|
Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
----
|
May 17, 2003
Dennis Hopper's birthday
Hey, hey, it's Dennis Hopper's 67th birthday. He was born May 17, 1936. Happy birthday to yer bad self, Mr. Hopper.
He's done so much good work. I'd definitely take the low-fi immediacy of Easy Rider over the much overhyped Blue Velvet.
I'd also recommend Flashback, an underappreciated minor gem co-starring Kiefer Sutherland. Which reminds me to recommend Hopper's contribution to the first season of 24 as the uber-villain Victor Drazen. Some mocked his accent. Screw 'em. Hopper was outstanding in his role.
The cheesy commercial Speed vehicle worked out to be surprisingly good, partly from his presence.
Damn, but he goes back long enough to have been in Rebel Without a Cause and The Sons of Katie Elder.
Then there was his defining crazy role in Apocalypse Now. What a freak.
posted by Al at 5/17/2003 04:29:00 AM
Rosa Parks needs to get over her bad self
Rosa Parks really tries my patience. She's been set up as the greatest person in America, an untouchable icon. She's probably the number one living person about whom even almost joking is unacceptable. Indeed, she insists on this point. Negro, puh-lease. In this country, no one is sacrosanct. We're all equal, remember?
OK, fine. She did a fine thing fifty years ago by refusing to give up her seat on a bus, thus providing inspiration to the civil rights movement. She's not Jesus, however, and does not remotely rate deification. Rosa Parks just happened to be in the right place at the right time, getting a lot of publicity and a big court case because she was a secretary for the NAACP and knew MLK. Thousands of others commited similar minor acts of civil disobedience without recognition.
This was the point the screenwriters of Barbershop - the best movie of 2002- were making when wise old Eddie said, "Rosa Parks ain't do nothing but sit her black ass down."
Very specifically, Eddie made clear that Rosa Parks did a good thing, but just thought she should not be deified above all the other people who contributed to the movement.
Rosa Parks herself was so incensed by this "disrespect" that she absolutely boycotted the NAACP Image Awards show because it was being hosted by the actor who played Eddie in the movie- Cedric the Entertainer.
Oh, please, get over yourself. Most people would not have much patience for such behavior even from a war hero. Triple war amputee Max Cleland in Georgia didn't get a free ride for even these severe war injuries. Getting a minor ticket 50 years ago don't make you a saint.
Indeed, Ms. Parks has been quite fortunate. For her minor display of bravery, she has reaped fame and moral repute far beyond anything she ever did to earn it.
Of course, getting to be a public icon in America means you have made yourself a public person, open to be criticized, commented on or invoked as a symbol in open civil discourse.
Jebus Criminy, Rosa Parks is an ingrate. She did so little, yet has gotten so much in return. They make movies about her, make little children's books setting her up to every little kid in the land as a sainted figure. They name streets after her, and lavish every kind of praise on her. She's gotten more public recognition for less actual accomplishment than any person now living. She could stand to be just a little bit humble.
Yet here's Rosa Parks suing some poor schmuck hip hop group for invoking her name in their song. It's not even used in a derogatory manner. She apparently just didn't think the song made enough point of kissing her ass, so she's trying to have them destroyed in court. This ongoing attempt to supress Outkast's free speech cost her more credit with me than she had in her account. Guess that makes her approximately morally bankrupt.
LINK TO THIS STORY
HER MOMENT OF GLORY
SECOND THOUGHTS
Richard Pryor Is It Something I Said?
posted by Al at 5/17/2003 03:01:00 AM
May 16, 2003
Please don't feed the beggars
It's such an odd thing that your do-gooders can't see obvious parallels. Our partner at Kohl Hard Facts was studying up on camping stuff, quoting and noting:
"Resist the temptation to feed animals, even leaving bread crumbs or seeds for birds or squirrels. Feeding wildlife can upset the natural balance of their food chain, or make them dependent on human food."
The Sierra Club types all say this about feeding animals. The feeder creates the dependency of the fed. How is it that they routinely miss the logic as applied to humans?
posted by Al at 5/16/2003 05:11:00 PM
Pet Sounds anniversary
On this day in history, May 16, 1966 Capitol released the Beach Boys magnum opus Pet Sounds.
This album will go head to head with any album of popular music ever made. The songs, the melodies, the intricate arrangements and performances- you can't legitimately fault this in any part whatsoever.
Leaving aside my own puny ability to comment on such a masterpiece, let us turn to Sir McCartney. No less than Paul McCartney once publicly proclaimed "God Only Knows" to be the greatest pop song ever written.
Hell, that's not even one of the hit singles. "God Only Knows" and "Sloop John B" have been the songs played on the radio for a couple of generations now. What beautiful recordings they are.
This album makes a prime example for my standing idea of the consolation of creation. Brian Wilson fairly much went to pieces mentally not long after making this album. No matter how crazy he might ever get though, whenever he feels doubtful of his own worth he can climb out from hiding under the bed and say, "Hey, I made Pet Sounds - I'm somebody."
They can't take that away from him.
posted by Al at 5/16/2003 05:03:00 PM
A legitimate educational experience?
From the Indianapolis Star:
"A Westfield eighth-grader�s singing appearance during President Bush�s visit struck a sour note with school administrators who refused to treat her missed classes as an excused absence.
Brianna Tull won�t be allowed to make up any work or get credit for the classes she didn�t attend because she was singing with the Indianapolis Children�s Choir during Bush�s appearance Tuesday at the Indiana State Fairgrounds."
That is so cute. Very few things would constitute better legitimate reason for a couple of hours out of school than going to sing for the president. It's probably valuable to hear what the POTUS has to say, even if you personally think he's a dirtball.
This would seem to reflect either a ridiculously inflamed case of bureaucratic arthritis or, more likely, bitter liberal stupidity. Somehow I strongly suspect that if young Miss Brianna were going to see Jesse Jackson or join some lame-ass peace march, it would have somehow turned out to have been a legitimate educational experience indeed meriting extra credit.
posted by Al at 5/16/2003 04:59:00 PM
May 14, 2003
Homecoming
On this day in history, May 14, 1948, the Jews ended most of 2,000 years of exile from their homeland with the formal announcement of the creation of the modern state of Israel. Naturally, the United States was the first country to recognize their homecoming.
Welcome home. Just wish you had better neighbors.
posted by Al at 5/14/2003 10:11:00 PM
Our buddy Salam a Ba'athist conspirator?
Speaking of scurillous libel, THIS GUY at the Ottawa Citizen really doesn't like our blog buddy Salam, who writes from Baghdad. You can get an idea of the harshness of his critique from the headline:
'Salam Pax' plays Americans for fools in Iraq
The star of the blog 'Where is Raed?' is part of an anti-Western conspiracy
Interestingly, unlike some people this David Warren does not exactly question the authenticity of Salam. He doesn't claim that he's not real. Instead, he makes up a whole bunch of evil stuff apparently largely wholecloth to pile on top of the minimal personal details that this anonymous blogger Salam actually provides.
"Salam is the scion of a senior figure from Iraq's Baathist nomenclature. He was brought up at least partly in Vienna, which is the OPEC headquarters; his father was therefore an oilman, and possibly a former head of Iraq's OPEC mission. Another clue is a hint that his grandfather was an Iraqi tribal chief, from which I infer that his father was one of the Iraqi tribal chiefs that Saddam Hussein rewarded for loyalty, outside the Tikrit clan."
What? Where the hell did he get all that? He appears to be claiming to have deduced all this from reading between the lines of Salam's writings. To phrase it differently, Warren's just making most of this shit up. Apparently he's trying to set himself up as the frontrunner for the New York Times Jayson Blair Journalistic Integrity award.
For my attempt to qualify for this coveted award, I'd like to note that David Warren is a vicious homosexual pedophile whom we can assume has murdered at least several young boys during his criminal run. Now, granted I have no evidence of any of this, nor any good or even plausible reason to believe it.
However, I've got as much reason to make such accusations against Mr. Warren as he has for his nearly equally bad implication that Salam might be an Iraqi security goon. "Salam would never have known any "ordinary" Iraqis, unless he was interrogating one privately."
Best I can figure, Warren contends that Salam is some part of an anti-American conspiracy based on his opposition to an American invasion and continuing criticisms of some of the conduct of our occupation. Why, he must be one of Saddam's henchmen if he doesn't wholeheartedly endorse US bombing hell out of his country and tromping our big combat boots through his streets. Salam even has the temerity to question the pure altruism of the motives of our political establishment. What an ingrate!
Now, one could ask some tough questions Salam's general direction. It is reasonable to infer that he's a rich kid, at least relative to Iraqis in general. I've got no reason to suspect him personally of having done anything bad, but it might be reasonable to direct a little skepticism generally to the middle and upper classes of the old Iraq. How much of what kind of accomodating did you have to do with the Hussein regime to get by? Did you contribute to the longevity of this evil regime? I would intend these to be questions for private spiritual contemplation as everyone works to find a way forward rather than as public accusations.
Let me make a couple of points in Salam's defense, though. He was opposed to us making war on his home, but he was never any kind of defender of the Ba'ath regime, or the Hussein family. He was writing bad things about Saddam before the war that would certainly have gotten him killed if he had been discovered. From absolutely everything else we know about the Hussein regime, it seems exceedingly unlikely that he would have tolerated anyone making public comments against him as Salam did.
He reported bad things being done by the Ba'athists before they were reported by professional reporters, such as the trenches of oil being set up shortly before the start of hostilities in March.
Also, he exhibited only the most caustic disdain for the volunteer westerners who came as human shields before the war. Why would any pro-Ba'ath agent speak so?
His criticisms of the US before and after our invasion have been moderate and reasonable, which is not to say that I would wholly agree with them. He's never accused American soldiers of any gratuitous violence or cruelty. He does not speak bitterly of US soldiers or of Americans in general. Indeed, he's recently urged that we not be in too big a hurry to leave. Now that we've destroyed the old order, he fears chaos and mullahs more than Americans.
He's also picked rather odd blog friends for someone supposedly trying to preserve the interests of the Ba'ath regime. Note that his top buddy, the one person to whom he has actually spoken and divulged personal information is Diana Moon, a pro-war Jewish woman from New York City.
Salam also put up a link to my Culpepper Log apparently just exactly because he appreciated my initial skepticism about his veracity. Like Diana, I was also adamantly supporting the war effort long before we became acquainted.
Now, perhaps Diana and I are Double Secret Agents in Salam's anti-American conspiracy. If so though, he's showing exponentially more cleverness than anything else I've seen from the Ba'athists.
On the other hand, perhaps Mr. Warren is the one involved in the anti-American conspiracy. Perhaps he's really one of the commie Canucks, and he's trying to discredit our war effort by saying really hateful and stupid things on behalf of us hawks. That seems to better fit the known facts on the ground.
posted by Al at 5/14/2003 04:24:00 PM
May 13, 2003
The Miracle of Fatima
On this date in history, May 13, 1917, three shepherd children from Fatima, Portugal have their first vision of Mother Mary, beginning the Miracle of Fatima.
These visions continued over some five months, leading to "the Miracle of the Sun" involving some kind of odd solar event.
This phenomenon seems particularly noteworthy because I can't understand it. The Catholic church has long since accepted the Fatima visitations as actual miracles. Not being religious (as the term is usually understood), I have no convenient pat explanation.
I'd like to discredit these children, and dismiss it as fantasy. That doesn't really work, however, in that successive parts of this phenomenon were viewed by thousands of people. There were as many as maybe 70,000 folks gathered for the Miracle of the Sun. It stretches credulity to try to convince myself that they were ALL hallucinating.
I'm sure there are rational scientific explanations for all of the Fatima phenomena, perfectly good explanations that don't involve ghosts and gods and such. Right?Labels: god, julie andrews
posted by Al at 5/13/2003 01:26:00 AM
May 12, 2003
Damned radical
Forty years ago today, May 12, 1963 Bob Dylan walked off the Ed Sullivan show because he was told he couldn't perform the "Talking John Birch Society Blues". He never came back.
posted by Al at 5/12/2003 09:50:00 PM
George Carlin's birthday
George Carlin was born on this day, May 12, 1937. Happy 66th birthday!
Carlin really turned stand up comedy into proper rhetoric. Richard Pryor gave stand up comedy pathos and drama. Carlin uses it to express serious social critical thinking.
His most infamous recording, the "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" from the Class Clown album, was a masterful study of social mores. How exactly would these particular words be the worst things you could say? Is it the meaning of the words, the sound of them?
posted by Al at 5/12/2003 09:40:00 PM
May 11, 2003
Vintage 1930-32 musical film shorts
Y'all GOT to see the video Hollywood Rhythm: The Paramount Musical Shorts, Vol. 4 - Rhapsodies in Black and Blue. It is a collection of vintage short films from 1930-32, typically one-reel and about seven minutes. These made good appetizers before the main flicks, and just right to set up a little mini-story and do a song or two.
Every single video collected here fascinated me, but especially the first one. Louis Armstrong comes to a janitor in a dream, outfitted outlandishly and waist deep in soap bubbles to sing "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You". I'd never seen Satchmo's freak flag fly this high. I was seeing glimpses of Sun Ra and George Clinton and even Little Richard. Yowsa!
They gathered fascinating performances in numerous genres. There was an opera piece, and some hayseeds (Eddie Younger and his Mountaineers) in an old general store with some hot picking that doesn't sound like Jimmie Rodgers or the Carter family.
The Rudy Vallee Musical Doctor set at the end was probably the only somewhat lame item inherently. Even it, however, provides a fascinating window on the phenomenon of Rudy Vallee. So this is what made nice girls swoon. Hmm.
Props must also be handed out for Ethel Merman, who had two shorts included in this collection. One develops great pathos with The Blues coaxing her onto a bridge, working her up for a suicide. Surprisingly effective.
This is the kind of stuff that you should own. The only problem is that it is not available on DVD. The product is available only on VHS. Still well worth having.
The video comes from www.kino.com. You may wish to WRITE THEM AN EMAIL asking for a nice pretty DVD. Just a thought.
PS A response from the good folks at Kino suggests a couple of DVDs in their line containing some of these shorts. Hollywood Rhythm Vol 1: The Best of Jazz and Blues looks most righteous. Besides the apparently somewhat famous Louis Armstrong piece discussed above, this disc works in Duke and Cab Calloway and Fats Waller. Woo hoo! Warm up that credit card!!
Hollywood Rhythm Vol 2: The Best of Big Bands and Swing has the Rudy Vallee and some other groovy sounding things.
posted by Al at 5/11/2003 10:56:00 PM
Link Soup
morethings master
photo gallery index
MP3
new album
releases
lyrics
sammy davis
little richard photos
buddy holly pictures
fats domino images
chuck berry pictures 01/
02/
03/
04/
05/
06/
07/
08/
09/
10/
11/
12/
01/
02/
03/
04/
05/
06/
07/
08/
09/
10/
11/
12/
01/
02/
03/
04/
05/
06/
07/
08/
09/
10/
11/
12/
01/02/
03/
04/
05/
06/
07/
08/
09/
10/
11/
12
01/
02/
03/
04/
05/
06/
07/
08/
09/
10/
11/
12/01/
02/
03/
04/
05/
06/
07/
08/
09/
10/
11/
12/08/
09/
10/
11/
12/
la
24
lucille ball images james
blunt photos
clint eastwood pictures lena
horne images team
america pictures
robert mitchum photos
bruce springsteen pictures
mariah carey pictures
ann coulter photos
george clooney images
loretta lynn pictures
beatles pictures
white stripes pictures
andy griffith pictures
kill bill pictures
beverly hillbillies pictures
robin williams
frank zappa pictures
jerry lee lewis pictures
richard pryor photos
june carter johnny cash pictures
vic mackey shield pictures u2 photos
four seasons images
james cagney images
elvis presley pictures
country music
blog
dolly parton pictures
olsen twins photos
tom petty photos
tori amos pictures
joaquin phoenix images David
Bowie photos
Quills movie images
reese witherspoon pictures rolling
stones photos
fiona apple images kim
novak images ray charles photos marx
brothers pictures
prince rogers nelson pictures blazing
saddles images
sinead o'connor images
eddie murphy photos aretha
franklin photos
south park pictures homer
simpson images
bob dylan pictures elizabeth
taylor photos madonna
images
saturday night live pictures willie
nelson images hee
haw pictures james
brown images pete
townshend photos
tina turner pictures
dixie chicks photos
margaret thatcher photos
guns
n roses pictures
paula abdul pictures
jodie foster photos
amy winehouse
eminem
frank sinatra photos
van
halen images
satan
blondie photos
joni
mitchell pictures
merle haggard
images
rocky horror pictures
monty
python
|
|
