Things I Read Today

Henning Nelms' "Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers":
"The Japanese define an artist as 'one who has the ability to do more and the will to refrain.' This definition covers showmanship as well. Showmanship adds glamor and drama. However, if we try to give any routine more importance than it will bear, we destroy the illusion and may reveal the secret."

***

William Gibson's "Spook Country":
"She was fascinated by how things worked in the world, and why people did them. When she wrote about things, her sense of them changed, and with it, her sense of herself."

***

Grant Morrison's "Final Crisis" (Issue #5):
"If your superheroes can't save you, maybe it's time to think of something that can. If it don't exist, think it up. Then make it real ...

Was there ever a word you tried to imagine? The sort of word that could remind you who you truly were inside? Maybe it's more than a word ... it's a face, a scent, a voice. Like a memory of a place where someone cared only for you. A name."

What Have You Done?

Twenty-eight years ago, when I heard a voice on the radio say "John Lennon is dead" ...

Instinctively I steered directly to my old job, to the student newspaper office at Illinois State, to see what I could find on the UPI wire machine and to help with whatever the staff was planning to run. There I met another friend who had the same idea. We were both townies, both still lived near after our respective college "careers," still kept in touch with the newspaper staff. Both of us puzzled at the emptiness of the front offices and the lack of activity in the production room, until the new editor came in. He guessed what we were there for, saying, "Yeah, we heard the news, but wanted to meet the printer's deadline."

1980 and things had changed before our eyes, those who came after had already chosen a new and unexpected path from our own. We would have run a special issue, "deadlines be damned," but these "kids" (three or four years our junior) were too young by birth to carry any unconditional love for Beatles. That's how it was in the those days: you were either old enough to remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan's show or you thought Paul McCartney was just the guy who had a band called Wings.

1980: To most of the disaffected youth we knew, Jimmy Carter gave peace a bad name in his failure to deal with pretty much everything, while Reagan picked up enough of those who still felt they had to care about something, coloring the campus world in hues far different from the post 60s era we tried fruitlessly to keep flowering. Hindsight shows a view of us being too busy with a culture we were too young for, that we never got around to making one pure of the past and unquestionably our own. What kind of youth movement revels in the past, instead of rejecting it? Or, is that the way it always appears to be from the outside?

Whatever the past, our future would be one without Lennon the man. His works, his words, his thoughts would continue and we could use whatever time was left to make some sense, something good with them.

So this is Christmas and what have you done?

Not done yet, John...

Leave your own memories here.


WAR IS OVER! (If You Want It) from Yoko Ono on Vimeo.

Following the Heard 2008 - the Finale

Let's see how this finale to the year stands up with the two previous parts...

1) Angry*The Bug
2) The World Is Gone Wrong*BB King
3) You Only Live Twice*The Postmarks
4) I-Tunes Song*Homeboy Sandman
5) Kyotei Daiski (Favorite Games Mix)*Omodaka
6) Transformer*Marnie Stern
7) Clampdown*The Clash
8) Limbo*KatJonBand
9) Parisian Goldfish*Flying Lotus
10) Cobrastyle*Robyn
11) Never Give You Up*Raphael Saadiq
12) Sandcastle Disco*Solange
13) Riddle Me This*Aaron Parks
14) Official*Q-Tip
15) Live Your Life*T.I.
16) Folks*Mighty Underdogs
17) Harps & Angels*Randy Newman
18) That's Not My Name*The Ting Tings
19) Golden Age*TV on the Radio
20) Stop This World*Ne-Yo

Where'd everybody go?

The day after thanksgiving ... across the street from where I've lived this last week...

Trouble with a Capital 'T'

My backyard for the holiday ... better not get used to this kind of life.

Getting Home

I got 'home' --the word -- on my phone ... thanks to the patient counsel of my godson. This post is the proof, so disregard my previous message. Home on the range. Give me a home. Almost home. Be it ever so humble...

Phone Good

I've noticed a consistent problem pattern while learning how to text message with my LG phone. It uses the T9Abc mode, the so-called predictive mode that gives you the most common result for your pattern of keypunching -- for example, when I press 4-3-5-5-6 the word “Hello” appears.

The accuracy of the mode is very impressive. I also appreciate that the mind gets some type of exercise during composition of the most innocuous phrases, as well, when the word you want does not appear. You just have to come up with another word. However, I really wish I could type the word “home” – you know, like when you want to say, “I’ll be home, soon.” “Home” – pressing 4-6-6-3 -- always comes out “good”. “I’ll be home, soon” becomes “I’ll be good, soon.” “Call me when you get home” becomes “Call me when you get good.” “Are you home?” becomes “Are you good?”

Moreover, if it had been around during the Sammy Sosa/Mark McGwire baseball battles it would have been extremely inaccurate. “Home run” becomes “Good run.” Or Dorothy would have been texting over and over "There's no place like good. There's no place like good. There's no place like good."

What would E.T. have done with this? “Phone home" becomes “Phone good.” Sounds more like an endorsement of AT&T by the Frankenstein monster… but perhaps that is what this somehow has all been leading up to, another form of advertisement. “Phone good.”

Et Stew, Brute?

Our second snow of the season means it is probably time to dust off the Crockpot again. The recipe to first strike my fancy this go-round is good old reliably-comfortable Beef Stew.

Not sure where the recipe came from, but it was handwritten off somewhere on the web before I had easy access to things like printers. If the original author finds it here, please let me know your identity so your due credit may be finally paid-off.

INGREDIENTS:
2 lbs. stew beef
¼ cup flour
1 tsp. paprika
4 lg. carrots
3 lg. potatoes
1 can condensed beef broth – 14.5 oz.
1 ½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper
1/3 cup soy sauce
1 lg. onion
1 can tomato sauce – 8 oz.
1 small can mushrooms or a liberal amount of freshly sliced ones.

Cube up the potatoes -- after washing them -- and layer them in the bottom of the cooker, layer on top of that your sliced-up carrots. Cover that with the meat. Sprinkle the soy sauce, salt, paprika, pepper and flour next. Over that mixture spread out the onion which you’ve chopped. Then add the beef broth and tomato sauce. (If you’re using canned mushrooms, I usually put them last – if you’re using fresh mushrooms I usually put them on after the meat.)

Cover and cook on either the low setting from 7 to 8 hours or on the high setting from 4 to 5 hours.

Very different from my first stew made of Sunday pot roast leftovers when I was probably 7 or so years-old. Cubed up the roast beef and mixed it with the potatoes, carrots, and gravy, but realized there were not enough potatoes so I grabbed some from the bag in the pantry, cut them up and heated the mess together for my mother’s lunch.

People over 30 may realize what happened, may remember when potatoes in a bag usually came still covered with chunks of the earth in which they grew. Yes, I skipped the step of washing the potatoes first.

She took a bite, pulled a clump of dirt from her mouth, and told me about the pre-washing step. She also proceeded without complaint to clean out the bowl – except for the potatoes.

Buried Treasure

The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, more-familiarly known as "Bod", finds life in the graveyard – and finds life good. The graveyard is his whole world; where he plays with friends, where he sleeps in his adopted family’s home, where he learns what he needs to survive. His friends and family are the buried dead of the graveyard whose spirits live on eternally.

Orphaned as a toddler by a mysterious man named Jack, Bod grows up among the spirits and other beings (most especially his guardian, Silas) who watch over Bod, teach him their ways and, as best they can, the ways of the world outside the iron fence. Too soon for all concerned, the ways of that outside world intrude in a dangerous way and Bod must learn his final lesson from the spirits: how to live.

Author Neil Gaiman (Coraline and Stardust, among others) wrote this Young Adult fiction as a take on Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”. Being more familiar with the Disney cartoon than the actual stories, I do not find too many exact, one-to-one, characterizations here -- and that is not a bad thing at all. Sure, “Jack” is Shere Khan the Tiger, Silas is most-likely Bagheera, while Bod is, of course, Mowgli – but in the end, it does not matter.

Here is what matters:

Silas said, "Out there, the man who killed your family is, I believe, still looking for you, still intends to kill you."

Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead."

"Yes," Silas hesitated. "They are. And they are, for the most part, done with the world. You are not. You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished."

An exciting and clever book, nevertheless "The Graveyard Book" really won me over with its great heart and honesty. There is no sugarcoating the terror, and the trickster Bod often falls over his own faults. His foibles are not necessarily well-intentioned ones, either.

It is a book in which the experience of reading it winds up like life itself. At the end of our own time, many most likely do not want an end. We would want to keep going or sometimes would even want to start over. I felt a strong urge to start re-reading “The Graveyard Book” again at the end of the final page. If not for the fact it also makes me want to get out there and live even more. No time for someone else’s stories -- live your own.

I Believe I Can...

All too many mornings begin with this sad sad sight on my floor.
However, this morning marked the first time I noticed the label on the Kapla Blocks box behind him. What is most essential for this toy to learn: flying or falling? When will he learn what he needs to learn?

Another shot (or two) of the good life

Haven't been to a ritzy Clayton restaurant in a while, and with these prices it will be an even longer while before I go again. At least the beverage cost remains reasonable...and it was in celebration of a wonderful birthday. Priceless in many ways.

The Best -We- Can

Photographer David Katz created a flickr stream of his behind-the-scenes shots of Obama and family going through election night this past Tuesday. More on all this later, but in the meantime check out the President-elect's new government site change.gov ...

Just Plain Crosseyed

Still waiting three hours after arrival, but I know I'm next through the door... and after that I will not be able to take anymore pictures. Poll worker seen above tells of the seniors living here in the center who were up in the lobby at 3:30 a.m. in hopes for being first in line. They ended up waiting just as long as I have so far before casting their vote. Hope they're sleeping, now. I know I'm off to work after this is over.

Crosseyed & A Little Pained

Still waiting ...

Bi-State WUSTL Red bus has come through several times now -- the driver giving us the thumbs-up with her horn. Somebody was discovered to have a birthday today and the "Happy Birthday" song was taken up loudly by most of the couple hundred people in line. One little girl goes down the line with her Batman trick-or-treat bag, offering her own treats to thank people for their patience. Somebody waits in their parked car, blasting Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and many of the better singers in line take up the song as well. The poll workers had come out earlier to remove some campaign signs placed past the 25-feet-from-the-poll rule. No one says anything about the song possibly breaking the same etiquette.

Crosseyed & Painless

After an hour ... still waiting ...

Polling place opened 30 minutes late, but still troubled. Group-mind pretty together, with good-humored grousing about as ugly as it gets. Only one person gave up, promising to come back later. Talking Heads' "Crosseyed & Painless" remains the morning theme song moving through my mind -- probably because of the chorus "Still waiting, still waiting, still waiting..."

Face the Magic

Behind all of the main faces above smiles street performer Masaji Terasawa, known more familiarly at the annual Missouri Botanical Garden as "The Candyman".

For me, most of the magicians I've seen make me spend most of the entertaining time trying to figure out how they do what they do. Not so with The Candyman. His magic is subtle, sewn so tightly within the fabric of his entertainment you don't even think about it being there. He's not trying to wow, just trying to smile. Like comparing Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Kelly always looks like he's trying too hard to entertain, while Astaire doesn't seem to care about anything but the clouds beneath his feet.

What is the Question?

Little Brother
by Cory Doctorow

Marcus is a slightly above-average computer geek in high school with nothing much to worry about but grades and girls. When he and his friends find themselves detained by the Department of Homeland Security after a terrorist attack on San Francisco they find other things to worry about, other more important decisions to be made. They use their superior knowledge of how the Internet works to defend their freedoms and expose the cost paid when we willingly give up those freedoms to the government.

Found myself emotionally invested in the welfare of these kids, and I cannot remember the last time I was this thrilled and horrified at the same time while reading. “Little Brother” is a page-turner in the best sense.

"Little Brother" will also make for some good conversations about the Internet and Freedom with the young adult readers in your household. My only quibble is that I kept hoping for a less cartoon-like presence on the dark side of things. Marcus' dad was probably the closest we got to seeing why people make the choice to give up their liberties, but a more-reasonable DHS person or a non-thuggish conservative classmate would have been a good addition. The people who seem the most reasonable can be even more-terrifying than the obvious beasts.

Marcus’ friends do not necessarily go willingly, if at all, on the hard road he travels. Their own personal choices can add other ingredients to the conversation proposed above. Another note: though this is billed as a “Young Adult” novel, the younger person in your life might not be ready for some of the story. For example, Marcus is dealing with teenage boy hormones and interacts with girls in a manner you might not be comfortable with exposing to your own “Young Adult.” Read this for yourself first before passing it on.

I find myself most excited about this book because it is not asking us to "Question Authority" as many DHS supporters would assume. It is asking us to "Question". Period.

Author Cory Doctorow keeps the book in a free downloadable format on his website, though you can also purchase it through the normal channels like Amazon or your local bookseller. His website also offers links to sites where his book is discussed, as well as sites like cubeecraft (from where the Little Brother image above was borrowed) and Doctrow-affiliate boingboing carries a BBTV episode on guerilla t-shirt silkscreening based on the book.

Let me know if you find any answers...!

Shelter from the Storm

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932)
Starring Karloff, Melvyn Douglass, Charles Laughton and Lilian Bond
Directed by James Whale
(72 minutes) B&W

“No beds!” shrieks the overly-religious Rebecca Femm to her brow-beaten brother and the storm-tossed visitors to their old dark house – meaning in her mind that the sinful will find no comfort within the home, but to her brother it is a literal truth as the house is old and dark but not large enough to contain housing for visitors. In a larger sense, though, it means “no rest for the wicked and innocent alike.” It is, after all, a dark and stormy night, and this is a James Whale film from 1932.

Our anxiety awaits no cue from background music here – though not a silent picture the soundtrack lacks the usual stereotypical swell of crescendos or ebb of diminuendo. Our anxiety about the characters’ fates comes from out of our own apprehension and experience. We hear behind the dialogue nothing but sounds of the world at its tempestuous worst: banging doors, breaking glass, sudden cock crows, unexpected thunder, scattershot blasts of rain against wood and glass and stone.

There are also occasional screams, and dialogue like what opens my bit of fluff here. On the other hand, if you do not care for the negatives of sister Femm, perhaps you would rather hear something positive from her hospitable brother Horace. “Have a potato,” he offers – and you need to see the film to know the magic of that line.

You need to see the film, period. You should see it twice: once to get rid of your probable-preconceptions to a very old black-and-white terror tale containing no blood and little physical violence; the second time to appreciate the subtle bits you missed while waiting for the business-as-usual during your first viewing. After that, you will want to see it again. You'll have plenty of time to see it again, because after the second time you will find yourself strangely unable to rest. Almost as if there were no beds for you, too...

Hyohakusha

Why so scrawny, cat?
starving for fat fish
or mice . . .
Or backyard love?

Basho wrote that, or at least he wrote the original Japanese from which this translation came.

I read it just this morning in the recently-released “Basho: The Complete Haiku” -- been enjoying a leisurely stroll through its pages these last couple of weeks. I’m also waiting the arrival of Basho’s “The Narrow Road to Oku,” his travelogue, which from what I've read of it before sounds intriguingly blog-like. Always seeking perfection, he constantly revised his words there, as do I the words on this blog -- though I realize perfection remains walled-away from my own efforts, protected from completion in the mythically-remote realm of possibility.

Thinking about these short sparks of multiple meanings -- wondering if it is better to have only one precise thought behind the words, or if the world is a much wilder exciting place if the words and their order can bring us constant new possibilities with every re-thinking -- can cause too many sleepless nights.

Thoughts of Basho also brought memories of over ten years back: sitting alone quietly in the midst of the Portland Japanese Garden, wondering about picking up and moving there from the Midwest. Fortunately, at that moment came the cry of a baby from somewhere around one of the heavily greened walls, and I knew I had to go back to find out how my then very-young godson would turn out. I made the right choice…This weekend offers the possibility of a trip to the Missouri Botanical Gardens with my godson for the annual Japanese festival. Look for pictures of that trip posted here soon.

In the meantime, to get yourself in a haiku state of mind, check out either this archived posting at the National Geographic site about the travels of Basho (from which the picture at the top of this post is borrowed) or the YouTube video below found today at boingboing.net, featuring a Japanese techno group Omodaka's rendition of “the world’s oldest Japanese song” Kokoriko Bushi (tune for stringed instrument). A boingboing reader also provided a link to a traditional version of the original tune here.

Have no idea of the words here, but in the techno version I keep hearing what seems to be chorus based on Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing.”


And in conclusion, more from Basho...

Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening!

For those who made it all the way to the bottom, here's what the title of this post means:

"one who moves without direction"

Take from that what you will... but take care.

More conventional thinking

NOTES FROM LAST NIGHT: Does Obama’s attempt at a united-we-stand campaign represent the ideal American Dream, the shining mansion on the hill with its doors wide-open to anyone who is willing to work hard to maintain its splendor, the country that leads by example not by fear? If so, it is not hard to see McCain and company’s cynical campaign of fear as a representation of America as a shadowy underworld without options or opportunities, those who feel they are your ‘betters’ determine what you do.

ROUGH THOUGHTS AFTER NOT MUCH SLEEP: Re-read Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave" today because it seems to me the voters who previously went against their own self-interest and voted Republican could easily represent those prisoners of the cave -- hindered by the blinders of their preconceptions so that they see only the shadows of life, not life itself as it really is (or at the greatest 'least', life as lived to its greatest potential) -- the cave itself formed by underground fear of the unknown brought to their eyes by those who would profit from their fright.

To A Wider Universe...

Years ago, I spent a lot more of my time thinking about the artist Jack Kirby and his works. He is still in my thoughts, but even though I am not as manic about figuring out what the big It of his work means, anymore, I still take time in-between reading new stuff to dip back into his work. There are still plenty of unexpected new ideas found in the old stuff.

Anyhow, in celebration of Kirby’s 91st birthday today, you should either order Mark Evanier’s wonderful Kirby biography or, better yet, read some Kirby-created stories.

Guaranteed entertainment and amazing brain food on every page, and maybe, you'll come up with some meanderings in your mind from the experience, something like I did below in some old pondering of his 2001 series for Marvel Comics back in the mid-70s. As said before: I am not sure what Kirby really means, and I am still not quite sure what I mean with the words below. Do not hold that against, Kirby though. Just read some of his stuff for yourself and see where your own mind goes.

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NEW SEEDS: Kirby's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

“Perhaps here, a way of being may find the why of being...until then, the New Seed decides to seek the answer himself. What if it turned out to be merely -- simple!!” That’s what Kirby wrote in the final page of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, #7, June 1977, the penultimate chapter of his exploration into the ideas he found in Stanley Kubrick’s famous film. To me this is Kirby telling the reader: “You’re the New Seed. I’ve given you something to grow with, so...grow!” But it also warns me, I think, of digging too deep into his plot of ground, earth-bound and above -- that sometimes the most satisfying, most truthful answers are the simple ones. However, what truths, simple or otherwise, did Kirby see in the film? What kindred thoughts stirred him enough to adapt it to comics, but to carry on past the final scene? Here’s my theory...

“The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not the think of it,” Kubrick was quoted in David Anthony Kraft’s essay on the movie, which appeared in the edition of Kirby’s 2001 film adaptation. This thought puts the filmmaker in the same school of art as Kirby who has been deemed an intuitive artist -- a story-teller who makes his artistic decisions by gut instinct.

Or, like the comic book fan in 2001 #6: “There is, in many men, a sense of the dramatic which governs their lives. In Harvey Norton this instinct is vital and strong! He acts upon what he feels is the truth, and lets the devil take the hindmost...” Harvey Norton’s life, like the other characters in this series, formed itself dramatically to the “truths” his decisions shaped -- just as Kirby’s instinctual drive toward his own truths forged the shape of how he told their stories and why their stories fit into his ultimate picture.

The ultimate picture, the overwhelming theme, would seem to me to be: imagination is what sets us apart from the beasts and is our first step to “what’s out there”. Our creative urges have been with us from the beginning and it’ll be there to guide us at the end. What we do with it, if anything, is what determines how big our next progressive step into the unknown will be. Any step into the unknown is progress, according to Kirby here, because, “pass” or “fail”, it’s the test of life that must be taken. In addition, it’s the answers to the test for which we quest on this odyssey.

The monolith itself, mysteriously appearing to various people throughout time, signifies to me simply a symbol of the inspiration that spurs us to create -- the act of creation itself being a necessary function to humanity, what’s needed to fill our hungers: from the gnawing physical hunger felt by early man to the ”something more” craved by those with bellies-filled. “Where are we going?” Kirby asks in page 1 of the first issue, and he answers: “Somewhere in the dawn of time, we began --somehow, in these perilous times we keep moving on -- and some time in the future, something will happen to change us! . . .The monolith may be the cause! It does not belong to this world -- yet it does belong to us all!”

The Beast-Killer in issue #1 finds inspiration in the monolith, he comes away with the extra-spark jumpstarting his way to improve his tools and better fill his plate. He runs his own life apart from the pack, the others who “shun the stone-spirit and cannot hear its voice!” His ancestor, Woodrow Decker, stuck on a planetoid and whining about his fate, seems at first to be a strange recipient for inspiration -- “he has the drive for discovery -- but lacks the will to fight...” Then, a strange Kirby-creature appears and attacks, and Kirby writes: “Yet, in the cracks and crevasses of the ruin, there are things which have fought for life -- and survived uncountable eons -- where life should be negated...” Moreover, when it attacks, Decker fights to save his friend. It appears to me that the ruin is not only on the planetoid, but also within Decker himself, and the things that fight for life could include his strength of character. This fight is why he’s able to go on through the monolith for the ‘final’ inspiration.

Like any true artist and others we see go through the monolith, Decker sees things there beyond his comprehension and to survive the experience he must change. “Decker must become something else!!” Kirby writes, if he’s to go forward in his journey of growth and discovery. Then the old self dies and the new self, in the form of the New Seed, is born. “It is not the first of its kind. There have been others. There will always be others, as long as earth breeds human life...”

The next three issues continue this thread and contain their own separate, more complicated story: Vira the She-Demon and her ancestor Vera’s story are connected to the story of Marak and his descendant Marik (and Jalessa) in that the matriarchy established by Vira’s inspiration passes down in time to Jalessa’s authority. And it’s Jalessa’s land and power which Marak seeks to conquer. Vira, Marak and Jalessa all use their inspiration for growth, but while Vera, Vira’s far-future descendant, passes through the monolith like Decker and becomes something more, Marik remains curiously the same. Why he doesn’t become a New Seed is the curiosity: in his final phase he finds again his true love and his mind and soul seem satisfied. Is it because he finds his soul is satisfied, needs nothing more, that he doesn’t go on -- that for the ‘artist’ to continue growing he must remain ‘hungry?’

Next, we meet in issue #7, Harvey Norton, a comic book fan, who, though he finds fantasies easily catered to, remains hungry for something more. His fellow-fans have become almost repugnant to him, a dark reflection of himself, perhaps, that he sees for the first time. The whole world is a fantasyland and Harvey, with inspiration drawn from within by the monolith, realizes “I-It’s not real! It’s film and solar lamps! It’s wave machines and plastic sand! I-I’m a captive -- in a man made cage of illusions -- a world-wide Comicsville -- which has less substance than my own dreams...” In a scene like the famous favorite from NEW GODS #7, Harvey meets the monolith for the second time. His dream of something ‘bigger’ takes him away from Comicsville, out into space where he meets his ‘more’.

His love of comic books serves him well in space. While his fellow fans seemed to be satisfied with seeking only more of the same, repeatedly, Harvey took something else from his fantasies: a heroic ideal.

His final encounter with the monolith spurs on the ‘final’ change, his mutation into a New Seed taking on the trappings of a superhero, Captain Cosmic. Harvey “looks back upon a life of great adventure and a never-ending future of jousting against injustice.” Moreover, “what is the new seed, but man’s admission to a wider universe...”

What is the New Seed? We come full circle to my opening paragraph because it’s in issue #7 that Kirby offers some of the answers. Unlike the other parts, it begins with the creation of a New Seed and we follow its journey. It still learns. It still sees. “Find the reason for being and unlock the secret of the universe! To do this there must be life -- there must be a living will to seek...” The continual quest, the odyssey, the journey is what makes life worth living. To do less, to stop the search, to stop questioning, is when we die as humans because this failure to use our potential, I think Kirby says here, runs contrary to a promise we need to keep.

What more potential could come from this series? Kirby took a turn in issue #8, beginning the saga of Mister Machine and leading into the Machine Man series. It would seem to counter Jon Cooke’s feeling in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #11 that Kirby did not understand H.A.L. from the original movie. This last three-parter explores the soul of a machine and explains, to me, one possibility of why H.A.L. went mad: he wasn’t raised as human.

I don’t know the real reason why Kirby chose (or Marvel wanted him to choose) the 2001 book and I don’t think it’s been explained why the book stopped when it did. Sales? Licensing problems? Whatever the case, I don’t think Kirby needed to go on here. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY remains to me one of the few late Kirby series that gave just enough.

As with most of Kirby’s work, “just enough” is everyone else's cornucopia. Or, in this case, everyone's Monolith.

Following the Heard - 2008 continues

Finally, enough new music for another mythical mix of notable ear-pieces heard by me in 2008. While waiting on the new stuff I've been moving my lists for the old stuff, the previous 50 years, to another blog: followingtheheard.blogspot.com.

Really trying hard to give one track per artist this year, though if like Lil Wayne they come out with more than one album in a year they can qualify for more than one spot.

Double Dee and Steinski are the exception. They get two for their one album, mainly because ten years ago I never thought they would team up again, nor that their club date in Manhattan would be so easily available.

I also never thought there'd ever be a collection like What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective -- collecting 42 pieces of Steinski's work, solo and with partners like Double Dee. Without access to his work, I was unable to add him to previous annual mixes. We can thank the small-press called Illegal Art -- based, strangely to some, in the wilds of central Illinois -- for the long-overdue release, and you can read about others like it here in a 1986 article by Robert Christgau.

Steinski also just finished off a 12-minute mix of Sinatra tracks, mashing the Chairman of the Board's music with dialogue from several of his films, including The Manchurian Candidate. "Candidate" gave mind to a title for the new concoction: What Was Raymond Doing With His Hands?

You can download Raymond from the 'Raymond' link above (it's at the Village Voice site) along with a pretty good retrospect interview with Steven.

Anyhow, the "winners" of this 2008 round are, in order of their appearance here:

1) We're In A Lot of Trouble - Double Dee and Steinski
2) Get Up! - Earthworms
3) A-Punk - Vampire Weekend
4) Love No - The Teenagers
5) La La La - Lil Wayne
6) Ragged Wood - Fleet Foxes
7) The Ditch - Blood on the Wall
8) Joke About Jamaica - The Hold Steady
9) Caravan - Cassandra Wilson
10) Tape Song - The Kills
11) Brain Burner - No Age
12) In Step - Girl Talk
13) I'm Wild About You - Al Green
14) Little Toy Gun - honeyhoney
15) I Feel Like Dying - Lil Wayne
16) Lights Out - Santogold
17) The Kelly Affair - Be Your Own Pet
18) America - Nas
19) Strange Overtones - David Byrne & Brian Eno
20) Who Owns Culture? #2 - Double Dee and Steinski

Congratulations to all!

Royal Reflections

Elvis surrounded by adoring autograph-seeking fans and glossy still-unadorned photos of his own pensively smiling head shot makes for a good general picture of his life, as if he finds himself trapped in a hall of mirrors, in a place where reflections can be questions. Which Elvis is the real Elvis? Is Elvis all of these Elvises?

Of the fans, themselves: all we see are hands, all kinds of hands undoubtedly – hands to shake in fellowship, clawing greedy hands, hands to wipe a tired brow -- no faces to call their own here either, except the face on the photos of Elvis about which they can say in many ways “This face belongs to us.”

How many faceless, faceful fans will leave him if he stops being the Elvis they want him to be? Is that the only way out of his hall of mirrors: to disappoint enough fans, to make enough of them disappear to allow him an opening and new path to exit himself?

Thirty-one years ago, he accidentally found an exit from the hall, leaving even more Elvises behind, casting new reflections and asking new questions still unanswered.

If you find yourself doubtful where you stand on these questions and answers, refresh yourself with a listen to what he left behind, and then make up your own mind.

The Order of Things in the World

Some day I will write some more-specific words about the classic films Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and Abel Gance’s “La Roue”. Both are available in fine DVD editions and everyone who loves movies should watch them, enjoy them.

I hope that my thoughts about them then will be greater than the piece of fluff that just popped into my head:

Though they appear in the “L” section of my personal movie library, in Italy, “La Dolce Vita” would appear in the D section. “La Roue”, in France, would appear with the other R titles.

For that matter, why does Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” come to us from Criterion as “Beauty and the Beast” instead of its original French title “La Belle et la Bete”? Why didn’t the company then release “La Dolce Vita” with its translated title “The Sweet Life”? (Yes, I realize commercial reasons lurk as answers here…)

Additions to this posting will come when I can figure why these facts feel important enough for me to post them in the first place…

Gon Today

Ain’t he sweet? Cute, loving, and full of mischievous fun, Gon is definitely the kind of carnivorous little dinosaur it is a pleasure to know. However, if you tick him off (or, in one case, if his temper takes off when he is stuck with a tenacious tick) you might as well say “so long” to life as you knew it.

Nothing stops Gon from getting what he wants, whether it is the biggest fish, a pile of fresh fruit, or the most horrifying revenge you could imagine. Whole forests destroyed and mountains topple down in his wake if that is what it takes to complete Gon's current quest.

Created by Masashi Tanaka, he first appeared in Kodansha's Morning magazine in 1991. These completely wordless stories of a tiny orange dinosaur, anachronistically alone in today's wilderness, draw you effortlessly along with their amazingly lush and detailed illustrations. Frenetically paced action, occasionally slowed down by sometimes-sappy rest stops, mix together well with a dark sense of humor.

Make no mistake about the word “dark” and do not let the cute picture above fool you. There occasionally pop up in Gon stories what some consider overly graphic depictions of violence, but nothing worse than actions frequently seen on Animal Planet -- plenty of ferociously chewing teeth, head-butting and bloodied claws. Gon has a temper. He is not a role model, unless you use his actions to point out how a serenely peaceful scene can be completed destroyed by one person’s temper tantrum.

Not much on the Internet available about Tanaka, and Gon himself seems better known as a playable character in the Playstation Tekken 3 game. DC Comics reprinted several volumes of the Gon stories beginning in 1996, but I have not found any information on whether this collected all of the Gon stories, or whether Tanaka is working on new material with the character. DC began reprinting their reprints last year, but in the original manga flipped format, and there has been more talk about an animated movie.

Speaking of which, thanks to the recent Starclipper blog's Gon posting, I found an “end video” from the Gon chapter in Tekken 3. I never would have imagined Gon animated so faithfully well. If you want a quick look at what the Gon books are like, in spirit and character, this clip tells the tale. For those who are already fans: be prepared to smile.

Absence Makes the Mind Grow Fonder, Too

Woke up late on Saturday to find that not only was Fred MacMurray having a birthday, but also Turner Classic Movies scheduled in celebration a whole day of his films.

MacMurray’s career contained two genuine classics -- “The Apartment” and “Double Indemnity” – along with a long list of pretty-good-but-not-great work including “Murder He Says” and “The Caine Mutiny.” Reviewing a list of his jobs it surprised me how many films he made with director Mitchell Leisen, though I was always especially fond of the screwball comedy work he and Leisen put together with Carole Lombard like “Hands Across the Table” and “The Princess Comes Across.”

The part of his career usually ignored by critics is the Disney stuff from the late 50s - early 60s. Had not seen any of that in years – for some reason I have never seen “The Shaggy Dog” or “The Absent-Minded Professor.” Of course, the only one I had seen at the theaters appeared when I turned on the television: the “Absent-Minded” sequel “Son of Flubber”.

It is probably best to judge a person when they are at their lowest. What choices do they make then? How do they behave to others? If “Son of Flubber” was MacMurray’s nadir, then using those basics of judgment he must have been one heck of a human being.

My one memory of the film: MacMurray’s absent-minded Professor Brainard -- wearing a Twenties-style college prep gear complete with coonskin coat and school pennant -- follows in flying flivver the ratty rival for his wife’s affections. His faithful dog sits by his side through the trip.

What I had almost forgotten: He aims his Flubber Gas gun at the rival’s car, causing a rain cloud to form and a thunderstorm to commence inside the car causing a wreck. (Quite a fine line between comedy and drama…)

What I had completely forgotten: The crazed joyful look on MacMurray’s face while he stalks his prey.

That’s entertainment!

Most importantly I had also forgotten this: Near the end of the film, after being hauled to court when one of his creations breaks all the glass in a particular area of town, the district attorney asks him if he is found innocent and set free will he continue to teach. Professor Brainard answers the question:

Well, it seems to me a lot of people are going around these days selling fear – all kinds of fear. Fear of bombs, bugs, smog, surpluses, fall-out, falling hair…we find ourselves apologizing, hiding our heads, jumping at shadows. I remember when Groundhog Day only came once a year in this country.

I see a lot of students from my science class (here) in the courtroom. They may not be the most studious group of young people in college today, but I’ll say this for them: so far they are unafraid.

They have good will, enthusiasm and an infinite capacity for making mistakes. I have high hopes for them. The road to genius is paved with fumble footing and bumbling and anyone who falls flat on his face is at least moving in the right direction – forward. And the fellow who makes the most mistakes may be the one who’ll save the neck of the whole wide world some day.

Finding no transcripts of this on the Internet I later unexpectedly found a cheap copy of the film at a local shop (5.99!) and made a transcription of my own – apologies if I have misheard some of the above. Screenplay writers Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi – longtime Disney drones – despite the tremendous bit quoted above missed the mark here for the most part, along with another long-time Disneyite, director Robert Stevenson. This is not a great classic film, though the crazy stuff I mentioned above keeps happening enough that I am surprisingly looking forward to watching it again.

Even without the craziness, the courtroom finale and its words showed a worthwhile theme that if explored more by the rest of the film might well have moved it closer to the upper-levels of MacMurray’s credits. Regardless of the fine quality of the words, it is difficult to imagine them spoken more convincingly than how Fred MacMurray speaks them.

Since Fred spoke them, they become just another reason to celebrate his birthday. Thanks, Fred!

UPDATE: Apparently this was TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars” celebration of MacMurray – his birthday, not until August 30. So… happy –early- birthday, Fred!

Ha'ina 'ia mai ana ka puana

“Almost 30 years since Dr. Hunter S. Thompson spoke to a crowd at the U of I in Champaign-Urbana, an unruly crowd of stoners and drunks and miscellaneously adjective-deprived states far removed from what society back then deemed normal. They followed the bouncing beach ball to whatever beat bellowed from the PA, but what they followed to find themselves there I never knew -- which was too bad because at the time I was a reporter. I carried a pad.”

I wrote that on the Blackberry while waiting for the documentary “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson” to begin. A memory of the last time I saw Thompson -- renowned "new journalist" -- writing the words brought back some truths maintained in my mind all these years and by the time the end credits rolled on the movie I saw the lack of those truths became the problem with the film itself.

The details in my mind of that evening too many decades ago:

-Thompson had no speech; he answered questions from the audience.

-Arriving late, he showed up shortly after the bottle of Wild Turkey and a glass with some ice appeared.

-Most important: After the audience ran out of questions about drugs and wild life, he began to get questions about writing and journalism. The more of these types of questions, which brought out more emotional and detailed answers instead of one-liners, the more of the unruly crowd slipped out of the auditorium into the night.

So to what did my wondering eyes appear when I dug up the old article, my first-hand account at the time of these memories above? Only the first two details appeared. I left-out the good stuff in the third detail, the stuff that really mattered.

The best way to experience the life of Thompson is to read his works, most especially “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972” and “Fear and Loathing in Last Vegas” and I will admit the film could potentially steer people towards Thompson’s writings but it also steers away from the truth of the matter at hand. The same truth I left out of my own long-ago report…

Thompson at his best would write about what we needed to hear, not what we wanted to hear. “Gonzo” fails in that it concentrates on celebrating the crowd-pleasing upside of his madness, the fun of feeding a fantastic appetite for booze and pills, but barely touches the inevitable downside and cost of such a lifestyle. Sure is cool to see somebody get fucked-up and shooting off guns, yessirreebob! But what happened to the last twenty years of his life? How did his thoughts and writing deteriorate until the most radical reaction he could muster was blowing his head off with a gun?

Roger Ebert’s review contains a much clearer description of what I'm trying to get here:

In all the memories gathered together in "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson," there was one subject I found conspicuously missing: The fact of the man's misery. Did he never have a hangover? The film finds extraordinary access to the people in his life, but not even from his two wives do we get a description I would dearly love to read, on what he was like in the first hour or two after he woke up. He was clearly, deeply, addicted to drugs and alcohol, and after a stupor-induced sleep he would have awakened in a state of withdrawal. He must have administered therapeutic dozes of booze or pills or something to quiet the tremors and the dread. What did he say at those times? How did he behave? Are the words "fear and loathing" autobiographical?

Most importantly to me, vividly and emotionally, is the scene narrated by his wife who tries to describe what he was like while he was writing. We see him typing away in his personally peculiar fashion, not attacking the keyboard as you would imagine by the tenor of his words, but instead his fingers dance across the keyboard as if they’re doing the old soft-shoe to Whispering Jack Smith singing his 1927 hit tune “Me and My Shadow”. Thompson has a smile on his face, in heaven as the thoughts of his mind and actions of his body synch together in perfect rhythm.

Now I have a hankering to hear Warren Zevon sing “The Hula Hula Boys” and you need to read Thompson’s “The Curse of Lono” to find out why.

The Measure of Love

LOVE ME TONIGHT (1932)
Starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian
(94 minutes) B&W

“Isn’t it romantic?” the tailor (Maurice Chevalier) queries his customer, and continues in song:

My face is glowing, I'm energetic.
The art of sewing I found poetic.
My needle punctuates the rhythm of romance.
I don't give a stitch if I don't get rich.
A custom tailor who has no custom
is like a sailor, no one will trust 'em.
But there is magic in the music of my shears.
I shed no tears, lend me your ears.
Isn't it romantic? Soon I will have found some girl that I adore.

The customer picks up the catchy refrain, takes it with him past the taxi stand. There the song passes to a writer who takes the tune in a taxi to the train station, where it plays into the minds of some lovelorn troopers. They then march in step across the countryside to the tune now locked to the beat of their hearts. Their joyous noise gets picked up by a gypsy boy who takes it to camp in the strings of his violin, which plays its way to the uppermost tower window of a nearby castle, where the princess throws open her window and completes the song into the night, wondering when her prince will come. So the simple tailor is connected to the world and then to the true love of the princess (Jeanette MacDonald) by a song.

Isn’t it romantic?

Yes, it is, and much more modern than a 1930s musical has a right to be, but Mamoulian’s then-revolutionary camera work and the fact that he worked out the songs in pre-production with Rodgers and Hart to move along with the camera and the story keeps things flowing along at a surprisingly still-fresh pace.

I cannot take much of MacDonald’s high-blown but lovely operatic singing, but will admit it works well when paired with Chevalier’s down-to-earth singsong patter. In fact it makes them, to me, a much better and more interesting couple than what we see and hear when she duets in other films with the similarly operatic Nelson Eddy. When she sings with Eddy, her own “kind,” life feels narrow and as expected, but when she "lowers" herself to sing with a more pop like “dittier” like Chevalier the world becomes larger with more possibilities.

The scene described in my opening here better demonstrates this feeling: though the song itself is changed and sometimes mangled on its road from the tailor to the princess its message remains true. Moreover, other songs in “Love Me Tonight” like “Mimi” in similar meme-like fashion move from those resting comfortably in their boudoirs to those getting their hands dirty in the kitchen. Those on high, those below, and everyone in-between have an important commonality – “important” because concentrating on the common binding thread makes the future a day well worth the living. Isn’t that romantic, too?

Summer can be scary

He is here ...

Root for the home team

"He is now cycle"

Only my phone knows what that means. I typed "He is now awake"...

User error or another sign of conspiracy, a gathering of all technology together against us?

Probably user error.

Phoning in the Colors

Need to see some green today . . .

Can't talk now, I'm eating

Best face forward for shopping

And this comes direct from the phone...

Posting on the Go

This posting comes to you via e-mail. Not sure how it will work. The previous postings came from a mobile phone, though after the first two, new posts are not appearing... Will e-mail work? If it does be sure to check out what's below!

http://machineanimalcollages.com/Pages/Installations/AttentionChicken.html

Youth is not wasted

This post comes to you from my phone... hopefully...

Don't Bug Me!

More posting this weekend... as long as I do not run into Red Kryptonite -- in which case postings will be delayed another twenty-four hours.

Thank you for your patience! And don't forget to support your locals in tomorrow's Race for the Cure!!

Another new line for playtime

Yet another free web tool: sketchcast.com. Business applications aside, for me it's another way to keep the mold from taking over the inside of my rusty brain pan. Let's see what pops out when you click the 'Play' button below...



It's probably my favorite of what I've sketched so far. Decide for yourself, by examining the rest of the bunch here.

Jung at Heart

Conversation going on about the new Indiana Jones movie -- questions whether Indy is a Communist sympathizer, a ‘pinko.’

When Indy and Co. entered the alien room, my first thought was "sleeper cell of fellow travelers." Then we hear the dialogue about the collective unconscious. During all the loud sights and sounds, as Cate Blanchett’s Soviet agent met her fate near the end, didn't she scream, "I was wrong!"? I thought perhaps there she was realizing this collective was not the ideal for which she had hoped...or did I not hear her correctly?

Speaking of collectives: what about those prairie dogs, monkeys, and ants? Do they not all exhibit some sort of collective unconscious? The behavior of these creatures has been one of the most-criticized portions of the film. Nevertheless, could not their actions be purposeful, planted clues to the nature of the skull?

I don't really care, mind you. Indiana Jones has always been an apolitical cuss, whose passions are for the acquisition and sharing of knowledge. If you want to judge his actions and the film within the framework of a political system, how about calling it instead a parliament – which is a group of owls, which is a hoot…?