Blue Eyes Meets Bed-Stuy

The Hip-Hop/Swing crossover phenomenon continues with Blue Eyes Meets Bed-Stuy, a bootleg "mash-up" from Djs Cappel & Smitty, which posthumously pairs Hoboken hardman Frank Sinatra and Bed-Stuy badass Biggie "Notorious B.I.G." Smalls. Sinatra and Smalls were, ostensibly, kindred spirits: tail-chasing, hard-living gangster wannabes. In truth they had almost nothing in common.

Sinatra was closely involved with wiseguys Sam "OG" Giancana, Frank Costello, Willie Moretti et alia but publicly denied any association whereas Biggie wore his ersatz gangsta credentials like a cheap suit. It may have been "Sinatra's world" but the mob didn't just live in it ~ they were the majority shareholders.

The mob bought into Sinatra but Biggie bought into the mob: his gangsta affectations were filtered through, and abstracted by, the distorting medium of popular culture. Biggie's gangsta persona was inspired by movie Mafiosi, Tony Montana and Frank White, rather than real deal Cosa Nostra.

Ironically the mafia's post-modernist potency ascended in inverse proportion to the organisation's decline. Times change: owning up to mafia associations, philandering and other nefarious activities would have been career death for Sinatra but for Smalls... beefing-up his criminal cv with ever more outrageous transgressions, real or imagined, was always a good career move.

The gangster mythos endemic within hip-hop "culture" is a crassly cannibalised, inanely synthesized and incestuously self-referential fiction. This neophyte culture is based on appropriation and imitation rather than innovation and its appetite for "authenticity" reveals its insecurity. The, seemingly related, killings of Tupac and Biggie could be interpreted as a calculated attempt to "legitimate" the duo's criminal credentials: their deaths sealed their transition from mere Thug Life Mortals to Gangsta Gods and, in the opinion of most uncritical critics, invested their work with ex post facto gravitas.

Blue-Eyes meets Bed-Stuy doesn't work for a number of reasons, but chiefly because Sinatra's stellar talent is subordinated to Biggie's barely-discernable gifts. BEMBS is a bunch of Biggie a capella raps laid over the top of unimaginative loops of, generally, downbeat, second-rate Sinatra tracks. It's clear where this project's "masterminds"' loyalties lie: Capel and Smitty even have the temerity to speed up Sinatra's vocal on Everyday Struggle/A Day In the Life of a Fool and for this crime alone they deserve to be dispatched to Quentin for the electric cure. Even when Old Blue Eyes' buddies, the Kennedys, welshed on the (alleged) deal to go easy on organised crime after the crooner persuaded the mafia to deliver Illinois, Sam Giancana would still have had way too much respect to make Sinatra sound like Edith Piaf. Capel and Smitty commit Egotistical DJ Mistake 101 by assuming everything they steal is malleable grist for their manipulative mill. Wrong: The Chairman of the Board ain't no dj's bitch.

Nevertheless, and despite his peripheral role in the fabric of these mixes, second-rate Sinatra is embarrassingly superior to first-rate Smalls. Sinatra's sepulchral vocals drift in and out of the mix like a sombre Ghost of Christmas Past as Biggy gravely intones lyrical gems such as "Hail Mary full of grace.. smack the bitch in the face." Smalls drones on and on about hip-hop's unholy, unimaginative trinity (Guns, Hos 'N' Money) in his inimitably indecipherable version of Brooklyn braggadocio. Despite occasional moments of inspiration, Biggie 's much-touted verbal dexterity is a myth. It's a savage indictment of the prevailing Climate of Inanity that such a limited talent should be accorded such a prestigious position within popular culture's Pantheon of Immortals.

Dead Wrong/In My Room is a song I wish I could unlisten to: a desire to spring-clean the synapses and disinfect the cerebral cortex seems like the only conceivable response to this litany of atrocities. For some mysterious reason hip-hop's aristocracy, from the Geto Boys to 50 Cent, continue to labour under the misapprehension that we're all itching to take a trip inside the mind of a serial killer. Count me out of your travel itinerary, guys: being trapped inside Ted Bundy's cranium, with only a flash-light and tour guide Biggie for company, makes my alternate holiday destination, the seventh circle of Hell, sound like Bora Bora. At least Capel and Smitty did one thing right: excising the scatalogical preamble to Nasty Boy/For Every Man There's a Woman was a rare editorial triumph.

Sinatra, despite his philandering, whoremongering, boozing, mafia-consorting, mean-spirited dark side, transcended his copious shortcomings and produced art which was, and is, capable of elevating the spirit. Biggie's raps, by contrast, embrace the gutter.

Public Enemy ~ Hell No We Ain't All Right

Hell No We Ain't All Right

Guilt by Association

I'm way too deep into the "real" to seek solace in the virtual right now. Nonetheless, the recalcitrant contrarian lurking beneath my user-friendly façade figures this is as good a pretext as any for diversifying my time-investment portfolio and squandering a few of the, rapidly-accelerating and ever-diminishing, moments which comprise the remainder of my life on something reassuringly trivial:

Suddenly I’m in a smokey club in Montemarte discussing Derrida/impressing the chicks with a working knowledge of French Symbolism/drinking Absinthe and smoking jazz cigarettes while some impromptu bebop combo on a cartographic tip valiantly attempts to map the mysterious contours of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.

A slinky piece of homework in Givenchy shades is giving me the Hepburn stare and I’m floating on air, taking flight from the Authenticity Show.

So what’s the story? A kopacasetic Beat Boy meets an apocalyptic It Girl? Sounds like the perfect pitch but U can bet UR bo2m $ the text-messaging teens don't give a sh^t about language. How do you text "Ludwig Wittgenstein" and stay fashionable? This is the Hollywood remake: the last scintilla of original thought has been evicted from the cultural wasteland. Reductio ad absurd dumb movie magic lantern show me the money.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism, Homeyz” jokes some sinister Jim Carrey doppelgangbanger in his inimitable Cab Calloway meets Jerry Lewis persona non gratification of the Kyoto Protocolonic irrigation. An Umberto echo resonating around an empty vessel or a resounding tinkle on the ivory trade out of Africalifornia, girls? West coast girls are hip replacemental imitation is generally considered to beyond the pale face down in the gutterly irrelevant in this context messaging environmentally retarded ejaculate for a very important date with destiny creatures of the woodland of the free fall into the moral vacuum cleaner non schtick tock clock struck one we’ll have some funfair lady Godiva scuban missile crisis of “Faith” by George Michaelangelo Dundee city of discovery tempting to check that chick from the sticks and stones may break Fast and Furious starring Vin Diesel engine and tonic for the soul musicalifornia girls are hip replacemental limitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Do You Know the Way to Dr. Dre?

What the world needs now: a Burt Bacharach/Dr. Dre collaboration?

from The Independent

Once the world's smoothest crooner, Burt Bacharach is now collaborating with Dr. Dre and attacking President Bush. He tells John Walsh why he's swapped easy-listening for tough-talking:
more

Good article but one minor quibble: Burt is the Sultan of Songwriters, not to mention the undisputed Emperor of Easy, but his crooning is only marginally smoother than the use of sandpaper as a facial exfoliant: that's why Dionne, Dusty, Tom, Gene, Perry, Jack et alia were let loose on those melifluous melodies. Burt's exquisitely sophisticated arrangements even made Cilla sound good, though they failed to elevate his own resolutely earthbound vocals. As a songwriter... Burt's natural habitat is more Mount Olympus than Hasbrook Heights but as a crooner... hell, he's just another Icarus in diving boots.

(Still, at least the idea of Burt "attacking" George Bush is an amusing one: "Land of Make Believe" is a Weapon of Melodic Destruction, and we don't need to call in UN weapons inspectors to verify its potency.)

G-Funk (Dre, Snoop, Warren G) is the sound of gangsta rap kickin' back and sharing a Jacuzzi with smooth soul (The Isleys, Marvin Gaye, Teddy Pendergass, Michael McDonald...) but the "Bachman"'s laid-back lounge segues smoothly with the mellow mood.

Septegenarian Burt might not be "street" enough for Dre's hardcore demographic but Casa del ionesco's aging hipster-in-residence can't wait to hear the finished product. Fetch me my carpet slippers, my dressing gown and nice mug of cocoa! Oh, and don't worry about "rolling up a phat one": the only "chronic" in this joint is my angina.

The Do Rights ~ William S. Burroughs

from ubu.com

The Do Rights

Breaking News

Jive Talkin' Pioneers: The House of Blue Lights ~ 1946

Let’s go back, way back, to an old skool classic. And when I say old....
I mean this was the school Methuselah useta play hookey from.

Freddie Slack and Ella Mae Morse were rappin' over swing beats long before Dr. Dre enrolled for pre-med; back before Snoop Dog was a pup. Ol’ Dirty wasn't even as a glint in Poppa Bastard’s eye. Pre-dating P. Diddy’s daddy: we’re talkin’ Grampa Diddy's day, swingers.

Well, what you say, baby? You look ready as Mr.Freddy this black. How ‘bout you and me goin’ spinnin’ at the track?

What’s that, homey? If you think I’m goin’ dancin’ on a dime your clock is tickin’ on the wrong time.

Well, what’s your pleasure, treasure? You call the plays, I’ll dig the ways.

Hey, Daddy O, I’m not so cool as to drop my mood on a square from way back. I’m in there and have to dig life with father. And I mean Father Slack.

Well, baby, your play gives my weight a solid flip. You snap the whip, I’ll make the trip.

Well, lace up your boots and we’ll groove on down, to a knocked down shack on the edge of town. There’s an eight piece combo that just won’t quit. Keep walkin’ till you see a blue light lit. Fall in there and we’ll see some sights at the house, the house, the House of Blue Lights.

We’ll have a time and we’ll cut some rug, while we dig those tunes like they should be dug.

In the Jacuzzi Today

Laura Elena Harring, Friedrich Nietzsche & Angelina Jolie

Jack Pendarvis reviews books based on one random sentence

from The Believer

The Shorter Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature
Victor H. Mair, editor

And murder, needless to say, is the concern of Heaven, not to be taken lightly.

When ace private eye Johnny Fontaine is killed in the line of duty, he’s mighty surprised to find himself at the pearly gates. After all, he’s been known to hit the bottle and make eyes at the ladies. It turns out that Johnny’s trepidation is well founded: there’s one little catch before he can get into Paradise.

Johnny must return to earth for two weeks and perform one completely selfless deed. So far, so good. But nobody warned him about his new incarnation: a lovable if scruffy pooch!

Can Johnny (or “Rover,” as he’s now known) do his good deed—and catch his killer—in time? The Shorter Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature is a pleasing mixture of action-adventure and old-fashioned screwball antics. If this reviewer has one complaint, it is that the plot is uncomfortably similar to that of the 1980 classic Oh Heavenly Dog!, starring Chevy Chase.

The Proclaimers: the "500 miles" conundrum and non-traditional romantic combinations

The Proclaimers' song I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) contains one of the most ambiguous and elliptical lyrics in the canon of popular music:

But I would walk five hundred miles
and I would walk five hundred more
just to be the man who walked a thousand miles
to fall down at your door

The ambiguity is not merely textual but is produced by the interaction of the lyric and The Proclaimer twins' alternate delivery of the first two lines of the chorus (the remaining two lines are delivered jointly). One twin is proposing to walk 500 miles and the other is, seemingly, proposing to match (or possibly even double) his brother's prodigious perambulatory feat. The song, therefore, implies not only that both twins arrive at the destination but also that the walking and, more worryingly, the romancing are shared, rather than individual, endeavours. We must logically conclude that the "man" (rather than "men") who collapses at the door is the Proclaimers' "unified fraternal persona."

The issue is further complicated by each twin's assertion that they will have walked one thousand miles when, it seems, they're planning on sharing the task and only traversing 500 miles each ~ unless the latter Proclaimer twin is proposing to eclipse the former by walking 1000 miles (his 1000 being 500 "more" than his brother ~ in which case we presume he's proposing to start 500 miles behind his brother and to accompany him for the final 500 miles ~ and, thus, amounting to a joint 1500) by contrast with the more conventional interpretation, which suggests that the 500 "more" than his brother's 500 is also 500 (thus totalling a mere 1000 miles between them). Either way, at least one of the twins' "1000 mile" claim is bullshit.

At it's irreducable minimum the song seems to be describing a romantic triangle, yet it's unclear whether the object of the Proclaimer twins' affections is likely to a) expect some kind of crass Darwinian "survival of the fittest" showdown between her (or his) prospective suitors or b) consent to a request for a ménage à trois. The possibilities that the Proclaimers might be required to c) form (or join) a queue or , perish the thought, d) meet with rejection at the end of their journey cannot be discounted ab initio, and textual interpretation alone fails to elucidate the conundrum.

Ashley Pomeroy's analysis (see link) is rigorous but hardly exhaustive: he doesn't consider, for instance, the possibility that the object of the Proclaimers' romantic yearnings may be, in turn, a unified persona comprising seperate constituent personae. If this is indeed the case then the carnal possibilities expand exponentially.

One thing is certain though: any, and all, proposed amorous activity is likely to postponed until the conclusion of a prolonged recovery period after such a gargantuan trek. The Proclaimers' prospective paramour(s) would be well advised to stock up on fluids, high-glycemic/carbo-loaded foodstuffs, warm blankets and saline drips in anticipation of the pair's arrival.

Pomeroy analyses the mathematical conundrums inherent in the lyric and considers a few of the myriad romantic permutations generated by this polymorphously perverse Pandora's Box of Amorous Possibility.

With regard to the plethora of non-traditional romantic combinations implied by the lyric: Pomeroy, tentatively, concludes that close textual analysis favours a "brotherly love" interpretation over the "group sex" hypothesis. Whether his conclusion is warranted is open to debate.

Ashley Pomeroy's thoughts on 500 Miles

Five Families: 200 Vinnies an' a buncha Tonys

from The New York Times

Five Families: Made Men in America
Reviewed by Bryan Burrough

Earlier this year The Times published a front-page article describing an F.B.I. drive to rid the New York waterfronts of Mafia influence. At first glance the story appeared so anachronistic it was jarring. The Mafia? You mean those guys still exist? Given the fact that New York hasn't hosted a decent godfather since Sammy the Bull ratted out John Gotti 14 years ago, one might be forgiven for believing that the world of Italian-American organized crime had gone the way of other crumbling pillars of midcentury American culture, like heavyweight boxing, thoroughbred horse racing and the Democratic Party.

But no. Despite a 25-year onslaught by prosecutors armed with high-tech listening devices and racketeering statutes, despite the fact that so many mobsters have been sent away that not one of New York's infamous "five families" even has an identifiable godfather at the moment, rumors of the Mafia's death appear premature. Still, the mob's influence in the opening years of the 21st century remains a far cry from its glory days, as Selwyn Raab reminds us in his excellent history of the New York Mafia, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires.

For Raab, a veteran reporter who has spent decades chronicling the city's not-so-wiseguys, this book amounts to a kind of lifetime achievement award, granted for long years shouting questions at handcuffed men named Momo and Quack-Quack, studying wiretapped chats at "social clubs" like the Ravenite in Little Italy and trailing the drooling, bathrobe-clad Vincent "Chin" Gigante as he staged his long-running charade of mental incapacitation in the alleys of SoHo.

Mafia nonfiction is not a genre given to rigorous documentation and sound sourcing. What makes Raab so wonderful is that he eschews legend and suspect anecdotage in favor of a Joe Friday-style just-the-facts-ma'am approach. In a 765-page book, not one gangster is "linked" to anything more profound than a keychain. Readers raised on stories of mob ties to this president or that Hollywood chieftain will be disappointed. Frank Sinatra gets two paragraphs tops, Jack Kennedy's Mafia connections barely a clause. But just about everyone who should receive his due does, from Meyer Lansky and Joe Valachi to "Donnie Brasco" and John Gotti.

Therein lies Raab's challenge: organizing the mounds of material he has gathered over the years. This is a book that tells the story of 200 men named Vincent. Everyone else seems to be Tony. By and large, Raab makes things easy to follow with the help of a priceless naming strategy. Rather than repeatedly referring to a mobster as Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno or simply Salerno -- there must 15 Salernos in this book -- Raab removes the quotation marks on second reference. George Herbert Walker Bush, meet Philip Benny Squint Lombardo.

Raab divides his mass of reportage into three sections: one on Mafia history to 1970; a second on the F.B.I.'s awakening and the use of new RICO laws that culminated in the so-called Commission trial of 1985; and a final section that charts the subsequent fates of each of the five families, or borgatas, as Raab properly terms them. His brisk history reminds us that the Italian-American Mafia's creation was Benito Mussolini's doing; it was Il Duce's crackdown on Sicilian Mafiosi that sent so many of them scrambling for American shores. In quick, deft strokes, Raab explains how the mob was created in 1931 -- by Charles Lucky Luciano -- as a treaty settling the street battles of two Italian outfits.

From there the boldfaced names fly by. Tom Dewey, Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Dutch Schultz, Abe Reles -- the gang's all here. Five Families sags a bit as Raab introduces the generation of youngish prosecutors and F.B.I. agents who finally rouse law enforcement from decades of slumber to confront the mob in the late 1970's. But he hits his stride when he reaches the gangsters he knows best, those who presided over the Mafia's decline in the 1980's and 90's. Paul Castellano, John Gotti and Sammy Gravano spring to life for the first time in years, and Raab tells their story with precision and gusto.

The book's finest moments are reserved for Gotti's lesser-known peers, scary third-rate mooks like Anthony Gaspipe Casso of the Luccheses, Carmine the Snake Persico of the Colombos and Joe the Ear Massino of the wheezing Bonannos. Their Shakespearean outer-borough downfalls, heretofore banished to inside pages of The New York Post, bring Macbeth to Maspeth. New York's mob families, it seems, could weather Rudy Guiliani and Donnie Brasco, but they were helpless against their own. When Sammy the Bull trashed omerta by cutting a deal with prosecutors, the floodgates of betrayal swung open, never to be closed. Dozens of Mafiosi squealed before heading off to ranch-house retirements in the Witness Protection Program. When a godfather, Gaspipe Casso, joined the rat parade, the Mafia's fate was sealed.

One's quibbles with Five Families lie chiefly with the inelegant writing; Raab may gather facts like Joe Friday, but he's no threat to Proust. The only thing he loves more than a bloody Mafia hit is the passive voice. And he suffers from an irritating case of explanitis, a malady in which every conceivable reference, from Little Lord Fauntleroy to Crazy Horse, is defined. (Even my 9-year-old knows what "wearing a wire" means.)

In an apparent attempt to buoy its relevance, the book's subtitle refers to the Mafia's ''resurgence.'' This is a stretch. Raab takes 688 pages detailing the New York mob's operatic rise and fall; its supposed resurgence makes up the last 20. One can easily forgive this off-key final aria, however. Five Families is the finest Mafia history we're likely to see for a good long while.

Bryan Burrough is the author of "Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34"

Jed Palmer ~ Lives of the Cannibals: the Spell of the Sexual

from 3 Quarks Daily

They say that spring is the season of love, and they may be right. April's days may be soaked in the hormones and pheromones of a renewed reproductive cycle, and in this we are undoubtedly biology's sensual puppets. But let us firmly agree that we will have no truck with biology here. On the streets of New York, biology is perhaps useful as metaphor, but quite beside the point and ridiculously unsophisticated for our purposes. So we will dispense with eggheaded myopia, and in that spirit we will also reject the modern world's most egregious conceit--love. This cloying trope may be appropriate for the foil covers of paperback novels and the illustrated pages of children's books, but for a teeming metropolis it is a quaint notion, a rumor to sustain the lonely and unattractive.

They say that spring is the season of love, and they may be right, but on the streets of New York, spring is summer's ragged doormat and love is a faintly Midwestern excuse for the gluttonous satisfaction of lust.

Cruelty
Suggested by such details as the curl of a lip and the severe line of a jaw, cruelty is at the heart of sex, though you'd never know it to hear people talk. That cruelty is inextricably woven into the sexual experience disturbs many, largely because it doesn't jibe with the civilized construct of love. But of course the mechanics of sex demand a certain precise violence, and often the quality of our sexual experience is indicated by kabuki-like displays of pain and heartlessness. Despotic New York is, in its concrete miles and Darwinian efficiency, cruel's storied hometown. Just watch the summertime girls on Wall Street and in Times Square as they distribute their weight on nail-thin four-inch heels, and applaud the steel in the eyes (and the pants) of the conquering businessman, whose rigorous assessment of the physical merits of these very same girls is a feat of conscienceless objectification unmatched since stalwart American traders arrived on Africa's Gold Coast. Even the City's visual parameters signal cruelty's central role: Who will be kind in a city without a sky? It speaks to New York's defiant self-sufficiency--to see nothing but what we made with our own hands, to observe the struggle that plays out daily in the rippling heat of our walled streets. It prepares us to fuck.

Flesh & Heat
For a city where sunbathing is essentially limited to fire escapes and rooftops and the odd patch of park, skin is surprisingly ubiquitous. In spite of or in concert with the pronouncements of New York's own fashion vanguard, flesh is the order of the summer season, and, for better or worse, there is a democratic quality to this ritual of exposure. Imperfections of the body are courageously displayed, plumped and framed in elastic and cotton, and to hell with sensible shame for the homely. Our women fear nothing, and no matter your wishes you will witness the shiny rhythms of their flesh. Many visitors make the mistake of assuming that New York's men will not bare their chests, that urban settings don't lend themselves to traditional demonstrations of virility. These naifs are shocked in high summer, when the articulated pecs and corrugating abs hit Seventh Avenue in force. (That a substantial number of these men are gay is of little moment here, and only serves as further testament to the city's simmering carnality.)

Density
There are no secrets in this city, no privacy in the stacked lives of our high-rises and tenements, where we gain sonic (if not visual) access to the perversions and loneliness of our neighbors. New York can reasonably claim the concentrated libidinal force of six million--a deeply conservative estimate, given the total commuting population of the metropolitan area, the relatively low birth rate, and our seniors' migratory tendencies. This vast sensual endowment transforms the city's public space into a hothouse for various strains of latent sex. On subway platforms, where skin candies in seconds, we pace and seethe, preparing to press our glistening flesh against the glistening flesh of strangers. We are accustomed to the tight quarters of this vaginal system, which provides us a durable metaphor for the sublimation of violent desire. Although the train's arrival is a small ecstasy, discreet relief from the pressure of restraint, it's not nearly enough. Anyway, etiquette is a precious gloss here, an exotic curiosity for the foyers of Park Avenue apartments. By the humid height of July we have all but forgotten our modesty, and no longer do we draw the traditional distinctions between bodies. Instead, the perceived intrusions of eyes and limbs subside, and we become a single damp mass. Millions writhing as one.

Ambition
Gassy fumes of ambition stifle the breath of this city. Without some method of burn-off, some practice to spend its propulsive energy, New York would unmoor itself from the continent and take flight like a lost balloon. Thankfully, the city's sexual black hole siphons ambition from our lungs daily, granting us peace enough to sleep some nights. The same vigor with which we pursue innovation and growth is just as easily blown on the swollen implication of sex, and so in the summertime, on radiant streets and when business is slow, ambition finds its satisfaction in exhibitionistic displays of power and availability. Mincing and posing, we pout for one another, we straighten our backs and expand our chests, and the sport becomes an end in itself. Ambition's casualties--those who are stepped on and surpassed in their attempts to live up to this vertical city--find relief on the same streets, obliterating their professional disappointment with the easy dominance of sexual reduction.

Finally, it must be said that the spell of the sexual finds fuel in death. Confronted with incomprehensible violence, we revert to our simpler selves, manufacturing comfort from the appeasement of our bodies' appetites. There is nothing wrong with this. But we would be wise to monitor our devolution closely. One day we may find ourselves so taken with the reductive ecstasy of the sensual that we have forgotten the creative dynamism it displaced. Considering New York's global stature, this would be a tragic loss, even for those insensible to the city's genius. This tiny patch of islands and shorelines on the East Coast of the United States is a vital asset, worth far more than the product of its sensual economy. It would be a terrible shame to suffocate under the oppressive cover of our lavish fantasy life.

Jed Palmer

BaSin City Blues

I admit it's been a while since I saw this flick and I was intending renting it on dvd before delivering a definitive review but, truth be told, I'd rather sit through Battlefield Earth, Bridget Jones: the Guantanamo Bay Years or Enya, Paul McCartney & Cirque de Soleil Pay Tribute to Celine Dion than subject myself to this drivel again. I know I'm in a minority of one on this issue but, hey, at least the company is stimulating.

I might as well put my cards on the table right from the get-go: I've never been a fan of the Tarantino school of stylised misanthropy. Strip away the hip, post-modern veneer and the improbable dialogue (I'm no expert but I'll wager a whisky sour to all the beer in Brooklyn that hitmen don't talk like video store geeks) from Tarantino's movies and you could swap what's left for the sad, sado-masochistic fantasies of the average maladjusted post-pubescent and not notice the difference.

Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction's sugar-coated sadism was rendered almost palatable by great soundtracks and a few good lines but Kill Bill 's kitsch "carnage is cool" aesthetic seemed to be predicated solely upon the erroneous assumption that the conjunction of Uma and Ultraviolence is irresistably and undeniably sexy. Even if we concede a frisson of cool to the aforementioned combo, the dismal dovetailing of kung fu and Quentin was always likely to becalm my palpitating heart.

Sin City isn't, strictly speaking, a Tarantino movie but it might as well be. His pernicious influence is all over it like a lovesick john over a hooker. Apparently he directed a bit of it, wrote a bit of it, produced a bit of it...I'm surprised he didn't "star" in a bit of it (maybe he did: I was probably asleep at the time)...Hell, QT's brought his prodigious acting talent to bear on practically every other project he's been involved in: like an altrusitic maiden aunt who can't resist donating her inedible scones to the village fete, Quentin can't be stopped . Trouble is, kleptomaniac Quent diminishes everything he touches.

The "real" director was Robert Rodriguez (Tarantino popped up in, and collaborated on, Rob's Desperado and From Dusk Til Dawn) but Sin City might as well have "Property of Tarantino" tattooed on it's ass: the Ubergeek owns this beeyatch! Don't get me wrong: I'm not proposing locking Rodriguez up in San Quentin and throwing away the key; I'm just interested to know if he's capable of taking a leak sans Quentin!

The movie starts off promisingly: a sexually-charged encounter between a charming hitman and a foxy femme fatale in one of the noirish neighborhoods which comprise BaSin City's nightscape. The live action/animation hybrid looks great (though we've seen this black & white with flashes of colour schtick before in Rumblefish) and I'm starting to give Quent and Rob the benefit of any available doubt.... Dumb move, punk. Dumb move.

Suddenly we're cast adrift in a depressingly depraved and unimaginitively undifferentiated milieu where all women are either 1) street-wise, sadistic hookers, 2) masochistic victims or, and this seems to be BaSin City's core female demographic, 3) sadistic hookers who are really masochistic victims.

The only difference between the "good" guys and the "bad" guys is that the "good" guys only torture, maim and kill other guys whereas the "bad" guys torture, kill, maim (and eat) women and children too. The dialogue is execrable: barely-digested chunks of Chandler, Hammett and Ellroy extracted from the vomit of a sub-literate teenage sociopath.

There are 3 stories here but they are all the same story: knight in decidedly soiled armour seeks the only kind of redemption on offer in Sin City: saving a vulnerable virgin/hooker from death, depravity or a life on the game by torturing/snuffing a pervert.

Sin City indulges in the laziest legerdemain (let's call it "popcorn prestidigitation"): after nothing more than a mundane magician's misdirection (the style over substance trick) we're, presumably, expected to root for the "good" guys as they heroically maim, torture, castrate and kill the "bad" guys. I know we're deep into The Age of Barbarism but the parallels with Abu Ghraib seem a little too acute for my refined taste. Maybe one day, though hopefully not one day soon, I'll get hip to the misanthropic zeitgeist.

Ipod-Phone Hybrid hogs headlines

Good to see the iPod-Phone Hybrid in the news today, but it seems Apple's latest gizmo is already "carving a rep" as an attention-seeking publicity slut.

Not content with:

iPod-Phone Hybrid Launches Tory Leadership Bid

The narcissistic newcomer followed up with:

iPod-Phone Hybrid Pushes New Anti-terror Law

In an unprecedented move Apple chief executive, Steve Jobs, accused the new product of having "ideas above its station" and criticised it for "giving the come-on" to predatory management and marketing companies. "Between you and me, guys, this little tramp is acting like a Coney Island hooker" he confided to the world's press before declaring an intention to keep the upcoming (and, if industry rumours are to be believed, equally frisky) iPod nano "on a tight leash."

Thankfully, a few spare column inches were devoted to the day's real story:

Singapore Ponders A Wigless Future

Find out more at Newzoid! Headlines from Parallel Worlds

New Orleans Gumbo: Hot Joints from the Beat Barbecue

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Piano Roll ~ Eddie Bo

Mos' Scocious ~ Dr. John

Get Out of My Life, Woman ~ Allen Toussaint

Its Your Voodoo Working ~ Charles Sheffield

Hey Mama ~ Wild Tchoupitoulas

Thought for the day

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice

(A variation on Arthur C. Clarke's "A sufficiently advanced tehnology is indistinguishable from magic")

source: the sideshow

Random Transmissions 3: Dualism: Apollo & Dionysus

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars... ~ Jack Kerouac

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night... ~ Allen Ginsberg

I see the dynamic of history as an oscillation between the Apollonian and the Dionysian principles, order and energy, which become, at their extremes, fascism or chaos. In sexual terms, this promises eternal conflict between repression and debauchery. We must learn how to make tiny corrections to avoid the uncontrolled swing of the pendulum that, over a generation, swept us from Fifties conformism to Sixties rebellion to Seventies excess and the cataclysm of AIDS. We now live with the smell of funeral pyres ~ Camille Paglia

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The Apollonian rules we pass to govern the workplace will never fully control the demonic impulses of the Dionysian night ~ Camille Paglia

The specific idiocy of our time is, sadly, no longer differentiated from its intelligence. It is merged with it. It is no longer uneducated, but is indeed overinformed and has the same reflex vivacity as artificial intelligence. It is the degree Xerox of stupidity which merges with the degree Xerox of intelligence ~ Jean Baudrillard

Vulnerability generates its own entrapments, creating a maelstrom of voracity around itself. Nature abhors a vacuum ~ Camille Paglia

I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful -- of a crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not a man I am dynamite ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained ~ William Blake

Dionysus is identification, Apollo objectification. Dionysus is the empathic, the sympathetic emotion transporting us into other people, other places, other times. Apollo is the hard, cold separatism of western personality and categorical thought. Dionysus is energy , ecstasy, hysteria, promiscuity , emotionalism - heedless indiscriminateness of idea or practice. Apollo is obsessivesness, voyeurism, idolatry, fascism - frigidity and aggression of world seeking cathexis... Our brains are split, and brain is split from the body. The quarrel between Apollo and Dionysus is the quarrel between the higher cortex and the older limbic and reptilian brains. Art reflects on and resolves the eternal human dilemma of order versus energy. In the west, Apollo and Dionysis strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that leads to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus a vandal. Every excess breeds its counteraction. So western culture swings from point to point on its complex cycle, pouring forth its lavish tributes of art, word and deed. We have littered the world with grandiose achievements. Our story is vast, lurid, and unending ~ Camille Paglia

One last thought... there is no law in the arena. Many are killed. I hope to see you again, Judah Ben-Hur ~ Sheik Ilderim

Some idea swimming in the blue gelatine of the reptilian brain, seeking out the gossamer-thin difference between the illusion and the real ~ Jean Baudrillard

General Corman: Well, you see Willard... In this war, things get confused out there, power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity. Out there with these natives it must be a temptation to be God. Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point. You and I have. Walter Kurtz has reached his.
And very obviously, he has gone insane.

Captain Willard: Yes sir, very much so sir. Obviously insane.

Lucas: Your mission is to proceed up to Nung river in a Navy patrol boat. Pick up Colonel Kurtz' path at Nu Mung Ba, follow it, learn what you can along the way. When you find the colonel, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and terminate the colonel's command.

Willard: Terminate ? The colonel ?

Corman: He's out there operating without any decent restraint. Totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding his troops.

Civilian: Terminate with extreme prejudice.

Lucas: You understand captain... , that this operation does not exist, nor will it ever exist.

Carlito's Way

Carlito Brigante: You a gangster now. You on the other side. Whole new ball game. But you can't learn about it in school -- and you can't get a late start.

Pachanga: Carlito, man. Death Valley out here, man. Mira, you know me, I take to the street with any of these motherfuckers, man. But these new kids nowadays, man, they got no respect for human life! They shotgun you, man, just to see you fly up in the air, muchacho. You're better off in jail.
Mira que I don't even go up to the black Harlem no more, man. They're fuckin' crazy up there. Remember Victor?
Carlito: Victor, with the beard...
Pachanga: Victor got shotgunned to death right in front of the High, man. Right in front of fuckin' Patrick Henry High. Y Lalin, you know Lalin.
Carlito: Lalin Miasso, what happened to him?
Pachanga: Lalin is doin' thirty years in Attica, man, thirty years!

Benny Blanco: Hey, my name is Benny Blanco from the Bronx.
Carlito: You know me?
Benny Blanco: Yeah, I know you, you're Carlito Brigante motherfucker to the max, that's who you are!
Carlito: Well, I don't know you. So, I don't owe you, Saso does. My place now, new rules. Everybody pays, okay?

Benny Blanco: I don't know, but there may be some mis-fuckin'-understanding, I don't know man, but maybe you don't remember me, my name is Benny ...
Carlito: Maybe I don't give a shit! Maybe I don't remember the last time I blew my nose either.
Who the fuck are you? I should remember you? What, you think you like me? You ain't like me motherfucker, you a punk. I've been with made people, connected people. Who've you been with? Chain snatching, jive-ass, maricon motherfuckers. Why don't you get out of here and go snatch a purse.

[Benny Blanco is being beat up by Pachanga]
Carlito: Take him in the alley!
Carlito: [voice-over] Dumb move, man. Dumb move. But it's like them old reflexes comin' back.

Harlem Shuffle: Hot Joints from the Beat Barbeque

Live and direct from Casa del ionesco's boomin' system:

Defunkt ~ Razor's Edge ~ thermonuclear jazz-funk maelstrom from Joe Bowie's NYC combo

Liquid Liquid ~ Cavern ~ obscure New York art-funk outfit provide minimalist template for Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five's "White Lines."

Pharoah Sanders (with Leon Thomas) ~ The Creator Has a Masterplan ~ exuberant, soulful, afro-centric jazz masterpiece from the legendary tenor saxophonist

In the Jacuzzi Today

Green Gartside, Naomi Watts & Jacques Derrida

Wild at Heart and weird on top

EXT. FORTUNE HOUSE - BACKYARD - LATE AFTERNOON/EVENING
Marietta is escorting Marcello Santos and two stiff drinks to a table in her backyard.
Marietta: I want you to take care of Sailor, so he won't ever be able to bother my baby again.
Santos: Take care of him?
Marietta: Yes.
Santos: What does take care of him mean?... Do you want me to give him food or some clothing?....

Santos: Shoot Sailor in the head with a gun... Now I'm beginning to get it... You want me to shoot Sailor in the head with a gun.
Marietta: Yes.
Santos: But where in the head?... Not the chin, I hope.
Marietta: No... In the brains... What little I'm sure he has.
Santos: You want me to shoot Sailor in the brains with a gun.
Marietta: Yes.
Santos: Through the forehead?
Marietta: Yes.
Santos: Wrong! It's much better to blow a hole in the back of the head ... right toward the bridge of the nose ... Lots and lots of irreparable damage.

INT. CAPE FEAR HOTEL - NIGHT
Sailor: It ain't altogether terrible just to let things go along sometimes. Lula, I done a few things in my life I ain't too proud of, but I'll tell ya from now on I ain't gonna do nothin' for no good reason. All I know for sure is there's more'n a few bad ideas runnin' around loose out there.

INT. BAR - BACK OF "THE HURRICANE" - NIGHT
Lula: (howls) Jesus, honey! ... You better run me back to the hotel, baby... You got me hotter'n Georgia asphalt.
Sailor: Say no more... But go easy on me, sweetheart... Tomorrow we got a lotta drivin' to do. (he takes out a cigarette and laughs) Hotter'n Georgia asphalt?
ECU of match striking and bursting into flames.
WHITE OUT

INT. MR. REINDEER'S POSH NEW ORLEANS RESIDENCE - NIGHT
An old man, Mr. Reindeer, wearing a tuxedo is sitting on the toilet - his pants down - talking on the bathroom phone. He laughs a long deep smoker's laugh.
Mr. Reindeer: (laughing) Mr. Marcello Santos... Hey there... That was great shit you sent in last month...
CUT TO:
EXT. ROADSIDE PAYPHONE - NIGHT
Santos: I gotta problem... In fact, I gotta coupl'a problems...
CUT TO:
INT. MR. REINDEER'S POSH NEW ORLEANS RESIDENCE - NIGHT
Mr. Reindeer: (laughs again) Gotta coupl'a problems, huh?... For each problem drop a silver dollar through my mail slot... With all particulars... We'll work out "il conto" later...

INT. MR. REINDEER'S POSH NEW ORLEANS RESIDENCE - DAY
Mr. Reindeer is just finishing dialing a number on the telephone.
Mr. Reindeer: A coupl'a silver dollars came my way today... I'm sending one of them to you with a paper on the beneficiary ... As usual, you are completely free to fulfill the obligation in any manner you so desire.
He hangs up the phone and starts dialing another number.

Yalloppin' Hounds ~ Romantic Thugz & Rayzd ~ Apparition

Romantic Thugz

This smokin' NYC combo mix street swing, jazz and hip-hop to form "Ghetto Swing Extreme." Dr.Dre meets Count Basie Orchestra, or the Wu Tang Clan jammin' with Duke Ellington. G-Clef Da Mad Komposa and his crew know Cab Calloway and the zoot-suited swing pioneers were the prototype for for today's rap superstars. The Hounds sound tougher than a Bronx street hood but tender like midnight in Manhattan. Harlem Apollo meets the Rainbow Room. Romantic Thugz was the East Coast anthem for the neo-swing generation, the cool New York hipster flipside to Californian cats Big Bad Voodoo Daddy's hedonistic West Coast sound.













G-Clef is a musical visionary: a true pioneer of swing/hip-hop/jazz crossover. Long may he continue to innovate and inspire.

For more info go to yalloppinhounds.com













G-Clef's latest genre-defying incarnation is Rayzd. Rayzd incorporate eastern mystical and Japanese Anime/Otaku influences within their musical smorgasbord. I've reviewed their debut album Fear is the Mind Killer here.
Listen to FITMK's Apparition here

Rayzd's new album Just Fade Away: Music of Cowboy Bebop and Other Sounds for the Discerning Otaku is available now from Amazon and other discerning online retailers.

Nobody expects...the Bush administration

If the three defining characteristics of the Spanish Inquisition were "fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency and"... OK, four defining characteristics..."an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope", then the leitmotivs of the Bush administration have been belligerence, sadism, myopia and stupidity. Stop press: we can now add incompetence and impotence to the uniquely charmless mix.

Sadly, I doubt the Bush administration's response (and I've seen corpses with faster reflexes) to this, eminently foreseeable, natural disaster will be to launch a War Against Global Warming or a Crusade Against Climate Change.

They say bad stuff comes in threes: Bush hitting the White House was an even greater disaster for the people of America (and the world) than the planes which hit New York and the hurricane which hit New Orleans (and it's unfortunate environs). I hope this once-great nation, and the extraordinarily vibrant city of New Orleans (like New York), can recover. One thing's for sure: Bush won't.

Chrysta Bell

Chrysta Bell
photo: Dutch Rall

The bewitchingly beautiful Chrysta Bell formerly fronted 8 1/2 Souvenirs, a swing band from Austin, Texas. She is now collaborating with David Lynch on her forthcoming solo album and accompanying music videos.

There was a House in New Orleans

Maybe the Bush administration should read Scientific American.
From the October 2001 issue:

New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh--an area the size of Manhattan--will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities. Extensive evacuation would be impossible because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. Scientists at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.), who have modeled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die. The body bags wouldn't go very far.
A direct hit is inevitable.

One might have thought the American government would have stepped up disaster preparation post 9/11. But, of course, the illegal invasion of Iraq cost money and, presumably, justified cutting New Orleans flood control funding by 44 per cent.

In the Jacuzzi Today

Hugh Hefner, Camille Paglia & Tommy Cooper

The Essence of Edinburgh

Why do I love this town? It must be something in the air. The cool, clean, crisp, invigorating air. The air in London just isn’t the same. Edinburgh’s air is intoxicating; London’s merely toxic.

It’s something to do with the air, the light, the space and the harmony.

Robert Adam’s elegant Georgian architecture sets the tone: understated, perfectly proportioned, symmetrical and stylish. The most favourable views of the New Town’s elegant thoroughfares are afforded from the summits of Edinburgh’s Volcanic Trinity: Arthur’s Seat, Calton Hill and Edinburgh Castle. The impermanence and nobility of human artifice is here given dramatic relief by a landscape testifying to the powerful volatility of nature.

Man and nature compete for ascendancy yet combine to produce a uniquely beautiful city. The idiosyncratic antiquities and historical treasures of the Old Town complement the orderly refinement of the New. The view from Princes Street is awe-inspiring. Old Edinburgh and The Castle rise up magnificently, looming over the New with magisterial dignity. It has ever been thus. Edinburgh: a city of contrasts.

Aesthetics matter here. The only conceivable response to such an inspiring location is to dispense with the unseemly internecine squabbling of party politics and to institute an Aesthetocracy.

Ever since David Hume’s enlightened scepticism roused Kant from his dogmatic slumbers Edinburgh has been renowned as a city of ideas. Philosophy, literature, poetry and music have competed with, and indeed complemented, science, medicine and commerce. An independent legal system sprang from our philosophical predisposition and who would deny that our jurisprudence is more elegant than the pragmatic English equivalent. Enlightenment and Edinburgh are not merely alliterative: they are synonymous.

And yet, of late, a dissonance between the self-confidence warranted by our illustrious heritage and the self-doubt of a capital-in-waiting of a not-yet-independent nation has sounded a discordant note in our hitherto harmonious soundscape.

Is the fledgling Scottish Parliament our macro-malaise in microcosm? Is it a Harlot in Holyrood or a Diamond in Dumbiedykes? Architecturally astounding, symbolically seismic yet we just can’t seem to shake off that parsimonious Presbyterianism. We’re fixated with cost and impervious to benefit.

Edinburgh is evolving but the transitional pains are severe. The discord between the parochial and the cosmopolitan resonates loudest in Leith. Edinburgh’s once-prosperous port turned down-at-heel elderly neighbour has now morphed into its hip young brother. Leith’s burgeoning eclecticism is redolent of Tribeca, reminiscent of Barcelonetta. Critically acclaimed restaurants, art galleries, designer hotels and vibrant bars smuggle a scintilla of style into a hitherto unprepossessing landscape. Yet it is this dialectic between the indigenous and the extraneous which invests both with vitality. The MTV Awards’ subliminal appearance on Ocean Drive was an invigoratingly ephemeral injection of popular culture but the gravitas of a Guggenheim would provide a permanent infusion of prestige.

If New York has its chutzpah and Milan its élan it seems we’re still searching for the elusive Essence of Edinburgh.

The Edinburgh Festival & Fringe reflect our historic affinity for the Arts. The mood is relaxed, convivial and creative. Everything seems possible and Edinburgh is in its rightful place, at the epicentre of things. But when the culture vultures fly away, its back to business as usual.

Edinburgh’s Hogmanay has been expertly packaged to captivate the globe but 2003’s cancellation was a PR catastrophe. The Scottish climate can be inhospitable but the image of a hesitant butterfly clinging tentatively to the chrysalis is not quite what we had in mind. “Safety first” can never be The Essence of Edinburgh. Time to spread our wings. The world is watching.

Will Edinburgh become a Nearly New York or a Barely Barcelona? We’ve been “The Athens of The North” for too long. With so much vicarious va-va-voom in the room will we ever have the confidence to be ourselves? One day soon a town, somewhere, may claim to be “The Edinburgh of the South.”

Ewan McNaught

Jed Palmer ~ Lives of the Cannibals: Rage

from 3 Quarks Daily

It is 10 pm on Wednesday night and a man is screaming on the 1/2/3 platform at Times Square station. His voice gives no clue as to age or race. It's impossible even to determine the man's trouble: his tone is shrill and his words are stretched and twisted to accommodate rage. Walk down the platform twenty feet and discover that the man is Chinese, bald, in his mid-fifties. He is 5'6 or so and portly. In different circumstances, you would not think him capable of producing this noise. The subway arrives and the man boards, amply preceding himself. His voice is undiminished inside the metal walls, and his fellow riders immediately flee to other cars. He doesn't care. Over the train's clamor you can hear him screaming all the way to Brooklyn.

It's an important irony that here in New York, in this city that is the finest achievement of modern American urban life, a city that fairly reeks of cool and sophistication, we are reduced (or refined) to our basest fundamental selves. Stringent isolation and the madness of the crowd coexist here, giving rise to New York's exquisite hybrids--the stone-faced mothers and muttering businessmen and sly derelicts. Had Darwin lived today, he would not have had to visit the Galápagos to induce his theory. Two weeks in the city--at the Pennsylvania Hotel across from Penn Station, perhaps--would serve him well enough to discern natural selection and test its mettle on the street. Indeed, New York is the result of 7,000 years of urban technology, the fantastic product of art, science and political method, and yet nowhere on Earth offers a comparable opportunity to observe human behavior in its purest instinctual form.

We pine in love and we decay in sadness. In shame we cower and from revulsion we withdraw. Fear chases us away. These are retiring emotions. Expressed or simply felt, they are private things, shared and managed among friends, or at least those we know. They emanate modestly, rarely achieving anything like powerful broadcast. Anger is different. Anger is the orangutan's effulgent orange ass. It exists for its expression, and even in its chastened state we describe it in a way that indicates its volatility: it seethes and smolders, and we step lightly nearby, reasonably fearing its explosion. Internalized, anger is nevertheless evident. The hissed obscenity and the compact jab of an arm (silence! it says, get away!), these are inflections of rage suppressed, and they are obvious to see. They are warnings we heed.

If New York lost Broadway, if thieves looted the Museum Mile and if the observation deck of the Empire State Building were closed permanently for renovation, the city fathers would still have anger to trot out for the entertainment of cash-carrying visitors from the heartland, a sort of ecotourism tweaked for the Ur of contemporary urban landscapes. After all, New York is nothing if not a whore--why not capitalize on its wealth? Colorful pamphlets could be distributed, primers that elucidate the finer points of rage-watching and direct curious visitors to the best blinds in the city. Zagat could compile a survey. Twenty-eight points out of 30 for the corner of 44th and Lexington, where Grand Central Terminal disgorges its fretful loads. Bright red double-deckers could tour the worst traffic snarls and at the same time exacerbate the gridlock, thereby affording their wide-eyed charges the opportunity to be targets of the city's sporting take on road rage. The Germans and Japanese, the Kansans on holiday, valued, credit-wielding consumers in sherbet bermudas and baseball caps, they would feel a sudden sense of brotherhood twenty feet up as they listened to the narration of their tour-guide ("notice the dents in the hoods of the cabs--bonnets to you Brits--made by the fists of pedestrians") and pointed out to one another the most fearsome verbal and gesticular threats from these fascinating New Yorkers, ranging free in their preserve.

None is above rage. The extravagantly degreed publisher on his way to work is likely to test his manhood, his courage, by way of the pitch of his shoulders on a construction-narrowed sidewalk. Beneath these skyscrapers and amidst this rush of transit, by God he will not give ground to the slouching thug or the high-heeled secretary as they make their opposite way in the shuffling line beside him. And how many times has he struck another, absorbing the blow of a body as steadfastly as possible, giving nothing away, not even a flinch? Why, every day. Multiple times a day. This is a dynamic city. There's construction on every block.

Certainly, New York City is a brightly painted streetwalker, vulgar, sexually overt, but it is a debutante and a housekeeper too, and all three ladies are masters of the subtle sneer and the public snub. Rage finds many forms, not least of which are disdain and its underprivileged cousin resentment. The brutality of these expressions takes its cumulative effect, transforming the city into a breeding ground for creeping insanity, making it the de facto capital of lonely mumblers, who quietly suffer the violent discourtesy of thousands in the course of their plodding daily lives. There you go, Chief. No, really, it's my fucking pleasure. In these poor sensitive souls, whose nerves would be grated by the comparatively mild depredations of a Midwestern city like Pittsburgh or St. Louis, New York effects a paranoia of the chronic, distracted variety. These obscure ghosts, whose eyes remain fixed on the distance or the concrete before them, and whose tolerance for the physical intimacy of subway cars tends to endure for a stop or two at most, these victims are spotted easily for their twitchy gaits and pained faces, and for their hair-trigger shoulders, which tense at the first peal of laughter in the street.

Fifteen years ago, New York received a great deal of credit for its sustained calm in the wake of acquittals for the LA cops who beat down Rodney King. There was wonder in the voices of politicians and pundits, who saw unrest in Los Angeles, Seattle, Philadelphia and Newark, and assumed that America's shameless skyscraping capital would fall in line with the others. It didn't. Remarkable, they said, an unlikely development. In fact, if not for the pustulating seam of rage running right down the center of this city, we would have been at each other's throats. We were physically exhausted from the angry contest of our day, and we had no energy left to avail ourselves of the cool relief of riot. Anyway, we have our own infected wounds from which we draw murderous inspiration. It would hardly do to adopt the rage of another, lesser city. Los Angeles can keep its Kings and Furmans, thank you very much. We've got Howard Beach and Crown Heights, Yankel Rosenbaum and Al Sharpton, and apocryphal packs of black teenagers, who wild away a lovely evening under the electric lamps of Central Park.

Jed Palmer

Joe Coleman ~ Faith

Chuck D & Fine Arts Militia ~ No Meaning No

No Meaning No

Frasier quotes

Frasier: In the last week I've uprooted myself from my home of fifteen years, moved all the way across the country away from everything I care about, and plunged myself into a frightening new career. The first few nerve-wracking moments, I walk in here and find my producer lobbying to get herself transferred to another show. Abe Lincoln had a brighter future when he picked up his tickets at the box office.

Frasier: [responding to a caller] Roger, at Cornell University they have an incredible piece of scientific equipment known as the Tunneling Electron Microscope. Now, this microscope is so powerful that by firing electrons you can actually see images of the atom, the infinitesimally minute building blocks of our universe. Roger, if I were using that microscope right now, I still wouldn't be able to locate my interest in your problem.

Frasier: Niles, owning the CD of "Ella Sings Gershwin" does not qualify you as a soul brother.

[Frasier, Roz and her young daughter Alice are waiting in line at a kid’s book store: a book-signing session is being conducted by Frasier’s old flame, Nanny G]
Roz: So, are you hoping for another hug?
Frasier: Mmm? Well, the thought had crossed my mind. You know, we used to have this wild attraction to each other – it was almost combustible! Truth be told, it’s been a while since,I, uh... [covers Alice’s ears] romped with abandon through the perfumed gardens of Eros.
Roz: Next time you say something like that, cover my ears.

Frasier: [on the subject of Dr. Nora, a cruel, dismissive radio shrink]
This is a woman who thought the Spanish Inquisition was just tough love for heretics.

Roz: When I die, I want it to be on my 100th birthday, in my beach house on Maui, and I want my husband to be so upset he has to drop out of college.

Niles: Well, as some illustrious person said, "popularity is the hallmark of mediocrity".
Frasier: You just made that up, didn't you?
Niles: Yes, but I stand by it.

Pancakes in the Age of Enlightenment: Culinary Contours of the Mysterious Multiverse

Remember that line in Swingers where Mikey (Jon Favreau) tries, and fails, to impress the waitress in the Treasure Island Casino coffee shop?

Mikey (referring to the menu's "Breakfast Anytime" claim):
I'll have pancakes in the Age of Enlightenment

I'm pretty sure Steven Wright told that joke first, only it was "French toast during the Renaissance" back then.

That joke set me thinking... if I was unencumbered by the tiresome constraints of space & time and I could experience lunch, dinner and supper in three disparate locations during a single day, where and when would I choose to eat?

After further deliberation, I decided to leave "when" out of the equation, for now at least, and concentrate on contemporary cuisine and existing (rather than past, future or imagined) establishments.

There are so many potential combinations to choose from, but here's my choix du jour:

Déjeuner: cappucinno, crab chowder and an afternoon of conversation & people-watching as the sun streams in the massive French doors at the chic café Sonsie on Newbury Street, Boston’s version of Rodeo Drive.

Dîner: the finest steak de atún the Iberian peninsula has to offer at Senyor Parellada's charming little Barcelonetta bistro.

Après Dîner: vin rouge and a selection of fromage Au Petit Moulin, due de Thoroze, Montmartre.

Harlem Shuffle: Hot Joints from the Beat Barbeque

Now playing on Casa del ionesco's boomin' system:

She is Beyond Good and Evil ~ The Pop Group ~ music from the edge of the Abyss. The ne plus ultra of post-punk

Pussy ~ Brazilian Girls ~ electro-nova-bossa-reggae. Straight outta Brooklyn: this cool combo sound like The Slits and Smoke City flying Rio-high courtesy of Air Sensimilia

Discordance ~ Paris Combo ~ post-modern Parisienne Manouche swing par excellence ~ the musical equivalent of a sultry, summer night in Montmartre

In the Jacuzzi Today

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Luther Blissett & Countess Erzsébet Báthory

Killer Movie Scenes ~ Lost Highway ~ The Party Scene

David Lynch's noir horror Lost Highway opens in a mysterious retro-futurist city: a doppelganger Los Angeles in a disclocated dimension of Lynch's mysterious multiverse; a milieu in which the space/time continuum has mutated into a Möbius strip.

Free-jazz saxophonist Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) and his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) have been receiving videotapes in the mail. The tapes are recordings of their house, initially filmed externally but quickly progressing to interior shots. The packages do not disclose the identity of the stalker/intruder. The Madisons' marriage is clearly in trouble, the ambience is suffocatingly tense and the sinister packages tighten the tourniquet.

A visit to a party promises, at least temporarily, to alleviate the oppressively dark and menacing mood. The promise is not fulfilled.

At the party Fred meets a nameless stranger (later referred to in the closing titles as The Mystery Man) ; a man of genuinely disquieting appearance (chalk-white countenance, ruby-red lips and shaved eyebrows: a malevolent perversion of a clown). The Mystery Man (played by Robert Blake) is a Mephistophelean harbinger of murder & metamorphosis and a manifestation of Madison's madness.

The music heard during the scene is Barry Adamson's Something Wicked This Way Comes ~ a modern, funkier, darker reworking of Classic IV/Dusty Springfield's Spooky. The music and background chatter segue to silence during Madison's encounter with the Mystery Man and, just as inexplicably, fade back in upon the latter's departure.

INT. ANDY'S HOUSE - NIGHT

A swinging party is in progress at Andy's house - the man whose face we saw at the Luna Lounge with Renee. ANDY, 37 years old, a slick guy, is seen moving through the crowd, making small talk, kissing and being kissed.

The people here are wannabe players, the men mostly shady, gold-chain-wearing, slightly unsavory types; the women dressed provocatively, big hair and skin-tight dresses. Through sliding glass doors we see nude and semi-nude people cavorting in a swimming pool. Everyone has a drink in his or her hand. Renee finishes her drink and hands the empty glass to Fred who walks away with it. Andy grabs Renee, and dances with her. They laugh and talk. Renee appears to be a bit intoxicated. Fred, who appears less than thrilled with the carryings on, makes his way to the open bar where he orders two drinks. When the drinks arrive he drains one of them completely, then sets the empty glass down on the bar. Then he swallows the other drink, too, and sets down the glass.

A MYSTERY MAN, tall, well-dressed and groomed, older than Fred, approaches him.

MYSTERY MAN: We've met before, haven't we?

FRED: I don't think so. Where was it that you think we've met?

MYSTERY MAN: At your house. Don't you remember?

FRED: (surprised) No, no I don't. Are you sure?

MYSTERY MAN: Of course. In fact, I'm there right now.

FRED: (incredulous) What do you mean? You're where right now?

MYSTERY MAN: At your house.

FRED: That's absurd.
The Mystery Man reaches into his coat pocket, takes out a cellular phone and holds it out to Fred.

MYSTERY MAN: Call me.
Fred snickers, like this is a bad joke. The Mystery Man puts the phone into Fred's hand.

MYSTERY MAN: Dial your number.
Fred hesitates, puzzled.

MYSTERY MAN: Go ahead.
Fred shrugs, laughs, dials his number. We HEAR a pick up as we stay on FRED'S FACE.

PHONE VOICE OF MYSTERY MAN: I told you I was here.
Fred, still holding the phone, stares at the man standing in front of him.

FRED: How did you do that?
The Mystery Man points to the phone.

MYSTERY MAN: Ask me.
Fred, mirthful at first, as if it is a party trick of some kind, suddenly turns serious - it's obvious he's thinking now of the videotapes. He speaks into the phone.

FRED: (angrily) How did you get into my house?

PHONE VOICE OF MYSTERY MAN: You invited me. It's not my habit to go where I'm not wanted.
Fred looks at the man in front of him, but speaks again into the phone.

FRED: Who are you?
The man laughs - identical laughs - both over the phone and in person.

PHONE VOICE OF MYSTERY MAN: Give me my phone back.
The man in front of Fred reaches out his hand for the phone. Fred hears the line go dead, and he slowly passes the phone back to the Mystery Man who takes it, folds it, and puts it in his pocket.

MYSTERY MAN: It's been a pleasure talking to you.

My Adventures in Hi-IQ Land

(Note: this article was originally published on the Hamilton Academical supporters website "Acciesworld" back in 2002. It was subsequently published here (IQ Magazine: the online journal of the International High IQ Society). Understandably, a few of the pop culture references are a little dated).

Relaxing in the Jacuzzi at Casa del ionesco, whilst some grinning buffoon rejoicing in the epithet Britain’s Sexiest Proctologist flexes his telegenic biceps menacingly in the general direction of Kylie’s anodyne, aerobicised ass, it’s hard to resist the conclusion that televisual dumbing down has finally bottomed out.

It could be said that any society is “rewarded” with the popular culture it deserves. If so we can only postulate that Planet Earth is an off-world penal colony populated by the recalcitrant criminal underclass of some alien civilisation. Needless to say we, the incarcerated inmates of this outpost, are subjected to a daily dose of noxious mind-rot masquerading as entertainment. Lobotomy t.v. as prescribed by Dr.Murdoch of Global Media Conglomerate Control Mechanisms Inc.

Intravenously administered infomercials, edutainment, reality t.v. and lowest common denominator game shows “starring” maddening micro-celebrities, Neanderthal nonentities and wearisome wannabes. Fame junkies fighting eachother for the pop pap pusher’s placebo. In this Warholian world only curmudgeonly hermits residing in caves are spared the harsh light of the media glare. I stand corrected: “Britain’s Sexiest Curmudgeonly Hermit” approaches like an imminent migraine, as inexorably and inevitably as death, taxes and the new series of Big Brother.

Needless to say in this dumbed down, democratic dystopia everyone is a star, everyone achieves “A” grade at A level and every second-rate educational establishment for the academically-challenged is awarded “University” status. I needed a quick culture fix. Not that ersatz “off the peg” culture but the real deal. Erudite, educational and reassuringly elitist.

Even the absurd spectacle of that surgically-depleted goon Michael Jackson thanking David Blaine for his "Artist of the Millennium" birthday cake on the MTV awards show (hold your horse right there Jacko, you’ve got another 998 years to wait for that one buddy!) couldn’t cheer me up. Even Britney in her “Nazi leather whore from Hell” fetish gear couldn’t float my boat.

Then I remembered another night of television hell from the near past. Ann Robinson’s Test the Nation on BBC1. Blondes, builders and teachers limbering up for their imminent appearances on Britain’s Sexiest by flexing their grey matter in some bogus “intelligence” test. Could an ability to remember Mr.Phillips from Pontypridd’s post code really tell us something about the nation’s intelligence? I was sceptical but intrigued.

I remembered some grinning goon on the show posing as “the friendly face of UK Mensa” and I realised this organisation must be a one-stop shop for all your intellectual dietary requirements. It’s pretty hard to get in they say. Good. I need a little rest and relaxation away from the detritus of democracy, far from the flotsam and jetsam of the “fame” game. A world away from the text-messaging teens, the shell-suited savages and the baseball-capped barbarians. An on-line test, a home test, a supervised test and the best part of eighty quid later and I was “in”. The reassuringly elitist 98th%ile cut-off should keep out the riff-raff at least.

Wrong. I’m in the door 5 minutes and I’m greeted with the news that I’m joining a long line of “gifted people” including “celebrities” Jamie Theakston, Gary Bushell, Carol Smillie and Jimmy Saville. Can I have my money back? One look at the Mensa mag. and I know I’m not exactly hangin’ with Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table. Mensa’s just a social club for a bunch of sad geeks who can solve simple puzzles quick. The temptation to join the Star Trek, Dr.Who and Red Dwarf SIG’s (special interest groups) was far from overwhelming, shall we say. They’ve even got a “Thick as a Brick” SIG for those proud “thickos who just scraped past the entrance exam” and which promises resolutely “unintellectual” activities. I soon realised smart people join Mensa but the really smart ones take one look around and leave. Taxi for mr. ionesco..

High IQ societies are proliferating on the internet at an incredible rate. The higher cut-offs of the 99th%ile and above “ultra-high IQ societies” held some initial promise until I encountered a member of the Sigma Society who preferred his pick-up truck to philosophy. I bet the Olympique Society, which has a cut-off at the 99.9999th%ile (i.e. one in a million), and which to date has a meagre 5 members out of a potential 6,000, or so, world-wide has 4 bona fide intellectual members and one guy “who just scraped past the entrance exam”. I bet he’s always dragging the rest of them down the pub for karaoke. The Olympiq Society are probably being sick over the barmaid and challenging the doorman to a fight right now.

I settled down at the IHIQS (International High IQ Society) for a while. An undemanding 95%ile entrance threshold didn’t prevent it from being populated by some pretty sharp cats. But the denizens of High IQ Land are a strange breed. They really believe in IQ. I’m a bona fide psychometric sceptic. I don’t believe you can reduce intelligence to some simple numerical representation. Imo an ability to jump through Mensa’s hoops is indicative only of an ability to jump through Mensa’s hoops. There are plenty of bogus internet IQ sites eager to push feelgood IQ booster pills. A plethora of pushers will happily send you a framed certificate attesting to the “fact” that you’ve been psychometrically evaluated by a qualified psychologist as “smarter than Einstein” ; in exchange for your 50 bucks of course. A vain validation junkie and his money are easily parted.

Americans, in particular, seem to buy into this bogus pseudo-scientific malarkey. I’ve a feeling psychometrics is their version of the class system. As anyone who visits the States regularly will attest PBS broadcasts a constant diet of terrible UK sitcoms such as Keeping Up Appearances and Are You Being Served? I’m sure Rupert Murdoch has got a studio somewhere churning out unsubtle pastiches of the British class system tailored exclusively for American consumption. Anyway our democratic, meritocratic, “classless” American friends have bought into the rigid Social Darwinism of psychometrics in a big way.

Most of the high IQ societies on the net are full of Yanks whining about how no-one understands them and are populated by a roughly equal contingent of “losers” and “uppity geeks”. The “losers” regard High IQ Land as a self-help group for the “much maligned, misunderstood gifted” community. The “uppity geeks” regard themselves as Nietschzian Supermen or “Ubergeeks” and regard anyone with a lower IQ than themselves (i.e. everyone from Einstein on down) as lower primates.

The “losers” moan about how they’re too intelligent to commune with the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker and not intelligent enough to commune with the uppity geeks. It’s a sado-masochistic relationship for sure. The “Ubergeeks” wear fascist attitudes like a cheap suit in the hope of attracting some masochistic “loser” chick to their Dionysian dance.

There’s always an IQ cut-off the “losers” can’t quite attain, a fabled society populated by Olympian Gods of intellectual discourse they can only dream of aspiring to. No-one questions the credentials of the “Olympian Gods” though. Xavier Jouve, Nik Lygeros and the other self-appointed gurus of Ultra-High IQ Land preside over admissions and their judgement is final. Their self-designed, self-administered tests are allegedly exhaustively normed for psychometric accuracy.

Yeah right. Maybe 100 uppity geeks world-wide have even heard of their tests let alone gone through the tedious rigmarole of actually taking the damned things. According to this self-selected cartel of “Ubergeeks” the brightest guy in the world (and brighter than historical geniuses Kant, Descartes, Beethoven, Newton, Voltaire and Galileo, Shakespeare and Da Vinci) is probably Dr.Petri Widsten, a Ph.d. student from Finland specialising in wood technology. His c.v. claims he’s fluent in 9 languages but his review of the Sigma test reads: “I like immense of Sigma Test because I consider in many problems is need high intelligence and imagination for solving.” So I’m guessing English isn’t one of the 9? Oh yeah and there’s Chris Langham, a nightclub bouncer from the U.S. who’s beaten Steven Hawking to the punch and published a “definitive” unified theory of everything which he calls the CMTU.

The Mensans revere the Prometheans and despise the common man. The Prometheans revere the Olympians and despise the Mensans. On the IHIQS site a friend of mine (the brilliant Will 13) posted a transcription of a Promethean meeting.The entire transcript was an anti Mensa-lite/Mensa wannabe diatribe in which the 120-140 (s.d.16) IQ fraternity (132 is the Mensa cut-off on s.d.16 in the States, 148 on s.d.24 which applies in the UK) were characterised as the spawn of the Devil or “acadummies”. Bright enough to be a nuisance but not bright enough to contribute anything useful to society. Needless to say this provoked a lot of soul searching and existential angst amongst the American Mensa-lite “loser” community. I pointed out that caffé latté and sympathy wasn’t appropriate. Poor little Mensans shot by both sides (the proletarian mob on the grassy knoll and the uppity Prometheans high in the Book depository). Who said they had to drive down Dealey Plaza with 120-140 tattooed on their foreheads? This “revelation” had genuinely never occurred to them. Could they really escape from the psychometric straitjacket?

I’m sure these Yanks have better things to do than bemoan the fact that their IQ’s are “only” equivalent to the average neurosurgeon’s. They need to relax and get back to traditional American pursuits like voting Republican, rigging elections, depleting the ozone layer, turning up the heat from “global warming” to “global we’re really cooking now” refusing to sign the Kyoto protocol and unilaterally invading Iraq.

The sinister side of psychometrics was only just becoming apparent. Lots of pseudo-scientific waffle about how Aryan races scored high on IQ tests and African Americans scored low and that even “culturally fair” IQ tests confirmed this disparity. A worrying convergence of “conservative” and “very conservative” political views on the IHIQS membership survey and a few loose canons with overtly fascist agendas. One letter to the Mensa mag. suggested, in all seriousness, that only Mensa-eligible parents should be allowed to rear children).

Despite the lunatic fringe I like Nate Haselbauer’s IHIQS joint. Nate’s a succesful Wall Street trader who started the New York High IQ Society. Now the renamed IHIQS has more members world-wide than anyone bar Mensa. Thousands take their tests rather than the handful who try the Sigma, the 916, the Mega, the Titan etc. So their norms might actually mean something. If you gave any credence to psychometrics that is. From the moment I joined I was the “psychometric sceptic”, a WWF type character keen to engage “Johnny Reverential” and co. in some no holds barred surrealism.

My maxim is “When in Rome, act like a Barbarian.” so my approach was to attack the pseudo intellectuals and bogus geniuses with a dose of reality t.v. The mere mention of the names Neitschze and Wittgenstein is tantamount to provocation on a football site but you don’t get past the velvet rope in High IQ Land without a rough familiarity with these German cats. Dead philosophers rather than dead presidents is the currency in these joints. To antagonise the uppity geeks you really need a strong pop culture portfolio. Brittney, Kylie and Heather Graham worked for me.

I proposed starting up my own high IQ society with positive discrimination in favour of pop culture princesses. My reasoning was that I’d rather hang out in a “high IQ Jacuzzi” with Kylie and co. than a bunch of ripe Germanic philosophers and Star Trek aficionados. The geeks weren’t having any of it. Even Michelle Pfeiffer was considered “sub-Mensa”. I conceded she was a definite no-no circa Grease 2 but she’d gained a few IQ points by the time she was hangin’ poolside with Tony Montana in Scarface. And when she draped herself over that piano in The Fabulous Baker Boys she could have told me she was the Emiratus Professor of Philosophy at King’s College, Cambridge and I would have believed her.

For a moment or two it seemed like High IQ Land was going to embrace this visiting surrealist. My “fly in the ointment” approach clearly intrigued the geeks. I was invited to join a couple of Ultra High IQ invitation only societies and made it onto “Glenn’s list” (the IHIQS top table). However I preferred to remain one of the hicks from the sticks heckling from behind the velvet rope. When Steve Rubell finally opened the doors to Studio 54 I told him I didn’t really want to hang out with his narcissistic crowd anyway.

Despite being invited to become one of “High IQ Land’s adopted sons” I’m finished with these freaks, fascists, vain validation junkies, puzzleheads and pseudo philosophers. Give me Britney, Kylie, Becks, Clay Aiken, Simon Cowell, Ozzy Osbourne and co. any day.The company is better here in the “real” world. For that matter I’ll take Ryan Seacrest over most high IQ geeks. Or maybe not..

Ewan McNaught 2002

Killer Movie Scenes: Good Fellas ~ Funny How?

(Tommy (Joe Pesci) has just told a story that has cracked up the entire company of gangsters at his table, particularly Henry (Ray Liotta))

Henry: You're really funny. You're really funny.

Tommy: What do you mean I'm funny?

Henry: It's funny, you know. It's a good story. It's funny. You're a funny guy.

Tommy: What do you mean? The way I talk?

Henry: Its just, you know, your just funny. You know, the way you tell the story and everything.

Tommy: Funny how? I mean, whats funny about it?

Anthony: Tommy, you got it all wrong...

Tommy: Whoa whoa whoa, Anthony, he's a big boy; he knows what he said. What'd you say? Funny how?

Henry: It's... You know, you're funny.

Tommy: You mean-lemme understand this, cause I don't know maybe it's me, I'm a little fucked up maybe. But, I'm funny how? Funny like a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I'm here to fuckin' amuse you? What do you mean funny? Funny how? How am I funny?

Henry: It's just... You know, how you tell the story. What?

Tommy: No, no, I don't know. You said it. How do I know? You said I'm funny. How the fuck am I funny? What the fuck is so funny about me? Tell me. Tell me what's funny.

Henry: Get the fuck outta here. Tommy...

Tommy: You motherfucker. I almost had him! I almost had him! You stutterin... You stutterin prick, ya. Frankie was he shakin? I wonder about you sometimes, Henry. You may fold under questioning!!