writer, Director and producer of the film), Mike’s wife, their daughter Debbie and their poodle dog. The car comes to a halt. Debbie says she is cold and Mike’s wife invites her and the poodle into the front seat. There is brief discussion where Mike’s Wife says they should have asked for directions the last gas station. Mike, being a jerk, for the first but alas no the last time in the film gets defensive and says “I never got us lost before.”

Lord. Raise your hands how many times you have heard those words from someone just before you find yourself on the road to Terra de Fuego when you meant to go to Jones beach?

In order to pass the time Mike’s wife suggests that they sing – they start up Row row row your boat in what seems to be a round by you’re not sure – then they are off and we see the titles.

“MANOS” THE HANDS OF FATE

Manos is Spanish for hands, so the title of the film is actually ‘Hands’ The hands of Fate. It could have been worse, but I’m not just sure how. Maybe FEET, THE HANDS OF FATE but let us, let it go. There is so much worse ahead. (Side note: by the end of shooting the crew – who by then loathed Hal Warren – started calling the film – Mangos, Cans of fruit. End side note).

Anyway – we have learned that they are looking for the Valley Lodge and have been looking for a while. Other than that we don’t know much, except that this movie is going to suck. Remember the opening of say, Raiders of the Lost Ark where you were transported into a world of daring do in just seconds or the Opening of Casablanca where you learned everything you needed to know in about 10 seconds (including that the stakes were life and death) or any great film where you knew from the moment the film started you were in the hands of very talented folks working at the peak of their game in their chosen art form. Here you know you have been kidnapped by a hairy madman who has tied you up in his cave in the mountains and is showing you a shadow play projected on a white bed sheet doing the voices by grunting and squeaking and gibbering. You know you are in for a long evening.

So they drive along with the camera jumping from one shot to another looking out the window until they are pulled over by a cop. The cop and Mike talk a bit (in what sounds like the same voice) and the cop lets Mike go without giving him a ticket for the stop light like he was going to.

I don’t know why this scene was put in. The tail light does not feature in the film. The cop, Sheriff’s deputy actually in a cowboy hat, does show up later but he doesn’t do much in the film so it’s not like we need to be introduced to him now. It smacks of filler or just since Hal wrote the screen play and it was in the screen play, in the movie it goes. The scene also features a police siren that starts up when the car has stopped.

So they drive some more –we have flute music and scenery, the cut goes to more scenery, more flute music, and more scenery, then we jump to an empty road. After a moment, we see Hal’s car pass by – it makes a left onto a small road – there is a sign that says Valley Lodge on it. You see that whoever painted the sign wasn’t careful – the word Valley is big and the word lodge has the letters all jammed together to make it fit. I’d have redone the sign but when you have a budget of $19,000 you go with the sign you get first try.

A few things about the way it was filmed. Hal, making the film with a budget of about $96,000 (where did he get the money? you always wonder that.) got a color film camera. It was hand cranked and the longest shot it could do was 35 seconds. Hence the jump to other shots all the time. And the odd static shots where nothing happens. (Can’t waste film).

Also there was no sound recording during shooting– all the voices were dubbed later by Hal, His wife and a couple of other people. (Which is why the little girl’s voice sounds so awful – not that the other voices are much to write home about).

The music changes from the flute to somebody pounding on a piano and someone doing a kind a oh – big voiced female warbling. It doesn’t have much to do with what’s going on in the film, but neither did the flute music so it’s not much of a change.

More driving – shots out the window – shots of mikes hands on the wheel as they drive. There is pointless bickering where mike and mike’s wife start arguing and Mike again makes like the defensive jerk “We saw the sign, it said it was this way.”


And they come to the end of the road – no lodge and Mike finally agrees to turn back.

Aside from the bad filming and what not this section reminded me too much of riding in the car with my dad “we’re not lost”.

More to come. The horror has not even begun yet.

Peace Love, Valley Lodges

Random Notes & More Manos

Sorry for not posting but work got in the way – about three boxes of things have to be sorted filed and tossed depending – that in addition to my usual duties. And to be fair I’ve done more blogging than I should on company time so – anyway a late post.

I note that W has decided to finally compare Iraq with Vietnam - of course being him he gets it wrong but hell at least the seal is broken.

He made a big deal about the Khmer Rouge who by any standards were monsters but I remember back when Vietnam finally moved in to stop the killing fields – the US government was on Pol Pot's side cause he was against the Vietnamese. Yep. We insisted that the Khmer Rouge were the legitimate government of Cambodia despite killing at least a million people. But hell we supported Saddam for a while as well.

Folks have started referring to the Blue Dog Democrats (who have given W his recent wins in congress) as Bush dog Democrats. They don’t like the label. Good, it was meant to be insulting.

The utter lack of any coherent debate on how to get the hell out of Iraq is merely another indication that within the beltway it is far better to be wrong in the accepted manner than it is to be right. It looks like the only folks invited to the adult table are the ones who supported going into Iraq in the first place. But it was ever thus.

Didn’t check the market but people are just still too greedy and too in love with their own wisdom to suit me.

Anyway

Manos –

This is going to take a few posts because well I want it to be good and god almighty I’ve actually done research on the damn film.

Anyway, anyway first a personal memory.

It was at least 20 years ago maybe more. I was sitting in the basement of my house watching TV , it was very very late 1:30 am at least I think. I was just flicking around before going to bed (this was the early days of cable before the late night air waves were filled with people peddling baldness cures, weight loss by hitting yourself with a belt or better health via huge bowel movements) when I hit on this film.

I’d like to think it was on TBS but I’m really not sure. In any event I couldn’t turn away. It was horrible. Bad acting? Hell this needed some other word; it was so beyond as in worse that bad acting that even the word horrible wasn’t enough. The camera work was at once unsteady and static, the sound was annoying the voices grating and the action well things happened but I didn’t quite know why.

It was like a train wreck – I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I remember willing myself to stay awake (my body trying to protect me was trying to get me to go to sleep – if we lose consciousness we won’t have to watch this horrible film it was saying) but I stayed awake I had to – I remember saying “this is the worst film I have ever seen in my life” At that point I had not seen Plan Nine From Outer Space – although I had head of it (via The Golden Turkey Awards the last decent thing the Medvid Brothers ever did) so I hung in until the end . Which I absolutely hated. I remember going to be thinking what a damn rotten ending.

Fast forward a few years – like a lot – it’s about 1995-6 Mystery Science Theater was about to release it’s only movie. In addition to that they published a book on the first 7 years of the series (it was going from Comedy Channel to the Sci Fi channel – side note I remember being righteously pissed that the Comedy Channel was canceling MST3K – my nasty comment was – well they canceled the only funny show on the comedy channel – end side note.)

Anyway (yes I use that word a lot) I picked up the book – in the book they descried a film called Manos as “the blecherist most loathsome film we did – of course it was a fan favorite – we were haunted for days”, It was a film called Manos. Well of course as soon as the VHS of Manos was available I got it – and almost ran home to pop it in. I did and as the film started to roll I realized.

Oh my god it’s that film. THAT ONE ! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Later .

Peace love NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

No Shortage of Bastards

No time to do anything much today – so this will be very short.

My sister said over the weekend that there is no shortage of Bastards in this world. As a perfect example the White House has moved to restrict access to a federal program that insures children. One New Jersey state spokesman said she was “horrified” by the new regs – which were sent out late Friday afternoon.

Someone has written a bizarre article in something called the Family Security Foundation that called for W to declare himself president for life as did Creaser when Rome was in crisis.

I didn’t know my head could spin 360 degrees around before I read this (they’ve scrubbed it from the site but it lives in Google forever) a few things – 1) this is very very crazy 2) at least Creaser had managed to conquer Gaul when he set himself up as dictator, he wasn’t stuck in an endless occupation 3) The only thing W and Creaser have in common is that they walk on two legs 4) Caesar’s move was the end of a long long period of political turmoil and civil war not, as this would be, the start of it.

They also want Iraq and Iran nuked.

Joe Lieberman is now saying as long as we’re in the neighborhood, why not bomb Syria.

Dick Cheney is now saying he is not part of the executive branch. Why? To not answer a subpoena to the executive branch. Wait till he needs executive privilege and he’ll claim it. It’s a wonder this guy doesn’t vanish in a blast of fire and smoke that reeks of brimstone.

Michael Vick has plead guilty to charges relating to dog fighting. I got nothing.

Was watching Atlantis the lost continent a film by George Pal from 1960 Friday night - it’s dumb trivial poop really but one thing stuck me. In the film Atlantis is the greatest nation in the world, far ahead of any others in terms of wealth power scientific achievement and yet the rulers live in fear of an imagined attack and conquest by barbarians. The speech made by the heavy justifying Atlantis going to war with the world sounded for all the world like a neo-con right wing screed about how the isalmofacists and illegal immigrants are going to take over the US. It was spooky, especially with what happened to Atlantis. Cause there’s that global warming thing as well.

Foreclosures in July were up 93% over last year’s July total. What’s making this worse is that the mortgages were packaged and bundled and sold all over the world so a homeowner trying to try and work things out has nobody to talk to. Not that the powers that be care – they are screaming for more money for well to do since they are the ones taking the hit on the street.

As my sister said.

Peace Love and maybe just a few less bastards please?

Folkfest, stuff and Manos

I enjoyed the Philadelphia folk fest – it was a beautiful day not too hot (other times I remember spending most of my time pouring water on my head waiting for the sun to go down) the music was good and the vibe was well.

Well it’s pretty much hippies and folkies which makes it a very very mellow vibe – I also think that they don’t allow booze in the performance areas (just about anything goes in the camp grounds I’m told) also adds to the laidback ness of the whole thing. I’m personally too tightly wound to feel entirely comfortable in the atmosphere for more than a day or so but it’s nice to get away for a while.

Son Volt played, while good they didn’t really wow me – don’t know why It maybe the songs were all a bit too much alike and sung in the same style – don’t know – I liked it but wasn’t as taken with it as my brother in law and sister were – but they were fans for a while before.

My favorite was something called Old Springs Pike which has 3 guys and girl all in their early 20’s who just tore it up on stage – four part harmony – furiously strummed acoustic guitars and enough energy to light a small town – they are one of the few acts I’ve ever seen with a stand up drum kit – just amazing stuff. Them I will see again.

One thing I noticed was they cut Betty LaVett’s (a soul singer who gave you the impression she felt every note as she sang it) set short during an instrumental break someone came from off stage and spoke to her, – and then when the song was ending she said “thank you and good night” and walked off cold, no bow nothing.

There was also no announcement that she would be up at the CD tent later (which is a folk fest tradition and a way for bands to sell more cds yes?).

The next guy came up (after a very very lengthy break where a banjo was tuned over and over again. I remember thinking come on guys it’s a banjo they don’t tune) we were given a kind of lecture on the history of Hobart Smith with banjo music. It wasn’t bad but I could have done with less lecture and more music and maybe just a little more of the soul singer yes?

W in talking to the Egyptian president described himself as a dissident. From what? Reality? You’re the president – granted a hugely unpopular and unsuccessful president a historically colossal failure but you’re the president, you stand at the heart of the establishment, men bow and curtsy and fawn and kiss the hem of your gown (when you wear a gown – when that is I don’t want to know) inside the beltway you are still powerful (for unknown reasons) your wisdom on Iraq, such as it is, is the prevailing wisdom in Washington. Honestly you’re as much a dissident as Stalin was.

The great relief when this nightmare is over is that at the next UN General Assembly, the president of the United Sates won’t be automatically the stupidest person in the room.

Judging by the reports I’m seeing in the blogs – democratic members of the House and Senate are getting raked over the coals about a) the wiretapping fold and b) impeachment as in how about it.

Good.

I also notice that the market isn’t quite convinced that what the fed did Friday is going to work. I’m not surprised at this – during a credit crunch it doesn’t always help to give the banks money, if they aren’t that interested in lending it. Also there wasn’t quite the sense of despair and defeat that you need to see before things go back up – too many folks are still impressed with their genius and in a down market that’s a bad sign – hell you almost end up defrauding yourself. We’ll see just what goes the next few days.

While the right wing seems nostalgic for the gilded age of the late 19th century – the economy was far more prone to huge drops back then – they called them panics back then and while the term has been replaced with the more neutral sounding words (down turn rather than recession now a days) it’s still a good description of the mood - at least on Wall street.

Mets won 3 games in row for the first time in what seems like years – I also note that the bucs took two out of three from the phillies – so it is just vaguely possible that the pirates are getting a little better rather than the Mets failure to sweep them meaning the season is over.

Manos – oh god I’m not sure I want to but I will give it a bash.

A lot of stories you read in almost any field of human endeavor are of the type were someone decides hey! I could do better than that and goes and does. Manos is an example of a guy who decides he could do better than that but doesn’t.

Anyway in 1965 Hal Warren a fertilizer salesman from El Paso decided he wanted to make a movie.

And he did.

More to come.

Peace, Love, I am Torgo

Off to see Der Volk and other Musings

The Federal Government is making noise about needing identity cards or passports or something to board a plane or even go to into a federal park or Federal Buildings – it has something to do with the Patriot act or the something called the real identity act or some states have balked at requiring everybody to carry some kind of official ID. So if you’re from those states you’ll need a pass port to get into Yosemite I guess.

Land of the free and home of the brave yeah right.

For some reason I have flashed on something I read about 100 years ago in the National Lampoon Magazine – they used to have fake letters to the editor and one was from Bulgaria complaining that their secret police were spying on people in their country. The letter insisted that they did not have a secret police, what they had as a secret fire department which would break into your house and hose you down if you were under suspicion. It was stupid and funny at the same time, a trade mark of the Lampoon in those days.

We can’t be that far from a secret fire department ourselves.

News has come in that three mine workers have been killed and six injured trying to get to the six miners trapped back on August 6th. This probably means the end of rescue efforts there.

We’ve had a series of mine disasters over the last few years brought on by yes – you guessed it, lax enforcement of mine safety laws. Coal mining is dangerous enough but you start gutting the enforcement of safety violations by Mines you are asking for kind of thing. And the appointee to head the Federal Mine and safety board was so horrible that not even the GOP controlled Senate would sign off on his nomination (W made a recess appointment – he was fond of those whenever he got stymied)

Off to the Philadelphia folk Fest this weekend – just one day for me (it’s a three day festival but well one day is enough – lot of music – not all of it indeed most of it isn’t the kind of folk that makes me want to kill myself – you know the long meandering songs that go on and on and on and on with verses that have little to do with each other or even the point of the song which you don’t get to for 5 minutes anyway – and when you finally do get to the point of the song you start wondering “if the is about his lady friend why all the verses about driving in his car and ordering take out on his cell phone?”

There’s that or the covers of folk songs from a 150 years ago ( I do like this but a little goes a long way) that have everybody dying in a flood, famine and a fire all at the same time sung as slow as you can with someone playing the dulcimer.

What the fest likes to do is feature music out side the mainstream – and that covers a lot of ground these days. And it’s a very mellow crowd – it’s like 3rd generation hippy by now. Which for a New Yorker is a cool get away from the late summer tension vibe that is here I must say.

And they have this thing called funnel cake – it’s some kind of dough (pancake or waffle maybe) that they push out through a funnel (hence the name) into boiling hot cooking oil, then after it’s cooked it’s covered with white confectioners sugar and you eat it. As appalling as it sounds it is actually – when you’re there outdoors – it’s quite good. Better than you’d think for sure.

Trying to line up gigs for the band for the fall – we have one with Otto’s 9/7 then with luck we’ll have one in October at the Luna Lounge then maybe one out on the island. We’re kind of hoping maybe we can get a Philly gig at some point as well – originally when it was just the Enemy Below, Insect Girl and myself we’d figured we crash at my sister’s but well not with the traveling circus we have now. Hell I don’t know if we could all fit in a single van for that matter.

Anyway must dash things to do – probably no hideous bad film until later but with the 1 year of blogging coming up I think it’s time to climb the mountain of utter awfulness that is Manos – the hands of fate.

Peace Love

8/16/77 - Elvis leaves the building forever

Elvis died 30 years ago today. The apocryphal story is that a Hollywood agent upon hearing the news thought for a time and then said “good career move.”

It was – dead Elvis is bigger than Elvis ever was when he was alive except for the moment he first burst onto the national scene and scared the living daylights out of everybody. (It’s hard to remember just how panicked the powers that be were by this kid.)

I wander all over the track thinking about Elvis – there was this stupid McDonald’s ad a few years ago where a woman is remembering the time Elvis was going to be on the ed Sullivan show . She and her sister were ecstatic with anticipation but the TV broke so her dad took them to MacDonald’s for burgers.

The kicker is that years later they found out that their dear old dad had purposely broke the set so his daughter’s purity would not be imperiled by the Heathen shakings of hips Ed wouldn’t show.

The commercial painted the idea the daughters were glad for their special McDonald’s memory with their daddy (which is actually kind of creepy if you think about it) rather than the actual response which would have been to kill the bastard where he stood. Listen, if he did something like that because he was so threatened by his daughters burgeoning sexuality that he’d break his own TV set, lord knows what other creepy passive aggressive controlling games he pulled over the years. Really he’d be very lucky if he died peacefully not smothered by a pillow in a nursing home by one daughter while the other kept watch in the hall.

Back to Elvis – I have a lot of Elvis records but the only ones I’ve listened to on a regular basis are the Sun Sessions – the double CD of his top hits and a collection of Blues Covers he did: Reconsider Baby. The rest – well I got them at Half price when I was working for a company that through a complicated train of events ended up owning RCA Records and with cd’s at that time, I was like Hunter Thompson with drugs “not that we needed all that for the trip but once you lock into a serious drug collection the tendency is to push it as far as you can.” (Fear & Loathing in Los Vegas). – having spun them a few times you get the feeling that Elvis would have sung the phone book if you plopped it in front of him and started playing music.

Anyway his death in 77 marked what seemed like the end of something – what I’m not sure, maybe the emergence of Punk but if that was the case why did the clash honor Elvis’s memory with their London Calling Album cover?

Actually the Brit’s feelings about Elvis are worth an essay on its own.

Got to go – have a few things to work on.

Peace love Hound dog.

Scooter Adieu

Phil Ruzzito died yesterday, the papers have picture and as expected the air waves are full of tributes and what not. I’m not sure if this makes two or three cause I don’t know if Mary Astor who also died counts or not. We’ll have to get the decision from the judges later.

I always find the ‘Celebrity deaths come in threes’ amusing. Simply because if you wait long enough after one celb dies – two more are bound to pop off sooner or later.

You wonder what people would say if a bus full of celebrities went over a cliff – but the number wasn’t divisible by three, would people be saying well two more are coming? You wonder these things as you wait for the coffee.

Speaking of Merv Griffin – was I speaking of him well never mind – anyway I was honestly surprised to learn he was gay – but I’m clueless about such things – it took me years to learn what was the deal with the village people – I mean, no I didn’t realize they were gay and dressed as gay stereotypes – honestly . I was extremely naïve back in the day. YMCA just flew right over my head. I didn’t like the song because it was disco and back then disco made my teeth hurt. (I don’t hate it so much anymore, I just don’t like it that much) so the news about Merv was interesting, considering here was a closeted gay man good friend of the Reagans and such. Who as Aids was ravaging the gay community said nothing at all.

I suspect that when the right talks about homosexuality as a choice it is more directed at choosing to live openly as a gay man or woman rather than actual orientation, which they are pretty happy to over look as long as one stays in the closest.

Anyway back to scooter. I remember two things: one when he was doing the Yankee games you knew the score instantly – when the Yankees were losing he would be talking about fishing or some pastries he had gotten. I remember him wondering aloud how you can land a 10 Pd fish with a 5 pound line while a double play was going on.

The other was a conversation I had with someone; this was before he got into the hall, where a co-worker was saying that his dad told him the other teams didn’t like it when Ruzzito got on base.

“Well of course not”, I said. “You got DiMaggio or Mantle so you want to limit the damage they can do they are going to get hits, people on base makes it worse. Teams didn’t like it in ’86 when Dykstra and Backman got on base but that was because the Mets had Hernandez Carter and Strawberry coming to the plate not because Dykstra and Backman were so good.”

As far as Scooter being in the hall, well he’s in. He wouldn’t be in if he had played his full career in Washington or Philadelphia but that’s the way things go. Ted Williams, who was a friend, wanted him in, and I have better things to do than worry about the purity of the hall of fame right now.

Busy so that will have to be it.

Peace Love, they come in threes.

If it keeps on raining levee’s gonna break.

Going to be short – stuff to do.

Was listening to Dylan’s most recent album (Modern Times) this morning – still haven’t quite made my mind up about it, he seems to be just stringing words together pretty much at random and singing them. It’s interesting but I’m not sure it quite deserves the critical swooning this one has gotten. Anyway one of the songs is “the Levee’s gonna break’ a play on the Memphis Minnie Song covered (without credit mind you) by Led Zeppelin Side note: I remember reading a contemporary review of Led Zeppelin IV that dismissed “Stairway to Heaven” as trivial hippy poop and said that the HUGE song from the album would be the Levee song – critics don’t know everything yes? End Side note.

Okay the whole thing is that with the total mess in Iraq (Turkey and the Kurds, the wearing down of the army, the collapse of our chose Iraqi government, the continuing violence et al,), The collapse of the Housing Market (with it’s very very bad implications for the rest of economy), the saber rattling with Iran, the rising nativst fear of the ‘brown people’, the ugly state of every damn department in Washington (and the up coming fights over testimony and the possible impeachment of Gonzales), the lead and other poisons that keep getting into the United Sates cause things are cheaper to make in china, the strange and weird longing of the right wing religious right for Armageddon, you just the get sense that something is going to break big time. Something is just going to blow up in our faces and it’s going start whacking down all the other dominos out there.

Nothing I can really put my finger on, just a sense of something big and bad is on its way.

They are touting the PPI gain in the ‘core’ inflation of only 0.1% for July. However boys and girls that excludes prices for things like food and gas. And what do people spend most of their money on (aside from shelter) yep Food and Energy prices. The whole idea of ‘core’ inflation is a bit of a con started in the 70’s to try and a) make people less hysterical about rising prices and b) justify not increasing wages enough to match inflation.

An example of how my head words - Georges Cuvier the French Naturalist of the early 19th Century (he died in 1832) in addition to introducing the idea of extinction was the supreme exponent of the idea of Catastrophism – the idea that a series of disasters destroyed life on earth which then was restored in different forms (the exact mechanism of replacement was somewhat fuzzy). While he came to believe that the earth was indeed millions of years old he did not hold with the deep time ideas of geology or indeed of the evolutionary process itself.

Now Darwin, working later in the 19th century and English, used uniformitarianism as his basic understanding of the method, (uniformitarianism is the idea that the processes going on right now in nature are the same as they always were and have been going on for a long long time) to explain his idea of the gradual change of one species to another over vast amounts of time.

To my mind part of this could be explained by personal experience, Cuvier lived through the French Revolution, the overthrow on the Monarchy, the rise of Napoleon and the fall of Napoleon, the Restoration of the Bourbons and the July Revolution of 1830 – the idea of sudden and violent changes would be a natural to him, whereas Charles Darwin scion of a well to do doctor in Shrewsbury experienced nothing like those earthquakes of the social order – personal losses and the like but not revolutions in the social order so Darwin being at heart a good English Squire at heart distrusted the idea of sudden change and went with the idea of slow gradual change.

Possible? Maybe. Likely? Who Knows?

Well that’s how my mind works – that and coming up with sick song lines like “I killed my boyfriend for you”. I don’t know if that will work but it popped into my mind while I was day dreaming and I wrote it down.

Off to get stuff done.

Peace Love Fossils.

Karl, Ring, Flash Gordon

1. King rat leaves the ship.

The news has just shot through the web and the airwaves that Karl Rove the man known as Bush’s Brain and other even more insulting terms is leaving the White House to “spend more time with his family” a comment that has raised eyebrows all over the blogsphere and even in the normally somnambulant Main Stream Media. The phrase “spend more time with family” is a well known Washington euphemism for “fired or told to resign”.

They are all saying it has nothing to do with the several subpoenas he has refused to respond to or the other investigations fluttering over the heads of the W, Gonzales and the whole crew not a thing.

Meantime the Italian government claims it has uncovered a weapons smuggling ring linking the mob and the Iraqi government. I don’t really know what it means but it can’t be good.

There will be many eyes watching the Stock Market this week. We are assured that nothing bad will happen – the people doing this assurance don’t know any better than we do what will happen – it is however part of the job of the serious and important financial people to say things will be okay and will continue to be okay. We’ll see. I heard a silly piece on the radio this morning that said that the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market wouldn’t affect small stock holders since they don’t usually invest in the kinds of firms that deal with these kinds of interments.

Like oh, banks.

I mean come on – why the hell else is the fed pouring money into the banking system? Jesus I am so tired of spin.

One of the things that mark a real bear market is that the weekend makes things worse. People look at the week just past and come to the conclusion that it’s time to go.

2. Anyway Ring of Terror.

There was no reason for this movie to be a movie – there isn’t’ enough plot to sustain an old tales of the darkside ½ hour show.

The story such as it is, is a med student seemingly fearless, is forced to confront his secret fear (being in the dark with a corpse from a child hood trauma) and when he does he drops dead. And with that the movie ends.

Since there isn’t much that happens most of the film is padding. The students go to the cafeteria – which is supposed to be the hot spot with a live band (the “Campus Cool Kats’) who manage to get a great trumpet sound out of their saxophones.

Now music is kind of important to me – actually in my case it’s like saying oxygen is important to me and that kind of thing just drives me crazy. I sitting there (the song is lame as hell by the by) and at first the band isn’t even playing their saxophones – then one of the actors deigns to put the horn in his mouth and we get a trumpet solo. God did they think we are that stupid?

Actually they really didn’t care – this was so couples had an excuse to go to the movies and neck. It didn’t matter really what was on the screen as long as there was something.

Bad B movies – another casualty of the sexual revolution.

Back to the film – in addition to the lame music – guys this was filmed in the late 50’s – swing jazz wasn’t what people listened to especially kids in college (although all the actors are way way too old to be in college – the Male lead was 40 when he did this.) guys you know – Chuck Berry? Elvis? Little Richard? Buddy Holly? Rock and Roll? Guys? In addition to the lame music the film does give an interesting insight into contemporary views on gender roles as viewed by a hack 50’s filmmaker.

The women are all looking to get married – they seem to be at the dorm in campus but none of them mention a class or what they are taking. Their entire conversations consist of talking about ‘the boys’ (again you snort soda through your nose as you consider the age of the male actors) and getting all petulant when the ‘boys’ have to leave them at the dance because they have to go to an autopsy of a john doe (part of their class work you see) – but silly women don’t get that, they are too just to silly to understand that men need to get high paying jobs and take are of them , silly silly women. I’m a guy and I wanted to throw something at the screen.

There is also some painful comic relief (from what we need the comic relief I can’t say but there it sits like a heavy weight on your head) from an overweight couple “ha ha! Fat people eating! Ha! It’s Funny! They put sugar substitute tables in the coffee after eating cake and drinking four sodas Ha Ha! Then later when it looks like they are making out Ha Ha! Fat People making out! It turns out they both eating the same sandwich – because fat people like to eat! Ha! Ha! Please kill me. Please Kill me now if you have the slightest humanity killll meeeeeee.!

The last part of the film is a barbeque where the freshman are given their final hazing – one poor bastard has to dress up like cupid - never got the whole frat thing, life is humiliating enough, or at least so I’ve discovered, and I’m not really keen on joining an organization that insists on humiliating you in order to join it. No thanks.

In the end the male lead has to take a ring (the ring of terror yes the movie makes sense – no it doesn’t) off the hand of dead person in the holding morgue or the local cemetery. This is actually called grave robbing and gets you tossed into prison. But the Male Lead to prove he is brave does it anyway – and manages to lose or drop his flashlight and then a sound (it’s a cat shown earlier don’t ask) screeches and somehow the corpse’s hand (with the RING OF TERROR) on it grabs at the Male lead – who drops dead (we assume of a heart attack – well it can happen in your early 40’s). And that’s it. there is a epilogue of sorts but nothing going back to the students or how his death affects them – and listen somebody dropping dead as part of a fraternity prank is kind of a big deal you would think – opportunity for real drama and all that but why have that now since we there wasn’t any the whole damn picture.

There goes another 76 minutes of my life I could have been doing something else. Why I keep asking why?

3. TV show: Flash Gordon –

The Sci-fi channel has decided to update – like they did with Battlestar Glactica an old sci fi series. This time they went way way back to the 30’s to do Flash Gordon – (or the 80’s with that silly film – they are using the Queen theme song). Over all, despite the fact I made fun of the show from time to time – over all I thought it was pretty good. There was no way they were going to even try to emulate the look of the old serial – which was the 80’s movie’s problem – but I’d have liked Ming to be a bit more, well merciless (It’s tough with Charles Middleton’s Iconic role as Ming in the serial. But Ming comes off a bit more like a tightly wound neurotic clerk than the evil master of the universe – still props to him for the bathe her and send her to my quarters line upon meeting Dale). And I’d have liked Princess Aura to be well a little more dangerous. In the serials she was as dangerous as a cobra and about as predictable – she came off more as a spoiled brat princess – not someone even Ming was careful around.

Still the cast was pretty good – the women showed enough cleavage to keep attention up when the plot sagged and hell they have time so we’ll see what happens.

Peace Love Defender of the Universe

Books to add to the summer Reading list

The Technology of Orgasm – by Rachel P Maines. A study of women’s Hysteria and the rather odd treatment they had for it back in the day – manually stimulate the patient to orgasm. It was viewed by doctors as nothing more than a chore – what the patients’ thought is not as well known so when a mechanical device was invented (the vibrator) they jumped on it so to speak.

Books like this amuse me because they remind you that while science and medicine are wonderful things – they are human endeavors and humans are pretty strange lot. And it’s a study in how social mores can just lead people right off the cliff.

Stephen Jay Gould once said about this kind of thing saying we shouldn’t make fun of the past opinions saying the danger is that we can view the past as a land of buffoons compared to the modern era. I’m confident that we are still the land of buffoons – hell any look at the evening news will tell you that. Heavily armed and dangerous buffoons but buffoons none the less.

Speaking of Buffoons:

Mitt Romney is getting some heat because in the mist of a long and unfocused babbling answer to a question said that his sons were serving the country by working on his campaign not enlisting in the army. It’s one of the reasons Mitt isn’t qualified to be president. He’s a god awful liar.

Rudy mean time, operating on an Ego that simply can’t keep its mouth the hell shut said something to the effect that he was a ground zero as much as the rescue workers were. The exact quote is "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers”

It’s hard to put into words just how insulting and arrogant and flat out dumb this statement is.

Standing there with some local doing a photo op is not the same as going down getting your hands dirty and breathing in that muck until you can’t move anymore crashing for a few hours at St. Paul’s and then doing it again. Or in the case of my cousin (a fireman) working 3 days at the house and then two days at ground zero over and over again.

The man’s a shameless attention whore. (and that’s one of his good points)

Meantime W came out and talked up the economy, especially the housing marking saying there will be a soft landing. He doesn’t know that, nobody knows that. They just figure that if enough people say it – it will reassure people and it will happen. We’ll see. It hasn’t worked much in the past but it’s a popular thing to do.

Stock market as of 2 pm or so continues grim slide. The trouble with a credit crunch is that if you can’t borrow money and you need it, you have to something. So if you’re a person you sell something – guitar, clock what have you, if you’re a corporation you dump some stock on the market cause you need the cash. This of course is not counting the entire sub prime mortgage market that is beginning to look like Savings & Loans, the Sequel. That is going to cause much suffering.

Was going to write about the film Ring of Terror – which is – wait for it – terrible but this will have to wait, work matters press on. Suffice to say not enough happens in the film to justify a 30 TV show never mind 70 minutes of well nothing at all. This is not an example of the Theater of the Incoherent like say plan Nine is, this is film néant, the Cinema of Nothingness because nothing happens, nothing at all – the entire movie consists of padding. Along with real bad acting and painful dialogue.

Well as I said, later for that. Sorry.

Peace, Love, Buffoons

Yes that's Diana Rigg again - it's been a long week.

No - We don't know what we're doing.

Now that I have that in mind it’s easier to deal with things like the subway’s third collapse this year after torrential rains.

I had a brief conversation bout the impact of the earth’s warming trend – more storms and more violent ones – and got weird nonsequator responses like ‘it’s the 100 year warming trend” and the like.

Even if, and boy this is a stupid if, since most of the folks saying this are invested in or are getting big bucks from the status quo – it’s true – the problem with that response is - under the circumstances – the earth is getting hotter, the polar caps are melting and weather patterns are getting more violent and unpredictable – is meaningless. In the end it doesn’t matter much if the warming trend is part of a cyclical warming trend, greenhouse gases or god holding a lit Zippo under the earth, the end result is the same – we’re going to have more, not fewer violent thunderstorms capable of pouring 2 inches of rain or more and hour and we need to update our public transportation system to deal with that.

Over in Iraq the Pentagon has admitted that 190,000 weapons (AK-47’s and Pistols) that they were given to the Iraq’s as part of their re-arming the Iraqi army are missing.

Let’s say that again 190,000 weapons are missing. I don’t know what the percentage of AK-47’s to pistols are but it still can’t be good.(Wikpedia says the number of AK’s missing is 110,000 so what 80,000 pistols?) The AK being the Guerilla fighter’s weapon of choice due to its reliability and the easy availability of ammo for it.

The Pentagon says it does not know how many of these missing weapons have ended up in the hands of the insurgents.

Oh I don’t know either but a good guess would be ALL OF THEM.

Jesus – it’d think maybe double agents were involved in this when I remember the snarky Ocam’s razor “never assume malice with stupidity is an adequate explanation”

They didn’t tell us that W was treated last year for Lime Disease. Until now.

Huh? This is the insanity of these people – everything is a secret.

Many of the Democratic Senators and Congressman who voted for the cave in to W wiretapping bill admitted they had not read it or are now surprised and upset by parts of the bill. Namely Alberto Gonzales is allowed to authorize wire taps on good faith that some one is calling someone overseas.

That’s about it. No oversight nothing.

So the next time you call over seas make sure to speak clearly and slowly, when the NSA does a transcript of the tape they will appreciate you efforts.

It’s a mark of how weird the GOP has become that the most biggest surprised of the most recent GOP sex scandal is that involved heterosexual sex.

A man asked “What’s wrong with America and how do we fix it?”

Expect this man to be slandered and dragged through the mud by servants of those who think the only thing wrong with America is that they don’t have all the money yet.

Got a gig at Otto’s shrunken head – after that we are looking to work on the musical try to book a gig back at the Luna Lounge – and then Philly and maybe someplace on the island as part of the Bob Muir and the Enemy Below kinda tour of the Northeast.

That’s about all – I’m not feeling so hot – heat I think.

Peace Love, more shows!

Seven Hundred and Fifty Eh and Worse, Batboy’s home is gone.

Well Barry Bonds is now holds the record for the most home runs in a career. And while I’m not fond of Bonds, I have to say when ever I find myself and the New York Post on the same side, it’s a mark that I should re-examine my position. Their headline was just mean and childish but that’s you expect of the Post.

That said, I still think the only real long term effect of Barry’s quest has been to remind baseball fans of what a good player Aaron was.

The whole steroid era has and will have long term bad effects on the game as time goes on – the era by the by, was the result of Baseball’s wounded position after Bud Selig first damaged baseball by canceling the world series in an effort to cripple the baseball players union. One of the stupider decisions of what has been a pretty constant stream of stupid decisions. It didn’t break the Union (and god in heaven what is with the need to break unions- you can really screw workers a lot easier by making deals with union leaders but no, the desire to be absolute rules runs strong in the boardrooms, never mind that none of them can hit a curveball) and it left baseball in a bad state, so bad that when McGuire and Sosa and well everybody else started juicing Bud decided (bad decision number two) not to do anything about it. (also he would have needed the cooperation of the baseball players union and after his attempts to destroy it, they really weren’t about to cooperate with Selig on anything) so he hawked the new playoff system and Inter-league play (I don’t like either idea and I still don’t but I’m not going to say that’s really a bad decision on his part cause that is just my own subjective opinion) and celebrate McGuire’s 70 home runs. Like it was kind of his idea. Selig is good at that kind of thing; he was a used car sales man back in the day.

There were a lot of stories about how baseball is back and all that and after the disastrous strike year the last thing anybody wanted to do was rock the boat about ‘roids.

So it became let’s pretend that somehow these guys are stronger because of more exercise or some thing. Bonds of course was one of these players. There is an odd subset of folks who continue to use the word ‘alleged’ about Bond’s steroid use – which does leave them the having to explain how a man at 35 (or thereabouts I’m too lazy to look up the actual date) suddenly gains 20-30 pounds of muscle, grows a bigger head, has his hair fall out, gets bad skin, if anything gets a worse personality, and becomes a home run hitting machine when before that was hitting at most 40 a year – with out resort to magic spells from a witch.

We know, to quote Jay Gould the evolutionary biologist who wrote books like ‘the mismeasure of man’ more about baseball than we know about any other human activity – and in the history of the game nobody has ever done what Bonds did – vastly improve his offensive stats across the board as he got older (i.e. in his 30’s). That being the case, the reasonable explanation is that he was juicing –it’s that or he’s a mutant or magic spells were involved. And as much as folks love Harry Potter magic doesn’t work. (If it did there would be cabinet position ‘Chief Wizard’ or some such. That god there isn’t – can you imagine what kind of horrible choice W would make filling that position? The mind reels. ‘I’d like ya to all meet mah new Chief Wizard – Sauron the Great. Questions?”).


Working out alone doesn’t cut it – both Carlton Fisk and Carl Yazstremski maintained ferocious workout schedules in their later years that allowed them to play baseball well into the their 40’s but their offensive statistics showed decline as time when on without any sudden rise. The same as Steve Carlton and even Nolan Ryan who when he was older, a coach said “Well he’ll never throw it over 100 again’ (given that Nolan’s best years were before we had decent radar guns lord knows just how fast he was tossing the ball, best guesses back then were 105-106 – one of the reasons I’d rather watch than play- ouch.)

And an effect of ‘roids is that you heal quicker so that the wear and tear of the long baseball season doesn’t effect you. Until recently, when Bonds started to get the kind of weird ailments you typically get from steroid abuse (a healthy 40 year old man does not get the kind of persistent infection he was dealing with a couple years ago unless well, you know the drill by now.) the man was a horse.

So Bonds became this mutant roid freak and the press and baseball put their fingers in their ears and went “La La La We can’t hear you’ until, well Bonds was knocking on the door of the home run record and 50 homer years were common and …

Well then they had hearings – there is now a steroid test policy (but not for human growth hormone yet) but as The Tour De France can tell you once the juicing starts it’s hard to get it to stop and you are in for embarrassing moments - I lost count of just how many tour riders got kicked out for testing positive this year – and it’s going to hurt.

If baseball is serious about this they would do well to study what FIFA does – they have their own damn lab in Switzerland dedicated to making their tests better and keeping up with the juicers advances in technology.

But getting back to Barry, oh let’s not cause he’s such a jerk it gives me a headache dealing with him. Anyway I’m more than willing to lay him like the unlovely mutant baby he is at the feet of MLB, the players, TV and the Press who all for reasons they thought were good at the time didn’t do the job. He’s your child, enjoy.

But enough of that – the sad news comes that the Weekly World News will stop publication with the August 27th issue. The News had been going downhill since the folks who gave us such headlines as “Statue of Elvis Found on Mars” and Batboy had sold it and the National Inquirer and such like to new owners who didn’t under stand the weird report made up shit as straight as you could without camping it up style of the News. Still I own a copy of “Saddam;s Submarines in Lake Michigan” which I will show my nieces and nephew’s children so they will understand just how fucked up we were in 2003.

I am trapped in Queens today by the early morning rains in New York that had a tornado watch issued for the area near Kennedy airport.

One of the side effects of global warming that I remember mentioned was that storms were likely to get more intense – not just hurricanes but such things as thunderstorms as well.

In other words – get used to this.

Peace, Love, Statue of Elvis found on Mars.

Blogger hates pics for the moment.

Dog Days, Hello Kitty, Dinosaurs

Well I woke with all sorts of ambitions in my head – but they all left me in the subway ride. It’s the official dog days of summer. Sirius, the Dog Star is the brightest star in the night sky – it’s bit annoying that actually the most interesting night skies are in the middle of winter. Still aside from the cold, the clear winter sky is better for stargazing than the smog and haze laden last summer sky,. Boys and girls the stuff looked slate grey as I was going into the tunnel on my subway (I’m on an El while in queens) I’m not happy when I can see the air I’m breathing. Makes me nervous really.

So for now my major desire is to go home – put an MST3K movie in the TV and apply gin and tonics (plenty of ice) to my forehead before drinking them. I know it’s not much of a plan but it’s the one I got so It’s the one I’m working with.

Noted in the passing parade.

The picture above is of a Thailand police officer. In an effort to get the officers to behave better (not yell at civilians, turn their cars off when parking, don’t take doughnuts or whatever they do in Thailand) whenever an officer violates one of the regulations he will, in addition to whatever goes on his record gets to wear for one day a hello kitty pink armband. I hope the Thai police don’t have guns cause a humiliated human being with a pistol is a pretty dangerous thing.

This is not a bad movie review – watching The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (a fathom – the international fathom, there are others, by the by is 6 feet . It’s said, it was the length derived from a sailor holding a rope with his arms out stretched – must have been a big guy).

As I said this is not a bad movie review – hell compared to the junk I watch, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is damn near Citizen Kane. Still there were some things I noted, not having seen the film for a while.

The movie starts with a team of government scientists and the military dropping an atomic bomb some place north of the Artic Circle. This bomb, in the long tradition of atomic bombs in sci fi films, releases the title beast to run amok until killed in the last reel. But let’s just track back here a bit.

Whose bright idea was it to drop a bomb on the ice cap? And what earthly purpose could it have served? At best it was an, let’s set off a bomb and see what happens idea. And the scary thing about the atomic tests in the 50’s was a lot of them were just that, let’s set off a bomb and see what happens to ships, houses even people (like trucking troops in just after a bomb went off and tracking their health or more accurately, their lack of it). In this case we end up with a huge monster roaming the ocean and sinking things, wrecking Light Houses (maybe the best scene in the film) and causing no end of bother.

Second he’s not a dinosaur, he’s really a big big lizard, Ray Harryhusen did that on purpose but still hearing everybody refer to it as a dinosaur. Dinosaurs may or may not be an actual group like say the snakes or lizards (which have certain anatomical similarities that lead to their classification – I could go on for days about this but won’t cause a) I even manage bore myself when I’m dealing with this and b) I have work to do) but be that as it may the group of animals considered dinosaurs exhibit certain traits – the number of holes in their skulls, their hips, but mostly that their legs are straight under their bodies, not like the sprawled legs that Lizards and crocodiles or the beast from 20,000 Fathoms have – based on its appearance you’d really have to classify it as a Lizard (Order Squamta for you keeping score at home) - a fantastically huge lizard, but a lizard, not a dinosaur.

Finally in the end the Beast is wounded and it turns out that he/she (the gender is never determined or even worried about since it’s wrecking lower Manhattan at the time) is a walking germ factory with a disease in it that is spread by the spatter of its blood (like the Ebola virus spreads) so they shot a radioactive isotope into the wound thereby killing the creature.

And as it’s dying I’m thinking great – one, you now have a 50 ton irritated corpse to deal with and two) bacteria and viruses are a lot less vulnerable to radiation than we mammals are (and reptiles are less vulnerable as well – but the best is dead so lets just let that go) so it’s possible you have a 50 ton corpse with mutated viruses or bacteria running chock a block through it. And on top of that you've burned down the Cyclone. Way to go guys.

More tomorrow.

Peace Love More gin.

More pics

The band in full cry -



Erin


The Enemy below

We can never get a picture of eamon without his eyes glowing. I wonder why.


And after the gig - dancing like idiots.

Pics from the gig

In a dressing room no less -


Just before we started.



Spencer at the keyboards


And Ah-one, and Ah-two and ah -



And away we go.

The Rot at the Core and other notes

I live near the Tribrough Bridge - it was built in the 30’s under the auspices of Robert Moses a man who left his mark on New York mostly by running highways through neighborhoods – he seemed to hate city neighborhoods just on general principle. Anyway the bridge (bridges rather) opened back in 1936 – and is constantly in use and I can walk to the corner of the street and see the entrance ramp rising up to the bridge – and see the bits of concrete on the facing of the ramp walls falling off.

Now that doesn’t mean the bridge is structurally unsound or something’s going to happen but, it is symbolic.

We’re rotting away from underneath in this country. The Minnesota Bridge was just one of thousands of bridges, roads, railways that we have neglected over the years – governments are scrambling now to inspect our bridges and the like, but once the panic dies down, it’ll be back to hoping the damn things don’t collapse with even more people on them.

This sort of thing is going on everywhere – we’ve shut our eyes to the need to fix things, to make sure food we eat won’t kill us, that the drugs we take are safe, our schools are falling apart, the water systems need work but we just put it off until shit starts falling into the river – and we hope not to many people get killed.

Even now the forces of money is more important than people (as if you doubted this) are using the call ‘higher taxes’ to scare anybody off from actually trying and fix things.

Of course this is while we have poured about 500 billon dollars into Iraq and continue to pour money in there every day. And the billions on weapons (we spend more on guns that than pretty much the rest of world combined) and stupid boondoggles like the infamous Alaskan bridge to nowhere.

By the way what is it about Alaska? It seems like both Senators and their one member of the House is in trouble – Sen. Stevens – he of the internet is a series of tubes comment – is in the most hot water. As a rule the FBI do not search Senator’s houses – not without a fairly decent reason. And it also looks like one of his assistants who was being paid by the Senate was actually a personal assistant looking after his money. That’s kind of a no-no.

Meantime – the Iraq Parliament has gone on vacation for a month leaving a lot of issues unresolved. I suspect they are not coming back. Just call it a hunch.

Meantime there is little power and no running water in Baghdad. It’s 115 during the day and 95 at night – are they trying to spark a general revolt? You have to wonder.

Meantime in another you have to wonder moment – W wants more wiretapping without oversight authority. We’re supposed to trust him and his? I don’t think so. I wouldn’t trust these lunatics with string.

It’s hot and listening to Blue Oyster Cult – mostly the three early albums – the Black and White era stuff – and mostly for Buck Dharma’s ice pick guitar – seems cooling when the weather is like this.

Didn’t get a chance to download the pics will do that this weekend.

Peace Love Secret Treaties

THANK YOU! and Snowmen

Gonna be short today - hope to get some stuff up tomorrow pics and the like – end of the month catch up time at work.

First – to everybody who came – THANK YOU THANK YOU VERY MUCH – it make the night playing for you guys. I’d get gushy and sentimental but I did that last night after the gig and I don’t really want to do that again in the cold light of day. We had the most people of any band show up – so again thank you.

Had a great time playing – for me anyway this was the first big club we played at – with a stage and dressing rooms and two (clean no less!) bathrooms for the performers. Utterly fab indeed .

I admit I was nervous – this was a step up, people have actually heard of the club.

It’s funny – I came off the stage thinking I just totally blew it – and everybody said how good we where. I figured that I was just being my down on myself self and decided to bow to the view of the majority.

Looking back the whole thing was a blur, from the time we got there to the time we finished.

On a sad note – in the confusion the Insect mask has gone missing – I’ve e-mailed the club and since nobody in their right mind would thing – hey I need this – we should get it back – if not we’ll have to find another .

Got a new gig at Otto’s in September – details to come.

Used one of my birthday gift certificates to get an old Ivan T Sanderson Book on the Abominable Snowman – now not so much in the news, the Abominable (a kind Himalayan Bigfoot) was the absolute bee’s knees of X File type stuff back in the 1950’s, at least 3-4 or more expeditions that went hauling about the roof of the world looking for the beast.

They never found one – some mysterious tracks here and there but no beastie.

Still I enjoy reading junk like this – I’m skeptical that there are large anthropoid animals out there in the woods of California and the mountains of the Himalayas but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were either. The world is a very strange place and there are still mysteries out there.

Little mystery remains about W and his people – they are lying weasels. Rove will not appear and another aide has refused to answer any question on the ground of ‘executive privilege” which to W means nobody has to say a thing. This isn’t a political party it’s a crime family.

More people waving papers – more tomorrow.

Peace Love Abominable Snowmen