Doorway to the Unknown

As long as you live...

"Remember this as long as you live: whenever you meet up with anyone who is trying to cause trouble between people...anyone who tries to tell you that a man can't be a good American because he's a Catholic or a Jew, a Protestant or whatever: you can be pretty sure he's a rotten American himself. Not only a rotten American, but a rotten human being! Don't ever forget that!"

So spoke Superman, warning youngsters about the so-called "Guardians of America" in a story entitled "The Hate Mongers Organization", from the Superman radio show in 1946, as quoted in the excellent new book "Flights of Fantasy -- The Unauthorized but True Story of Radio & TV's Adventures of Superman" by Michael J. Hayde.

Following the Heard - 2009 continues

Blink of an Eye

It's been much longer than I thought. You've been patient about the recent sparse postings, so how about a nice reward -- a free and legal show of the Waco Brothers at The Hideout in Chicago? It's courtesy of the band themselves and the Internet Archive ...

The Wacos are a so-called "alternative country" group created by The Mekons' Jon Langford. This may help some people: think of how The Clash would sound if they explored country music instead of dub or rap in 1980. Or, how about just taking a listen by clicking the 'play' arrow on the bar below? Once you've enjoyed the show (and you will) you can get more of their stuff here...

See the possibilities

Rut = Row

Harmony out of Memory Land

Woke up to the refrain of Ted Lewis singing his hit from the 1920s, "Walking Around In A Dream", and though I can't yet find a legally-shareable clip of the song itself, I ran across a 1929 clip of Lewis and his band which you may view below.

Yes, that's Noah Beery as the Big Pirate in the scene. It was part of Warner Brothers 1929 revue "The Show of Shows" reportedly largely lost, except for clips like this. I'll have to see what else I can find of it on the YouTube.

The Invention of "What"

My reasons for posting the following are not yet fully-formed in my mind. Take it then at your own leisure, at your own pace.

From Steven Johnson's "The Invention of Air":

"...in Priestley's age at least, leisure time was where ideas happened. You can't dabble in scientific experiments when you've got to use all your cognitive resources just to put food on the table, or when you don't even have a table to put the food on. Priestley was a professional minister and educator, in that he was paid directly for those labors, but in some fundamental sense he was an amateur scientist, particularly through the first two decades of his life. Like most of his Enlightenment-era peers, he was a hobbyist where science was concerned."

Priestley reached the top of Maslow's pyramid. His journey unburdened by worries about his next meal or the roof over his head; someone is paying him to think and to pass on knowledge. The latter action made Priestley something to talk about, as well. Though he was mistaken in some of his beliefs, he expended energy in putting his true and false thoughts to paper and mailing them to friends and associates around the world, including Benjamin Franklin. Franklin's thoughts on sharing information could be best said in his own words (quoted by Johnson in "Invention").

"These Thoughts, my dear Friend, are many of them crude and hasty, and if I were merely ambitious of acquiring some Reputation in Philosophy, I ought to keep them by me, 'till corrected and improved by Time and farther Experience. But since even short Hints, and imperfect Experiments in any new Branch of Science, being communicated, have oftentimes a good Effect, in exciting the attention of the Ingenious to the Subject, and so becoming the Occassion of more exact disquisitions (as I before observed) and more compleat Discoveries, you are at Liberty to communicate this Paper to whom you please; it being of more Importance that Knowledge should increase, than that your Friend should be thought an accurate Philosopher."

This sounds much like what we see going around the Internet -- on blogs, and comments, and discussion groups -- the sharing of thoughts and ideas in various stages of completeness and validity. Much like this post here. My own leisure time for the day is at an end and I must now click 'publish post' but will return tomorrow with more stuff.

Good Samaratinism

The adventurer Doc Savage and his men, after keeping the pirate Tom Too from taking over the Luzon Union, leave behind a legacy for the country, The Savage Memorial Hospital. "The institution was to operate always under one inflexible rule -- payment from no one but those who could afford it."

Thus ended another rousing adventure in Doc Savage magazine, "Pirate of the Pacific" by Lester Dent, cover-dated July 1933, only a few months after what many consider the absolute nadir of the Great Depression. Roosevelt had been President for only a few months, as well. I've been trying to find if their philanthropy carries some special classification in economic terms. It's not charity because it's not giving services away to everyone, just helping those who need it. “Good Samaratinism”, perhaps?

This year and its economic problems brought out similar good Samaratinism in people from different fields...

In restaurants, we've got: The S.A.M.E. Cafe in Denver, a restaurant with a priceless menu -- priceless in that there are no prices on the menu's items. They ask that patrons pay what they can afford for the meal, stating that everyone deserves the same service, the same quality of food, no matter their economic circumstances. "S.A.M.E." stands for "So All May Eat" and those with no money at all get the chance to work for the meal -- serving, cleaning, etc. The food itself comes from the high-end of the culinary world (spinach souffle instead of cold beans). It's not a soup kitchen, with dignity for the food as well as the customers. NBC ran a spot on it, which you can view here.

In the field of Medicine, we have news of doctors offering their regular patients one free preventive visit per year.

And this doctor who gives free treatment through 2009 for his patients who have lost their jobs.

If the economy continues to be depressing it's great comfort to realize the examples above are just the ones we've heard of, and that the reporting of their examples has undoubtedly led to the raising of other helping hands. It may not solve all the problems we've got, but it adds a little weight to the side that says that the problems are worth solving, that the human race is worth saving.

NOTE: The image above comes from the cover of a Doc Savage magazine reprint which you can purchase here.

Following the Heard - 2009 so far

We're rapidly approaching the half-way mark of another year, and musically the tone feels kind of 1969, kind of 1979. Will 1989 and 1999 also make an appearance before we're through? Time of course may tell, but may not fully reveal itself until we're further down the road. Just glad we've got another Marianne Faithfull disc. Dylan's on sale again too, and sounds like he's continuing the fine form of his other 21st century discs, and will undoubtedly appear here in another few months.

Here's the rundown:

1) What's In the Middle - The Bird And The Bee
2) Lucid Dreams - Franz Ferdinand
3) Keep The Streets Empty For Me - Fever Ray
4) The Brave and The Snake - P.O.S.
5) Bang Bang - K'naan
6) Cost of Living - Living Things
7) Straight to Hell - Lily Allen (featuring Mick Jones)
8) Heads Will Roll - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
9) Heartbroken, in Disrepair - Dan Auerbach
10) Hold On Hold On - Marianne Faithfull
11) Bozos - Amadou & Mariam
12) Middle Cyclone - Neko Case
13) Nothing Seems The Same - Heartless Bastards
14) Gasoline and Matches - Buddy & Julie Miller
15) Right Side Of My Brain - The-Dream
16) Happy House - The Juan MacLean
17) The Loneliness of Magnets - The Handsome Family

If you'd rather hear the songs, than just read about them, check out a version of this mix on my 8tracks.com site here...

Further on up he rode

It did not take me a month to get this much further into Forest Park (far further than I have ever rode before) but it took me that long to finally blog about it. Stephen Berlin Johnson's new book, "The Invention of Air" is correct about the importance of Leisure Time and I hope to have enough of it soon to continue recording these adventures.

Two-tired

Excitingly, exceedingly, exhausted ... my first trip of the season out on the bike and made it all the way to WU. Unfortunately this is only a quarter of my trip!

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho

During the usual wait for the first of several traffic lights to change my way one morning I noticed a lackadaisical fellow loping along at his own westward pace – a very slow pace considering the cold and his lack of coat, but one with a purpose slightly skewed from those more often adhered to during a rush hour in February. He was playing a slide flute and, by the way that he walked, whistling with it an uncommonly slow march. Could not hear it over the music I had blasting behind my rolled-tight windows, but though the beat seemed more of a dirge, the pleased expression on his hairy unkempt face sang otherwise. His big blue eyes saw warmth and joy, somewhere, and he did not care how long the journey, or how cold the morning light

Several long blocks westward I came to another light and stopped, about to look back in my side view mirror to see if the sliding flautist still marched my way, when another marcher came to view a block or so ahead. Another marcher, yes, but one driven eastward by different beats and a definite purpose, of places to be, dressed neatly, sharply, in brown camouflage fatigues. Despite his well-defined manner, his location and neighborhood made it more likely he was home on leave and keeping fit, adhering to his own daily rush hour of regimen.

My light changed and, before I reached the next one, I thought about what would happen when the joyful jaunt of my first marcher crossed paths with that of the second.

A few days later I sat at the light, going home from work: Pony-tailed runner with wrap-around sideburns jogged a pretty fast pace westward down the street, head back, eyes in a half-squint into the sun. He wore red white and blue sweats. Ahead of him another guy -- with a flute, a regular silver flute. His hair was also long, (but loose) and he wore a long-sleeve crazy paisley printed dress-shirt and jeans, hiking boots, clomping along as he too ran into the sun. His pace kept him -ahead- of the sweat-suit runner and he blew his flute the whole time. I rolled down my window, to see what I could hear as they passed me by. It sounded not so much like a song; could make out only two notes up and down the scale, up and down, up and down, up and down and he continued to run, to keep ahead of the sweat suit. Up and down, up and down, then ahead of me, red turned to green and I lost my sight of them in my mirror, in the dusk.

If we were to call for help...

A few years ago someone got in trouble over a fight at school. He was only five years old or so. The school asked him to write a short essay on what he did, why he did what he did and why he was sorry for what he did. So he did. And he signed the essay: Mothra.

Happy birthday to you, young Mothra! May you continue to fearlessly flap your wings towards the future...

Although it's not the birthday of the -original- Divine Moth, still in his egg in the picture above, now's as good a time as any to celebrate.

The music for this celebration comes from the same source as this posting's title: the Mothra song, originally performed by the Peanuts in 1961. Not many know the lyrics were in Malayan rather than Japanese.

Hear the songs here.

Stills from Mothra's first battle with Godzilla (along with the original Japanese trailer) reside here. Of course, there's the 90s version of the song from the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy, put together with some of the big moth's greatest hits below...

Ten years later they redid the song again...check it out below. Still trying to find the first 1961 version, but you can enjoy it yourself if you will only give -in- to the song and see the movies.

Mothra is something you’re not really supposed to think about. It's something you just believe in -- a giant Tinkerbell who, in this case, can shoot rays from her antennae.

Let yourself go and fly away to a place where large graceful things can bring beauty and Armageddon-time destruction at once.

Yes, I believe a giant moth can fly, that it can fight off fierce fiery attacks from giant radioactive creatures of the deep, as well, and that somehow it finds time to save the planet and its children. If you’re lucky you can get a ride when the day is done. If you don’t believe, well, you might be too old. Too bad...

Listen To Me!

The Neko Case posting below exposed me to some different ways of presenting music files to the blog -- legal ways, of course.

The link below will bring up an experiment I ran a couple of years ago with the Electroplankton music software for the Nintendo DS.

CAUTION: Laurie Anderson talked about "difficult listening music" in reference to tuneful works which might make you think. The thoughts engendered by listening to the following are probably less beneficial to the world at large.

Click this to hear my Electroplankton Experiment

More sophisticated use of the DS and Electroplankton can be found in the video below:



Or how about this use of the new Korg synthesizer software for the DS? Some might say it sucks...



...But not me!

BTW, both videos are the work of musician Jetdaisuke. More info here.

Their Dreams They Dreamed Awake

If I'm doing this right, by posting the following link to a free MP3, five dollars will be donated to the Best Friends Animal Society. That's the deal for all bloggers.

Download at... http://www.anti.com/media/download/708

The MP3 would be worth -your- while, regardless of the charity, as it's Neko Case's new single -- People Got A Lotta Nerve -- from her upcoming album "Middle Cyclone" which you can pre-order here. Very glad to literally hear she's got something new in the works as it's been a long time since the New Pornographers (their New Challengers came out two years ago?) or her solo stuff (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood was almost three years ago?). Hopefully she'll also make her way here for a show...!

The Spirit is Willing, but...

The recent film of “The Spirit” is not really a story, to paraphrase the character's creator Will Eisner, “for little boys.” In other words, it is not for comic book fans who expect to see a faithful rendering of the Eisner classic strip. They really ought to know better. How many films based on comic book properties made it to the screen without revision and revamping? When will they learn?

Nevertheless, this type of revamping is sacrilege in some quarters. Those aware of comic book history revere Eisner, not just as an artist and writer who created his own characters – most notably, The Spirit – but who put a lot of thought into the form of the stories he put to paper. The limitless possibilities he saw of how to put together a story in comic book pages makes his work one of the few inarguable cornerstones of the industry.

What many forget is that the form itself in Eisner’s work more often than not overshadowed substance. Moreover, when Eisner went for the substance later on in life, trying to tell the Big Story with capitals B and S, he became to me a boring preacher instead of a stimulating artist. (Think Sullivan trying to make "O Brother Where Art Thou" instead of "Ants in Their Pants 1939"...)

For the star of this story: Eisner himself never really fleshed out the Spirit as a full-blown character, but rather used him as a tailor’s dummy on which to design his latest fashion. Mysteries, comedies, westerns, science fiction, combat, and romance: all fictional genres eventually made their way into the Spirit’s life “story.” The only constants: he got beat up a lot, he generally met incredibly motivated and beautiful women, and he always wore a blue mask and a red tie.

So here comes writer/director Frank Miller with his film revisioning of Eisner’s character. Miller is a successful comic book writer/artist, who not only knew Eisner well (a book of their conversations on the art of comics was published a while back) but who also creates stories of style over substance. His Sin City stories probably claim the largest fame -- best known by those not comic book fans -- as Robert Rodriguez made them into a largely successful film a couple of years ago.

To Miller’s credit, this is not Sin City II, and “The Spirit” is not a shot-by-shot recreation of Eisner’s stories. He has created a stimulating amalgamation of his work and Eisner’s and for frustratingly long moments in this film, it successfully wows us with a campy piece of visually entertaining work. Where it bogs down is in the all-too-frequent scenes where tedious dialogue goes on and on and on and on without much in the way of something visually interesting to sustain us.

That is the crime here and the root of my frustration. The entertaining parts are extremely entertaining, but because of the bad parts and the extremely bad reviews, not many will know that Miller, like Eisner’s Gerhard Shnobble, knew how to fly in this film. He just did not fly often enough.

p.s. If you would like to learn more about Will Eisner’s The Spirit, to see what all the fuss is about, pick-up “The Best of The Spirit”. It’s a decent sampler of his work with the character. If you would like to see a more successful comic book re-imagining of Eisner’s character, check out both Darwyn Cooke’s excellent modernization and Alan Moore’s “The New Adventures of The Spirit”.

p.p.s. Of course, any book links above should be ignored if you live in the St. Louis area. You don't need any links because you can more-easily visit the friendly folks at Starclipper (see link to the right) who, if they do not already have the books in stock, will be glad to place your order.

And now, we fly off with an Eisner-drawn Shnobble...


BONUS REVIEW: Writer/artist (and Will Eisner fan) Kyle Baker weighs in on the movie.

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