Claude Bovee

The Tomato Patch Murder I

2009-03-27T05:50:00.007-05:00

THE TOMATO PATCH MURDER I

This much is clear, on May 18th, 1997, Billy Crowder and John Stanton entered the bedroom of Thurman Martin, Billy`s maternal granddaddy, and shot him to death with a 22 rifle as he slept. Then they wrapped him in a shower curtain and buried him in the backyard. In order to cover up what they done they planted tomatoes on top of him to account for the fresh dirt. As an afterthought, Billy had taken Thurman`s wallet and used the money to pay some bills. This action would prove to be Billy`s fatal flaw. They made it seem like the grandfather had disappeared. Katie Crowder, Billy`s sister, had cleaned up the bedroom, wiping blood off the walls. This case would become known as The Tomato Patch Murder, since the disposal of the body involved the planting of tomatoes on top of the grave.

A random stack of hand-written notes, trial transcripts, and Polaroids rested quietly on a tabletop in a corner of my room. I had done my research well, yet how could I organize this data in such a way so that people could make sense of it? Troubling too was the fact that there were many things about this case that were unknown to me. The biggest one was the question of who Thurman Martin really was? Why was Thurman Martin such a despicable person? Why was he the perfect bastard towards his own wife, his own daughter, and his very own grandkids?

Much of it was coming back to me now. I had been searching frantically for a photograph of my yellow Mustang to share with a friend. Over the holidays I found a musty archive box with some forty unlabeled VHS tapes in the closet. I carried the archive box over by the TV and put the first tape I could grab in my Sanyo player, just out of curiosity. Gradually, it came back to me just what I was watching. This was the Tomato Patch Murder Trial on Court TV, with the familiar face of Dan Broden as your host.

The main focus of this case is on Thurman Martin, a retired truck driver, husband, father, and ‘good old boy’ from the small town of Ludowici, Georgia. He had one other character trait also, he was an abuser, chronic and violent. Thurman abused his wife, Lula, for a lifetime. He hated her with a passion and beat her repeatedly, right in front of his grandchildren, Billy and Katie. The abuse spread to his grandkids, and over a span of time I intend to detail for you many of these sorted events. As far as motive goes, Billy Crowder felt as if he had no choice but to take the life of his granddaddy. The reprehensible pattern of behavior would not seize until Thurman Martin was stone dead.

So ten years have passed by since The Tomato Patch Murder Trial was broadcast on Court TV; that was January of 1999. It was my habit at that time to tape record many shows that I deemed worthy for future reference. In the back of my mind I recognized the remote possibility that some of these tapes may come in handy one day. I believe that it has come to pass now. I watch this fragile VHS tape over and over again. I am reviewing the evidence for something I may have missed, a tiny speck of evidence that may have been carelessly overlooked. I didn`t want to take that chance. Good God, one thing is for certain, Billy Crowder might well spend the remainder of his life in jail for what he`s done. We can surely afford to be critical of the case made by the state of Georgia, and contemplate the worthiness of incarceration a s the only option on the table for this young man.

I meandered over to the research table with the stack of Tomato Patch evidence again. I recalled all the labor involved in compiling this data. But I also saw shortcomings. A visit to Ludowici is necessary. Interview witnesses, attorneys, family members, and friends, if possible. I hadn`t seen the crime photos either. I feel a need to share what I do have with you. This will improve the process. I will release it little by little, in parts, or chapters. Serialized, you see. Truman Capote had done it this way in his book In Cold Blood. If there are flaws, let me know. If Thurman Martin was as bad of a man as I suspect he was, then maybe more facts should be disclosed about his life to fill in the picture.

XTC`S SKYLARKING REVIEW

2009-03-08T07:27:00.004-05:00

SKYLARKING IS A RARE GEM AND A HIGH MARK FOR XTC! By John G. Kays

SKYLARKING *(please visit me over at Newsblaze) IS A PAISLEY UNDERGROUND MASTERPIECE THAT IS PERCHED IN THE PANTHEON OF GREAT ENGLISH ALBUMS AND FURTHERMORE, PLAYED A ROLE IN THE CREATION OF A MOSTLY FORGOTTEN COMEDY/PARODY BAND FROM DALLAS, TEXAS: THE POTATOES!

Rediscovering XTC`s Skylarking after twenty-three years is indeed a pleasant prize. I had recently read Bucks Burnett`s (a former proprietor of Fourteen Records and present day owner & General Manager of Earotica) piece “My 10 Favorite English Albums Ever”; he had sung its praises as “ridiculously melodic and irritatingly good.” I concur with his positive accolades. A “Sentimental Journey” was unleashed after this reading. The mnemonic runs something like this: during one particularly crisp fall evening sometime in 1986 I ran into a friend at the now defunct Peaches Records in Dallas, Texas. Hubert Winnubst, a guy I had worked with before in a band named Rachel Bazooka, had in his hands a gigantic stack of LPs ripe for purchase. Skylarking was intermingled amongst this stack.

“Hey Hubert, do you want to get together and jam sometime next week?”, I blurted forth with a wavering throat. “Why not,” Hubert retorted. We did just that, and over a few near-beers we jammed freely on guitars and Hubert played that lovely record several times over. We whipped up enough inspiration to start up another band, and we did just that. Later, after many of the members were assembled, each with their own distinguished musical assignments in place, we called ourselves The Potatoes (1987-1991). It`s difficult to put a moniker on this band, but it approximated a Comedy/Parody band, a Dinner Theater revival group that danced around many genres and made a sizeable splash on the local scene, mostly in the Fair Park District of Dallas. So Skylarking does have a permanent parking place in my heart; thus I hungrily snatched it up at Waterloo Records last Saturday, and have been listening ever since.

It`s produced by Todd Rundgren and he was hired to make a record that could result in some kind of commercial success. Todd`s sequencing of the songs is nothin` short of brilliant, one song syncs into another seamlessly and mellifluously. He also decided which songs were used from the demos that he received from XTC. Rows between Andy and Todd were rumored widely, but later Partridge recognized the gifted hand of Rundgren, that delivered the goodies, indeed a very beautiful product. The genre is psychedelic pop; the lyrics remain abstract and the music stays tuneful and inventive. It is, roughly speaking, a ‘concept album.’ Let me shed a few impressions of this sonic kaleidoscope for you. Let`s see here…

I am interpreting “Summer`s Cauldron” as Andy Partidge`s coded statement on his dire addiction to pills. “Please don`t heed my shout I`m relax in the undertow.” I could be wrong. ”Grass” is my favorite song, a pastoral spoof written by Colin Moulding, a clever play on words, a blatant double entendre where turf and pot are interchangeable, and vice versa. Huh? “Over and over we flatten the clover.” Is this a zany scene from Green Acres? “Shocked me too the things we use to do on grass.” Like what? Play croquet such as Alice In Wonderland? Fight off fire ants at a bummer-of-a Sunday School picnic? Should I marvel at Astro-Turf newly revealed at the Astrodome in the mid-sixties? Let yourself take a tumble in the hay as this lilting melody sends you away to Day Camp. Clean-cut lawn or up-in-smoke, it`s green either way!

You will find yourself humming “The Meeting Place” in the shower or on a work break in some hefty-foreclosed-building in the middle of nowhere. Moulding`s melodies are contagious! “That Really Super, Supergirl” is comic book song that combines a catchy tune with upbeat lyrics that may be partially biographical for Partridge, but things remain metaphorical to the umpteenth degree. “Ballet For A Rainy Day” is a psychedelic tune and reminds us of the Paisley Underground phase in the mid-1980s, that XTC partially fits in with. Think of bands like Green On Red, The Dream Syndicate, and Jesus & Mary Chain as examples of this interlude in pop music. ”Silent film of miracle play” is a most pleasing line for me in terms of palpable poetry. `Twas a refreshing blast of Nouveau-Flower-Power for that time in the mid 1980s.

“Another Satellite” is a catchy outer-space type theme, where people orbit around each other like planets around the sun, or otherwise around each other. “Don`t need another satellite” with treated guitars and synthesizer is out there and seems to be a plea for your own free space. “Mermaid Smiled” was cut from the LP to make room for “Dear God”. It was put back on when Skylarking was remastered in the 2000 reissue. Mermaid is an enchanting nautical nursery rhyme that chimers and chimes ryely.

Two late appearing tunes by Colin Moulding are pleasantly plump partridges resting sweetly side by side. “Dying” is a melancholic reflection on the death of an unidentified acquaintance, “the day you dropped in the shopping line.” Moulding does not want to die like his unfortunate colleague? An enviable goal for sure! “Sacrificial Bonfire” is puzzling? It reminds me of a Medieval, quasi-Provencal yarn; Colin delivers the vocal in a knavish nasal phrasing, as if he were a servant/clown/bard at some fictitious royal court of yesteryear. He sings it almost soprano, happy, like some kind of comic puppetry, yet the lyric is dark and foggy. The theme is change, which can only be gained painfully. “Burn up the old. Ring in the new.” Savonarola burning at the stake in a Florentine square? The tragic bonfire at Texas A & M? Two odd parallels, yet not transparently logical, that rang the doorbell of my mind as I listened.

The thought-provoking track “Dear God” was initially just a B-side to the single, “Grass”, but was added to the U.S. album. It helped boost the sales of the record, and you can easily see why. It starts out with an acoustic guitar and a child singer asking if God got his letter. On the second verse Andy Partridge pipes in with: “Dear God, sorry to disturb you, but…I feel I should be heard loud and clear.” The tone gets more passionate and angry as the song progresses. Basically, Partridge is voicing skepticism and anger towards God. If God made Man in his own image, then why is Man hungry and suffering and all? So the argument might go, why is Man not all perfect and happy like the Buddha-Head God? This doesn`t make sense? Andy is making a valid point, and in concurrence with some of our modern-day pundits of theology, who have gone south on God themselves!

The music is delightful with Colin Moulding`s thumpy bass, Andy`s jangling guitar, and the middle lead section with Dave Gregory`s synthesizer ching-a-linging like a toy instrument orchestra. The finale C section is a choppy staccato and oozing umbrage. “I won`t believe in heaven and hell. No saints, no sinners, no devil as well. No pearly gates, no thorny crown. You`re always letting us humans down. The wars you bring, the babes you drown.” God comes off as a bad guy in this song! Bohemians love this kind of Existential banter…echoes of John Lennon`s “God,” “I don`t believe in Jesus.” And the child singer has a touch of Pink Floyd`s “Another Brick In The Wall, part II.” Profound also is that in the B section, Partridge says that man made God first, then God made man…this makes sense, from what little I can remember from my isolated bible studies.

I have a cloistered compartment in my heart for Skylarking, it resides in the childhood section of my heart where daydreaming in some empty cow pasture of Texas (a good part of the day) is allowed, and make-believing life just might work out is also legal.

MY FUNNY VALENTINE-LA PARISIENNE

2009-02-12T05:54:00.003-06:00

This is, for me, a good representation for Valentine. It is Minoan (Late Minoan IIIA,c. 1400 BCE) and is a fragment of wall-painting from the palace at Knossos. It is simple, yet elegant, and gives us a glimpse into Minoan notions of feminine beauty. Bronze Age cosmetics are gleaned, with ruby lips and talcum powder white on the cheek. The eye is huge with prodigious eyeliner and flowing curly black locks. Presently, this is my Funny Valentine-La Parisienne!

THESE WERE THE DAYS: THE AUSTIN PUNK SCENE IS REANINMATED!

2009-02-08T18:27:00.008-06:00

THESE ARE THE DAYS: THE AUSTIN PUNK SCENE IS REANIMATED! By John G. Kays

IT`S JUST A JOKE MAN! IT`S JUST A JOKE MAN! IT`S JUST A JOKE MAN! PERE UBU-THE MODERN DANCE-1978

On January 24th, 2009 I stepped into the Arthouse to take a peek at These Are The Days show, and was amazed as I walked around the facility fancying music flyers, vinyl singles, LPs, tattered Tee-shirts, and flaking fanzines on the walls and `neath glass cases. Punk poptones wafted from an adjacent room where a film installation called itself home. I thought I had vacated a Time Machine such as Rod Taylor in the H. G. Wells movie by the same name. Was I at The Museum of Natural History looking at Neanderthal dioramas in a primordial backdrop? I don`t think so. I pondered prodigious ephemera from the Punk/New Wave scene of a bygone Austin ala 1978? Rushing (or sorta rushing) through my mind was the scary visage of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Jimmy Carter`s haircut, his silly brother`s Billy Beer line, and the Kool Aid party of doom. I stumbled about, partly in the here and now, and partly in the ELO electric groove of the late 1970s!

The show was put together by Matt Stokes, an artist from England who is more interested in, how say a music movement affects people`s lives and how it shapes that local culture. Social anthropology, my friend. Matt interviewed many people who had a role in the scene and they gave him materials that he displayed at Arthouse. None of the ephemera is labeled but is rather displayed organically about the gallery in no particular chronological sequence; I knew enough about the scene to enable me to categorize particular bands or writings and associate them with the appropriate philosophical components of ‘The Movement.’ Through the years, I`ve manned Aristotelian methods of procurement that enable me to sort things into its proper box. Youngsters may not be so lucky, but should contact one of us ‘New Wave Historians’ for a fleshing out of the period.

When I first conceived of this show, after hearing about it from friends, or opening their emails, I imagined it to be more of a massive installation, perhaps an experimental sculpture of sorts. I thought of it as a New Wave Funhouse where you`d be on a joyous watery log ride, like at Six Flags, and you`d float past dioramas of Duke`s Royal Coach, punk puppets would pop out suddenly and sing their old songs, there would be footage on the waxy, stalagmite cave walls, as you drifted in and out, with holograms of faded events looming large…okay Goofy, I woke up. The actual show was more linear and two-dimensional, self-evident ya see than my pipedreams, but Matt did a good job of assembling these replicas of this bygone era. Never will all of these Punk/New Wave flyers, records, and fanzines be gathered together in one space again. You should definitely check this out!

Read Contempo Culture lampooning society and religion, terrific music reviews, & a jiffy interview with William S. Burroughs-King of the Grizzlies & Urban Buccaneer, best Art Cassettes around! Cap`n BrewKid`s Yankee Doodle Freak Flag poem springs outta the page again! Read Stewart Wise`s original interview with Patty Smith as if it was yesterday! Listen to The Reverend Neil Xs New Wave radio show on KUT! Can calibrate my groove to `is tunes! Is that Skylab selling British Punk import singles over at Inner Sanctum…I believe it is! Doc at the Radar Station, here ye be. A Fairy Queen`s Paradise of X-Y-Z! Fanzines `neath glimmering glass?Foosball anyone, at the Posse East? There`s Doctor Stix telling jokes at Dukes at a Gator Family show! Fritz Brow zooms by on a mopad or flips a steak over the hot Raw Deal grill while wiggling and writhing in his kitchen to Devo`s Crack That Whip! A Touch of Evil emanated from the punk flyer?

I enjoyed Matt`s 16 millimeter film, but I primarily focused on the pasties *(paper, pastiche, & plastic) from the Austin scene, since I had played a minor role in this trip, and I knew many of the parties involved from these creative times. Look, there are many 45 rpm vinyl singles lined up on a shelf! A partial list of the bands with singles is: The Stains, Inserts, The Offenders, Dicks, Re*Cords, Terminal Mind, Pork, Radio Fre Europe, Big Boys, Huns, D Day, and Lester Bangs Y Los Delinquents. On another wall Long Playing Records are prominently fitted to the plaster wall as trophies to a remote, but mostly not forgotten time. The punk music scored my circuit board as I drifted in and out of reverie or returned to observations of graphics in this moment…of experiences echoing through time where more than thirty years have passed by our confounded eyes.

For a flash, I focused on the Sluggo Fanzine display case, and read a faded article on Nick West that explains his position on the media, as he defined it. In his latest issue, No Tocar (some time in 1980, I fathom), he focuses on ‘Psychotronic Warfare’, an apparent hidden agenda of the Soviets that acts as a counter-punch to American aggression, and then it summarizes an article on the mutilation of cattle that has mostly hazy attributions. Nick West describes his magazine as “cultural blips on a distant radar.”

Nick`s angle on the culture of that time was that the real dialectic, that might define dynamics in our culture, was between Science and The State, not between Religion and The State. This is an out of date model. His reason for believing this is that Science has replaced Religion in the context of spiritual values. Science is Religion now (1980 ya see). This makes sense. My own take: Nick West was a media guerrilla capturing subliminal messages, decoded by Sluggo, that had slipped between the cracks of the ‘generic media’. I began to wake from the slumbers of bubble dreams…

The video and film installations were everywhere! There were two old TVs, Magnavox I suppose, and two big film screens. One small TV had The Re*Cords (a very early, influential New Folk band) in the Capitol Rotunda playing Guyana Holiday acoustically while strolling the interior of the Dome; the accordion player Bert Cruz is interviewed for a nightly news broadcast, defending his art. Also, there is a video of Lynn Keller doing perhaps the best song of the entire ‘Movement’, Plastic Money, penned by Doug McAninch (okay Bert, Guyana Holiday is a masterpiece too).

One film loop projected on a canvas screen was black and white footage of Rauls (the vintage Punk club of Austin) with frenetic dancing and the pusillanimous pounding of bass strings flickering past your eyeballs. On the other side of the exhibit was a film of The Huns (the most Punkie of the bands) gigging in East Austin-footage of The Beatles and The Stones was mixed in, for some reason unknown? My favorite was the footage of every day people from the late 1970s just on the drag (Guadalupe) noodling on the street. Random unrehearsed chaos. I saw The Varsity Theater, I recognized Tim Kerr, Gary Floyd of The Dicks, and many young punks who I didn`t know. Recognized Conans Pizza next to Rauls and saw Zebra Records where my sister Jenny had worked. This footage provided a natural gut-shot of Austin at this innocent juncture, unstaged, direct and simple…

The reverie kicks in again…stop studying Lester Bangs` Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, it`s not a bible! Stop analyzing the period like it was The Roaring Twenties! The period only ran from 1977-1980, then morphed to a new configuration! There are three separate periods her, maybe five! Start looking at the Xyphoid Process Xeroxes again. Control Rat X was a Xerox Artist of the highest caliber! Triple chicken fried steak with greenie/tan gravy at the Stallion-can`t wait! If it`s in stock, we have it! Paranoid Of Banana Yogart, you know the drill!

Matt Stokes` title for the exhibit is These Are The Days, but for me it`s Those Were The Days, such as in the Mary Hopkins song on Apple Records. For me, PUNK ROCK IS DEAD! The dribble coming out since 1980 is recycled garbage, nothing` more! Men At Work is the most banal excuse for New Wave, that I`ve ever heard! Those were the gunslinger days of the Old West. Austin was Dodge City or Abilene Kansas (ala 1870) back then! No amount of an injection can re-vivify this pale, gossamer Frankenstein. & Lester is kaput…so is Willy Pickel! No one to carry the ball…Doke Walker is gone.The biggest genius of the scene was Brian Hanson…he died a long time ago…Radio Fre Europe and the film Speed Of Light-Future of Man, God rest his soul!

Austin had an open atmosphere at that time, not tethered by the media and sweetly free as a bird in the blue sky. Afterwards, The Austin Chronicle gobbled up the local culture, like the Giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, in its own image and pigeon-holed artistic output into icy, concrete molds of sterility. Bands were simply sucking-up to these media-master slaveholding bastards! This was unfortunate, but is the record, Post-Punk. Matt`s show REANIMATES those days, almost brings them back to life, but the dummy sputters, falters, then quivers on the floor, a lifeless manikin on cold concrete mortar. The day is gone, just a memory of bangin` git-fiddles, sweaty blue spiked hair, runs to Swedish Hill, or taping flyers on dragstrip lightposts, keg parties and all-nighters. Get over it!

*Thanks Ellen Gibbs for the Punk Albums photo and the Sluggo Glass Case snap! You`re a better photographer than me, Ellen!

THESE ARE THE DAYS

2009-01-26T05:40:00.004-06:00

I went to Matt Stokes` art show These Are the Days yesterday for about an hour, and was getting into it, but felt twitchy like I was getting outta a Time Machine. Many old flyers (some yellowing and fragile) were displayed from the PUNK DAYS, as well as Fanzines, such as Sluggo and Contempo Culture. I saw fragments of an old guitar...don`t know what that was? Some of the 45 rpm singles that came out from that time were displayed also.

My favorite aspect was the television sets that were set up to show, I believe, 8 millimeter films of some of the local punks just fooling around, simply dittling around in Austin somewhere (maybe by the University or on Guadalupe...don`t know). I recognized some of the faces, but couldn`t really put together who they were? This may be a good thing. This isn`t odd though, because I was living in Dallas in 1978, and managed a Baskin Robbins Ice Cream Store at Preston/Royal. I actually wrote parts of Magnum Lust (the Norvells` song) back in the stock room where we kept malt cups, straws, sundae dishes, and cake boxes also. Oh, the film of the Re*Cords was an eyeopener! Bert Cruz had on shades and played the accordian and had on that striped shirt I remember just like Mr. Peppermint. Doug and Tom and Lynn waxed electric too.

I didn`t take everything in, but felt like I was taking a step back in time...not that I really wanted to go there? I felt nervous as if I was at Roswell or Area 54...can`t say why really? The new punk film was a little loud and I felt like I was watching a parody of the old punk bands. Maybe a sort of Spinal Tap one off to punk? I don`t think the simulation really reflected back on the period, in a way that I remember it. That may bot be saying much? I could have used some historical context too. Things like the Son of Sam shootings, Jimmy Carter`s haircut, the Iranian Hostages, Billy Beer, and the gas crisis would put this period in a national context. This could have been a little corner with newspaper clippings, where people could go hah hah...that`s what was going on nationally at the time...1978 or 1979. But that`s my own little brainstorm, folks.

I`ll try to go back and take a camera (my Polaroid One600/Ultra fur sure)...I`m certain my perspective will change...it was very cool...good job Matt...I just feel lucky to still be alive in 2009! The punk movement was just a fad, but it still holds some importance...what that importance is is what I`m still trying to determine? Maybe it was just an adolescent initiation rite, nothin` more.

It`s too early (6:34 AM-1/26/`09) to dig into my boxes for flyers (I actually have a few myself somewhere?), so I`ll just put my Gut Shot piece up...it`s as punk as anything else I have!

CHE GUEVARA AS POP ART-THE PURPLE EDITION

2009-01-18T16:39:00.002-06:00

CHE GUEVARA AS POP ART by John G.Kays

I am looking forward to the movie Che by Steven Soderbergh, but I know it will take its time in coming to Austin. In the mean time I have been studying up on Che Guevara and am noticing a curious thing about how he is portrayed in Pop Art. Most of the interpretations of him, by way of graphic art, come from one photograph taken by Alberto Korda on March 5th, 1960. Different versions of this same image abound, with the colors, texture, or lay-out only varying slightly from one item of art or another . This Korda photograph is essentially Che Guevara as Pop Art proliferated throughout many different mediums. Why? Probably because people prefer its simplicity and the easy access of identification that can be obtained with the Communist Revolutionary/Saint that we call Che, so much revered by so many. This is my theory anyway.

The iconic photo was taken at a memorial service for the La Coubre ship explosion in the harbor of Havana. Alberto Korda went back to his darkroom and developed it and knew immediately that it was the ultimate Che image, and he was certainly correct. An Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli got the rights to the photo in 1967, on a hunch that Guevara would die soon, and then produced a poster that sold 2,000,000 copies in a half year. I have seen news footage of the students holding the posters up high during the Paris Protests of May 1968. You can see them clearly carrying these posters along with ones of Ho Chi Minh in El Che: Investigating a Legend. Korda just wanted to remain true to the anti-capitalist spirit of Ernesto Guevara, remain true to Che`s sincerity, his heartfelt commitment to Socialism; for had Korda retained the rights to his photo he would have been wealthy beyond belief!

When I look at the Korda image of Che I think of the graphic artist Shepard Fairey`s image of Barack Obama which is everywhere I look. I have seen it used on political placards, stickers, and even on the cover of Time Magazine. His previous stickers of Andre the Giant (Obey) are all over town, on street signs, light posts, and on the walls of buildings. I LOVE to see Andre`s mug and also it might not hurt that I once saw The Giant wrestling live at The Sportatorium in Dallas many, many years ago. How do you account for the popularity of Fairey`s clever little graphics? The simplicity and humor may be the reason. Similarly, Che has the beret and shaggy hair-he seems to personify revolutionary virility and defiance.I try to project myself into the frame, even though I`m just a wimpy little nobody with husky dreams. What do you think?

What is stunning to me is the fact that many people in Latin American countries have this image preciously mounted on their walls, simulating a religious icon, say a Christ icon or possibly it is a mirror of Milagros that could bring a body good luck. In my Che Handbook I have seen this image as a mural on a brickwall in Belfast, and I`ve seen it printed on a wine bottle, a cigarette pack, and even on a carrying bag. There`s a striking statue by Delarra in the Che Guevarra Revolution Square in Santa Clara, Cuba. Luis Martínez Pedro`s “Che America” is Warholesque with multiple single-colored prints of the Korda photo juxtaposed on one poster. There are scads of other examples as well.

I was curious about this proliferation of Che paraphernalia, so yesterday (January 17th) I visited a local retail import shop myself, Tesoros Trading Company on South Congress Avenue, here in Austin. They have souvenirs and novelties from around the world, but they specialize in items from Latin American countries. I marveled at two kinds of Tee-shirts, Che postcards, gigantic mousepads, refrigerator magnets, and pricey original posters from Cuba, commemorating the Revolution. Only Frida Kahlo merchandise was more ubiquitous. This stuff sells like hotcakes! Believe it or not, exclusively, all of the Che ephemera in the shop used the famous Alberto Korda photograph, no exceptions.

This may seem somewhat childish, but I tried my own hand at some Che pop art. First I printed out a Photostat of the Korda photo on Kodak photo paper, then I painted it with acrylics such as yellow ochre, antique brown, cadmium yellow, raw sienna, and lots of burnt umber. Oh, I used some orange, tan, and red also. I let it dry, sprayed it with Krylon Crystal Clear, scanned it, and then tweaked it slightly on Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, then saved it on My Documents, and now here it is! Bingo, I`m a fantastic Che artist myself now, or amateur artist anyway. Whoop-di-do right? The idea behind this was Instant Karma, immediate gratification, FRIENDO! Who knows, maybe thousands will see my Che art on NEWSBLAZE?

Still with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the present near collapse of Communist Cuba (don`t forget Castro`s close demise) the question remains: why do so many people persevere in worshiping this simple graphic? Does it provide hope for poor people? Yes. Do people still idealize this earlier Communist era, though it is now in shambles? Yes. Maybe people just like the simplicity of it. Maybe people like to worship political martyrs too, like JFK, MLK, and CHE. I know I do. I have a portrait of JFK on my wall and pray daily to the American Saint. I do not know why really. People watch The Motorcycle Diaries over and over again. I have seen it five times and have loved it every time. The Korda shot is a NOSTALGIC TALISMAN that people grab on to, like the ‘Hope’ poster of Obama by Shepard Fairey. The cult of Che will never die out! I`m not a Communist people, but I can not stop staring at this Che icon!

CHE GUEVARA AS POP ART

2009-01-18T15:44:00.002-06:00

CHE GUEVARA AS POP ART by John G.Kays

I am looking forward to the movie Che by Steven Soderbergh, but I know it will take its time in coming to Austin. In the mean time I have been studying up on Che Guevara and am noticing a curious thing about how he is portrayed in pop art. Most of the interpretations of him, by way of graphic art, come from one photograph taken by Alberto Korda on March 5th, 1960. Different versions of this same image abound, with the colors, texture, or lay out only varying slightly. This Korda photograph is essentially Che Guevara as pop art proliferated in many mediums. Why? Probably because people prefer its simplicity and the easy access of identification that can be obtained with the Communist Revolutionary/Saint that is called Che, so much revered by so many. This is my theory anyway.

The iconic photo was taken at a memorial service for the La Coubre ship explosion in the harbor of Havana. Alberto Korda went back to his darkroom and developed it and knew immediately that it was the ultimate Che image, and he was certainly correct. An Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli got the rights to the photo in 1967, on a hunch that Guevara would die soon, and then produced a poster that sold 2,000,000 copies in a half year. I have seen news footage of the students holding the posters up high during the Paris Protests of May 1968. You can see them clearly carrying these posters along with ones of Ho Chi Minh in El Che: Investigating a Legend. Korda just wanted to remain true to the anti-capitalist spirit of Ernesto Guevara, or the sincerity of his commitment to socialism; for had Korda retained the rights to his photo he would have been wealthy beyond belief!

When I look at the Korda image of Che I think of the graphic artist Shepard Fairey`s image of Barack Obama is everywhere. I have seen it on political placards, stickers, and even on the cover of Time Magazine. His previous stickers of Andre the Giant (Obey) are all over town, on street signs, light posts, and on the walls of buildings. I LOVE to see Andre and also it might not hurt that I once saw The Giant wrestling live at The Sportatorium in Dallas many years ago. How do you account for the popularity of Fairey`s cute little graphics? The simplicity and humor may be the reason. Similarly, Che has the beret and shaggy hair-he seems to personify revolutionary virility and defiance.I try to project myself into the frame, even though I`m just a wimpy little nobody with husky dreams. What do you think?

What is stunning is the fact that many people in Latin American countries have this image preciously mounted on their walls, simulating a religious icon, or possibly mirrors of Milagros that could bring a body good luck. In my Che Handbook I have seen this image as a mural on a brickwall in Belfast, and I`ve seen it printed on a wine bottle, a cigarette pack, and even on a carrying bag. There`s a striking statue by Delarra in the Che Guevarra Revolution Square in Santa Clara, Cuba. Luis Martínez Pedro`s “Che America” is Warholesque with multiple single-colored prints of the Korda photo juxtaposed on one poster. There are countless other examples as well.

I was curious about this proliferation of Che paraphernalia, so yesterday (January 17th) I visited a local retail import shop myself, Tesoros Trading Company on South Congress Avenue, here in Austin. They have souvenirs and novelties from around the world, but they specialize in items from Latin American countries. I saw two kinds of Tee-shirts, Che postcards, gigantic mousepads, refrigerator magnets, and pricey original posters from Cuba. Only Frida Kaylo merchandise was more ubiquitous. This stuff sells like hotcakes! Believe it or not, exclusively, all of the ephemera in the shop used the famous Alberto Korda photograph, no exceptions.

This may seem somewhat childish, but I tried my own hand at some Che pop art. First I printed out a Photostat of the Korda photo on Kodak photo paper, then I painted it with acrylics such as yellow ochre, antique brown, cadmium yellow, raw sienna, and lots of burnt umber. Oh, I used some orange, tan, and red also. I let it dry, scanned it, and then tweaked it slightly on Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, then saved it on My Documents, and now here it is! Bingo, I`m a fantastic Che artist myself now, or amateur artist anyway. Whoop-di-do right? The idea behind this was Instant Karma, immediate gratification, FRIENDO! Who knows, maybe thousands will see my Che art on NEWSBLAZE?

Still with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989 the question remains: why do so many people worship this simple graphic? Does it provide hope for poor people? Yes. Do people still idealize this earlier Communist era, though it is now in shambles? Yes. Maybe people just like the simplicity of it. Maybe people like to worship political martyrs too, like JFK, MLK, and CHE. I know I do. I have a portrait of JFK on my wall and at times, practically worship it. I do not know why really. People watch The Motorcycle Diaries over and over again. I have seen it five times and have loved it every time. The Korda shot is a NOSTALGIC TALISMAN that people grab on to, like the ‘Hope’ poster of Obama by Shepard Fairey. The cult of Che will never die out! I`m not Communist people, but I can not stop staring at this Che icon!

MY YUCATAN VACATION

2009-01-03T08:05:00.007-06:00

MY TRIP TO THE YUCATÁN: MÉRIDA, CHICHÉN ITZÁ, AND ISLA MUJERES by John G. Kays

Pressed Rat and Warthog have closed down their shop.
They didn`t want to; twas all they got.
Selling atonal apples, amplified heat,
And Pressed Rat`s collection of dog legs and feet.

Sadly they left, telling no one goodbye.
Pressed Rat wore red jodhpurs, Warthog a striped tie.
Between them, they carried a three-legged sack,
Went straight round the corner and never came back.
*(Ginger Baker-Cream-Wheels of Fire)

There is more forgotten than remembered when you confabulate the record of my fabulous vacation to the Yucatán. I do know that it was in 1975, but exactly which month or day I can not be too certain. Let the commencements begin, the tracings of that journey, the jotting down of memories in a marble memopad. Some of the proceedings were recollected, but some have been forfeited at the blood-soaked altar of Quetzalcóatl. It`s through these feeble Don Quixote eyes that I now bring back those days of this godsend of a holiday. Herein is the testimony of a reconstituted conquistador who heard and saw unspeakable marvels of the New World, and will spin you a tale that will make your eyeballs pop out! Let`s see here…where`s my marble memopad?

We flew into Mérida that clear day, so many years ago, found the historic El Gran Hotel, and ventured out to a local mercado for ropas of a casual nature. I was traveling with Bill and Dennis, two cosmic cronies game for an adventure or two, and knew how to enjoy life. We picked up straw sombreros, huarache sandals, tiki shirts, and postcards to send to friends. Don`t forget the Foster Grants de rigueur to shade our dainty gringo eyes. I am sorry I can`t retrieve a leftover Polaroid of us, but you can picture The Trio if you put your mind to it. In the evening we took in a cantina or two with zesty Mexican jukeboxes and dancing dervishes; don`t leave out the sizzling peanuts or the shots of tequila. We planned our trip meticulously. It looked like a fun one was in store for us.

In the morning we sipped coffee and read the Spanish newspapers. The pace was slow. We ate pastelería. My friends smoked cigarillos, curling smoke drifts to the ceiling. We were doing nothin`, just as planned. We seemed to swat a lot of flies. Then the three of us took in a Mexican cine, then more cafes, picked up some tasty snacks, and yet more drifting on calles, soakin` in the indigents. We kept gliding by the Cathedral on the Plaza Mayor; it was a magnet for all, peasants were couched against the walls hoping for a miracle. It never came.

A few words about what we ate. We ate lots of hand foods from cheerful street vendors. Simple hand foods are hot and tasty, muy barato también. A good many tacos pescados and maybe some papadzules. We devoured scads of grilled fish and shellfish on the island. The Trio was always on the fly. Found friendly lancherías. Loafed in the open-aired patios and walkways. Washed the cottonmouth down with aguas frescas. Napped on hammocks. Heard the ocean breath. Gulped Mexican cerveza (Montejo). Lots of it. The pain went away. Yes, simple hand foods got us by, doused with ample chile sauce. Yea, buckets of El Yucateco.

The very next day, bright and early, we departed by bus for the ruins of Chichén Itzá. The seventy-five mile ride was rickety but interesting. I saw Mayan people tending corn or grilling meats on sticks in open pits. They wore beautiful clothing. When we finally arrived my stomach was queasy, hair disheveled, and my frame rearranged. You might infer, we exited the bus a little unsteady. As we entered the ruins a vibe glowed both inside and outside of us. Looking out, cactus plants and jungle growth painted a desert scene. Clean green iguanas dashed out of nowhere and grazed our feet. I thought I heard the lament of Mayan ancestors. A sadness came over me. I stepped out for more. There was no turning back.

El Castillo is an awesome sight to behold as the trio took the 79 foot trek up to the top; it is 91 excruciating steps up to the platform apex. It was the cruel Bishop Landa that named it; he is the Spanish priest who tortured the Mayans as heretics and burned a good many of their coveted codices. The pyramid is dedicated to Kukulcán, a feather serpent. This is the same god worshipped by Moctezuma, but the Aztecs called him Quetzalcóatl. I was tuckered out after I climbed up all those steps. Scary serpent heads are on cornices and on the sides of the inner temple. A cool red jaguar was up there too, but I have no lucidity in that regard. The Chac Mool image near these words came from this inner room atop El Castillo, but currently resides in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

It is said that at the spring and fall equinoxes a shadow of the snake god crawls down the side the pyramid sanctifying the earth. Chichén Itzá was populated with spiritual adventurers during the “Harmonic Convergence” of August 1987. I attended a party/ceremony myself in Dallas during these ‘final days’, and felt the coming together, the big breath of humanity exhaling. Dr. Arguelles, a New Age visionary, designed this scheme to counter catastrophic apocalyptic outcomes inherent in the Mayan calendar. In his own words, the goal was: “to bless and heal Planet Earth, to unite with all of life, and to raise the human spirit through a single collective human experience.” Okay, I felt something!

Yes, you do feel a presence, a vibe, as you stagger about these ruins of mystery. Did a UFO come from outer space and take the Mayans away? ‘A UFO went whirling through my mind.’ Or have I read too many Weekly World News articles? That`s a possibility! But I love the Chac Mool, even if the Mayan high priests did place the yet still beating human hearts of sacrificial victims on his limestone pot-belly. And it poner los pelos del punta when I stared at the skulls engraved on the walls of Tzompantli. The heads of sacrificed captors were actually displayed on these walls. Okay, maybe Mel Gibson did get it right in the heart extraction and head chopping scenes of Apocalypto!

I pondered the “Cenote Sagrado” for many moments. A sinkhole that honored the Maya rain god Chaac, it was a vital conduit to the gods. Mayans had flocked to it as a shrine. Water was a rarity for the Mayans. This water was emerald green. I trembled as I imagined what had transpired there. The bottom held gold, jade, and even human skeletons. I wondered where the exact spot was from hence the sacrifice suppliants had leapt? The Caracol is an astrological observatory; The Trinity strolls around, and Bill said: “Weren`t there a few Star Trek episodes shot here?” “Sure,” Dennis retorted, “And George and Jane Jetson (Astro too) came here with Fred and Wilma Flintstone for a ménage à trois (quartet rather) weekend fling.” It wasn`t all business as usual.

The excursion continued. “Hey look,” I said, “there`s the incredible Las Monjas (The Nunnery),” named as such by the Spanish, with ornate lattice work and scary masks, very baroque, yet purely pagan. Let me take a moment to link you to this perfect site for photos of Chichén Itzá (hit tour). It is done by Jorge Pérez de Lara and will place you directly on this enchanting archaeological site. Don`t forget to take a stroll down Juego de Pelota, the largest ball court in Mesoamerica, and check out the acoustics. “I`m pooped out,” whined Bill, “let`s high tale it back to the El Gran Hotel!” Thus spoke Zarathustra.

When we arose in the morning light we took a bus north to Progreso in order to catch a boat to Isla Mujeres or “island of women.” We traveled east on the Golfo de México to the northeastern most tip of the Yucatán peninsula. Isla is just north of the Riviera Maya (Cozumel) in the Caribbean Sea. Isla Mujeres is extremely laid back and we had some gentle idle hours in her care. A mermaid spirit still haunts the coves and beaches. ‘Catacombs, nursery bones, winter women throwing stones, carrying babies to the river.’ *(Soft Parade-Jim Morrison)

What did we do there? Next to nothing. WE did manage to rent some mopads for an entire day, then rode across the island several times over. Oh I just remembered! We met a couple from California; we hung out with them and marveled at this simple set up. Obviously, this stood out in stark relief to our tethered lives in the states. Lots of naps were had. Hit the hammocks, watched the waves, ate pescado delicioso, and counted the grains of sand in the hourglass that marked our passing. Then The Trio had to go.

There is a devotion present on the isle towards Ixchel, the Mayan goddess of rainbows, the moon, and the sea. ‘On a lyre gentle tones she plays.’ Furthermore, it is known that pirates, such as Sir Henry Morgan and Jean Lafitte used it as a launching pad for their campaigns of robbery on the neighboring high seas. Thus, they would leave their ladies behind to secure and nurture their sandy makeshift homes. These lady legends are a canopy of zippity-do-da for this peaceful paradise.

Our trip was nearing its end. A numbness came over us and we splashed agua frio in our faces, then crawled on the boat back to Progreso. Then the bumpy bus ride back to Mérida, our faces green and stomachs turned upside down from the gyrations, the bobbing and weaving, or the hairpin turns around molehills and bends. Hey, people were throwing up. That`s not pretty, but the bus was old and decrepit, so I remember it being like Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas. It`s not going to matter all that much if it wasn`t really like that.

Okay, then the plane flight back to Houston. I was exhausted, but now another bus trip back to Austin. I was broke so I bummed a little dough from Bill, who always seemed to have lots of it. Bill was somewhat peeved with me over this. “Stage Door Johnny, you`re going to pay me back, aren`t ya?”, Bill sternly clamored. After this famous trip dudes would go to Bill to borrow money, since he was a good business man, and always had wheel barrels of cash that he carted around. Okay, I bid farewell to my buddies and ambled back to my crash pad for some R & R.

The next day I reluctantly had to beg for my old job back at the Garden Café, the one and only organic restaurant in Austin at that time (1975). “Rick, no one chops carrots or pilots the Autochlor Automatic Dishwasher as good as me,” I blurted. I was a kitchen worker and yes, Rick let me have my old job back. I dreamed of sunny beaches and Mayan festivals as I scrubbed one more mammoth cooking pot.

I bet you are puzzled by the inclusion of the lyrics by Cream at the beginning of my piece and at the end. The book ending of two verses sung by the drummer Ginger Baker are provided as architectonic seals. You may be asking what`s their connection to the Mayans and how does this tie in with my antique vacation? Needless to say, every time I hear this song I experience different glimmers of meaning, shifting prisms of self-realization. Pressed Rat and Warthog could be spitting images of my two old friends. This is not a put down. Obviously, I`m the bad Captain Madman, because I used that moniker freely back in the day when I was a working musician.

“Went straight round the corner and never came back.” What this says to me is that it has been many years since I have seen these departed compadres. They vanished into thin air. Disappeared into the night. Don`t know if they`re wearing concrete army boots at the bottom of some lake? Could be…hum…No, halos `round their heads, I`m certain of it. On the other hand, this simple rhyme could just as easily be a vision for the distant Mayans. They evaporated more than a thousand years ago. Where did they go? Were the Mayans aliens who returned to their planet in a distant galaxy? So what that I used an easy hand in my interpretations!

What can be gleaned from this morass? A lifelong love of Mayan studies? Yes (see Yes Man for how to do this). Theories of the Mayan collapse? Yes. Read David Webster. Internecine warfare, drought, corn crops gone? Yes. Ecological imbalances? Yes. A peasant rebellion against the Royal elites? Yes. Excessive sacrifices at the altar of Chaac? Yes. Parallels with Al Gore`s global warming? Yes. Interplanetary travel in UFOs? Likely. Finally, yes to Frederick Catherwood for the essential lithographs that are oh so romantic and real! Yes, for keeping me in the driver`s seat of Mayan studies. Yes, cornball head, and I`m out to lunch!

A real lesson learned: All I was doing on this trip was just being happy. Communing with nature. Just existing. Having friends too. Channeling Mayan rubble. Getting nowhere. Creo que deberé refrescar la memoria a Juan. Yea, there is much that I no longer remember about that Yucatán vacation. But I came away believing that one should just live their life, not think about it. No interpretation really matters. I`m SKULL-FUCKED, my fair weathered friends! HAPPY NEW YEARS! Beware of MAYA (George Harrison).

*I must give credits to Wikipedia, Fodor`s 2009 guide to the Yucatán, scads of web sites, a Spanish idiom book, countless other books on the Mayans, The New York Times archives, my vacant parking lot of a memory, and The Dynamic Duo, wherever they might be? “You can not petition The Lord with prayer!” Jim M. Let it wail, Doors! And now two more verses of Cream:

Pressed Rat and Warthog have closed down their shop.
The bad Captain Madman had told them to stop
Selling atonal apples, amplified heat,
And Pressed Rat`s collection of dog legs and feet.

The bad Captain Madman had ordered their fate.
He laughed and stomped off with a nautical gate.
The gate turned into a deroga tree
And his pegleg got woodworm and broke into three.

THE BEATLES` REAL LOVE

2008-12-14T09:51:00.003-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5D3FMioSoc

*(THIS IS THE OFFICIAL REAL LOVE VIDEO FROM THE ANTHOLOGY)

REAL LOVE

ALL MY LITTLE PLANS AND SCHEMES,
LOST LIKE SOME FORGOTTEN DREAMS.
SEEMS THAT ALL I REALLY WAS DOING
WAS WAITIN` FOR YOU.

JUST LIKE LITTLE GIRLS AND BOYS,
PLAYING WITH THEIR LITTLE TOYS,
SEEMS LIKE ALL WE REALLY WERE DOING
WAS WAITIN` FOR LOVE.

LONELY TO BE ALONE,
NO NEED TO BE ALONE.

IT`S REAL LOVE, IT`S REALLY REAL,
YES IT`S REAL LOVE, YES IT`S REALLY REAL.

FROM THIS MOMENT ON I KNOW,
EXACTLY WHERE MY LIFE WILL GO.
SEEMS THAT ALL I REALLY WAS DOING
WAS WAITIN` FOR LOVE.

NO NEED TO BE AFRAID,
NO NEED TO BE AFRAID.

*(CHORUS)

THOUGHT I`D BEEN IN LOVE BEFORE,
BUT IN MY HEART I WANTED MORE.
SEEMS LIKE ALL I REALLY WAS DOING
WAS WAITIN` FOR YOU.

LONELY TO BE ALONE,
NO NEED TO BE ALONE.

YES IT`S REALLY LOVE,
YES IT`S REALLY REAL
(REPEAT & FADE)

THE BEATLES` WHITE ALBUM FORTY YEARS LATER

2008-12-11T05:58:00.007-06:00

THE BEATLES` WHITE ALBUM: LOOKING THROUGH THE BENT BACK TULIPS FORTY YEARS LATER! By John G. Kays

1968 was a year of dramatic change. A few of those pivotal events were: the Tet Offensive, the Paris war protests in May, the killing of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as a blossoming partnership between John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I will link a helpful timeline of 1968 for you, so that you can gain a working knowledge of events for that turbulent year. The Beatles` White Album, which turned forty a few weeks ago, was a quintessential reflection of that era; I still remember that day (11/25/`68) clearly as if it was yesterday. This double album contains, by way of kinetic expression in pop song, much of the energy of 1968.

Now rewind the fragile reel tape back to the day. Just a week before a comment from a colleague at Jesuit Prep piqued my interest, “Did you hear John, that a new Beatles` album is set release next week?” I got in gear and did some yard work to earn ‘record money’ and also rolled some quarters, dimes, and Nichols in anticipation of B-Day. I was fidgety for several days, and invented ways in my mind that the new songs might possibly sound. I reviewed all of the older records so that I would be well oiled to make accurate assessments for the new release. This was a Standard Operating Procedure of that day.

On November 25th, 1968 I waited in line agog with hope until the doors opened at the Melody Shop record store in North Dallas. When the doors finally opened, I swiftly entered the store, and could see the stacks of unopened LP boxes on the floor near the cashiers` station. The record clerk pulled the Lillie-white product from one of the boxes and politely handed me my very own personal platter. “The sun is up, the sky is blue, it`s beautiful, and so are you.” I paid the cashier with a combination of rolled coinage and paper currency and shot out of the store. I made the short walk back to my house with promises in hand.

I got home in a flash, pulled the unblighted white record out of the plain brown paper sack, and ripped off the cellophane wrapping. I impatiently yanked out disc one from its paper sleeve. I marveled at the pretty green apple logo inset of the disc; made haste to my parents` bedroom, then proceeded to pop disc one on the family Zenith stereo console within. As I listened to Back in the USSR attentively, I studied the inserted fold-out lyric sheet with groovy pik-collages on the other side. Then I discovered the four separate photo prints of The Beatles inside; a few days later these were tacked up on the wall. The ritual of listening to the records, studying the lyrics and artwork, and applying meaning to the blank white cover by Richard Hamilton, continued for weeks on end.

For example: Did Mother Superior Jumped the Gun mean that Christianity was outdated? Was the white cover symbolical for the purity of God? Or was it atheistic? Sexy Sadie is a put down of the Maharisha as a guru with a big ego who lusted after ladies. Guru worship, by the Fab Four, vanished away after that. I was at a Catholic prep school, so I tried to see if The Beatles` had views about religion in the lyrics. I took a closer look at John`s comments about Christianity in 1966, said just as a lark. This was taken out of context by the Fundamentalist Christians and then the burning began. I will reference the quote for you here.

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn`t argue that; I`m right and I will be proved right. We`re more popular than Jesus now; I don`t know which will go first-rock `n` roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It`s them twisting it that ruins it for me.” This is a quote from John Lennon from an article written by Maureen Cleave that appeared in the London Evening Standard on March 4, 1966. Please read it here in its full context. It`s just John jesting and trying to impress the reporter, or trying to explain Beatlemania.

John`s early death, in light of his comments, renews our sense that these were perilous times, radicals would not be tolerated. Lennon lived on the edge all of his life, and said shocking things as a defense mechanism against a hostile culture that may have been incapable of grasping his take on the world. The recent tardy pardon of the Vatican backs the notion that they took a good while (forty years) in sorting through Mister Lennon`s mocking words towards Christianity. The White Album is filled with snipes, jabs, and put downs of ‘polite society’. Look for yourself at the lyric sheet for little bursts of exasperation!

As a backdrop to my comments on several of my favorite songs, I will qualify the creation of this historic double record. Brian Epstein, The Beatles` manager, had died from a drug overdose in August of 1967. Brian had kept them fastidious and focused, but now that he was dead they did what they fancy well wanted to do. As a way of creating a tax dodge, they started their own label, Apple Records. I recall John and Paul appearing on The Tonight Show and making public this move. Hey Jude/Revolution was the first Apple single, and was successful beyond belief!

In February of 1968 The Beatles flew to Rishikish, India for a transcendental meditation session with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In India they wrote forty songs on acoustic guitar and many of these ended up on The White Album. As they ventured through these grueling recordings in the summer of 1968, they knew they were at the peak of their popularity, and that their every word and note would be siphoned in the silly sandbox of the youth movement. I love every song on The White Album, even Don`t Pass Me By, but for the sake of space, let me dissect a chosen few.

The sonic curiosities, its interplay of lyric and circular four chord progression, makes Dear Prudence a fascinating one for me. The song was written about Mia Farrow`s sister, Prudence, who wouldn`t come out of her bungalow from meditating (in India), so John and George were recruited to coax her out of her turtle shell. The lyrics are presented in a nursery rhyme format and the acoustic guitar is finger-picked in a droning, repeating evolvement, with the bass thumping merrily on the bottom end. “The clouds will be a daisy chain, so let me see you smile again.” George`s guitar, with tints of flange, cascades gaily up the scale on the final verse, while Paul`s piano twinkles briskly as the chaps try to cheer up the sequestered, sad-eyed Prudence.

Glass Onion is just John fencing with fans (his crackerjack wordplay ya know), who try to spin Beatle lyrics into outer space or construct a sandcastle mirage of the cosmos out of syllables. For if these Freaks could decode such messages hidden in Beatle verse, they could discover the key to the universe. John delivers his lines with ample ebullience, enough mojo in its elocution, that you buy into the likelihood that you are receiving signals, even revelations about ‘the big picture.’ The glass onion itself is slang for a monocle; this is a seeing glass with extraordinary magical powers. Indeed, things got a little dodgy in 1968.

Glass Onion is in the key of A minor and in a blues tradition is more spoken than sang. A nice touch is the flourish of bowed strings on the third line, “well here`s another place you can go…” The chording is dense and this mirrors the rich metaphors within the lyrics. The bridge is a chromatic pony ride that mounts suspense. An eight measure outtro has a surprise ending, with pastoral orchestral strings descending the scale, then back up…repeat…remember the ending to Blow Up? This short song packs a punch and you know you are on long, strange riverboat ride of the imagination on this album.

Happiness Is A Warm Gun is the most Beatle-ish song on the White Album and shows close collaboration between the four moptops. It is mainly a jab at those who worship guns but verily so much more. I am hearing five distinct sections woven together, each with a different time signature and a unique emotive expression. John characterized it as a history of rock and I see it as a capsulated journey through rock too.

First there is the folksy arpeggio guitar passage, then the hackneyed poetry portion, and next the bluesy heavy guitar (‘I need a fix’) fissure. The Mother Superior Jumped the Gun bit acts as a coda to John`s comments about Christianity. The sister resists sex and violence, but maybe religion too. The fifth section is a 50s doo-wop rant that is celebratory and simultaneously sarcastic. Reflective listening reveals it as an aural cubist painting assault leaving you out to dry on a clothes line with a smoking pistol in your pantaloons!

All of George Harrison`s songs on The White Album are Arabian baubles, nonetheless Long, Long, Long is the most piquant paean to his new found spirituality. It whispers forth and basks in the glory of karmic renewal: “Now I`m so happy I found you. How I love you.” George`s acoustic guitar resonates easterly, duplicating his raga-rock touch that first surfaced on Rubber Soul. The fourteen bars of the middle section has an accented, recrudescing upright piano phrase by Chris Thomas, as George laments his wasted time away from the restful bliss of grace. You can share with George, finding peace of mind and God also, when you listen. “Now I can see you, be you.” Finality… aye, a spiritual catharsis is achieved in the closing crescendo, where Paul`s organ part rattles, George wails like a anchorite, and a splash of strings from his Gibson J200 echoes with a G minor eleventh chord, conjuring supernal glee!

Paul McCartney`s jaunty Twenties` ditty, Honey Pie, is his most versatile contribution of the lot; `tis a vaudeville number with a rollicking rhythm, a 1920s flapper show tune that conjures visuals of moonbeam liaisons. Paul is vicariously worshipping some silver-screen idol, a mythical moll of the ‘Roaring Twenties,’ me thinks. He may have been alluding to Clara Bow, that`s just a guess, but it could just as easily have been Louise Brooks or May McAvoy. The introduction has Paul mimicking Al Jolson`s lispy banter out the-side-of `is mouth (“now she`s hit the big time”); you could swear up and down you were hearing a scratchy old 78 rpm record. The saxophone and clarinet arrangements by George Martin, peppered throughout, jazzes it up and John ekes out an inspirational Django Reinhardt guitar phrase that saves the day. The line “I`m in love but I`m lazy” has stuck to me like a flea on a sheep dog all of the last forty years!

Cry Baby Cry has always been a curious one for me, with its thespian lyrics and trotting 4/4 rhythm; it`s presented in a simple verse/chorus structure, yet a clever little story is sketched about some mischievous children of a fictitiously daft king and queen. `Tis a fairy tale of sorts, a limerick along the lines of ‘sing a song of sixpence.’ John`s resounding two-handed piano chords, along with a colorful harmonium part by George Martin, makes it a sing along in la-la-land; there`s a diversionary bluesy accent of Bb7 at the end of each verse line, such as ‘hol-i-day.’ A demo exists from late 1967, so it was mostly written before the excursions to India.

Much of this is hocus pocus, but it seems to be a dreary dream from Lennon`s childhood, a dark little nursery rhyme about an isolated world of kings and queens and their children, who at times play pranks. As the skit unfolds the lesson of the fable is “she`s old enough to know better.” “Can you take me back where I came from” as the outtro by Paul shrouds the meaning even more, but casts it as reverie or idle fantasy, an Alice In Wonderland gobbledygook word puzzle of say Lewis Carroll. A little charade transpires (the ‘séance in the dark verse’), but who knows exactly what happens? It hints at a trifle of a royal scandal at some lofty European court, from the pages of medieval lore!

Revolution 9 is a sound collage (musique concrète) that tips its hat off to experimental composers such as Pierre Schaeffer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and Yoko Ono of course. This eight minute aural potpourri by John Lennon is the most widely listened to avant-garde composition ever! John has characterized it as a painting in sound. It is a way of putting texture and color to ineffable undercurrents and random thought, then freely sharing these with millions. John just collected junk, scraps of forgotten recordings from around the studio, and creatively piecemealed them together. This pastiche should be listened to on a quality stereo and with headphones too!

“As time went by they`d get a little bit older, and a little bit slower.” One titillating line from Revolution 9. Revolution Number 9 has a lifetime of sonic data, layers of backwards tapes, opera arias, bits of Beethoven, melotron, fragments of forgotten Abbey Road sessions, football recitations (“hold that line”), and fake Shakespeare lines uttered by John. “Take this brother may it serve you well.” Just let your mind wander while you listen. Herein is a subconscious meditation of the sound atmosphere, a sonic boom. Just free up your mind, let go of Ionian or Mixolydian modes, and you will find a deeper meaning. It has no specific focus, taps into reservoirs of lost tradition, then squeezes out western toxins deeply seeded in your central nervous system. This deconstruction allows you to breathe in new musical paradigms. Hope is awakened!

The Beatles` White Album is in fact a ‘youth movement symphonic codex’ that acts as a catch-all fanfare, both bequeathing and in deference to the turbulence, harmony, and violence of those times, or otherwise pertinacious ‘change factor’ omnipresent, likewise inducing rapid modulations in the social psychology of the late 1960s. These types of cerebral acrobatics are most apropos in this case, although ironically its real effect is both illusive and transparent. I digress, yes and no, but the young people in 1968 took this so seriously, were so devout in their consecrations, that Beatles` music became a surrogate for religion and scripture. This may shock you, but that is just what happened. Therefore, since the young people were so fervent in their Beatle worship, its historical impact, both on events and on the psychology of those young people, was most consummate. This is not so easy to prove, so why don`t we (do it in the road) just intuit it!

The White Album is the greatest rock record ever made! Okay, I said it. I don`t believe that young people today can in any way fathom just how big a stars The Beatles truly were in 1968. I had full realization of that in 1968.When I was young I never understood the star power of Elvis. Society and culture became bifurcated. There was straight society and there was the counterculture. The Beatles protected the young people from the cruelties of authority. When this new album came out youngsters flocked to the record shops in search of clues of how to survive in an insane world filled with war, bigotry, and chaos. The music itself provided answers.

The White Album is a continuous program with brilliant sequencing, that bookends many different styles of songs. Its eclecticism is what makes it so good. Good Night is a lullaby, Bungalow Bill is anti-gun song, Julia an oedipal confession, Piggies is social satire, Blackbird is Bach`s Bouree, Helter Skelter is the first metal tune. There`s experimental, folk, art-songs, blues, rockers, and even a jazz flapper! The holes that fill the Albert Hall are filled in here.

‘Turn me on dead man, turn me on dead man’… Supposedly one could hear those words by spinning the platter backwards `gainst the stylus. Take a gander at Eric Van der Wyk`s web page for an exciting breakthrough! You can hear the entire song backwards using Cool Edit Pro. *Let me provide a few credits: Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald is a valuable resource. Also, check out the writings of Alan W. Pollack for over-the-top musicological analysis (way out there) and Wilfred Mellers` Twilight of the Gods (its out of print now and I couldn`t quite get my hands on it, but read bits of it from other articles). Lastly, thanks to French for the image.

PROLOGUE On December 8th, 1980 John Lennon was shot outside of The Dakota. Twenty-eight years ago today (Monday). The spirit of 1968 died that day. In December of 2005 I visited the Dakota and Strawberry Fields Park. Took some nice photos. And then another sad fact, George Harrison left us November 29th, 2001. The Beatles are half gone. “Now it`s time to say good night, Good night Sleep tight, Now the sun turns out his light…” The music lives eternally. “Is this really love, is this really real? Is this really love, is this really real?” The White Album is the Rubik`s Cube for the baby boomers.* Please listen to the record non-stop while you read my piece! It makes sense then.

JFK ASSASSINATION: THE CASE FOR CONSPIRACY IS STILL ALIVE!

2008-11-23T08:20:00.005-06:00

JFK ASSASSINATION: THE CASE FOR CONSPIRACY IS STILL ALIVE! By John G. Kays

I still remember that hot Dallas day in August of 1965 when my family drove north on the Stemmons Freeway past the Texas School Book Depository Building. I was startled by its dark red, earthen tone. My family had only seen it on a black and white television in Houston, Texas during those dark days. “There it is, Dad,” I exclaimed with some trepidation in my voice. At that moment I felt equal measures of thrill and repulsion as I glared in awe at the ruddy colored building.

My enthusiasm for President Kennedy, his optimism, courage, and charisma all propelled me forward, and filled me with his hope, when I was very young. Yet the explanation for his death, by way of the Warren Report, left many unanswered questions. How could a lone assassin have committed such a sophisticated crime such as killing a president? What really happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963? Today marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination, and yet many doubts still linger today.

Throughout these forty-five years the American people have been bombarded with images, books, newspapers, magazines, films, and countless theories about the assassination, that have left them jaded beyond belief. Over the past few years a new cover-up has taken place, modeled after the same old withered, ‘single-bullet theory’ that has been clouding the light of truth from us all of these years. This is a mystery to me as to why this is still happening after so many intelligent, virtuous researchers have definitively countered the assertions of Oswald as ‘The Lone Nut.’ Just a few examples of the new cover-up would be a 2003 Peter Jennings production or the way in which The History Channel has pulled from rotation the superb seven part series The Men Who Killed Kennedy by Nigel Turner.

These specials have to leave out more than they leave in in order to make this ‘lone assassin construction’ seem feasible. For me, it is still simple things that I`m troubled by. It is little things that don`t fit. One example of this is, you will remember, that the Dallas police officer, Marion Baker, saw Oswald in the TSBD lunch room only 90 seconds after the shots stopped. The odd thing is, Marian Baker said that Oswald was calm, and not out of breath. This would mean that Lee Harvey would have to flee from the snipers perch, run through the myriad of stacked boxes to the other side of the building, hide the rifle, race down four flights of stairs, and then calmly enter the second floor coffee room, all in just a minute and a half! An impossible feat!

A litany of brave researchers have saved us from the permanent peril of obscurity in this important case. Therefore, I must sing praises here for the likes of Penn Jones, Jr., Gary Mack, Robert Groden, Harold Weisberg, Mark Lane, Josiah Thompson, and most of all, Gary Shaw. Gary Shaw`s book Cover-up was my bible in the late 1970s. These brave individuals kept the spirit alive for dissent against the dark forces who didn`t want us to know who or why JFK was killed. Now days the internet protects us from these facts and clues from being lost to time. Moreover, information has been preserved by museums, libraries, and specialized archives. I have actually done a good job myself in preserving valuable records that shed light on this case. Last night I viewed a VHS tape, Fake, that has been buried in an archive box for more than ten years; I know of nowhere you can currently find this rare artifact.

And yet the truth about this case lies burrowed, aye, perched in a ‘snipers nest’ of data; the false facts must be carefully culled away from the uncut gems of truth that are hidden from view. The rubble of debris, the corpus of ephemera, that is the artist palette for conspiratoricians must contain the best evidence, the reasons for this deed, how they actually pulled it off, and the manner of its blasphemous cover-up. The reality of what happened forty-five years ago today in Dallas is just as clear as spring mountain water, if we could drink from its fount, but we can`t taste of its sweet water today. Storm clouds shroud our view and a newly forged cover-up persists.

*(This is a scan of drawing that I got when I went to see President Kennedy at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas in 1962. I was nine years old at the time. Forgive me, but the scan is incomplete.)

This is a very interesting photo gallery of people and events associated with the JFK Assassination.

FORTY-FIVE YEARS LATER-THE JFK ENIGMA IS STILL ALIVE!

2008-11-22T07:41:00.005-06:00

I have been feeling as if over the past few years a new cover-up has been put in place, certainly by the media. Today marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination, and there seems to be a shortage of new specials about the topic, especially those that are critical of ‘The Lone Nut’ theory. Back in 1988, at the twenty-fifth anniversary, there was no shortage of good new books, video, and photographic analysis. Why this is, I can`t say exactly; maybe interest in the case has dwindled? More sinister however, is the idea that those in authority want to re-spin this case in a simple manner; that is, they want to reassert the Warren Commission`s ‘single bullet theory’ construct that has been shown time and time again to be completely fallacious.

I must praise the internet at this juncture! Also, I have preserved many of my documents, such as books, Xeroxes, and VHS tapes. Memory can play tricks on you, but after reviewing some of my materials, some of which it`s been as much as ten years since viewing, much of this period (1988-1992) rushes back to my feeble brain. Keeping good records is a virtue that can`t be underestimated. Otherwise, the truth of what transpired in history will be lost to man. I was absolutely thrilled to find an old interview with Gary Shaw, author of the rare and out-of-print book Cover-Up, and I will link it for you here, it is called Alternative Views. Please be sure to view this important interview in July of 1988.

Last night I viewed a rare video, I guess I taped it many years ago, that is a photographic analysis of the infamous backyard photos of Oswald. I`m not even sure of the title, but I call it ‘Fake’, since it nearly proves that these photos were altered in order for Oswald to take the fall. It is the work of Jack White, and uses much technical analysis to show just how this was pulled off. Oswald`s head has been grafted onto the body of another individual. I doubt you will be able to find this video anywhere, so I feel like I have possession of a very rare piece of video. Oswald himself said the incriminating photo was a fake when he was showed it by a Dallas detective at the police station. The chin is wrong and Oswald never had a watch, nor the type of shirt worn by the man holding the rifle, pistol, and Communist literature. You must experience the work of Jack White, in this regard, it is quite good and you will be convinced that the photos were faked!

With the internet`s presence, and the solid gatherings of information by dedicated researchers (I will humbly include myself) who seek the truth, no one, no entity, nor any iniquitous renegade coterie will ever be able to bury the vast body of dissenting artifacts that point to a conspiracy to eliminate the 35th president. In spite of recent efforts by non-dissenting writers and film-makers to spin these traumatic events in the most conventional ‘lone assassin’ framework, those you are weathered in these matters can still glean fragments of the truth. While J.Edgar Hoover and the FBI tried to cover-up the conspiracy at the time of the crime, enough hard evidence has remained to weave a vastly different story. Every American, if they want to truly know what happened, should review this evidence, and all the contradicting strains that make a clear picture of what happened impossible.

If they want to, they can assume that the Warren Report is right! Then let them try to plug all the facts of the case into the model and see what they come up with. It doesn`t fit, too many of the facts point to a widely different scenario!

TGIF-THE FINAL COVER-UP

2008-11-21T07:16:00.002-06:00

Lee Oswald must have been filled with apprehension as he woke up on Friday, November 22, 1963. Needless to say, he would have a very, very busy day ahead. He left money and his wedding ring for Marina at the head of the bed. When Wesley Frazier picked him up to go to the Depository, he asked him if he had heard that the president was in town today. Frazier asked him what was in the brown paper sack that he was carrying. Oswald said, “curtain rods.” Later Frazier would testify that Oswald carried the paper sack in his hand and anchored under his armpit. Later, it was proved that the Carcano rifle was too big, even when broken down, to have been carried by Oswald in such a manner. It would be wise to further probe this issue to see if this pans out.

This is just out, but I may be able to get my hands on chapter 7 of The Men Who Killed Kennedy-The Last Chapter. This is the controversial installment that was shown on the History Channel in 2003, and was later pulled from viewing. It points a finger at LBJ and this must have pinched a nerve here in Texas. I found a segment of the video on this site, so be sure to watch it. I believe many were surprised the way it was brushed under the rug. This, of course, just makes you all the more curious to see it.

Like I said before, it`s the little things that don`t fit into the lone assassin model that peak my curiosity. If the rifle was disassembled, it would still be three feet long. This would make it impossible for Oswald to carry the package under his arm, when walking up to the back entrance of the ruddy-colored Depository Building. Wesley Frazier was absolutely certain that Oswald had carried it in this way. The Dallas police officer, Marion Baker, saw Oswald in the second floor lunch room. The officer saw him in the lunch room only 90 seconds after the shooting. The odd thing is, Marian Baker said he was calm, and not out of breath. This would mean that Oswald would have to flee from the snipers perch, run to the other side of the building, hot the rifle, flee down four flights of stairs, and then enter the little coffee room, all in just a minute and a half!

And then there are many, many other little bits of conflicting data. Oswald was seen fleeing down the grassy knoll by Roger Craig, a trained detective, and then getting into a car. Later, Roger Craig saw Oswald being interrogated at the police station. This would mean that Oswald didn`t take the bus to Oak Cliff. Roger Craig was later shot at, and finally murdered under highly suspect circumstances. There are video clips around of his testimony, but you will have to do some detective work to find them. Someone didn`t want Roger Craig to tell his story.

You will also need to study the Tippett shooting in Oak Cliff, at Tenth and Patton. One witness, Acquella Clements, saw two men with Tippett when he was shot. And if Oswald entered the Texas Theater at 1:07 PM, as he was reported to have, then how could he have shot the cop at the same time? What about the ID of Oswald that went out? Who could have given it? Was it planted? Why did another police officer run from his motorcycle up by the picket fence and confront a man who claimed to be a secret Service agent? Today is Friday, just as that day, and all of you have many unanswered questions to mull over, as you watch another bland cover-up special on TV.

CITY OF HATE

2008-11-20T07:13:00.003-06:00

I still remember that hot Dallas day in August of 1965 when my family drove on the Stemmons Freeway past the Texas School Book Depository Building. I was startled by how dark red it was. We had only seen it on a black and white television while living in Houston. “There it is, Dad,” I exclaimed. I felt equal measures of thrill and repulsion as I stared at it in awe. But now, since we were moving to Dallas, I could visit it frequently and examine the crime scene for myself. I did just that many times in the some nineteen years that I called Dallas my home.

The atmosphere of my new neighborhood in North Dallas was icy and at that time many young Americans were now heading to Vietnam purportedly to free a people strapped by the incursions of communism. A brittle, intolerant attitude persisted in Dallas, as she tried to shake the stain of recent events. People from around the country and the world were condemning Dallas as ‘The City of Hate’, a shadow that Dallas is still trying dodge. A humble reporter from the Midlothian Mirror, Penn Jones, Jr., began to knock on the doors of living witnesses and published his findings. Startling revelations were suddenly revealed. Gradually, dissent against the war began to solidify, as people realized our mission in Vietnam was questionable. In the same breath, a small coterie of brave individuals began to vocalize their doubts about the conclusions of the Warren Commission.

I am very incensed by the recent zeitgeist that has emerged regarding conclusions of the JFK assassination. This in a nutshell is that Lee Harvey Oswald did it alone in order to secure a place in history for himself. In order to make this model fit, these new Pro-Warren Report Constructionists have to omit, yes white-out, many, many bits of information. These facts have to be completely cut-out to make it fit! People, please review part II of The Men Who Killed Kennedy. Lee Bowers, a railyard worker, saw much activity behind the picket-fence before, during, and after the shooting. Couple this with the testimony of Ed Hoffman and Gordon Arnold, along with the pristine Mary Moorman photo, and thus you can piecemeal a convincing mosaic of intrigue and high-level conspiracy.

The new and last (lost) episode of The Men Who Killed Kennedy implicates LBJ. This was shown once on The History Channel quite a few years ago, and I fortunately got to see it. It was then pulled and buried and never heard from again. In the special, it was told of a meeting at the house of big oil man, Clint Murchison, where both LBJ and Richard Nixon were present. I will try to get my hands on this installment, and also research why it is that it was suddenly suppressed.

For me, fragments of evidence are consummate refutations for the single assassin theory. Ruby`s rub with organized crime is obviously one. And how did he get into the Dallas police basement just moments before he shot Oswald? He didn`t get in from the Main Street ramp, as the Warren Commission alleges! Oswald was obviously connected to U.S. intelligence. Just study on this. How could the pristine bullet have been so unscathed? Why did Seth Kantor see Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital? Why was Ruby stalking Oswald on Friday and Saturday? Why hasn`t the Nix film been studied enough? Why is a new cover-up in place in the waning days of the troubled Bush Era?

EUREKA! THE EVIDENCE IS STILL HERE

2008-11-19T07:09:00.003-06:00

Eureka! I found many of my old JFK files and VHS tapes, that I spent countless hours recording, in order to preserve this record of malignancy. Fortunately, no agent has come by to confiscate my records. The History Channel refuses to play The Men Who Killed Kennedy anymore, and why? They only show pro-single bullet theory specials now a days. T this point, I`m beginning to believe that there was a kind of Renaissance that occurred in November of 1988. Many theories were coming together and the sifting of evidence had reached a saturation point. I`m glad that I kept good records, because now I can see clearly what a good place we were in terms of solving the case.

After that time things got off the rails. The Oliver Stone movie did much to under mind the gains made by substantial researchers. Now everyone wanted to get in on the act. That is why I like to think back on earlier times when the sincerity and dedication was still present. I recall talking to some friends in Dallas, way back in the 60s, who were in Dealey Plaza on that fateful day. They were certain that a shot had come from the grassy knoll. They weren`t but a couple of feet from the presidential motorcade. They had told the investigators that too, at the time. I didn`t need to read any book to believe their story.

I would spend hours on end reading and speculating `bout `63 at both the Walnut Hill and the Oak Lawn branches of the Dallas Public Library. This was in the early 1980s. I read Harold Weisberg`s book Whitewash and Gary Shaw`s masterpiece Cover-Up. Later in the 1980s, I would go down to Austin and visit the Barker Texas History Center, which is now called The Center For American History, at UT of course. My friend John Slate was an employee there, and helped me find titles that I longed to see. Many of these came from The Kubicek Collection On The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. I Xeroxed the bibliography for that collection and am presently reviewing it. I do remember getting to read the Playboy interview from 1967 with Jim Garrison, what a thrill!

For me, history is a series of pool balls that randomly collide. When the Kennedys wanted to dismantle the CIA a handful of rogue agents decided to kill Kennedy. They gathered others in power, like big oil, in on the plot, and designed a plan that would work. When they killed him, they buttoned up Lee by way of Ruby. Then the military was free to escalate the War in Vietnam. Then the CIA was free to perpetuate coups in Latin countries. But by unwinding this conspiracy we can reverse history. One event randomly leads to another, but can be reversed.

Much of this reversal will come about because of advances in technology. As an example, verification of another 22 gun at RFK`s shooting has just been confirmed. Suspicion towards Thane Eugene Cesar is greater now. Badgeman in the pristine Mary Moreman photograph has been confirmed scientifically. He is the real the killer on the grassy knoll who easily escaped after the shooting. But Lee Bowers saw the commotion and activity on the knoll, so we know about Badgeman. And furthermore many other photos and motion picture cameras were rolling on that date, so that it is impossible to not approach the truth! The latest cover-ups will not work. At the time (1988) I thought that we had failed in our endeavors. I now believe that we succeeded! Simply put, more refinement must be applied to make the models fit. Penn Jones uncovered many important clues very early on, like Earlene Roberts hearing the tat, tat, tat of a police officer`s car horn at 1026 N. Beckley, when Oswald returned to his boarding house on that fateful afternoon. Who was the police officer who was signaling Oswald? Was it JD Tippet picking up his confederate in crime?

ANATOMY OF A CONSPIRATORICIAN

2008-11-18T06:49:00.006-06:00

I realized yesterday that it has been twenty years now since we did the coffee-table book, Conspiracy-A-Go-Go, a guide to sites associated with the JFK tangle. My feelings for study of the JFK assassination have been dormant for many years. Yet when viewing RFK Must Die, about Robert Kennedy`s shooting, much of my enthusiasm came back from the dead. This was in November of 1988 that all of this action went down. But yesterday I tried to remember when this unusual hobby of evidence digging really got started; what were its origins?

In the early to mid 1970s I tinkered a little by reading the Warren Report; more than anything else I was having trouble making the facts fit together into a cogent puzzle. I am a trained historian and was aware of methodologies to research a subject and at least attempt objectivity. Not that much was laying around that you could read to counter the wooden story that was given by the Warren Report. And then again, I was from Dallas (but living in Austin at the time) and many rumors and stories were circulating back then; most people with any saby did not accept the fabrications spun-out by the government.

Actually it was just a handful of independent researchers who began to crack the lid of lies, the cookie-jar cover story that shielded the American people from the stark truth. I would sit in the public library for hours on end reading the trifle of material I could get my hands on. One of the first things I ever looked at was Cover-up by Gary Shaw. I can not recall when I first saw it (around 1978). I marveled over all the knew information contained within, such as the tramps or hobos at the Depository or the fake Oswald photos taken at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. I knew that Gary Shaw was onto something significant.

In the late 1970s I began to obtain more reading materials that gave me more data. When the House Report came out suddenly I realized that the conspiracy was real, four shots had been fired at Dealey Plaza. Oddly, over the past ten years, say, more books and specials have reasserted the veracity of the single bullet theory, the model for Lee Oswald doing it alone. From say, 1979-1999 conspiracy was the going trend regarding the assassination. I am confounded by this change in public opinion. I believe it is contingent on these oppressive times. However, I will state a few simple bits of info that still lead me to believe that JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy.

One thing that still eats away at me is pointed out by Josiah Thompson in Oswald`s Ghost, the best film I`ve seen in recent memory about these issues. That is, what was a lefty doing shooting a liberal president in right-wing Dallas? This does not make sense. Did Lee work for the CIA, just as his mother Margarita always purported? The evidence that Lee did is convincing to me.

For me, It is still simple things that trouble me. It is little things that don`t fit. Remember, witnesses saw two men stacking boxes in the sixth floor window about thirty minutes before the shooting. How could Oswald have gotten to the lunch room in just two minutes? No one has ever duplicated this feat. Did Roger Craig see Lee run down the Knoll and get in a car about twenty minutes after the shooting? Why did so many witnesses die after 1963, many of them under suspicious circumstances (see Penn Jones Jr.)? How does the missed shot that hit the curb fit into the construct? Why were there two caskets for JFK? What about the puff of smoke coming from the Knoll, and seen by S.M. Holland and others? Weren`t the autopsy photos faked?

There are hundreds and hundreds of anomalies to this case, that simply don`t support the position that only Oswald did it alone. I`m sorry to see this new wave of conservative constructionists on the JFK Assassination. We have an obligation to look back on the courageous original researchers who uncovered this heinous plot. A few of them are Robert Groden, Gary Mack, Mark Lane, Gary Shaw, Harold Weisburg, and Josiah Thompson. I will continue to be defiant against these latest distortions. Access The Men Who Killed Kennedy again for truth. This has been censored on the History Channel in recent memory. I recorded it in the late 1990s, so I can not be denied its revelations. When people try to put forth the single-bullet theory, they simply have to extract all the info that doesn`t fit. This is a sizeable body of facts. Keep this in mind…

RFK MUST DIE!

2008-11-16T09:09:00.004-06:00

The second film that I viewed was RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy, a canny film with a few significant break-throughs, is by Shane O`Sullivan and was released last year. The freshest evidence is the apparent presence of three CIA agents at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5th, 1968. His other major contribution to the case is the argument that Sirhan Sirhan was hypnotized in order to play his role as a patsy to take the wrap. This coverage includes the specifics of the shooting as well as ample explanations of the bigger picture of a conniving conspiracy.

The coup de grace of conspiracy, for me, is the fact that Kennedy was shot in the back of the head, probably and the muzzle of the gun was just about three inches from his head. This is known because of the powder burns that were apparent in the autopsy. Another shocking fact is that were more bullets flying around the kitchen pantry than the 8 that could have come from Sirhan`s 22 caliber Iver-Johnson cadet revolver.

THE GIRL IN A POLKA-DOT DRESS
Sandra Serrano was a twenty-year old at the primary victory and was napping in a balcony, when two people hurried by and exclaimed, “We shot him, we shot him.” “Who did you shoot?” “We shot the senator.” The girl running by was young and pretty, with dark hair and wore a white dress with black polka-dots. Sandra had seen them earlier with two Latin men, one of which she later identified as Sirhan. Another witness, Vincent Di Pierro, also identified the girl in question. At the trial the prosecution argued that Valerie Sheltzie, who was a blond, was the said girl.

The oddest thing about this is the way that the LAPD detective Hernandez. interrogated her and tried to coerce her to alter her story. She described him as a Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde-like character. He engaged in ‘brow beating’ and was trying to intimidate a witness, just like the Dallas police had in 1963. He manipulated her into signing a statement that she did not see or hear anything from the girl with the polka-dot dress.

WITNESSES TO THE CIA AGENTS
The chief identifier of rogue operative Dave Morales was Bradley Ayers. Ayers had known him in Miami when working on JM-Wave in 1963, a CIA operation to train Cubans to attempt the usurpation of the Castro regime. It must be noted that Morales himself had a massive heart attack in 1978 before he could appear on the Senate Hearings on the Assassination. Someone did not want him to talk.

I will include some of Bradley Ayers` words in order to cement the ID of Morales at the Ambassador Hotel on the late eve of June 4th, 1968. He is reacting to the footage shown him by Shane O`Sullivan. Ayres` words verbatim.

“That was the figure that I previously identified as Morales. The nose is a little more flattened, but the stance, the shoulders, the face, the tie eschew, the general facial impression is an individual that I would identify as Morales. Yea, practically to a 100 % degree.”

“I think that the nose is really an artifact of pixel color shadow and so on. This definitely from the profile is hugely similar. The body language is very, very much characteristic of Morales. See how he moves back and forth very casually so as to not attrack attention to himself. That is him, no question.”

A good testimony is provided by Wayne Smith, a state department official who knew Morales well at the US embassy in Havanna in 1959. He says: “That`s Morales! Yea, I`m virtually certain,” while reacting to the film footage of the night of the assassination. Smith says also: “I knew Morales quite well in Argentina.” They argued and Dave Morales said: “Kennedy got what was coming to him.” This was said in a very determined way, Smith emphasized. Kennedy had betrayed the agency by not providing air support for the ‘Cuban liberators’ at the Bay of Pigs.

Shane O`Sullivan asked him if there is a benign explanation for him to be at the Ambassador. “In my wildest imagination I couldn`t imagine Morales being assigned to protect RFK,” Shane exclaims. He furthers concludes that Morales` presence there that night and RFK being shot have to be related.

David Rabern, an ex-CIA operative and eyewitness at the Ambassador Hotel, was working on an alarm systems project and had free tickets to primary victory party. He was walking toward the front doors when he heard the slight noise of the pop, pop, pop of gunshot. Rabern did not believe that Sirhan could have done it alone.

David Rabern clearly identified David Sanchez Morales (El Gordo) at the crime scene, a rogue CIA agent who had antipathies for the Kennedys. Rabern also saw the bald one (CIA agent Gordon Campbell) talking to Morales. He assumed a military stance with his hands behind his back. Sirhan was a decoy, a mere throw away, the shooter in the public eye. The primary gunman performed the act in a secret way.

David indicates that this is highly suspicious. “Why they were doing the things they were doing, I`m surprised it was never investigated, is a mystery,” he states (I`m paraphrasing). He did not want to detail his associations with Gordon Campbell, but was fully familiar with him.

Ed Lopez, a former congressional investigator, identifies George Joannides in a photo at the Ambassador Hotel. Joannides had a very intriguing background with the CIA. I have just learned that he was the case officer for the DRE in New Orleans. They were a fabricated anti-Castro group that got in a ruckus with Oswald in the summer of 1963, when Oswald was handing pro-Castro leaflets on the streets of New Orleans. This got Oswald news coverage, and put him the limelight as a communist rebel. This appears to have been the goal of Joannides` operation. Ed Lopez is able to verify the connection of Oswald and the CIA and Joannides is smack dab in the middle.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE

Perhaps Sirhan was programmed just right before the shooting. He was highly suggestable and was hyponotized to climb his cell bars. On the day of the shooting he had picked up two boxes of 22 caliber ammunition at the Lock Stock and Barrel. He had gone to San Gabriel Valley Range to target practice for six hours. He bumped into a friend at Bob`s Big Boys and challenged him to a game of pool. Sirhan had four Tom Collins cocktails and was very sleepy. He began to seek out coffee at the Ambassador Hotel. He ran into a girl, the girl in the Polka Dot dress, and she led him into a dark place.

Sirhan was interviewed under hypnosis. He described a policeman with a funny uniform. "You son of a bitch." A comment Sirhan makes about Kennedy. A witness heard him say that on the given night. "Can`t send those bombs." The psychiatrist, Dr. Diamond, utters: "he`s reaching spasmodically for gun in pants." There`s a Freudian aspect to the killing. Programmed to kill RFK, then programmed to forget. Sirhan was seen staring at teletype operator. He appeared to be in a trance. The witness was told by LAPD to not tell anyone about seeing this. Clues that night suggest his trance-like state. The writer George Plimpton noticed that Sirhan`s eyes were enormously peaceful. He was a good candidate for the decoy. These strange handlers from the CIA programmed him to forget the crime, and forget the people who who helped him. Sirhan honestly never did remember the crime.

WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS
The Manchurian candidate angle was liberally treated. An audio tape of Sirhan under hypnosis was played in its entirety. He called Robert Kennedy a “son of a bitch.” When conscious he claimed no memory of the crime. The film suggests that he may have been programmed by the CIA to participate in the shooting with some help from the girl in the polka dot dress.

The main angle played here is that the CIA engineered the killing of RFK. The great thing about Shane O`Sullivan`s treatment is that he connects the RFK assassination with JFK`s in 1963. The Kennedys took an interest in dismantling the CIA. There was lingering resentment that John had not given the Cubans air support at the Bay of Pigs. This was the motive for eliminating the Kennedys. The two killings were related events.

There is no benign explanation for the CIA presence at the Ambassador hotel. Surely they were not involved in Robert`s security? The identification of these agents is mostly positive, with some objections raised by a few. The chief CIA agent who is implicated is David Sanchez Morales, a person involved in military coups in third world countries. Do not neglect reading the article Did the CIA Kill Bobby Kennedy? O`Sullivan has exposed some new evidence here. You will need to study the identity of Gordon Campbell and George Joannides too. If they were in Los Angeles on June 5th, 1968, then that they are connected to the shooting is positive.

“I WAS IN DALLAS WHEN WE GOT THAT MOTHERFUCKER, AND I WAS IN LOS ANGELES WHEN WE GOT THE LITTLE BASTARD.” DAVE MORALES-The man of a 1,000 faces and a hater of all communists.

Okay, I have ten pages of very good notes to plug into this document. Shane O`Sullivan has done some great leg work here. I want to mull over this, and then see how others react to it, that may be in a position of authority. This conspiracy was so cleverly perpetrated, that I wonder just who will come forward. I will get his book and the DVD and study them further.

“DID YOU SAY THAT SOB I`LL BREAK HIS BACK?” RFK
RFK wanted to dismantle the CIA. I think he probably knew that they had killed his brother. The motive was The Bay Of Pigs. JFK did not give air support for the CIA brigade that tried to instigate the coup of the Castro government.

The chief areas that I feel are worth investigating are: the actual shooting itself. The fact that too many bullets were around. And then there is the question of whether Sirhan was programmed? The suspicion of the Security Guard, Thane Eugene Cesar, was be carefully probed. I think it is a fact that RFK was shot in the back. It is impossible for Sirhan to be the shooter. The girl with the polka-dot dress must be studied. The LAPD was obviously being manipulated, and this must be considered. And finally the fresh evidence of the CIA must be examined very carefully! This thing has been finally cracked wide-open by Shane O`Sullivan, yet some still deny that the three men were CIA at the Ambassador Hotel, June 5th, 1968. Remember the tenet of ‘plausible deniability’ that was put forth by Richard Helms when he testified in 1978!

You are going to want to see the epilogue to this on the web site for RFK Must Die. Stanislaw Pruszynski made an audio tape, little known by anyone, that has 13 shots on it, thus proving that a second gunman was involved in the shooting. This would cast suspicion on the security guard Cesar who was right behind RFK.

Please be sure to use the wiki page, it is a good resource.

Robert K. Kennedy

Then I found this great page by Thom White.

http://www.citizinemag.com/politics/politics_0506_rfk_twhite.htm

Two Days In October

2008-11-15T07:52:00.009-06:00

*Left-from the Pentagon Protests-not Madison-my favorite image of Vietnam Era.

This may be the best documentary on Vietnam that I have ever seen, and I have seen quite a few. This post is just a fragmented, hodge-podge collection of notes along with a few comments. More order will be imposed on these records in time, I promise. As I watched it, I started to take notes because it was so important what was being said. Please watch this special, and see for your self. My notes may help you to begin assembling these troubling facts, as disjointed as they are. At least I`ve opened a file now, and I encourage you to do the same, on these few turgid days in October of 1967, that seemed to turn the world upside down.

“We got ambushed”… and later: “I was pretty bitter. I…I…, I considered those people to be traitors. I mean traitors, cowards, and any other dirty name you can come up with. As far as I`m concerned they can line those people up and shoot `em right between the eyes. That`s a pretty hard stand, but that`s the way I feel about it.” First Sergeant Bud Barrow-comments about Vietnam War protesters.

I saw two excellent DVDs yesterday (November 8th), the first was Two Days in October, which tells the parallel stories of a battle in Vietnam and a war protest at the University of Wisconsin. In October of 1967 the Americans of Alpha Company were ambushed by the Vietcong. Sixty-one young Americans lost their lives. Clark Welch, a Vietnam veteran who is extensively interviewed in the documentary, survived the battle and was wounded several times. Terry Allen, Jr., son of the famous WWII general, was in command at this time and ordered Alpha Company to attack the Vietcong position. He has therefore, when looking back in time, been held accountable by the survivors for this senseless massacre.

“To say it`s wrong to liberate the oppressed (to help the Vietnamese was the right thing to do)…It seemed so simple.” Clark Welch-Commander Of Delta Company

Terry Allen was shot through the head while staring at a photo of his three daughters. His wife, Jean Ponder Allen, is interviewed and reveals her gradual objections to the war. This includes a breaking with her husband who was on the other side of the fence. Footage of the battle makes it very real, and many of the Vietcong`s stories (Vo Minh Triet for one) are also recalled. Upper command was urging the soldiers to get into a real scrap with the commies. Terry Allen was being pressured to engage in a real battle.

The student protests at the University of Wisconsin were shocking to watch. You could see police battering students on the head with Billy clubs. The students blocked the administration building in protest to Dow Chemical, who had a presence on campus, and who made napalm, the gruesome jelly gas that burns at 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Apparently, this was the first student protest of the Vietnam War that turned violent. This incident occurred on October 18th, 1967 when the Chancellor, William Sewell, ordered the local police to break up the sit-in, even though he was an opponent of the war himself. I believe that he was pressured by the governor of Wisconsin.

The introduction to Two Days in October, produced and directed by Robert Kenner, synchronizes and animates newspaper headlines with snapshots from college and high school yearbooks, as well as talking head sound bites. GI VIET DEATHS PASS 10,000…US DEATHS IN VIETNAM SET RECORD… VIETNAM TROOP INCREASE… The music is pensive. Here is one sound bite:

“I`m the first born Jewish son after the holocaust. You don`t just blindly follow, you don`t just blindly obey. You stand up when you see something wrong. Your government like any government can make mistakes.” Mark Greenside

In the fall of 1967 the war was picking up. The nightly news says:171 killed this week, 977 wounded. Walter Kronkite reports: 193 died, 14,000 Americans had died by the fall of 1967. Dow Chemical Company started producing Napalm in 1965, they mainly made sirran wrap heretofore. A piece in Ramparts, read by students, calls attention to this new chemical warfare. The Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, was an opponent of the war, but he later calls the Madison police when the students stage a sit-in in defiance of the presence of Dow Chemical`s recruiting on campus.

There were now a half million young men in Vietnam. LBJ wanted body count, search and destroy the enemy was the prevailing tactic used by the military. “It was an exciting day, there was movement all around us.” Jim Shelton-On October 17th, 1967. An entire regiment of Vietcong, 12,000 soldiers, were present in the Iron Triangle, forty miles NW of Saigon. The Black Lions were stationed at Lai Khe. The Vietcong had no rice to eat for days, and were dug in bunkers. “It`s a big, hot murderous jungle.” General Hay was told by Westmoreland that we were not aggressive enough (in our pursuit of the enemy). Colonel Allen told the Company, “To pick up the pace.” Was being a hypocrite, but didn`t want to get relieved of command. Allen paid one last visit to his wife and kids in the states.

Allen`s wife, Jean Ponder Allen, from El Paso, was assaulted by images on TV of body bags and flag-draped caskets coming home. She began to doubt what it meant to be a military wife. She now wants a divorce from Terry Allen, but something worse was yet to come. She wrote a ‘Dear John Letter’ saying “I don`t want to be your wife anymore.”

The interviews with Paul Soglin and Jane Brotman really shed light on their evolving perspective. Paul Soglin became a professional protester after a very early start, dating back to protests against U.S. support of Ngo Dinh Diem. Jane Brotman, less of a professional, gradually turned against the war, especially when she was an eyewitness to the police brutality. She could hear the crack of the bats against student skulls when she walked upon the scene of confrontation. A combination of film footage, black and white stills, and eye witness testimony give this a poignancy of realism that riveted me. Scary were the words of Keith Hackett, a Madison cop who seemed to enjoy cracking the heads of students and who still seemed to relish those glory days. No remorse for his brutality could be detected in this 2005 documentary.

THE BATTLE OF ONG THANH

On October 16, 1967 Delta and Bravo Company made contact with the enemy, or on the edge of the base camp anyway. They had hit a ‘vital organ’. “we got the Vietcong where we want them.” A ‘frontal attack on a fortified position’ is not such a good idea (Clark Welch). There was a full moon that night. On October 17th Allen, who had never moved a company on the ground, began moving the troops in position. Heard a clicking sound, then the battle started.

The Americans had 160 men, the Vietnamese had 14,000 men. They were just 10 or 15 meters away. Fight very close. Alpha Co. just disappeared, now it was Delta. Machine gunner Sikorski is dead. “Anybody that was in the sunshine was being shot.” Mike Troyer. All of a sudden they had disappeared. They were gone. Everything was dead silence. 142 went out, 64 died. Almost everyone was wounded. It was a massacre. Diane Sikorski had an intense dream. Danny had his arms out. He had a giant hole in his stomach. It was a nightmare.

THE DOW PROTESTS OF OCTOBER 18TH

The kids were playing musical instruments. DOWN WITH DOW! DOWN WITH DOW! They chanted. William Sewell calls the Madison police. The Madison cops came mainly from the working class part of town. The students were East coast money. Keith Hackett says they were young and dumb. “You start anarchy, you have a fight on your hands.” James Rowen, a student protester, says: “ Expulsion from school could be a ticket to the war.”

When the cops showed there was an electric tension in the hallway. The officers were speaking through their clubs. 65 students had to go to the hospital. The bodies were stacked up like cordwood. 4,000 other students were watching the proceedings. Hackett says: “I`ve never seen the hate that was in these kids faces.” Chanting SEIG HEIL! SEIG HEIL! *The photo to the left is a demonstration in Seattle, October 16th, 1965. This is from my great book, Vietnam-A Complete Photographic History.
COVER-UP

After the ‘ambush’ at Ong Thanh of Alpha Company the military tried to spin it to look like a successful campaign. A private, Mike Arias, was told “not to mention it was an ambush.” The documentary shows old newspapers, then highlights the headlines, and enlarges the type so you can read it good. This is shocking the way the military spins this. Here are a few of them. “Threat Of Cong Attack Nipped In Jungle”… “Cong Repulsed”… “103 Reds Killed”… “Communists Withdraw”… “Victory”…. Okay, nothing could be further from the truth. General Hay was pleased that Charlie stayed in place briefly. General Westmoreland rewarded the purple heart to a few of the survivors of Ong Thanh.

The spin of the ‘Dow Protests’ by the Madison press and the university was equally nefarious. Some of the newspaper headlines that were projected were: “Campus Strike”… “Face Civil Arrest”… “Riot Leaders Suspended”… “Legislators Demand Penalties”….A witch hunt was on by the governor for protesters. A credibility gap between the media and the students is created. Now they could see that the university was on the side of Dow, the war profiteers, weapons makers. Jane Brotman, a freshman at Wisconsin in 1967, realized it was her civic responsibility to say what I witnessed was wrong. The anti-war movement only grew after ‘Dow Chemical’.

One headline reads: Communism Is On...Campus.

*(A collage I did a few years ago-not related to this special.)

DO NOT FAIL TO READ MY PIECE WHY VIETNAM? FROM 2005!

THE LESSONS LEARNED FROM THOSE DAYS IN OCTOBER OF 1967
“I think back then if people tried in anyway to stop the war, they probably felt that they were doing the right thing. On the other hand, the boys in Vietnam felt that they were doing the right thing. In the end I wonder who was right?” Diane Sikorski-sister to Danny Sikorski, a gunner who died in Vietnam on October 17th, 1967.

Diane Sikorski recalls the painful news on October 20th when the soldiers showed up to tell her family that Danny had been killed in action. Danny was dead and she had dreamed it the night before. Jean Ponder Allen lost her husband. She found it to be meaningless. She still feels a deep anger about the war. Most of the people in this special are far from healed yet.

OBAMA WILL WIN!

2008-11-02T12:55:00.005-06:00

Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States come November 5th. The economy is bad and people will vote against the incumbent party. It will be a referendum on the Bush administration, who has performed poorly in every area-foreign policy, the economy, and with the American people themselves. Just look at Katrina. The American people want change and they`re going to get it. If we don`t get change, the economy will collapse and the threads of society will come undone. We can no longer afford the War in Iraq. Our auto companies will go out of business, if they don`t retool and build energy efficient cars. Tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas is unacceptable! Large tax breaks for the big oil companies is unforgivable! No health care for millions of Americans is not acceptable. The curtailment of civil liberties (The Patriot Act) is unacceptable!

My fundamental reason for believing strongly in the Democrats and Barack Obama is that I can recall when Bill Clinton grew the middle class in the late 1990s and then more people could participate in the economy and share a little bit of improvement. I made some money on the stock market and slightly improved my social status from lower class to lower-middle class. This is the key to what makes our capitalist economy tick. If a greater amount of people increase their income, then they can make contributions to other small businesses so that they can also succeed. They in turn will create more jobs, may become IPOs on the stock market, so that the rising middle class can participate in their unique niche in the market. At one time companies like Cisco Systems, Yahoo, Qualcom, and Sun Microsystems were small, on the go companies that people could purchase shares of stock in and participate in their growth. This opportunity has not been present in the last eight years of Bush. The market has gone down because average people can not participate. This is due to rising fuel and food costs, health care costs, and shrinking wages. This phenomenon is due to, in part, to the elitist tax structure of the Republicans that rewards the wealthy and cripples those that struggle for improvements, such as myself. These tax policies are fundamentally undemocratic.

There has been much talk lately about The Great Depression, what with the recent economic melt down of astronomic proportions. This may be something of an exaggeration, but we will just have to see just how deep the current recession will be. The measures taken by the New Dealers were, when looking in hindsight, somewhat harsh. But when you look at conditions such as unemployment levels, desperation and creativity were greatly needed. Work programs had to be created by the federal government in order to give people the ability to eat. Once they started to purchase products such as food, the helped small businesses to keep their doors open. This is small, but ironically it was the Federal government that was able to save capitalism. We will have to see how bad things get, but no doubt Obama will have to create work programs such as improving roads and bridges, investing in the US infrastructure, and helping the under employed, whose numbers are growing every day. I`m calling Obama`s efforts the New New Deal (see my collage), although I`m sure it will assume a very different form from FDRs. This won`t be a welfare state, but just a little intervention to help redirect the economy after eight years of crippling policies. This will actually be friendly to common people, so cast off the paranoia of the Bush years! I know, this is hard to do!
Everything is going to change a lot, I do believe! Businesses will have to equal out their pay, especially for African Americans, Latinos, and women. Democracy in general will be more apparent. People will vote more in schools, businesses, and in local government. People will have more voice in important decisions. Executive decisions will need to be more transparent and those choices should be based on the will of all workers. The Fat Cats can no longer be renegades in profit sharing and decisions or policy. Everyone must have a voice, we demand it.

The polls are tightening in the battleground states, such as Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina. Please everyone heed the warning and work harder and harder to help Obama win! We can do it…YES WE CAN! THE RED MEANIES are creeping up on us, so lets redouble are efforts for the BLUE! I don`t understand why so many people are still going to vote for McCain. I suspect that its ignorance. Young people must vote in groves. African Americans must vote in groves. The poor must vote in groves. Obama can help us all, because we all are hurting.

THE WAR IN IRAQ MUST END! We can not afford it anymore, and the Iraqis have plenty of money to help themselves. We can not go it alone anymore. Even Bush senior built a strong coalition of allies before we went into the first Gulf War. We need to make some friends in the world, and Obama can help us do this, especially Third World countries. And no George Bush, The United Nations is not an outdated organization. We are spread too thin in Iraq and need more troops in Afghanistan.

Thousands and thousands of Obama ground troops are canvassing Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Missouri, even as I type this, and knocking on doors, making phone calls, and arguing down misdirected conservatives who have been brainwashed for years by Shaun Hannity and Rusch Limbaugh, who are nothing but demigods for an extremist and dangerous position. Fox News will lead us to destruction! Turn it off RIGHT NOW! Obama is running a brilliant campaign, maybe the best since John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960 with Robert Kennedy as his campaign manager. Obama is getting the Hispanic vote and white women, and many of the soft Republicans too, who see Sarah Palin as too far on the right, which is exactly the case! I have a feeling that the follow through for the Obama people will be fantastic, and I`m making a stab at it right here! We have to win, and WE WILL! I don`t want this GREAT COUNTRY to end, and I know that you don`t either!

Let me summarize Obama`s position to turn this country around: GROW THE MIDDLE CLASS. Create jobs in technology and the auto industry…have everyone working, UNITE ALL PEOPLE…we are one people, not various pockets of blue and red. DIXIE NEEDS TO THAW OUT! The past is over, let it go. Maybe Georgia can go Obama if every African American will vote there. Let`s elect the FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN EVER AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! Health care for all Americans is possible. Friends with many more countries is a possibility! An end to foreign wars. The recovery of civil liberties. The reduction of fear and the stupid use of the American flag to only represent a very narrow concept of patriotism…one that rejects dissent against an unfair War in Iraq! We can do it, ELECT BARACK OBAMA ON NOVEMBER 4TH! Study his web page please, and pass my blog on to countless others immediately! OUR VERY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT! JGK

OBAMA/BIDEN OR DIE!

2008-10-29T16:12:00.003-05:00

EMERGENCY! PLEASE VOTE FOR OBAMA/BIDEN NOW OR ON NOVEMBER 4TH!

TEN GOOD REASONS TO VOTE DEMOCRATIC BLUE MY FRIENDS:

1. WE NEED TO GROW THE MIDDLE CLASS!

2. THEIR PLAN FOR HEALTH CARE WILL WORK!

3. TAX CUTS FOR 95% OF AMERICANS WILL HELP THE SHRINKING MIDDLE CLASS & ALL WORKING PEOPLE!

4. IT`S TIME TO END THE WAR IN IRAQ NOW!

5. THE FEDERAL DEFICIT IS RUINING THE ECONOMY-WE MUST SHRINK IT JUST AS BILL CLINTON DID!

6. WE HAVE TO STOP OUTSOURCING JOBS, & CREATE JOBS HERE IN THE U.S! OBAMA HAS A PLAN FOR THIS!

7. THINK AL GORE IN TERMS OF THE TYPES OF NEW JOBS THAT CAN BE CREATED IN ENERGY & THE HIGH TECH INDUSTRY!

8. OBAMA`S IDEAS ON IMMIGRATION ARE RIGHT!

9. WE MUST BEGIN TO IMPROVE OUR IMAGE IN THE WORLD! OBAMA/BIDEN CAN DO THIS, BUT IT WILL TAKE MUCH TIME! WE HAVE TO STOP THESE ILLEGAL INVASIONS INTO SYRIA!

10. THE ECONOMY WILL GRADUALLY IMPROVE, BUT IT WILL TAKE SOME TIME! THE KEY IS BY LETTING THE LOWER MIDDLE CLASS DO A LITTLE BETTER. THEN THE WHOLE ECONOMY WILL START TO PERCOLATE! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED LATE IN BILL CLINTON`S SECOND TERM! THIS IS WHY I STARTED TO DO BETTER THROUGH THE U.S. STOCK MARKET!

MCCAIN/PALEN ARE WRONG ON THE ECONOMY, WRONG ON THE WAR IN IRAQ, & WRONG ON ENERGY!

VOTE OBAMA/BIDEN ON NOV 4TH, OR EARLIER!

A TRUE TALE OF WOE-GHOUL(S) OF THE OLDE WEST

2008-10-25T06:40:00.006-05:00

A TRUE TALE OF WOE-GHOUL(S) OF THE OLDE WEST by John G. Kays

“I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour, now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away. I saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams. The whole surface of the earth seemed changed-melting and flowing under my eyes. The little hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun belt swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and minute by minute the white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring.” The Time Machine-H. G. Wells

This is a true tale of woe. The particulars are undeniable shards of indicia, yet the rub of this perplexing interlude is subject to pendulums of speculation. If I had any notion of what was about to happen to me this Hallows Eve, I would have chartered a flight to Bermuda, cashed in my 401 K, or what is left of it, and taken an early retirement, a leave of absence from this ignoble planet that we call home. Yet the human race craves to hear my wrenching tale, while even knowing that their fates are carved as pumpkin fur party. Eek! Gadzooks! Yet wait, here crawls a freak, a ghoulish effigy, a Badman out-of-time-me sees a puff of fancy, a pipedream, my chummy compadre? Doomed, doomed, thus quivers my throat!

`Twas a crisp clear autumn day in the year 2008, the month was October, the day was the 31st. An infrequent breeze did coarse through the room, and openings in the blinds saw whisking palms gently swaying. Merrily, I lit a candle to a newly carved Jack-O-Lantern smiling wryly and arranged decorative, fresh candy bowls for the trick-er-treaters who would chance my abode this very eve. Eagerly, I unwrapped my HP Pavilion dv9000 notebook from the Fed Express package and began to set up shop for my wireless laboratory that would soon take me to new places. Green light go, all systems tilt-a-whirl, knobs on eleven! The antenna waves began to function and I surfed the net for spine-tingling stories to pass some idle hour.

I peered into the notebook and this scene came forth: it was the parking lot behind a humble mall in Dallas, Texas, known as Northtown Mall. The focus is on a yellow 1966 Ford Mustang, the best model ever, and one that resembles my very own, used to drive around the town in my youth. It was closely parked to one of the entrances to the mall towards the back of the building. Why was I seeing only vehicles in the lot from the 1970s, such as Pintos, Ford Broncos, or Pontiac Firebirds?

Screen fog clouds then the ‘camera’ trots swiftly into the mall, then pans into the AMC Northtown Six Theater, an earliest version of multi-cinema complexes that now crowd our American landscape. You should know, I was gainfully employed as an usher for the Cubs-share of my latter days in high school (1967-1971). The eye then races down (I do not know what it is) the lobby (replay The Shining again for reference) past the refreshment stand and into screen IV where the feature that is playing is Phantasm, considered by most to be a classic, with its campy antics of flying metal blades and the spooky Tall Man mortician cruising in hearses, snatching teens, and turning the dead into dwarf zombies in order to take over the world.

Now skip back to a young man munching corn and hugging a soft drink-grimacing to the shenanigans of supernal simulacre. He is a thin lad with flowing chestnut locks and coke-bottle glasses as thick as the iron girders of the Empire State Building. He is wearing a navy blue sports coat, white wrinkled dress shirt, bell-bottom blue slacks, and cordovan weejins lacking socks. As I witnessed this on the notebook canopy, my mouth opened in awe, this was me back in time. I was watching myself at the premiere of Phantasm, March 28th, 1979, at Northtown Six Theater. The specifics of the event began to flood back into my mind, Goosebumps popped up in my craggy joints.

This was a chronicle from my life. It was real, I actually did attend this movie at this now defunct mall, that is at present an abandoned shell for dubious flea markets and traveling carnivals with one star ratings. But folks, I had just gone back in time some twenty-nine years to a frivolous, yet pertinent event from an earlier chapter in my life. A pitch of fever for vagaries, a trance came over me, what would happen next? I watched Phantasm once again on Netflix to put meat on the bones of memory.

The laptop curtain blurred and cleared prodigiously in my chamber, the commotion desisted and I observed some relevant entries in the bottom right hand corner of the flatface. It read: May 25th, 1871, Abilene, Kansas. I recognized this as the last stop on the Chisholm Trail, a frenzied cash-in cowtown where law and order had taken a vacation to Saskatchewan! Frame the scene, two men approach each other with harried mugs. The drunken one sputtered: “I`m just taking in the town.” The other blasted, “Take those pistols off. I arrest you.” Lo and behold, this was Wild Bill Hickok, I recognized his countenance from rusty photos!

The young, spunky stranger pulled his firearms from his scabbard and quickly rolled the guns over in his hands and stuck em in Wild Bill`s face. He curses the legend as a long-haired scoundrel, then he says, “This is my fight and I`ll kill the first man that fires a gun.” Oddly, the two made up, shook hands, patted their respective backs, then paced to the Apple Jack Saloon fur an eye-opener. I grimaced as the screen fogged up big time. Cognizance filled my brain, I pulled impacting data from storage-this was John Wesley Hardin`s infamous Border Roll on Wild Bill Hickok. The event seemed real; the cobwebs of time dissipated, sheen returned to the dusty memory.

Several hours went by and I doled out trick `r treats to costumed revelers ambling from door to door. Nervously, I festooned my condo with orange and black streamers, to take the edge off, you see, but the shocking revelations, the recollection of the cyber-loop, echoed through my brain and bones (which shook with the timidity of a skeleton dance of death). After much gloom and off-the-map marveling, I returned to my experimental chamber for encounters unexplained-a diminishment of cowardice pushed me forth to my station (a refuge for unspeakable chimera).

I deposited my paperback copy of The Tommyknockers on the nightstand and turned down the chiming clocks ringing on The Dark Side of the Moon vinyl platter. I returned to my spanking new notebook and read a ghost story or two-one on theSOP.org about the Bell Witch put me in a moony mood, so I fetched a steaming kettle of green tea and fixed my eyes on a short story, Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe in a yellowing, though lovely, antediluvian volume. Mysteriously, fog began to appear on the edges of the screen; did I have extra pork-barrel options in this box that I was unaware of? Data in the bottom right hand corner displayed Friday, August 1st, 1873. Locale: Albuquerque, Texas. Clarity returned to the screen.

I could make out a Blacksmith Shop; one man was getting off a horse with a double-barreled shotgun in hand. The other cowpoke was cocking a pistol and aiming it towards a man down the dusty street who was sporting a knife. The man with the blade uttered: “Hands up, you son of a bitch!” The ornery dudes commenced to plug `em with six-shooter balls and buckshot. The man tumbled to the dirt stone dead and bleeding from countless orifices. The killers fled nonchalantly and my display began to obfuscate yet again. Later I was able to piecemeal exactly what I had seen.

The electronic partition clouded for a moment than began to rewind rapidly. Scenes changed dramatically as people, trees, and buildings whipped back through time and got younger. Finally, focus emerges and on the right hand bottom of the screen digits are noted: El Paso 8/19/1895. I can see we are in front of the Acme Saloon on San Antonio Street-downtown El Paso. The time on the screen is 11 PM and a cantankerous looking cowpoke walks through the saloon doors, and begins to pull a pistol out of his side holster. A drunken man with a mustache who is playing dice gets up, wobbly, tossing dice down the spit-clean bar and utters to his compadre, “Brown, you`ve got four sixes to beat.”

The man with the silver star pinned to his vest walked four steps through the smoky pallor and pointed the pistol to the back of the woozy gambler`s head and fired. Down tumbled the loner, a gaping wound to the back of the head. The limping lawman pumped two more slugs into the fallen cowboy then calmly left the scene. The screen began to mist as the drama was told. A chilly draft wafted through the room. Strains of Stan Jones` classic Ghost Riders in the Sky piped through the Altec Lansings. “Their brands were still on fire and their hooves were made of steel, their horns were black and shiny and their hot breath he could feel…Yippee-yi-ya, yippee-yi-yo, Ghost riders in the sky.”

I was still soaking this all in. My eyes danced over to the mantle while the clock struck midnight. Antique photographs of ancestors leered out at me as if they were still alive. And there was a shot of me from around the time of the ‘Phantasm incident’ at the old familiar mall called Northtown. Troubling too was a cowboy menagerie on the mantle-a pistol-packing outlaw shootin` straight at me! My eyes turned back to the shroud where steamy vapors began to part; scenes transformed rapidly-buildings disappeared, old men morphed to garland-bearing youth, Starbucks vanished in a puff, and Wal-Marts vaporized to desolate prairies.

As the notebook began to clear up I indexed the data in the bottom right: High Noon, Sunday, August 27th, 1995-El Paso, Texas-Concordia Cemetery, to be exact. A little scuffle was taking place, and I could hear their words. These citizens had a disinterment order to confiscate the remains of one John Hardin, and return him to his hometown of Nixon. But the historian Leon Metz got an injunction signed by a local judge restraining the digging up of Hardin`s charnel remains. After a few minutes the parties dispersed; the Nixon bunch were grumpy and cursing for the failure of their mission. Later I would find out John`s position on where he intended to rest all his days.

In a flash the apparition sprung out magically from the mini-computer veil and floated languorously around my condo like a busy bumble bee sniffing honey. Remember the fairies in Disney`s Sleeping Beauty, for this was the type of projection that I beheld. A day-glow green veneer emanated out of the ghost bubble eidolon. My jaw dropped, eyes bugged-out, and my face turned a slime green. Perspiration streamed down my cheeks and I quaked in terror anticipating otherworldly utterances from this gruesome umbra. The ungodly gaseous ghost got in my face (this petrified me to stone) and bespoke some words that warbled sinuously from some echo chamber of a Poe tale of horror. These creaky vocal chords sounded distant like white zombies in a New Orleans voodoo factory.

“I am what remains of John Hardin. I loathe every Yankee carpetbagger that ravages the hallowed grounds of Texas. I never killed but in self-defense. Though it is true, I once shot a man simply for snoring. Let my remains stay in El Paso until eternity! I have revealed these scenes unto you that you might see the truth instead of the legend. However, I am the greatest gunslinger that has ever roamed the Wild West. My story is wrought from Reconstruction, the darkest time in our nation`s history. Tell my tale to the world that people will see the travesties and contradictions that confounded me. I was a victim of Lincoln, that scoundrel! While yet it is true, fifty men bit the dust from my pistol lead, each of them Yankee lovin` devils got their just deserve.” He gave out a shrill laugh and disappeared into the ether. A screamin` genie out-a-the-bottle had just haunted me!

The next day I gathered my wits after fitful slumbers and noxious dreams put bags under my eyes and cobwebs in my crevices. The theorems of science were ‘closely watched trains’, but I needed badly to catch the metro daily express to sanity! I knew what had happened to me, so I will tell you. My notebook had turned into a conduit to the past. It was programmed into a time machine, possibly by the combination of technologies at the disposal of necromancing wizards. I wasn`t looking at an old movie, nor was this a reenactment of the glory days of the Old West. This was a Sherman and Peabody out-of-body experience where I had seen pivotal events in real time.

These did not look like dwellings derived from the movie sets of Hollywood, say culled from the days of Tom Mix or the early flicks of the Duke, Mister John Wayne. No motion cameras were around in the 1870s. My best conjecture is that these were real time-loops summoned by my modem and projected onto the notebook terminal. Please understand, these were not instant playbacks, but rather the actual action itself happening-live, you see!

This is very hard to understand. I`ll give an example. Remember, there is a distinction between a memory and the actual event. Think of the shooting of Oswald by Jack Ruby; what you have seen over and over again in the past forty-seven years is a film tape of the shooting. It looks real but it is not. The real shooting resides in a specific time slot: 11:14 November 24th, 1963, and in a particular space spot, the basement of the Dallas Police Department. In my case, I truly went back in a time machine to some salient events in the life of John Hardin.

Let me summarize exactly what transpired. First, I returned to my premiere viewing of the cult classic Phantasm. Second, I experienced the Border roll of Hardin and the famous confrontation with Wild Bill Hickok in Abilene, Kansas. Third, I was right there when the killers took down Sheriff Jack Helm-this was most ghastly indeed! Fourth, I was an eye-witness to the murder of John Hardin by the two-timin` Constable John Selman in El Paso. Fifth, I saw the altercation at the graveside of our gunman; this is divined from recent recollections, sundry newspaper articles, that are unsavory souvenirs of infamy and violence. Lastly (sixth), I had my own personal visitation by the sheer, translucent poltergeist of one Hardin. This was a historical event, I can swear on it! This was not a memory or made up, but rather a newly conjured banshee conceived from fresh advances in computer science. A new necromancy has emerged along the lines of H. G. Wells and his nifty Time Machine. This explanation can not be proved, but no other possibility can be plausible. Rebellion against science is unheard of, so immutable facts are for the offering.

Lazy days went by, and day to day obligations were performed. The trash was taken out, the dishes cleaned, the bills paid. Nervous palpitations began to spring up. Itches and sweating, clammy sensations, fears, unbalanced humours, denial, mood swings, and the questioning of science all played their hands. Nothing out of the ordinary, mind you, but one rainy night I looked into the crystal ball (the notebook) and saw a flashing bright orange pumpkin in flagrant animation and the chilly strains of John Carpenter`s Halloween theme went blasting through the speakers! I tossed up my hands, gesticulated in consternation and rattle chanted: “I better not ‘pal around’ with ghostly western outlaws anymore!” Nothing ever happened again for evermore.

A GHOST STORY OF JOHN WESLEY HARDIN

2008-10-10T06:57:00.004-05:00

This is the actual GHOST OF JOHN WESLEY HARDIN! I am preparing a chilly, yet true account of his gossamer visits to me, by way of a modern machine that acts as a conduit to paranormal waves of spirited energy. Be prepared to read my story about one week before HALLOWEEN! You can be sure that he`s an apparition because you can see through him; transparency of his image is obvious. Ladies & gentleman, this is not a stunt, it is not hocus pocus, no charade my friend, nor has trick photography been harnassed to cajole you into believing that this is an otherworldly spirit. That it is honestly a ghost, you can bank on it! I chill at the prospect of more visitations, but no doubt, more will come to pass! This gunslinger, this murderer is restless, maybe angry, & wants to still preside on our times, for reasons unknown. I will peck out my story with fear & trembling but will truthfully chronicle the path of the reckless killer with keen acumen . But no use in stirring him up to the point of harrowing hauntings. Of endless campaigns or spooky encounters! SO PLEASE PREPARE YOURSELF FOR THE GREATEST GHOST STORY EVER TOLD JUST TWO WEEKS HENCE!

*If you haven`t already read my piece on Philip K. Dick`s, Flow My Tears, please do so now!

The Potatoes - Dig Their Okay Sound!

2008-10-08T07:57:00.004-05:00

Boy this is very groovy art for this art cassette!

RING IN THE NEW!

2008-10-01T07:52:00.003-05:00

I thought I`d post on my new HP Pavilian laptop, now that I finally am getting this little wireless machine going!
1. BARRACK OBAMA IS GOING TO BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!
2. Austin City Limits Music Festival totally ruled!
3. Best: Gnarls Barkley, Foo Foo Fighters, Jacob Dylan, Plant/Krauss, David Byrne, & Manu Chau
4. Let`s hope we can survive this deep recession caused by flawed economic principles of GB.

AUSTIN CITY LIMITS MUSIC FESTIVAL

2008-09-28T12:01:00.003-05:00

I`m actually going to ACL this year, and having a blast. Friday`s highlight was Manu Chao. I got their CD. They`re from Spain and have a very full sound with two percussionists. Yesterday I saw John Foferty and Robert Plant & Allison Craus and could not believe how good it was. Please refer back to my review of Raising Sand). We`ll see what`s good today, & I`ll provide a complete report soon.

FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID

2008-09-14T10:51:00.003-05:00

IN FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID PHILIP K. DICK IS A NOUVEAU-NOSTRADAMUS PAINTING OUR FUTURE WITH SUCH TRENDS AS IDENTITY THEFT, GOVERNMENT SURVELLANCE, AND THE REVIVAL OF VINYL RECORDS. By John G. Kays

“The exclusiveness of space, we`ve learned, is only a function of the brain as it handles perception. It regulates data in terms of mutually restrictive space units. Millions of them. Trillions, theoretically, in fact. But in itself, space is not exclusive. In fact, in itself, space does not exist at all.” Phil Westerburg-LA Police Agency Coroner

It is suddenly the year 1988, (fourteen years into the future from the publishing date of 1974), October 11th to be exact, and Jason Taverner, a television star and pop singer with 30 million viewers is casually cruising home in his Rolls flyship, after taping his show, with his present girlfriend, Heather Hart, a starlet in her own right. Oddly enough, the very next day on October 12th, Jason awakens natty-eyed in a shabby, bug-riddled shack-of-a-hotel, and nobody knows him anymore, whatsoever. Zilch, nada, caputski, nie one living soul has so much as even heard of him. He is now a living zero, and neither his business agent, his girlfriend, nor any of his 30 million fans have any clue as to who he really is? The rest of this Science Fiction novel, penned by Philip K. Dick, is the curvilinear journey of this ‘nobody’ scrapping vapidly for his former famous self.

The frame for this story is a United States that has transformed into a totalitarian state after emerging from a “Second Civil War.” Traces of democracy emerge ever so latently, but a most sturdy police infrastructure is in place, with the National Guard (“Nats”) and US police force (“pols”), identity checkpoints, and national data banks operating smoothly to monitor its citizens for transgressions. Previously, the black population has been pruned voraciously via sterilization and the student population is burrowed like gophers, entrenched that is, in sub-terrestrial kibbutz units `neath most major universities. Furthermore, other so deemed dissidents are incarcerated in forced-labor camps, that have in recent memory witnessed altering states of liberation and oppression, depending on prevailing political winds. In the current decade (mid 1980s) society is chilling ever so slightly as hints of democracy sprout up shyly. Blacks are more respected now a days yet public affairs are laced with indiscretions, such as incestuous relations and flagrant drug abuse. The residing government is a dictatorship with a “Director” and police marshals and generals in place to owl-eye any iota of civil discord.

The machinations of plot are, in design, the journey of Jason Taverner to retrieve his frittered identity. Also, the Police Academy in LA, and especially the Police General Felix Buckman, are utterly confounded by the fact that they have no info on Jason in their central data banks. The Police General is convinced that the data has been misplaced. “Somewhere, some obscure place, he`s overlooked a microdocument of a minor nature. We`ll keep searching until we find it.” Much of this SF novel provides vivid descriptions of the police surveillance apparatus in all its refinement. A specific fact in chapter one, that piqued my interest, was when Marilyn Mason, a jilted lover, hurled the Callisto cuddle sponge on Jason, for his womanizing ways. Did this in some way contribute to his loss of identity that appears in chapter two? I sense that there is a connection, but am not able to draw a line between the dots.

One thing I liked most about this book was the assortment of flaky characters that pop up in the story. Kathy Nelson comes to mind; she`s an expert forger who creates some docs for Mister Taverner to aid him in clearing checkpoints. “Most of it called for pol-nat standard postcurfew tags, with thumbprints and photographs and holographic signatures, and everything with short expiration dates.” Kathy is a state-of-the-art forger alright, and she is only nineteen years old, but she is also an informer for the state police and can`t be trusted. When Jason takes her to a tacky restaurant she freaks out and commences to scream. This results in her being thrown out by the management. Then there is Inspector McNulty; he is a yes man to Felix Buckman, but does much of the dirty work in terms of investigating the case. Later I`ll touch on some of the other big players.

I love Philip K. Dick`s style, in spite of its awkwardness, for he is a brazen ‘paperback writer’ that is not afraid to slap down some words on his trusty typewriter and let them exist on parchment. He uses a lot of snappy, corny dialogue and one may think of hard boiler stuff, such as Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, but come to think of it, they may be a mite more arty than PKD. I had much to choose from, but I`ll give you this quote `cuz it will no doubt flip you out (from chapter 27)! “Someday your story, the ritual and shape of your downfall, may be made public, at a remote future time when it no longer matters. When there no more forced-labor camps and no more campuses surrounded by rings of police carrying rapid-fire submachine guns and wearing gas masks that make them look like great-snouted, huge-eyed root-eaters, some kind of noxious lower animal.” Images of the 1968 Democratic Convention immediately popped into my head!

Anachronisms are welcome weeds in Flow My Tears, a round peg in a square hole is a good fit in this case. As you mull over the leaflets you get a surreal sensation; is this the ‘Disco Era’ of the 1970s or a ‘Brave New World’ of the future? A little of both essentially. Citations of vinyl records herein are mondo. “Carrying the enormous record albums he ran back to the house.” And: “He lifted at the lid of the phonograph but it wouldn`t open.” Wisely, PKD is prophesizing the revival of vinyl record albums! Here`s another hoot for pasé-isimoniciousness. “Does she still read the Book-of-the-Month?” And good old reel-to-reel tapes still peek (or rotate) from the pages. “Moodily, General Buckman opened the third drawer of the large desk and placed a tape-reel in the small transport he kept there.” Let`s not leave out the trusty retro-video conferencing that pops up here and there. The out-of-time ephemera that occupy this landscape are comic conundrums that tax our linear perceptions of history.

Jason Taverner is a genetically engineered six, an older model, a crooner, TV star, and a womanizer. I picture him looking like say a Pat Boone or Glen Campbell during the 1970s. White shoes, curly golden locks, a glassy smile, he pipes pop songs through a microphone to 30 millions viewers. PKD uses him as a conduit to channel theories of identity loss. Taverner is a breathing torso of Andy Warhol`s fleeting fifteen minutes of fame. It is noticeable, Jason`s robotic and predictable, a cartoon for Dick`s imaginative playland. Heather Hart is a six also, a cool movie starlet who digs Jason, and yet she is the object of a plot twist that could well be the crux of the matter. This must be coveted at this ink spot. Mary Ann Dominic is a suburban unknown soldier who café-hops with Jason through some troubling moments and is a skilled potter whose ceramic vases become cherished ware for the museums of the future.

Paranoia is the primary mood or tone of this paperback. Jason spends most of his time attempting to evade the police. And losing your identity is not such a pretty thing. The state apparatus is geared towards universal surveillance of society. The fruits of technology are recycled into maintaining a well oiled state. The spirit of George Orwell`s 1984 oozes out of every page. During the bust on Ruth Rae`s apartment the pols nonchalantly perform their duties. “Parked in one of the slots was a police van, with several pols standing idly around it, weapons held loosely. They looked inert and bored.” One gets the feeling that PKD knew that the paranoia factor within our society, manifold in all its tentacles, would do nothing but increase as we move through time.

A body pert near naturally seeks out data on the life of PKD, a passionate pursuit of proof for his quirky oracles and phantasms of the future, his on-the-mark predictions that echo through the nearly half dozen decades since his typewriter first clattered. The volume Divine Invasions-A Life of Philip K. Dick by Lawrence Sutin is a handy tool for Dickian dogma as well as biographical tidbits that helps to fill in the potholes. An example would be the need of info about Science Fiction publishing and how PKD fits into that bigger picture. Furthermore, it is mandatory that you view the documentary The Gospel According To Philip K. Dick with its funky animation of PKD pecking at his trusty typewriter; oh, so this is what a real writer looks like. Brain storm! Facts about his personal story are friendly bookends to the telltale upshot of his weird novels.

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said would make a stunning movie, visuals out of this world, air-bound quibbles, yellow or orange in color, that look like VW bugs with Mr. Natural decals. The checkpoints would resemble the border bridges of Nuevo Laredo or Ciudad Juarez, but pols in spacesuits inspect IDs-fingerprints, voiceprints, EEG prints appear on the monitor. The wardrobe people will be making whoopee with Alys Buckman, her tight black-belled patent leather pants, gold chains, beaucoup blue eyeliner, black wig long and wavy, witchy fairy boots, and a bag of potions as big as Cleveland. Another good one would be the raid by the pols on Ruth Rae`s snazzy Las Vegas apartment to arrest Jason Taverner; think a low key, intergalactic-like ATF raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco (that`s outer space-like already).

The Epilogue is a new feature in Flow My Tears for PKD as his MO is to usually leave loose-ends pertaining to outcome of his kinetically-charged SF novels. Fully fifty-nine years are telescoped with such flagrant ironies, that prediction of destinies for characters are floating debris in some foamy waves of uncertainty. Those outcomes are hazy mist for your eyes here, but the police state endures and many artifacts are preserved in museums such as pottery and the delicate collection of S & M art of the basket case lesbian twin of Felix Buckman. Dick telescopes aftereffects of the story: a thawing of the police state, liberation of the subterranean student population, new constructs of politically correct, yet impudent and lame universities; seventies déjà vu in the twenty-first century? A mother of all police manuals? Huh?

While reading Flow My Tears, the word parody will rear its homely head. Gulliver`s Travels by Jonathan Swift comes to mind, for when Gulliver arrives in the land of the Lilliputians they are at war with the Blefuscudians. This is a parody of the wars between England and France. PKD spuffs the Nixonian Era where the ‘student movement’ had to be dealt with by undercover agents of Nixon. Recall the fate of the students in this US of 1988. Another comparison is that Swift`s world is first a land of mini-people, then a land of giants-sharp contrasts keep coming up. PKD`s world is similar; one time Jason is famous then the next he is a nobody. In one moment he is in a swinging Las Vegas lounge with a synthetic old flame, then in the next he is under the hot lamp of an pol interrogator, sweating like a possum in a pot destined for the evening vitals. This composition (the pristine manuscript was in tact in 1970) predates the exposure of the Watergate break-in, thus reinforcing a vision of parody of a secret police state before all the facts were revealed.

A significant arsenal of brain cells have been expended (both by myself and other PKD aficionados) by way of theories for the brassy loss of identity of said Mister Taverner. One explanation for his sudden anonymity is that Alys Buckman took the powerful drug KR-3 and she uses a most mysterious mutation of mind control ever fathomed by mortal coil; she, with the craft of a wizard, projects him in a parallel world where he is unknown. Alys is a replicant police agent for her brother/lover (another odd theory of mine). The drug itself dictates how the atoms of reality will be assembled. I don`t know exactly how this works, but I believe that whatever her will is then becomes the prevailing corporeal model, and physical matter rearranges to simulate her mindset. As such, data in info banks vanishes, Heather Hart`s memory of Jason disappears, and Alys can abduct him (as she stealthily does so) to a vestibule as a silly toy to play with; she morphs to a black-burned skeleton, like a puff of smoke (an inside joke for lost comrades), when the poisonous KR-3 fries her system to a crispy critter. My theory here would be that she strains her mind to the outer limits and the KR-3 turns on her and makes her identity-less instead of Jason. The spell is broken-then he returns to his old universe-it goes without saying, though, this is an ify-at best-return to reality.

And then it could be political. Think of the Great Purge of Joseph Stalin. People were erased from the face of the earth. Felix suspects that Jason is getting a green light from higher ups. He`s not at the top of the pyramid and is expendable. Paranoia reigns. How could the file have been purged? Is Jason an agent of the state with a clearance to perform strategic intelligence? Think of Lee Oswald`s waiver to stay in the Soviet Union. Was the parallel world manufactured by Alys political in nature? People that perished in Russia during the Great Purge were whited out completely-photographs, personal records, families too scared, did they ever really exist? Kathy and Jason are afraid of deportment to forced labor camps. Who is really manipulating them? Is the mind control of Alys an early form of ‘identity theft’? Cults do this too. Jim Jones and Charles Manson-need I say more? Devotee are reduced to zombies who kill and worship, kill and worship-zealots with empty promises and brainwashing destroys free will. David Koresh did it too. Die for me! Felix Buckman was the architect of a seamless, efficient state. Taverner was used in conspiracy of Alys to confound her paramour-a spell on socity for reasons unknown.

Dick is commenting on fame too. Is it not an illusion? A Maya-here today, gone tomorrow. This happens all the time. Celebrities crash and burn. Britney Spears, Fatty Arbuckle, Tiny Tim (no, he not fade away). In Sutin`s biography PKD`s philosophy is revealed. Orthogonal time is real time. Linear time is a Maya. The two types of time run parallel to one another. An example would be a vinyl phonograph record. When it is played it is exactly the same every time-same cracks and pops, but your perception alters. Once an event becomes history it is a permanent record. It can be played back over and over again. Once it happens it is permanent through eternity. It is not linear, but rather rotary. It stands still but is time nonetheless. Jason enters a time/warp, a forgotten memory of when he is unknown. This is a valid rotary record, but just has never been played before. Alys taps into the lost memory and makes it a living experience. Have you ever gone to a cut-out-bin and purchased a platter and played it when you got home? Say the Purple People Strings that Ruth Rae so loved? All records are valid evidence of history. Yet some get more playback. Some are never played even once. This was a first for the playback of the anonymous Jason. If no one ever reads what I am writing right now, that doesn`t mean that it`s not part of the collective record of the current chronicle.

Much has been made of the humanity of Felix Buckman when he visits the self-service quibble gas station. Yea, he goes back and hugs the black man after he had given him a sketch of a heart with an arrow through it. I thought this was but a sidebar to a novel about cruelty and paranoia in a totalitarian state. One could see this as parody also. Buckman is giving a token salute to a black man who he has helped to oppress in the past. It was a nice touch, but not really a conversion or anything. He was just feeling sorry for himself, and his twin sister had just ODed in an embarrassing way. A cover up was in place to marginalize the mess up. It is interesting though, that PKD had a similar thing happen to him after he wrote the book. The bit about the John Dowland song is just some gentle ribbing, I thought. “I`ll play it on that big new quad phonograph of mine when I get home.”

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU is the real theme of Flow My Tears. Every page, nearly, oozes fear and confusion. Some funny stuff is on every page too. This is comic relief when butterflies dance in your stomach. But make no mistake, this is Orwellian in nature. Recently I saw on the news that when you show your passport at the border a file will be created by Homeland Security. Eerie chills trickle down my spine. It was implied that HS could use items in your file thereafter. PKD is weeping upstairs as he sees his predictions come true.

Identity loss can result from multiple consequences. It could be the result of disturbing political manipulation. It most certainly will result from mind some form of mind control. Sometimes drugs will play a role, as they did in this case. And best of all identity loss can be a function of quirp in the time/space matrix that sensitive to slight gyrations. The outcome of history can change with any alteration in the sequencing of events. PKD plays with these themes and urges us, vicariously I suppose, to contemplate the tenuousness of our existence. *I do hope my piece is granted a clearance certificate from you readers, then the electronic gates shall open to millions of Science Fiction devotees who have memorized every word of Philip K. Dick.

The best fan page for Philip K. Dick is right here. There is a wealth of information about his life and writings here, and tender loving care is present in abundance. You can find the article “The True Stories of Philip K. Dick” on that web page too. This was a very groovy Rolling Stone piece by Paul Williams that appeared in the November 6, 1975 issue.

AN EARLY VERSION OF IDENTITY THEFT FROM PKD

2008-08-30T10:18:00.003-05:00

This is my very favorite photograph of Philip K. Dick! I have added some color pencil to it to give it my own touch. I know that`s kind of stupid, but I like to doddle a little with art supplies like color pencils; maybe it`s a nervous habit or a juvenile form of kicks, sort of like some of the zany characters in a groovy PKD SF novel. He is actually holding a copy of Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, & he`s dressed sorta funky like he`s a celebrity. This would be true, I should think. My latest theory as to why Jason Taverner lost his identity, is that Alys Buckman sorta stole his celebrity identity, she put a curse on him by using mind control & with the aid of PK-3, the drug that ended up zapping her & turning her into a skeleton. I`m thinking of this metamorphosis to obscurity, including eradication from all government data banks, as an early version of identity theft. The same thing happens with totalitarian regimes such as the Nazis or the chilly Stalin communist regime. They steal peoples identities or reduce them to non-existing entities. Cults do this too, such as Jim Jones People`s Temple or The Manson Family. Devotees are reduced to zombies who worship their crazy leaders & are willing to die or to kill at the zeolot`s command. This is identity theft also. Jason Taverner goes from popularity to obscurity in the wink of an eye! This is very strange indeed!

Philip K. Dick characters in Flow My Tears...

2008-08-17T11:45:00.007-05:00

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said would make a stunning movie, a feast for the eyes, with flying quibbles as air-bound VW bugs, cloned movie stars, free-thinking, erudite cops (but nonetheless corrupt), & drug overdoses so severe that that the victim is reduced to charred skeleton remains. The ID checkpoints are chilly reminders that this is a thawing totalitarian state where the government police have complete records on every living person. One exception is Jason Taverner, who has been mysteriously de-identified from the data banks of this 1988 U.S. The characters that Taverner comes across in this science fiction novel are interesting, to say the least. He picks up Ruth Rae in a Las Vegas nightclub and gets involved with her, even to the point the police can trace him to her luxury condo because of an electronic bug that is on his body. Ruth Rae`s main personality traits are that she`s a lush, a sex pot, and a gold-digger. In the epilogue PKD reveals that she had married 52 times and dies of an alcohol/drug overdose. Like Alys Buckman she too had used the phone-grid sex network, a futuristic kicks addiction that has permanent metabolic side effects . Alys Buckman herself, an important pivotal character in the plot, was exceedingly eccentric. She was an expert on S & M art and her collection was committed to a museum of popular culture. If this book is ever made into a movie, the wardrobe people can do much with her costumes giving her tight black paten leather pants and metal chains, blue eyeliner and long wavy hair with a dark tan! Alys is not really evil, but she has the key to much valuable information that she uses to her advantage. Her undoing is drug addiction to KR-3, a concoction even stronger than heroin or crack cocaine.

The break in of PKD`s apartment in November 1971 is of much interest for the color it lends to PKD`s writing. Theories are provided in the 1975 article in Rolling Stone by Paul Williams. I believe I had this Stone at the time because I remember the cover with Rod Stewart. Lawrence Sutin discusses these theories in his PKD biography: “Divine Invasions-A Life Of Philip K. Dick.” He suggests the plausibility that PKD actually did it himself, but I am not inclined to believe this. There were many strung-out hang-abouts that could have easily done it. The documentary (the title escapes me at the moment, but it`s really cool...) hints that there may have been heroin in the file cabinets and this would provide an ideal motive for a bunch of junkies to snag-up some horse. The theories that it was the CIA or the Black Panthers are fairly far-fetched, but it was, after all, the Watergate era. Sutin does not rule out that it was an illegal search and seizure by the local San Rafael police. To say the least, this mishap haunted PKD for the remainder of his days and fueled his paranoia more, if that is even possible. He did clean up his act though and managed to write “A Scanner Darkly” without the crutch of amphetamines. Aspects of the break-in may be detected in some of his last novels such as Scanner. It may be in “Flow My Tears…”. But I couldn`t give you an exact citation. When they bust him in Ruth Rae`s condo though, & had traced him with the electronic bug, a Watergate chill came over me, ala the Democratic Headquarter burglers!

The character of Felix Buckman is perhaps the most important in this SF novel. In the epilogue he apparently penned an authoritative manual entitled: “The Law and Order Mentality”, that chronicles an efficient planet-wide police bureaucracy that functions properly and keeps society in order. He is somewhat more tolerant than some police marshals and in the day eased some of the restraints on the inmates of forced labor camps. Tensions are easing somewhat as the U.S. society comes out of the Second Civil War, but the students are still on the lam. These seems to reflect the freeing up of tensions in the U.S. when the Sixties became the Seventies and the Vietnam War ever gradually... wound down and people morphed to a ‘pleasure principle’ life style philosophy, as relief from the all-consuming war. Theories can abound as reasons for Jason Taverner`s sudden lost identity, but it seems to be tied-in with an occult drug called KR-3 and mind control can be induced by its use. But gee wiz, the side effects are too harsh-turning into a smoking skeleton is a little over-the-top, if you ask me!

An interesting little approach to the SF novel would be to dig up some of the items of technology and of popular culture. For instance, what did the quibbles look like? How did they operate? What did the juke box look like when Jason Taverner and Mary Anne Dominic were conversing in that quasi-greezy spoon? And what did some of Taverner`s records sound like, such as Taverner and the Blue, Blue Blues or his hit single, 'Nowhere Nothun` Fuck-Up'? Did it sound like Iggy Pop in the late seventies? ...Probably not...I thought that Bladerunner did a good job of visualizing PKD`s zany, futuristic world, but I`d like to see this one with more of a 70s disco sheen in a SF wrapper, of course! I envision much of this to look like the art work on a 70s juke box or say a pinball machine, or a semi-truck mud flap with a curvaceous dame; as much retro as futuristic panorama! And can you imagine what Ruth Rae would look like? If you had been married 52 times you might look rather disheveled, like Linda Blair in the Exorcist! Boy am I glad I never took KR-3, but would like to watch the experience remotely as a simulation of some sort!

PKD plays with a number of intriguing ideas in Flow My Tears..., & being an idea man by nature, he spoofs his current culture & packages his U.S.A. of 1988 with the foibles of a 1970 U.S. The youth movement is squashed, but the police apparatus flourishes and grows, due in part to the wisdom of Felix Buckman, a sort of Erasmus of the cop culture. Another theme is that dispite the totalitarian presence of Big Brother, society at large is loose & inundated with drug use and free living. Buckman himself practices incest with his own sister Alys Buckman, who is a shadowy figure that leads a hedonistic life and beyond. Technology florishes but the oil companies are nationalized like in Mexico or Venezuela. Radicals, intellectuals and minorities have either eliminated or parked in forced labor camps to rot. Felix Buckman himself is an architect of these camps and favors a more tolerant approach, believe it or not. The police control the data banks and thus can keep a tight control over the people. This gave me a creepy sensation with I thought of the new found authority of Homeland Security, a new institution whose reach is just now being defined. PKD would shutter at the thought of this new age of electronic surveillance.

PHILIP K. DICK-FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID

2008-08-14T06:29:00.005-05:00

I continue to be fascinated by Philip K. Dick. And there are still so many of his books that I can read. This is a warmup for Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, so I can start to shape some theories about what the book is about. As usual, much of this is about drugs and a totalitarian state that resides in the future. Jason Taverner, a television star with 30 million viewers, is suddenly whited-out. That is, he finds himself unknown, without any data on him in the state data banks. When he calls an old girlfriend, Heather Hart, she has no idea who he is. Jason gets some fake identity cards made by a crafty forger, Kathy Nelson, but he is picked up at stop point for questioning. It seems that the students from the universities are in rebellion and this future US is just coming out of a Civil War, so things are still very tense.

It`s my understanding that Mister Dick wrote this SF novel in 1970, then edited it for a 1974 publication. This got the John W. Campbell award for best novel in 1974. I won`t reveal the resolution to the lost identity of Jason Taverner, but I will say it has a lesbian S & M queen at its core, and the consciousness that she embraces. I have two essential articles that are a great aid in getting familiar with Philip K. One is in The New Yorker, The Return of Philip K. Dick by Adam Gopnik. The other one is The True Stories of Philip K. Dick by Paul Williams, that was in Rolling Stone, November 6, 1975. These are required pieces to have around when probing the mysterious world of Philip K. Dick. Much of this is about the break in of Dick`s crash pad where file cabinets with pristine documents were blown up. Many theories were postulated as to who the culprits were, and apparently this fueled the imagination of Dick (not a very hard thing to achieve) and he put this spice into his writing. I`m sending you the biblical web page for Philip K. Dick for you to start to study, if you find yourself moving in the direction of Dickian worship! I will continue tomarrow with some observations on the novel and the mystique Dick himself....

The main bullet to this story is how did Jason Taverner lose his identity? My best theory is that it was through the mind control of Alys Buckman. She controlled him with the drug KR-3 and put him in a parrallel world-a sort of space/time warp where everyone had x him out of existence. I too have experienced subliminally of course...in my earlier frontier days. Mind control is a strange thing...but such things really do happen. By way of analogy, think of when Stalin would eliminate supposed ememies...then their identities would completely erased from the face of the earth! They would even be whited-out of photos...yea, completely gone. Soviet Union memories are coming quickly lately with the invasion of Georgia, me thinks. Well, got to get ready for the factory...more tomarrow for sure!

THE NEW DELHI DERVISHES

2008-07-26T07:51:00.003-05:00

This is one of my works of art. For several years I`ve been meaning to return to it and try to finish it; you know polish it up a bit. The New Delhi Dervishes are vague spirits that linger in the atmosphere nurturing us with subconscious dreams and wonder. Their vague contours are suggested by Cycladic marble figurines, that I have often marveled at. When I mixed the photo just now I turned down the tones and made the Indian reds subdued earthen colors that don`t violate the eye with brightness. This is enables the eye to meditate on the image and to channel subtexture memories that sooth and heal the latent dharma of the mind. I used much sandpaper to give an antique or rusty lustre to the oils around the dervishes. This might be a relic that you find out by a dumpster, for instance, and you pick it up and later discover that it`s a long-lost pearl that was in the hands of a big collector of art at one time. I know this is tomfoolery, but you need to use your imagination a little and project this piece out to a more significant nitch in the World of Art! As such it is just gathering dust in my closet and I bang my foot on it every time I I try to grab some dirty socks in the closet. Now it will be seen by millions on the internet and its true value will be recognized for all time and my immortality is guaranteed. Go get another cup of strong Sulawesi Toraja, Mister John! Here is what I came up with when I googled punk art, Matt Stokes? I`m leaning in the direction, like The Leaning Tower of Pizza, of seeing this piece as a model for punk art? It`s unassuming, non-professional, unpolished, intuitive, humble, guttoral, and simplistic, like a three-chord garage rock classic...It`s Wild Thing! Is this junk or is this art, you decide (you don`t have to say junk, asshole)?

VIVA LA VIDA or DEATH AND ALL HIS FRIENDS

2008-07-12T10:41:00.003-05:00

ON VIVA LA VIDA COLDPLAY REINVENTS THEMSELVES AND SHEDS THEIR ARENA ROCK SKIN, WITH ‘A LITTLE HELP FROM THEIR FRIEND’ (BRIAN ENO)! By John G. Kays

“All in all you`re just another brick in the wall.” -The Wall-Pink Floyd

Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends (Capitol) is a very, very clever, well-crafted, long-playing record. Coldplay employed Brian Eno, as a suggestion from Gwyneth Paltrow, to help them out of the sand trap they were mired in with their 2005 release, X & Y; namely repetitive melodies, lukewarm lyrics, and inordinate ‘borrowing’ from other bands. Brian Eno is a savior here, and acts as the Pied-Piper for Viva La Vida. He brings in his stalwart gimmicks, his rabbit-in-the-hat Oblique Strategies, where oracles on playing cards dictate where a song will go in terms of rhythm, melody, and lyrics. This worked superbly on this record-Viva La Vida is a meticulously woven patchwork quilt, a string of multi-colored mardi-gras beads of every size and shape imaginable, strung together with leery, museum-case precision.

Viva La Viva is a concept record, and as such it`s a good idea to listen to the whole in one sitting. When I say it`s a concept album, you must think of antecedents such as Tommy, Sergeant Pepper, but conspicuously Abbey Road (side two), a majestic model of seamless song fragments that bespeaks the daily life of ‘Swinging London’ in the `60s. Coldplay`s new studio is an old bakery in London that Chris Martin pegs as a “a beaten-up little place, down a drunken alleyway.” A new voice was found by Coldplay in this bakery with Brian Eno as their spiritual guide, acting as a George Martin surrogate-guru for the lads. Do not ever forget that The Beatles once saved EMI and made them profitable, and now Coldplay has the same task before them in this generation of entertainment!

The business angle for this new release is of the utmost importance for EMI (Electric and Musical Industries Limited), the struggling label that holds the contract for Coldplay. This is a British institution that retains the intellectual property of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and even Frank Sinatra. EMI was recently purchased by Terra Firma, and it seems as if the new boss, Guy Hands, is better versed in reviving pubs and gas stations, than making a proper go at the music business. Moreover, with the banking industry going south, he has been rubbing some big acts, such as The Stones and Radiohead, the wrong way.

Fortunately, Coldplay has seized control of their own marketing and promotion this go `round, and this certainly has been working for them. Their album is currently number one on the Billboard charts (today is July 12th ) and on iTunes also. So it appears to be exclusively the job of Coldplay to keep the aging giant EMI a float; it is exciting to track the sales of the album as they are reported. In an age when the music business is whistling pass the graveyard new heroes are welcome visitors!

Let`s take a stroll through this British bakery and inspect the enticing “Viva” tarts displayed in the dessert case! There`s a nice apple tart, “Life In Technicolor”! Let`s grab a piece of coconut fudge, “42”! A coffee dessert (“Violet Hill”) will lift you up from my patisserie of mixed metaphors (my life is a mixed metaphor). Hey there`s a creme tangerine and over there a montelimat. I hope George Harrison is not frownin` down on me as I raid the cub bards of “Savoy Truffle” from the White Album. Our satellite photos from NASA`s Messenger show Coldplay creating our Generation Y truffles to save EMI. Let`s study the ingredients of these saving songs from the new Mayan Lords that walk these jungles. The treble clef notes are cascading in swirls on our ears and harkenin` us back to the London bakery!

“Life In Technicolor” has a mercurial canticle that rolls through it; it is an instrumental that acts as an overture to the entire project. The bass gradually comes up in counter distinction to the high-frequency range of the round sampled through. The rhythm is peppy and marching (one two, one two), and the sphinx-like guiding hand of Brian Eno pushes the plastic `round on the turntable (think of the hand of God on the Sistine Chapel).

“Cemeteries Of London” is a haunting sea chantey with a wall of sound splashing echo and reverb at the end of each measure; a great monsoon wave of noise. Some characters, it seems, are hovering `round the streets of spirit-soaked London searching for lost souls, encountering ghosts and witches on the way, and even getting a few glimpses of God himself. “There are ghost towns in the ocean,” recalls the chilly mariner legend of The Flying Dutchman. This one has a Pogues bite to it, with a punchy, crunching pace to it, and is the best of the lot.

“Lost” has a slow 4/4 rhythm with it and is accented with hand claps at the end of each measure. It was partially recorded in a church and uses sweltering organs and piano that disguise the vocal of Chris Martin, who is “Waiting till the shine wears off.” Apparently, this means that you will shrink back down to size; this is idle wordplay that`s letting the air out of his ego. `Tis a seahorse-float shooting through the sky that then tumbles like Phaethon, son of Helios, in his chariot. “You might be a big fish in a little pond,” but I suppose a prominent flounder can come along and shuck you off in a wink of the eye! The mix of “Lost” sends you into outer space; as I hear it I think of Alan Shepard pickin` up genesis lunar rocks on a casual moonwalk.

“42” is two songs in one; the first half is reflective and recalls John Lennon`s two-handed piano chording with some witty word play: “Those who are dead are not dead they`re just living in my head,” a crackerjack sliver of limerick that suggests that the memory of the dead can keep them alive. The second section is faster and brighter with some Lewis Carroll, non-sensical verse about the existence of a ghost that nearly makes his way to the pearly gates. “You thought you might be a ghost (repeat), you didn`t get to heaven but you made it close (repeat).” The first time I heard this song (June 17th) I was channeling unstintingly back in time to Brian Eno`s 1973 premiere pop album Hear Come The Warm Jets, it was a breath of fresh air.

“Lovers In Japan” has a Martian sonic drone over a catchy, repeating organ-grinderish melody. These hypnotic spaceship effusions will make the dogs howl through a full-moon witching hour, and Martin`s vocals are slightly tucked in underneath these ‘close encounter’ shenanigans, and `tis interesting. The lyrics are muffled, and thus are lacking anything real, or pithy, or even subliminal for that matter; Chris merely randomly references some such lovers, runners, and soldiers, with no specifics. Is it pro-war or anti-war? Clouds hover o`er our blue skies here, but ambiguity is often the kinder, gentler yellow brick road to follow, and it`s better for sales too!

The B section of “Lovers In Japan” is about the fans of Coldplay analyzing the band for meaning and direction for their own lives. The poor Mister Martin is placed under a microscope by people all over the world and even by myself, for his rapturous revelations. Instead, all we`re getting is a few parrot beak banterings, some choice chipperings of Chris against a space-rock moon tune, a U2ish blast of high frequency Martian squeal with a ice cream truck ditty in sampled loop. “Reign Of Love” acts as a pillowy couplet to ‘Japan’ and has splashes or miniature flourishes of piano echo with a lullaby melody and lyrics `bout the slavery of love, me thinks.

The first half of the title, Viva La Vida, comes from a painting by Frida Kahlo which is just a still life of cheerful melons. The whole title, (Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends), I have heard, is inspired by Stanley Kubrick`s scathing satire on the Cold War, Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. This moniker suggests a kind of yin-yang dialectic, quarried from tipsy pipedreams of the I-Ching, where life and death is in balance. This would, of course, be symbolic for the good and bad vibes contained in the songs on the album. But it does seem that the bad vibes are mostly wimpy, and may be construed as whining or pouting on the part of Coldplay. Nonetheless and oddly enough, this has been a saving grace, an integral part of the band`s M.O. from the get go!

The cover itself is a Eugene Delacroix painting, Liberty Leading the People, executed in 1830, which has been whitewashed with graffiti plopped on the surface. The painting itself is a depiction from the French Revolution showing Lady Liberty leading Parisians on a zealous rampage for freedom. To tie this in with Coldplay, one has to study the lyrics of “Viva La Vida”; it appears that Coldplay is on the wrong side of the fence? “Revolutionaries wait for my head on a silver platter;” they are the bad guys, the ruling elite or kings disguised as bic-flickering arena rocker debutantes, if you get my drift. Not that they have really changed, but at least they are cognizant of their politically incorrect quagmires; their social standing of bigwiggedness. And it even looks as if Chris Martin is not going to make it to heaven-“I know Saint Peter won`t call my name.” Boy they really blew it!

The artwork in the CD booklet is mostly just homegrown doodles of lyrics from Coldplay with a bit of paint slapped on too. The center page has just a few lines of each song. It would have been preferable if they included the complete lyrics in the booklet. Hopefully they weren`t trying to hide anything, but simply were downplaying the importance of the words. The title, cover painting, and lyrics only come together cloudily in my head, but that`s perfectly legal in pop music. Just to be blunt, I will say, “the cover doesn`t mean nothing`, that`s what it means.” I can just picture Coldplay fans all around the world twistin` and turnin` the CD cover `bout and puttin` it under a magnifying glass just to glean an inner sanctum of pansophy from the cardboard. This is pure ballyhoo, my fair weathered friends, but is exactly the ritual that I practice in the solitude of my condo!

“Yes” opens with four bars of exotic Middle Eastern strings, provided by Davide Rossi; this suggested the aura of “# 9 Dream,” which is the best song on John Lennon`s Walls And Bridges, released in September of 1974. Chris Martin sings in a lower register here, talking in defiance to loneliness, but certainly under the spell of fleshly temptation. After two verses there`s a refreshing barrage of Jonny Buckland guitars that jump in like falling stars (or red-hot meteor metals) to spice it up a bit. Then after two further verses the violin and cello strings are rippling piquantly again.

The lyrics to “Yes,” are encoded with secrets, and address the issue of breaking out of the moldy doldrums that plagued Coldplay after X & Y, whereby jettisoning the old tortoise shell is in order and cooking up an original project can be a nice change of pace. “So, up they picked me by the big toe.” This is code for the thrashing that they`ve taken from the press. To be more specific, this is a grim reminder of Jon Pareles` scathing article, “The Case Against Coldplay,” that appeared in The New York Times on June 5, 2005, a brutal hack-job on X & Y.

“Chinese Sleep Chant,” a hidden track, is fully a blitzkrieg of treated guitars overdubbed superbly by Jonny Buckland. This put me in a trance as the Sandman be dappled my eyelids with blissful slumber. “Good Night,” the last song on The White Album, likewise cured me of insomnia some forty years ago. At this very moment my glassy eyeballs are peering out at you from your flat panel monitor, where you beady-eyed internet geeks are surfing my lines lazily in real time. I`m using a branding iron to burn these letters into this scroll, so watch out!

“Viva La Vida,” the main single from the album, begins with a gorgeous staccato string quartet provided by Davide Rossi, and tells the tale of fallen kings; these diminished lords are Zen-Masters of arena rock who are whittled down to size, and are now teeming with humility and self-degradation. The narrator hears some type of ineffable vocational calling, “I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing, Roman Cavalry choirs are singing, be my mirror my sword and shield.” I am envisioning this as a quasi-medieval Sir Lancelot, Knights of the Round Table beckoning, a return to virtue and Christian wholesomeness; furthermore, it`s a boomerang uturn to the Cinderella working-class bubble of street- sweeper magnanimity.

The abdication of power and the loss of the crown results in admission to the gates of heaven with the gift of the keys of Saint Peter. (You may want to give this a close listening, but sometimes it sounds like ‘Saint Peter won`t call my name.’) This song conceals such vagaries as a trip to the confession booth might do, which then lifts the storyteller (Chris Martin) back to his majestic position. After all he has confessed his sins and is ready to resume his throne in the stadium for another rock show. “Sexy Sadie, you`ll get yours yet, however big you think you are.” I`ll buy that; catchy little pop song?

“Violet Hill” has a pungent video single that you can get on iTunes. The boys are dressed in Salvation Army looking gear (or scruffy Sergeant Pepper threads), and are fooling around in a mansion and in some fields. This brings to mind the bleedin` Be-a-tles in an early version of music video, the castles in the air of “Strawberry Fields,” with band members rotating rapidly at an upright piano or hacking away on marching band instruments. The lyrics are frothy as usual, but seem to refer to a need for affection in the snowy settings of Violet Hill, a street in St John`s Wood, London. There are a few allusions (or illusions) here to the Crusades, God again, and how the future is carved by fools, “when the future`s architectured by a carnival of idiots on show.” Is this Coldplay themselves? As confusing as this is, the combination of music, words, and images makes perfect sense in a big picture, forest for trees (or maybe better yet icebergs for snow) kind of way!

“Strawberry Swing” is an ‘afternoon delight;’ just chugs along idly, a happy-go-lucky nursery rhyme that chimes like a `sicle truck amblin` down the lane in a slowpoke suburb of anywheresville. This is the “Yellow” of the record and is just the prescribed medicine to hatch another golden egg; `tis charged with feel-good positive ions. Golden lines (would you believe copper penny pennings?) roll off my fingertips like sausage through a meat-grinder!

“Death And All His Friends” starts out as an innocent, Mary Poppins` morsel of advice to not worry ; just do the Peter Pan thing and fly away o`er rooftops! Two minutes into the piece it takes a high-tempo uturn that morphs into a Pink Floydish chant about defying gloomy death; the Brian Eno inspired phrase is finally bleated out: “I don`t want to cycle a recycled revenge.” Okay, he wants things to be cheery, don`t we all!

The coda, “The Escapist” repeats the opening melody of the record, a calliope muzak loop, thus coming full circle. This was actually written by John Hopkins, a colleague of Brian Eno. The lyrics were written by Chris Martin, “In the end we dream of making our escape;” this is the main theme of the album, escaping the stigma of brainless arena rock! I couldn`t help but remember the coda to Abbey Road: “And in the end the love you make, is equal to the love you take.” I suspect that others are making this connection as well! Mister Bucks?

I caught a snap of Ringo extending the peace sign for his sixty-eighth birthday and was whiffed with a measure of muse to polish off these billows. I listened to all their old records and solidly concluded that “Vida” shows marked improvement over their three previous releases. “Parachutes” is really trudging; I speculated that Coldplay didn`t get enough coffee before they entered the studio. Chris Martin`s use of falsetto is not as good as Thorn Yorke`s of Radiohead who warbles like a Martian on a whoopee cushion! And the diadem of Art Rock still rests on the moptops of Radiohead. Coldplay sports the Arty Arena Rock crown! I barb in jest, Coldplay Curmudgeons! My measuring rods of rock were begot on another day. I must recalibrate for Generation Y!

I chip away at granite with chisel and hammer, the final inscriptions; Brian Eno`s Another Day On Earth wafts through the flat space! Surfin` for clues as his process unfolds. By the time I finish this moronic word puzzle the top of my head will be fried, my eyeballs will pop out of their sockets, coffee grinds will be oozing out of the side of my mouth, and the record itself will be lodged in my forehead, protruding out like a swordfish and won`t disengage, even with the jaws of life! “I`ve got blisters on my fingers.”

Half of what I wrote won`t see the light of day for fear of retribution! *(Two examples: Coldplay sounds more like the Archies in Jettson gear. Or: Much of this is the obligatory tears and flapdoodle [Mark Twain`s words] of Chris Martin. I better leave off on this squawkin` papyrus before I get tarred and feathered and run outta town by Coldplay groupies.) Newsblaze people, please listen to the record a few more times then come back to visit me (reread my review) one more time! Indignities ya utter, pasty brainies, Queen Mab on an agate stone, so why not split my skull one more time, I casually walk o`er the turntable with vinyl between fingers, so as not to smudge the plastic, put the record on the chasse, and hear Tibetan monks chanting between the grooves whilst Coldplay rises skyward on Stratocumulus perlucidus Grammy clouds!

*Thanks to Bertha for turning me on to Coldplay; I had never heard them before May of this year.

VIVA LA VIDA OR DEATH AND ALL HIS FRIENDS

2008-07-03T06:54:00.003-05:00

*(I`m writing a review of Coldplay`s new one and these are my notes for the piece. I thought if I post the notes a bit of a fire will be lit underneath me and I`ll get the thing done! Let me know what you think of the record, & the controversial cover. I`ve been see-sawing on it a bit for your information.)

Until I get this new piece finished & hopefully published on NewsBlaze (about a week away), please continue to support my last piece, Raising Sand! It has entered the top 200 for July yet. Don`t want it to completely die out!

Coldplay-bic-flickering arena rock cast in a brand spanking new cellophane wrapper (bag) package (light). I ain`t saying this is candy-coated arena rock, but if I put that idea in your head, what can I do about it. Dumpster-diving the cut-out bins for last wonders. Coldplay-babeola magnets. I am using the measuring rods of rock. I`m aiming for a million reads on my new piece on Coldplay, but maybe I`m aiming a little high.Rock & Roll writing can still generate a lot more interest than can writing on movies. Maybe Coldplay is the current Archies, the current Bubblegum rock of this generation.
The cover is the famous painting of Eugene Delacroix, Lady Liberty, with Viva La Vida as whitewashed graffiti splashed on it. A French Revolution connection that I haven`t been able to make in the songs. The thing is Chris Martin got the idea for the title Viva La Vida from a still life by Frida Kaylo. How that painting is connected to the Delacroix painting, the wider themes of the record is undetermined.

The first song Life In Technicolor is a sorta overture to the album. I felt like I was on a rocket ship with a distant sound. I felt like I was on a ride at Six Flags Over Texas the first time I listened to whole album-the night of June 17th. Lost! Accented with handclaps. Synthesizers way up in mix. Can`t make out all the lyrics. “You might be a big fish in a small pond.” Slow 4/4 rhythm…waiting til the shine wears off…of the band. Sound is out there. Very distant, futuristic. 42 starts with just voice and piano…those who are dead are not dead, they`re just living in my head. Second section more eastern, pounding…you might be a ghost…you didn`t get to heaven but you made it close. Sounds like Here comes the warm jets…presence of Brian Eno very close…repeats opening line. Lovers In Japan very U2 big droning sound lots of synths…lovers keep on the road you`re on.

Cemeteries Of London is a sorta sea chantey with a cascading wall of sound…a paranoia trip a search for God…a pulsing churning echoing song. Singing la la la la la ehh…chantey-like. The wall of sound resounds and echoes with reverb splashing like monsoon waves at end of each measure. The Pogues have used such rhythms. Haunted vision of searching for lost souls. Strawberry Swing is an organ grinder soiree of innocence…afternoon fantasy of urban delight. No meaning (true grit) in the lyrics…whimsical. Commitment to lover. Death And All His Friends. Swept away by time and the seasons. Two songs in one. Theme comes in to break up two parts of song. Word play about countering death that spreads destruction wherever he goes. Okay, trilogy of parts. Last part back to light the love you make is equal to the love you take. Organ musak fades.

I`m having a little trouble detecting any skeleton bone in Viva La Vida. It is a bit dodgy in places. The whole project sounds like your grandstanding a shuttle lift off. Mechanical, ethereal. ET phone home! paranormal presence of Eno strong. Start to hit pay dirt on piece. Painful mode, into the piece, disguised inside the lines. My glassy eyeballs are peering out at you from your flat panel monitor where you slobski internet geeks are surfing my lines lazily.

42 has two sections. Second half really wails. Thought he was saying ghosts who are dead. You thought you might be a ghost means the downtime and possible demise of Coldplay, as I see it. Whole project has an undulating, running, grinding rhythm like a locomotion train. This reminds me of early Eno pop albums.

Death And All His Friends starts out as a lullaby/nursery rhyme, very innocent just a pastoral jingle that morphs into a Pink Floyd chant about fighting gloomy death. Then the calliope muzak riff of the beginning comes back in. Sorta like the ending to Abbey Road.

42 a raga rock rave-up “Those who are dead are just living in my head” the memory of the dead keeps them alive, in a sense. Coldplay has absorbed much of rock history-Viva La Vida is a concept album-all ten songs work in accord with one another. 42 has an upright piano and sounds very much like classic Pink Floyd. Song fragments piecemealed like Abbey Road-bits and pieces spliced together into pop-fruit cake-the suggestion of Brian Eno to break the mold. They have done just that. As I listened I found myself thinking of Gwyneth Paltrow a lot and channeling through some of her movies, like “Iron Man”, “Silvia Plath”, or . Colonel Critique here providing you with a review. I am using the measuring rods of Rock.

Throughout the record a monolithic wall of sound, spaceship rock, a volt of hurdy-gurdy blast of sound emanating from the jukebox (ipod box). Reign of Love uses acoustic guitar and is the softer part of Lovers of Japan, it`s the second portion of the song. Nuevo-art rock. From the paranormal presence of Brian Eno. More art-rock than parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head, or X & Y.

The skeleton bone of Viva La Vida is the carving out of a more original (authentic) bit of pop-music, & maybe whining about it a little along the way. A patchwork quilt, a string of pretty, multi-colored beads of a thousand various shapes and sizes, in the (tidily) displayed (dime store jewelry) case for all to marvel (oogle) at. A special sampling of all the experiments with Eno.

RadioHead is still the reigning Lords of Art Rock but Coldplay is currently the new cousin dolphins shining in glow of the Sun-King of Versallaises. Coldplay is a wholesome Radiohead.

“Viva La Vida” is a patchwork quilt, a spiffy slice of pop-ephemera, a jigsaw puzzle of Rock`s moments in the sun. For this I liked it. It`s not clichéd for this. It keeps ya guessin` by attempting to identify the mystery puzzle pieces of rock. There`s a bit of Pepper, a bit of The Wall, & UT`s Joshua Tree.

*(the business bit about EMI) Brian Eno plays the role of George Martin here.

Dreamy, unforced, natural, organic fluidity. More introspective, self-conscious, self-critical, narcissistic. Attempts to be more of a statement, but it`s not all that clear what is being said.

The opening number, Life In Technicolor is a sort of instrumental overture to the entire project and has a marching sweep to it, and suggests the guiding hand of Brian Eno. Cemeteries Of London is a ghostly sea chantey with a wall of sound splashing waves of echo and reverb, the lost souls of London are washing up in the soundscape.

Lovers In Japan is an amorphous tone, a bright, peppy promenade, a UT like march. The second half Reign of Love is lullaby like. Chris Martin looks inward and reflects the way that people are picking at him, that is the meaning of his words. Yes begins with an eastern riff, then Chris Martin sings against droning guitars about temptation and breaking the moldy doldrums of Coldplay. ‘So they picked me by the big toe.’ The lyrics for Yes address the issue of desire for a lady-lust. This must be the critics giving them a good lashing. Coldplay is in virtual isolation as they try to break out of their formula. Chinese Sleep is a little fragment, an ocean of guitars wailing.

Nice little intro-couplet. Reminded me of Walls and Bridges by John Lennon. On Yes Chris Martin sings in a lower register wailing against loneliness. Lyrics address the difficulty of coming up with a fresh project. Chinese Sleep is a little offering as cure for insomniacs; one is reminded of the last number on the White Album.

“Violet Hill” has a nice video single on itunes. In Salvation Army geer playing around in a mansion and fields. Reminded me of Beatles “Strawberry Fields” film with band members rotating rapidly at piano and playing marching band instruments. A lot of fun. The lyrics are illusive but refer to a need for affection in a chilly settine of Violet Hill, a street in St John`s Wood, London. A bit of a snack in the snow. A few allusions (or illusions) to the Crusades, God, and how the future is carved by idiots (fools). Use random word play is tricky, but when in the context of the images and the whole project, it makes perfect sense.

“Strawberry Swing” is my favorite on the album. Is a happy go lucky nursery rhyme that chimes like a popsicle truck ambling down the lane in some carefree suburbs of anywheresville. Death And All of His Friends starts out as an innocent little Mary Poppins positive bit of advice to escape over the rooftops a Peter Pan sort of thing. Two minutes into the piece it takes a high-tempo turn and the delightful phrase comes out “I don`t want to cycle recycled revenge-apparently some limerick thought up by Brian Eno-the lyric line in the whole album. The coda, The Escapist, repeats the opening melody-“In the end, we dream of making our escape”. Written by a friend of Brian Eno, John Hopkins. This is the main theme-escaping the stigma of brainless arena rock.

Viva La Vida will not go down in history as an innovative classic for pop-rock. The song Viva La Vida is for me their best song ever-shrewd high-pop. The songs are strung together like mardi gras beads functioning as treble clef notes on staff paper. The production is sprinkled (dappled) with glitter on glue, just as this piece is doused with glitter. Chris Martin is still chippering. I`m tapping into the inner sanctum of the album. The use of Eno`s Oblique Strategies reminds me of Philip K. Dick`s use of ‘oracles’ in The Man In The High Castle. This was really just the medicine needed to hatch a golden egg, with their record floating buoyantly at the top of Billboard charts.

First paragraph-Jiminy Cricket, Great Balls of Fire, Gee Wilikers, Viva La Vida is a proper piece of pop ephemera with planning, hooks, and production.

Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends is a very, very clever long playing record. * (first line in piece)

The cover is Eugene Delacroix`s painting, Liberty Leading the People with a bit of whitewash graffiti splashed over, and mysteriously ties together the title, Viva La Vida, the title of an exquisite still life by Frida Kahlo. How the two paintings connect together is unknown, but I do not believe it really matters. The cover doesn`t mean nothing`, that`s what it means. I can just picture Coldplay fans all around the world turning` the CD about and putting` it under a magnifying glass to glean the inner sanctum of wisdom, this is pure ballyhoo, but I too have been twisting the record cover about for secrets.!

Much of this is the obligatory tears and flapdoodle (Mark Twain`s words from Huckleberry Fin) of Chris Martin. Viva La Viva is a pleasing grab-bag of pop ephemera with Brian Eno as Virgil, the spiritual guide, & Chris Martin as Dante negotiating the perilous sandtraps of Hell, such as exist in the world of arena rock.

Coldplay brings home the bacon with a ‘Little Help From Their Friends’. This is a polite way too to say they borrow from the Xen-Masters of rock, such as The Beatles, REM, Pink Floyd, and UTU. I hear they are influenced by RadioHead, but RadioHead wears the crown of Art Rock. Coldplay sports the diadem of Arty Arena Rock. I realize there is no such genre, but there is now cuz I just invented it!

Ian Yorke from Radiohead uses falsetto just like Chris Martin, but warbles like a Martian Tibetan monk leaving his body for the Elysian Fields, Martin sounds more like Barry Manilow. Coldplay sounds more like The Archies in Jettson gear than Radiohead.

Coldplay almost soft rock. Was listening to “Parachutes” and thought the CD player was going too slow. They need to drink stronger coffee.
Viva La Vida is charged with feel-good positive ions. Pleasant album to listen to, but it`s just not that big a deal. Use the word punchy a few times!

MY MORNING JACKET-EVIL URGES

2008-06-16T07:04:00.002-05:00

I had a vacation day on Tuesday, so I went by Waterloo Records to scout out some new tracks. I saw that My Morning Jacket`s new one “Evil Urges” was out, so I listened to a few passages from several tracks at their nifty sampler stations. The first few tracks were gentle and smooth and I really thought they had changed from their hard-rockin` presence when performing live. I immediately thought of “Workingman`s Dead” by Grateful Dead as possible reference to these fresh tracks spinning in the Apple Player. The record was $11.99 so I snatched it up along with a bunch of Radiohead that was also on sale. I nonchalantly spun the disc a few times at home, but only as background music for my reading. Much variety was present, I thought, and the production was smooth with shimmering guitar work, enunciated lyrics, and balances in bass and drums. A very big piece in the New York Times appeared on Friday, and I consumed this with relish and curiosity as I tried to further assess this new offering of My Morning Jacket. They haven`t really sold very many CDs in their past releases but their live shows sell out easily. Maybe this new release will produce a hit and “Evil Urges” will take off on the charts! I have a sneaking suspicion that it will do considerably better than previous records. I just listened to ‘Thank You Too!’ and that one could be a possible hit, from where I`m sittin`. ‘Sec Walkin’ is on now and it is relective and people conscious, hey that one could be a hit. The background female chorus is a nice touch. This CD has a lyric book too, and this is a big plus for me, since I can rarely tell what musicians are saying. “Two Halves’ is very catchy and reminds me of the Everly Brothers. The guitar flanges and the background harmonies give a full, Spectoresque production. ‘Librarian’ will listened to vastly by college students on their ipods as they amble across their campus. This is a minor key with a melancholy motif…it`s catchy, my friend! The line about Karen Carpenter is likely the hook in this one. Okay he is has a crutch on the Librarian; sounds like a good B movie too. My favorite song on the record, for right now, is ‘Aluminum Park’; this one sends me to the empty industrial wastelands of the deep South…I don`t know why really? I will continue to think about “Evil Urges”; I sure hope it`s not buried amongst the avalanche of releases this summer!

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE

2008-06-08T12:03:00.003-05:00

...Or Mama Don`t Ya Take My Kodachrome Away.......

I was very surprised by this new Errol Morris project as I was viewing it. It was much more subdued than I had expected, and wasn`t a sounding board for a not so hidden agenda. The Fog of War seemed to naturally cook the goose of Robert McNamara by his own admissions. The issues here at play were who is actually culpable for the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib? That is not really all that clear. The photographs are the specific evidence that Morris looks at to provide clues to what really happened. This would even include one of Donald Rumsfeld inspecting the facility one day. The talking head interviews are perfect for what they reveal about the characters and also what they tell us about what really occurred at Abu Ghraib.

The interviews of Lynndie England were the best for me. She has aged startling since 2003, no doubt because of the stress of all the bad stuff that happened to her. She seemed to be motivated by her love for Charles Graner, a staff sergeant who seems to be the main culprit behind some of the more heinous photos. Graner was setting her up by photographing her with the leash around the neck of the prisoner Gus. What Graner`s motive was in this is undetermined? He comes across as a sadist who just enjoined torturing and humiliating these Iraqis. Most of the prisoners, as is shown in the film, were not associated with al Quadi or with the Insurgency, for that matter.

Sabrina Harman is even more puzzling in her interviews; the letters she sent back to her girlfriend carefully document the sinister events at Abu Ghraib. She seems like a sweet enough girl on the exterior, but then why is she giving a thumbs-up to the camera as the prisoner is writhing in agony? This is the great thing about these interviews, are these people telling the truth or are they lieing? Sabrina`s nose doesn`t grow here, but it looks like she is rationalizing!

The photographs themselves are at the center of gravity in Standard Operating Procedure. Morris tries to probe what may have gone on before and after the single snapshot in time. He does come close to seeing the truth. The chief investigator is able to compile a timeline of events because there were three cameras involved, and all have a clock inside of them. This is immutable evidence that can not be denied. There are thousands of extant photos, but only a handful were popularized by the media. This again underscores the tragedy of Lynndie England-that is, the way she took the fall for the real perpetrators of abuse.

I just paused for a moment to purchase Paul Simon`s Kodachrome on itunes; I suddenly had a flash that that song should have been used on SOP, but of course that would have been heresy. Really, the motive for the taking of the photos is at the heart of this film. I believe it`s “Mama, don`t take my kodachrome away!” These low ranking soldiers, plopped in the middle of the fray of Iraq, were simply trying to amuse themselves by shooting photos of themselves with prisoners. They weren`t even trying to hide it, and freely passed these snaps around Abu Ghraib.

On another level, SOP is the technique used on this low-key, refreshing documentary. Systematic, detective-like research is employed in order to ascertain what really happened; in this case the media blew this up out of proportion. Sensationalized, if you will. I don`t believe that Errol ever actually exposed who the real villain is (or was)? Then the photo of Rumsfeld comes back to me. Recently I`ve seen photos of Himmler touring (okay, inspecting) Auschwitz. A little fuzzy light comes on by way of analogy.

Please read my review of Raising Sand on NewsBlaze!

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today...

2008-05-31T07:10:00.003-05:00

Okay, a little more than twenty years since The Potatoes backed up Tiny Tim at Club Dada (May 19th, 1988). This photo was taken on May 18, 1988 and includes Hubert Winnubst (on left), French Acers, Mister Tim, Will Clay, & John Kays (me). Big Bucks Burnett & Jack Turlington (left to right) are in the front. When Tiny Tim showed up to our funky rehearsal space, The Tater Palace, he had his ukelele in a Neiman Marcus shopping bag. This was his standard way of carrying his musical instrument (to the best of my recollection). We LOVED Mister Tim, & will always love him. I LOVE those Potatoes and Mister Bucks too (& will always love em). If you would like to hear a more detailed account of that historic night, send me a comment! Maybe, I can get these guys (the retired, still living, former Potatoes & Big Bucks) to write their stories too, if you would dig it!

Please read my beautifully edited (by Judyth Piazza) review of Raising Sand on NewsBlaze too. This is my first music review, so don`t be too critical of me. I will improve with time. I did that with music too, as best as I can recall.

RAISING SAND

2008-05-28T18:26:00.003-05:00

RAISING SAND-ROBERT PLANT/ALISON KRAUSS-MAJOR GRAND SLAM! BY JOHN G. KAYS

Great Caesar`s Ghost, heavens ta mergatroid, (as Snagle Puss use to say) by cracky, Robert Plant IS a God on “Raising Sand” (Rounder) and Alison Krauss IS an Appalachian Sappho, fiddling feistily and piping odes of love-lost in pleasant pitch. Yet T Bone Burnett is Zeus himself pulling the marionette strings of these sundry lesser gods, picking up perfect songs, providing fresh arrangements for such rarities, and using a stack of veteran musicians who bless us with subtleties unfolding with each new listen. “Raising Sand” is a rusty squeeze box, a faded glass menagerie, a curio of a long lost era that belongs to none. I`ve been to Candyland and I`ve played Candyland (but I`ve never been to Electric Ladyland, but sure would dig it); nonetheless the bonding of this odd couple, twilight of the gods arena rocker and smoky mountain diva, works for reasons unknown, a perfect storm of banjo, golden throats, fiddle, electric guitar, a thousand permutations of percussion, and a genius record producer who knows his way around the block and then some.

I`ve invoked a mystery muse for this tidbit, a forgotten recipe stuffed in a ceramic Elvis cookie jar, crooning away on a microphone, and thus I`m ‘In Search of a Lost Chord’ here (in so many words), and so gather fodder from what I have compiled from my forefathers, the Maximilien Robespierres (would you believe the Vladimir Lenins?) of rock music criticism. I can still remember seeing Lester Bangs popping a vinyl LP on the turntable, then waxing hysterically, or cursin` the rock stars who wail these tunes or spit these riffs out an` wax em in so many grooves for hungry freaks. I frantically turned this platter “Raising Sand” over more than 150 times, stood on my head, read other coverage, isolated the instruments, listened to each section of every song, but found only an ineffability present, some alien sounds that left me on a vessel with no particular destination in mind, both in terms of the process for telling and the isolation of the musical DNA contained within the album itself.

My review is a distillation of bits and pieces, scratch pad doodles, misty recollections, or looking-glass scraps from a yellowing 1969 Rolling Stone, lying solitary on some stacks of an abandoned archive, catching dust. They did it right back then anyway. I began a solemn search for a method to this madness, that is, what is the process that one should use to write a music review? Ed Ward is a member of the Yahoo Group that I belong to, CasaGrandeEast, and so I had the opportunity to question him about this issue. I asked Ed, one of the original music critics for Rolling Stone (but so much more these days in terms of writing-travel, food, art, history, the Berlin Connection, and lots of other stuff make up his ingredients), “What process do you use to write a music review?” I will include his response in tact and let it speak for itself. ‘To be honest? I can`t answer that question. In fact, it doesn`t even make sense to me. I will, however, repeat something John Burks, who was managing editor at Rolling Stone when I was there, used to say, “Just imagine you heard something you want to turn your friends onto. What do you tell them?” A bit over-simplified, but something to think about (Ed Ward-an email).’

I tried to take his advice, but only morsels sifted into my consciousness. I listened to the record in many different moods, and in odd environments such as the urban jungle of Sixth Street, with hollow hobos driftin` at dawn. I even scribbled some lines outdoors at UT by the LBJ Library, while college students were shooting a video (I`m still wondering why the girls were in bikinis and one cat was dressed up as a clown?), Yea, I was armed solely with my MP3 player and my trusty parker pen; I slovenly jotted down lackluster sketches in my Office Depot (you can almost feel the sterility) notebook. But something was missing; hadn`t the ‘big boys’, back in the day, felt those gaping black holes when their editors were begging them for copy on the most recent offering of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer? I recalled that Lester Bangs had a similar empty feeling, had a clear sense that a vacuum permeated rock music itself, that the well was now poison you see; yea, ROCK WAS DEAD! It took Punk Rock to resurrect Lester back from the departed (to cure his writer`s block) and to put a fire back under him (like he had felt with The Doors in the Sixties). When I put this together, I suddenly felt a fresh spark myself from the likes of Plant, Krauss, and Burnett, and the light bulb came on in a strange way; these were the founts of spring water that sprinkled my brow with sweetness, stardust brushed over me, and my shape altered. I was a spick-and-span man again, and hurried home and put my ailing ears right `gainst my Beovox S40 Bang & Olufsen speakers, the most perfect ear-boxes that ever were-they have served me for three decades-; eureka, mesmerizing music transported my spirits to the spheres of the Mousai!

I ain`t no Mark Twain and I ain`t no Lester Bangs, I ain`t even no Prairie Miller, but I was shocked when I found out that I was sufferin` from a mild case of writer`s block as I banged staccato strokes on my Gateway relic of a keyboard. (Stop your cleverness people, I know you`re saying, “John, you may not know it, but you have ‘terminal writer`s block’”). I transcend this malady (presently) by reading the greats of rock criticism (Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, and Ed Ward), hoping some of the good juju will rub off on me. Maybe if I give the appearance that I`m having some fun, the stigma or better yet the stigmata, will lift. When I read Lester he doesn`t hold back nothing`-writes whatever he feels like-and this only increases his audience. In fact, this is why we like him so much, because he`s a self-indulgent, pompous, narcissistic asshole who thinks higher of himself than a bunch of stupid rock musicians who he constantly has to plaster an obnoxious wallpaper-of-words-on for the paltry pulp of Creem and Rolling Stone. This is why he is our hero. And as I pondered, chewed on these revelations, I tossed overboard the lions share of my editing abilities; hey, this isn`t “The Sound And The Fury” by William Faulkner, I thought to myself, after all! Yea, I let myself go and didn`t give it a second thought.

This album is a brontosaurus trudging through the verdure, or rather through the sand, and getting its bully way as it carves a path of destruction through the primeval rain forest of Tunes Ville. The reason that it challenges us so potently is that it has jettisoned some sacred barriers of music that would normally come through the forms of bluegrass, country, pop, mega-rock, or even ballads, and so something modish emerges. It`s not a singer-songwriter record either, and thank God for that! As soon as we spot it here as a horse-of-a-different-color, by way of miracle the Technicolor turns on so very brightly and we`re Dorothies crashin` in the Merry Olde Land of Oz with a kaplunk, after the twister unmercifully whirls us there. Robert reclaims his throne in heaven because of this serendipity, this realignment of the orbs, but probably it`s a result of so many magic tricks by the Merlin T Bone Burnett, where bluegrass and rock can morph to an au courant species of music never heard by temporal beings heretofore.

We take off with a thud on the first song “Rich Woman” an R and B shuffle, a catchy vocal duet for Robert and Alison, where dollars and sex appeal (the money/honey dichotomy) go hand in glove. The percussion is up in the mix and the delay on the guitar, that is also flanged coolly in the middle eight, reminds me of the early Sun Sessions, the Mystery Train thing or The Killer`s brawlings on “Whole Lotta Shakin` Goin` On”. The second track is a heartfelt “Killing The Blues” penned by Rowland Salley, and is a sad poetic ode with soothing harmonies; moreover, this is a vocal capstone for Ms. Krauss. The pedal steel guitar by Gregory Leisz slowly jacks up the lyrics off the page, ‘bouncing over a white cloud’, guitars are stacked to the sky and blended tenderly; here blues are a viable path to optimism.

“Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” is the most melodic song of all with droning drums and banjo and fiddle interplay, and is a particularly canny showcase for Alison`s pipes. The song was written by Sam Phillips, an Ex of producer T Bone, and the B-section is one of the most beautiful I`ve ever heard, since Mary Hopkins` “Those Were the Days”, written by Paul McCartney in the early Apple Record days. “Polly Come Home Again” is slow and dirge-like and was penned by Gene Clark of The Byrds fame. Robert Plant provides an apropos monotone to the sad lyrics that speak of a love loss, ‘I felt much of the pain as it begins.’ I dug up some backlog on The Byrds at this rest stop, reread Bud Scoppa`s famous piece in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History Of Rock & Roll (1976, 1980) and felt Byrdsie fingerprint smudges present (when I dusted for them) throughout this spectacular oeuvre of Americana. I`m listening to “Eight Miles High” at this very moment, and see the changes of the country right before my very eyes (as if I`m watching a history time-capsule film of the Sixties)!

“Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)” is the punchy pop hit from the record with a fun video, an oasis of bright yellow in a sea of blue. “Through the Morning, Through the Night” is another Gene Clark song and is given a country interpretation with pedal steel guitar twangin` against overdubbed harmonies by Alison. The arrangements are minimal, the piece is understated and paced; this lament by Gene Clark is sincerely sad and seduces you into this melancholic mood, a love loss that can not easily be repaired. A refreshing digression for me was the discovery of Gene Clark`s solo project “Echoes”, a dusty gem by way of grandma`s attic, a seldom heard clarion burst of flower-power from 1967 that`s getting robust rotation from yours truly! I can not play this enough, “Echoes” is sensational!

I`m goin` back in gradually. Back down the river where hostility is all around, and the primitives shoot their poisonous darts at me with impunity. I still remember that Rock & Roll killed Lester Bangs! As I was watching Indiana Jones the other day, I realized that this form was dead too. Lester felt the same way when he listened to over-produced Seventies rock with synthesizers, such as ELO! But this album brings me back to America and I return gracefully to the heartland of Americana, where Tom Waits and Townes Van Zandt reside, and hobos make a fire and tell stories of endurance. And the Neville Brothers are pickin` `til the break of dawn, and T Bone gets it all, and broken New Orleans is on the mend, and banjos or fiddles remind us of Seeger or Guthrie or Bobby and we are home again. I can read through “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll” as if it`s for the first time, and it`s fresh and revealing to me. And all because some musicians got together and agreed to play some songs, but they were bringing miles of experience to the table, and things came together to create a new paradigm, but all the old forms were still there, but used again in an unusual way. That is a paradox if you think on it.

With thumpy bass and jaunty rhythms behind “Please Read The Letter”, gentle pleas from Mister Plant and urgent harmonies from Ms. Krauss are everywhere, since ‘their walls came falling down’ or ‘the secrets and the memories we cherish in the deep’-touching lyrics and riveting fiddle lead by Ms. K. Just a few Plants moans and a partial penning from Jimmy Page, injects this with some Zeppelin-zap that squirms and gyrates loosely, clear-see right in the grooves when you look at the vinyl under a microscope. Another listening today revealed the beauty of the shimmering harmonies. These two should team up permanently! “Trampled Rose” resides in an empty space of the heart, a Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan composition, it`s a bopping lament where banjo is echoing and percussion racket is thumping, traces of xylophone and strings, it sounds like you are in a tunnel. I feel safe here inside Tom Waits` world of carnies and misbegotten outcasts, but I feel mostly empty such as a homeless critic hitching rides with a sign (will write for food) on a lonesome interstate, Highway 61!

“Fortune Teller”, written by Naomi Neville, conjures images of Madam Marie Laveau for me and the occult arts of New Orleans. I love the Rolling Stones earlier take on it, and this minimalist version is a clever arrangement where by the first half of the song is soft, then it breaks open with some joltin` guitar and sweaty metal bendin` by Mark Ribot- dude, this rocked my world! The middle section has only hand clappin` and treated primal female vocals that is really ingenious, just before the Bad section. “Stick With Me Baby”, a pop-country song penned by Mel Tillis, is a tasty little ditty, a classy duo where the vocals are subtly blended and the electric guitars are drenched in reverb.

“Nothin`” is the most distinct arrangement of all the songs on the album from the composer`s original version. The vocal lines are light, then the relief-response-part wails with fuzzy guitar and frolicking fiddle; the dynamics are astounding and put me in my place! “Nothin`” was written by the dearly departed Townes Van Zandt, who fairs from these parts (Austin), and is a legend of the highest caliber. I was fortunate enough to see him a few times in the seventies and can attest to his vision as nothin` (pardon for the word) short of revelatory! You would benefit immensely by reading the lyric book as you listen to this. If you can, please dig up some of his original recordings and witness for yourself the brilliance of his feelings and ideas.

“Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson” is a chug-a-lug C and W boogie-woogie shuffle that snaps and pops. Alison belts it out with gusto, but the best is the bluesy guitar with low treble with a four bar accent before each verse. “Your Long Journey” is another tent revival, tear-jerking duo by the twin song-gods that sends a chill down your spine. The autoharp gives it an olde-timey feel and you feel as if you`re gliding down the Mississippi River on a riverboat with Mister Twain as your captain navigating you to New Orleans!

I`m listening to Scarlett Johansson`s “Falling Down” as I write this. It reminds me of Lester Bangs and breakthroughs that have made Rock and Roll a trippy world to dwell in. It has consumed some, though, sucked em into the abyss, ‘everyone knew that hotel was a goner’, Chelsea Hotel I guess, but there is an equality of songs on “Raising Sand”, and the whole thing works together with persnickety like a concept album ought a. ‘My house was full of rings and charms and pretty birds’, and here was the conundrum staring me in the face. The reason I was sufferin` writer`s block was that I had been going back inadvertently to the Seventies into ‘Lester`s Bag of Malaise’, I was there again, and stuck in the muddy puddles of the Eagles, BloodRock, or Nitzinger, but I gotta tow from AAA and raced back on “The Road”, by way of the perfect manuscript for counterculture (that`s on display at the HRC in Austin now), and was resuscitated otra vez (this is modeled from the opening lines of the “Divine Comedy”). It was my blunder to dwell on Led Zeppelin, but Plant suggested them, and this caused me to make a wrong turn onto this “Highway To Hell”. Plant transcends his old role here and is a part of this ‘New Art’. Just think of the title “Raising Sand”, and as illusive as it is, it suggests to me the idea of creating an oasis of art out of an exceedingly dry desert of sand. I could be off base on this, but that is what it is telling me. A vibrant new paradigm emerges from a drought of locusts; this would be an escape from the Seventies and Led Zeppelin for Plant, you see! Okay, I may be trippin`, but that is what I`m seeing! And so my curse dissipated, I didn`t evaporate from the landscape such as Lord Carnarvon (or Lester for that matter) when violating the sacred tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings. So please read the review that I wrote, people!

* This piece is dedicated to the late Lester Bangs, a pioneer of rock music journalism, who had the courage to write what he really felt in his heart to be the truth!

A BLAST OF FLOWER POWER...??

2008-05-10T12:53:00.001-05:00

PLEASE TAKE A JOURNEY TO MY PIECE THE COUNTERFEITERS ON NEWS BLAZE! I NEED TO BOOST MY NUMBERS OVER THERE. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE! ALSO, YOU CAN FIND ME ON VERVEEARTH NOW! JUST CLICK ON AUSTIN AND PUT IT ON ART, MOVIES, OR HISTORY AND YOU WILL FIND CLAUDE BOVEE. IT`S PRETTY NEAT!

I`m longing for a blast of flower power today. This may be partially due to the fact that this story is breaking about possible new bodies being found on Barker Ranch. I didn`t think that the Manson Family story could have such endurance, but it`s coming back to life again. Eerie memories seem to surface, but I surfed itunes for some flower power ditties from a fresher period. I found it in Gene Clark`s Echoes, a 1967 release, a little bit before the over-ripening of psychedelic generation. I downloaded the twenty tracks just like that! To my surprise I have never heard this before. It sounds just like The Byrds, but the quality of the songs is a little sub-par. It still has Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke as the rhythm section. The jingle janglie guitars, possibly twelve string, are stacked to the sky and the harmonies are complex and choir-like, just like The Byrds. I didn`t really know Gene Clark`s story very well, so I read up on him on wikipedia. It`s a sad one along the lines of Townes Van Zandt or Gram Parsons. This is a recurring pattern…I astutely discern. I came to Gene Clark because he wrote two of the songs that appear on Raising Sand, a really spectacular record that I am trying to write a review on. Polly Come Home and Through the Morning, Through the Night are two very fine songs that led me to Gene Clark. Then when I was reading up on The Byrds I realized that he had written many of the mega-hits, like Eight Miles High, I`ll Feel A Whole Lot Better, and Set You Free This Time. I`ve never heard most of the songs on Echoes, but the sound is familiar to me and the tambourine shaking is an old sensation.

Only Colombe is playing right now and has a mandolin rippling throughout. So you Say You Lost Your Baby is the last track…it`s just an acoustic guitar and a vocal and it has double-entendre lyrics and a nasal vocal…very good song. I doubt if many people have ever heard it. Echoes is a big production number. Strings, flutes, and the lyrics are electric. I just read that Terry Melcher was the producer for The Byrds…Eurekia! There`s the Manson connection with Gene Clark that I was able to make through the back door. Melcher actually owned the Sharon Tate mansion and was possibly the real target of the flower molls, if I can remember my Ed Sanders. His book on The Family is really the best one to read, in case you are curious to travel down that Black Brick Road…He headed up the band The Fugs and it`s been a long time since I heard them.

I Knew I`d Want You is a great song too…harmonies all the way through…the guitars are crisp and top off each line. Here Without You reminds me of Eight Miles High, the way the minor key melody cascades up the scale…the harmonies on the chorus are rapturous. I knew I Wanted You is more of a drone, an ode? On Set You Free This Time the melody is atonal, but the sound is full, overdubs are present on the vocals. I`m beginning to believe that the folk/rock label of The Byrds was largely due to the influence of Gene Clark. Boston is a catchy one and starts off the album. For Me Again is maybe the best song on the record. In listening to these ancient songs I feel like I am in a museum for ancient music. I`ve found some very old tracks and as I look at the ghost town photos of Barker Ranch a chilly feeling comes over. I can`t find my old Byrds, so it`s lost, just like many of these great stars who have succumbed to substance abuse…wasted talent. I sure needed this blast from the past today, and I don`t know exactly why? So you say you lost your baby…if they find some lost flower children buried behind Barker Ranch we will discover something odd from the past. Maybe Manson really is The Devil! But I need a fix of positive flower power today…not the Dark Force of The Sixties!

THE COUNTERFEITERS (DIE FALSCHER)

2008-04-29T06:50:00.001-05:00

THE COUNTERFEITERS (DIE FALSCHER) by John G. Kays
**** ½ stars

‘A True Tale of Bogus Bills and Shaky Scruples’

We wrestle with some universal issues here, our souls are rattled precipitously by such subhuman atrocities; what is protocol for a prisoner in a concentration camp? Are the instincts of survival exclusively at play, or should one pay homage to ethereal ethical principles? The Counterfeiters, an Oscar winner this year for best foreign film (in German with English subtitles), is a charged package of drama that puts us in the line of fire. You and I are precisely there. No escaping is possible; we are forced to confront the abominations of incarceration by a ruthless throng of bully Fascists. With a staggering story snatched from the pages of history, creditable acting, and resonating themes, I am awarding it four and a half stars out of five. The discriminating acting of Karl Markovics as Sally is a study in emotive nuance and props it (the movie) up on a pedestal. Tonight (April 27th) I will watch Nazi Scrapbooks From Hell, a documentary about Auschwitz done by Erik Nelson, that uses photographs to bring these harrowing events to life. This is a non-fiction complement to the project under scrutiny here. Some films are just for fun, while others are made of the sterner stuff; The Counterfeiters is in the latter category and should be filed in ‘the library of freedom’ under: ‘required viewing for all who cherish democracy’, if such a classification might be uncovered.

The Counterfeiters (Die Falscher) is the story of Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a master counterfeiter of currency and a forger of passports and documents. He is arrested and sent to the concentration camp Mauthausen in 1936, surely because he is a Jew, not because he is a criminal. Later he is transferred to Sachsenhausen and is commissioned by Herzog (David Striesow), the same S.S. officer who first arrested him, to create a factory for fake currency. First they perfect British pound notes and even cajole the experts at the Bank of England, then they try to tackle the dollar, but run into some complications in duplicating it. Salomon Sorowitsch recruits a consortium of talented cronies, such as printers, chemists, graphic artists, and typographers for the Nazi enterprise. Specifically, the charge is to flood the western economies with bogus bills in order to sabotage those markets, and champion the charades of The Third Reich. The drama takes place within the confines of Sachsenhausen and is a survival story blearily in the template of Stalag 17 or Bridge Over the River Kwai.

The coveted inmates, in sharp contrast to say the condemned prisoners of Auschwitz, have bed linen, running water, piped in opera, and actual food, but the sound of gunfire and screams leak into their quarters as they play ping-pong or discuss their plight during spotty idle moments. As they succeed in producing the British pound the moral question arises: are we giving aid to the Nazis too freely? They begin to stumble while working on the dollar and are threatened with the gas chamber by Herzog, who is under pressure by Heinrich Himmler himself .

A trademark of this story is its ground in history; the screenplay, written by Stefan Ruzowitzky, (he does a proper job as director too) is culled from Adolf Burger`s (a Communist with scruples) The Devil`s Workshop. These memoirs document the scheme of the Nazis to counterfeit pound notes and dollars, a top secret project called Operation Bernhard, and as proof of its existence over one billion pounds in banknotes were recovered by the allies at the end of the war. The real Salomon Sorowitsch was a Russian Jew named Salomon Smolianoff. The counterfeit operation was directed by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and its commander, Reinhard Heydrich, who is also remembered (for certain infamously) as a master architect of the Holocaust. Noteworthy in its irony is the German slogan on the front entrance gate of Sachsenhausen: Arbeit Macht Fre; translated as “work brings freedom”.

The Counterfeiters is a focused character study of Solomon Sorowitsch, who has a knack for surviving in sticky circumstance. “Sally” is ever the pragmatist, who gives the Nazis their every wish, but by contrast, Adolph Burger (August Diehl) is an idealist willing to sabotage the operation for his beliefs. Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow), the commander of Sachsenhausen, secretly protects the expert counterfeiter, but as the Russians surround Berlin, he weathers the downgrades with struggle. Hauptscharfuhrer Holst (Martin Brambach) is an S.S. psycho who sadistically shoots prisoners for little reason. One critic has compared him to Colonel Klink or Sergeant Schultz in the TV staple, Hogan`s Heroes. Actually, this is a serious, chilly portrayal of a Nazi criminal, so no trace of comedy is conceivable; Holst is a big player in making the Holocaust a reality, and so the comparison is lame and inappropriate.

The incandescent acting of Karl Markovics is a bolt of lightning; you are inside his character as he circumnavigates Nazi landmines and plucks his confederates like pop-strings under a warm June sky. His Sally is shifty and criminal-like with a greedy twinkle in his eyes. Markovics masters the ‘life-long offender’ angle of Sorowitsch with his dodgy eyes and angular face. His demeanor is crafty, nuanced, and he ambles about with chameleon-like instincts-he rides his environs with the dexterity of a high-wire acrobat-a Walinsky perchance. Early on while still at Mauthausen he paints some picture-perfect portraits of Nazi officers, gaining their confidence. At Sachsenhausen he assembles a crack-A-squad that grinds out the fake British notes like an efficient Model-T-Ford assembly line. His portrayal is multifaceted though, and he evokes humanity for the prisoner with TB by feeding him and arranging for his needed medication from Herzog. Sally is humiliated by Holst in one scene (Holst urinates on him in a latrine) and he is filled with rage-he yanks out the wash basin in the bathroom! This signals a tell-tale shift in his perspective.

His balanced portrayal is complimented by August Diehl`s role of Adolf Burger as the idealist who is willing to openly defy the Nazis. Devid Striesow as the commander Friedrich Herzog is on middle ground and he too survives through stealth and maneuvering. Finally, there is Holst (Martin Brambach) who is more of the garden variety, nefarious Nazi-robot killer, but that is not to say that just such brutes did not exist in Hitler`s real Reich. Coupled with the somber gray tones of the filming, an ambience of realism and depth projects from the screen; but as an oxymoron the acting is otherworldly!

A revelation for me is the plethora of striking scenes that freely pop into my mind throughout the day, with only a slightest suggestion. The fact that I can keep replaying the tape in my head is testament to its visual caliber. A few of the images are: the exhibition of the perfectly duplicated British pound by the crafty crew to Herzog. Another is a simple ping-pong game that is interrupted by gunfire just over the fence, when yet a further pointless execution is carried out by Holst. I can still see it, if I think on it. Next I envisage the rapid stealing of a mostly eaten S.S. officer`s apple by Sally, then his own consumption of said apple core in a flash of a millisecond. The most vivid though, is one of the final scenes, where Sally carries the dead comrade who has TB to a designated convening point after the liberation of the concentration camp. Sorowitsch`s conversion to a ‘real humanity’ is consummated in this exact scene. Did I not detect a dew-drop-tear in the eye of each and every member of the audience-yes, in just this moment of time? The director of photography was Benedict Neuenfels and kudos should be clipped in at this juncture for the starkness, the clammy grays of his camera images. I actually awoke from a startled dream this very morn with the residue of the final sequence referenced still lodged in my circuits!

The theme of The Counterfeiters is the moral dilemma that Sally finds himself in: “to be or not to be”, in a nutshell. Should he simply appease the Nazis and increase the probability of his survival, or should he defy them for his convictions (if he has any), then in short order be scurried off to the gas chambers? Just such a quandary is the focus of these ninety-eight moisture-brow minutes! My best observation is that Sorowitsch seems as if he is playing both sides of the fence, but favors ‘survival’ over ‘idealism’, in fair measure. I thought of Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons, by way of contrast, who makes very different decisions; he is courageous enough to stand up for his beliefs, and refuses to sanction King Henry VIII`s annulment to his queen, Katherine of Aragon. Thus, he loses his head to the axe man for his lofty principles. Sally ‘outlives’ the war and gambles leisurely in Monte Carlo after some very troubling days.

THE COUNTERFEITERS (DIE FALSCHER)

2008-04-21T12:33:00.004-05:00

‘A True Tale of Bogus Bills and Shaky Scruples’

“The Counterfeiters”, an Oscar winner this year for Best Foreign Film, is a powerful piece of film in terms of its story, acting, and theme. The story is grounded in history, since the screenplay is based on the book “The Devil`s Workshop” by Adolf Burger. Salomon ‘Sally” Sorowitsch, the anti-hero master forger here, is commissioned by the Nazis (in 1944 at Sachsenhausen concentration camp) to counterfeit currency with the goal of flooding the western economies with phony bills so that they might sabotage those markets. Sally recruits some experts from the talent pool, such as printers, chemists, graphic artists, and typographers for this brazen Nazi enterprise. The better part of this drama is played out within the cold, gray confines of this “work camp”, just outside of Berlin. Three standout scenes that I must note here are: the presentation of the fake British pounds to Friedrich Herzog (the commander of Sachsenhausen), the ping-pong game that is interrupted by gunfire just over the fence, and the painful liberation of the camp, where the “Operation Bernhard” prisoners are nearly shot by some common populous prisoners.

The understated acting of Karl Markovics as Sally is a study in emotive nuance; his Sorowitsch is shifty and guileful with dodging eyes and an angular face. He wreaks, breaths ‘survival’! An example of this is the way he paints perfect portraits of S.S. officers at Mauthausen (his earlier camp) in order to placate them. Yet at other times he is compassionate and dons a conscience that guides him through his hardships. Other actors offer superb performances as well, such as August Diehl in the role of the idealist Adolf Burger or Devid Striesow as the manipulating commander Friedrich Herzog.

The theme of “The Counterfeiters” is the moral dilemma that Sally finds himself in: “to be or not to be”, in a nutshell. Should he simply appease the Nazis and increase the probability of his survival, or should he defy them for his convictions (if he has any), then in short order be scurried off to the gas chambers? Just such a quandary is the focus of these ninety-eight moisture-brow minutes! My best observation is that Sorowitsch seems as if he is playing both sides of the fence, but favors ‘survival’ over ‘idealism’, in fair measure. I thought of Sir Thomas More in “A Man For All Seasons”, by way of contrast, who makes very different decisions; he is courageous enough to stand up for his beliefs, and refuses to sanction King Henry VIII`s annulment to his queen, Katherine of Aragon. Thus, he loses his head to the axe man for his lofty principles. Sally ‘outlives’ the war and gambles leisurely in Monte Carlo after some very troubling days.

JIMMY CARTER: MAN FROM PLAINS

2008-04-06T17:59:00.003-05:00

*(please visit me on News Blaze! Need to get my #s up-at the bottom of the barrel for now-please support me in this effort!)
Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains is directed by Jonathan Demme and is a good snapshot of the former president while on a national book tour for his controversial best selling work: Palestine-Peace Not Apartheid. I`ve read most of the book and acquired my copy at BookPeople when Carter came to Austin. I got to actually see the president and had my copy of the book personally signed. The portrayal by Demme is favorable and shows the courage of Jimmy in the face of criticism for his views about the way Israel treats the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Carter argument is very sensible, and simply shows the way Israel have fenced these people in and oppresses them the way whites have oppressed blacks in South Africa. This is where Apartheid comes in by way of an analogy. There are no flaws in Jimmy`s argument as presented. “The largest mental institution in the country is the Los Angeles County jail.” Rosilyn Carter gives a speech on the problem of mental illness. Jimmy is still very fit and mentally alert and still a big force for peace in the Middle East…A lot of airports and airplanes…Kenneth Stein, a director of the Carter Center, quits during the book tour. Footage of a bombing in Jerusalem. A bombing in Tel Aviv…Atlanta Georgia at the Carter Center. They discuss Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Everyone can enact change…See the world with fresh eyes…Security needs on the West Bank…defense of Israeli position. In a hotel again. Book is very carefully checked for accuracy. Does a reading from one of his book. Contract with Simon Schuster. No negotiations in Middle East since President Clinton. Candidates who oppose Israel will lose their support. Only two check points in the Gaza Strip. Carter rides a bike. Camp David Accords footage. Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin screaming at each other. I love Jimmy Carter. Gas Crisis was a very odd thing to experience. Not one hostage died as a result of Carter`s reaction to the Iranian Hostage Crisis. I`ve studied the Malaise speech and find it honest and revealing. Sake of peace, Begin speaks…Carter has done it…no one else can. “Musicians Village” build a house. Not enough is getting done for home loans for families…Sound track is reflective…Al Escovedo does some of the songs, all instrumental, acoustic…good background music…Now Los Angeles rap music talking on the cell phone. In dressing room for make-up. Loss of land. Loss of freedom. Jimmy with Edward Norton on Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Do you remember Jimmy Carter in Playboy Magazine? He had lust in his heart…Ignore Arab Terrorism? Let the Gaza people get out of the fence. Fence designed to take land. The Geneva Accords to start with. Aljazeera. Riz Khan. Comprehensive peace agreement. Impediment aggression from Israelis. Casa de Laundry. Drives through LA. Good Spanish but he`s rusty. Rosa and I read the bible in Spanish for thirty years. Last thing of the night. In airport again. Friendly to passengers on plane. Music is New Agy, mellifluous, dreamy, a little country. Phoenix AZ. Book is not about Isreali. Mandatory separation and persecution of people. Noxious. Adobe flats cloudy skies Israelite protests…a book of lies..signs copiesPalestinian side then hatred upon us they treat us like nothing. Carter in car and getaway…publicist with him the whole time…human rights abuse in Palestine. Bound together in the Brother of Abraham. Swimming now. The Department of Energy created in his term…Alan Dershowitz doesn`t like it. I supported him 1976. Reasonable debate. Hitler perpetrated one of the worst crimes, the so called holocaust. Hamas was elected freely…Hamas equivalent of Nazis. Hamas terrorist cockroaches. Speaks at Brandeis. Provocative title. Brings the controversy to the public. I`ve been hurt. Called a liar, and a bigot, a coward, an anti-semite. This hurts me. A Harvard professor is not needed. Jimmy Carter is a genius.

10,000 B.C. YET AGAIN??

2008-03-29T08:50:00.006-05:00

*(VISIT ME OVER AT NEWS BLAZE & ROTTEN TOMATOES)

10,000 B.C. -A NUMBSKULL-QUASI-CAVEMAN-GENRE-SPINOFF WITH A SPOT OF SPECTACLE by John G. Kays

‘It was important for me to not over do it National Geographic style.’ Steven Strait on his role as D`Leh.

‘Lana, zug-zug.’ Grunts from Ringo Starr in Caveman 1981.

It looks like the light of day is dimming on this Easter Sunday and I am still rubbernecking the entrails of 10,000 B.C.? I replay the clip of the freeing of the saber-tooth tiger by D`Leh for parallels. Daniel and the Lion perhaps? Curiously, why did Roland Emmerich spend two years on the CGI of 10,000 B.C.; is Tony-The-Tame-Tiger and Wimpy-Wally-the-Wooly-Mammoth all he could conjure in the laboratory? Gadzooks, these cartoons are not that scary! The chomping gargantuan ostriches look like Thanksgiving Day turkeys shot full steroids and hybrid nutrients. This stuck out like a sore thumb, but was pleasant pulp inserted in these meandering (meaningless) excursions through tropical jungles; is this yet another Mayan-laden Central America of yesteryear (see Apocalypto)?

Now close your eyes, my pretty! You are getting drowsy, you are falling into a deep, deep slumber. I command you to jump through the white canvas screen and now you are literally in the movie 10,000 B.C. The plot, if you can detect one, is packaged in a frame of three periods. The first third covers the Ice Age (shot in New Zealand) and just includes some military training (see 300) and then the big wooly mammoth hunt, where d`Leh snags a big bull and gets the sacred white spear. The second third is the Amazonian Tropical Rain Forest segment (shot in South Africa), or the Jungle Book period, and includes the capture of some tribes people of Yagahl by the “four-legged demons” (Tartar-like equestrian warriors that are teeming with evil). Especially noteworthy is the snagging of the princess Evolet (Camilla Belle) whose destiny is mostly prophesized as a ‘pivotal one’.

Alright, I hope you are still drowsy. Oh, I am certain of it after snacking on this pompous piece of pie. Your eyelids could use some close-pins, I do believe. Nonetheless, the third and final portion of B.C. is the Egyptian-Desert-Pyramid-period (shot in Namibia), where stupid slaves are building leviathan pyramids with beaucoup Wooly-Mammoths at the behest of some odd anteater-looking high priests with real long, spooky claws. I don`t have the slightest idea what they are up to, I just know that they are evil critters of the highest caliber, and they seem to mirror some of the tricks of the bad guys in the movie Matrix. Go ahead and see for yourself? Oh yea, the “four-legged demons” are employed by this goofy priest cult. The finale is a Coors Light Spartacus with mostly fake violence.This is the crescendo and resembles the ‘let my people go’ loop (from The Ten Commandments), and as such D`Leh amasses an army of down and outs and commences to bust up this greedy party of golden-calf-idle-worshippers. Evolet plays a key part in the liberation too, but I am not certain just how? I do know she comes back from the dead, yea, resurrects right before your eyes, when the shaman-medicine-woman, Ma-Ma from the Adam`s Family back at the homeland, channels some magic across the universe. I know it turns out happily ever after, but the scrapping is ‘but a light affair’, as Santa Anna once said in conjunction with the siege of the Alamo. Gee whiz, that is most of it.

Anachronisms flourish like moldy fungus in and on B.C., but thrill you with their audacity. “Roland and I never intended for 10,000 B.C. to be a documentary.” Words of Kloser again. No problem, comprende senor! A few fauxpas` for ya: pyramids in 10,000 years ago? Dreadlocks on hunter-gatherers? Proper English diction? Weren`t wooly mammoths already extinct at this time? Military sailboats on this fake river Nile? Did One Million Years B.C. have as bountiful of a basket of anachronisms? At least we got to see Raquel Welch in that rockin` Flintstones` bikini! Ostriches the size of giraffes snapping at the little tickie boy? Can D`Leh cross time zones by multiple millenniums too? It doesn`t matter actually, in fact, it makes it funnier. A narcissistic comment here is in order. I was hoping to make this piece inspired, logical, and even with smooth transitions, the way good writing is suppose to be (as Judyth Piazza, the editor here, would want it, I surmise), but B.C. is so stupid, banal, irrational, historically inaccurate, and lopsided, that I don`t think it would be possible for me to apply any writing virtues in its portrayal. This is a clever rationale for the imperfections of this writing, don`t you think?

“Only time can teach us what is truth and what is legend.” Omar Sharif provides the narration that is overview for the gospel of the oppressed Yagahl, a tribe of Rastafarian cavemen with exquisite English diction. The screenplay is written by Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser; it would be comical to read it in a script format. They created their own theology for this Paleolithic culture of hunter-gatherers. I do not need to see all the specifics, but it looks like a zany kaleidoscope (from my tree nest) of classic fragments, ransacked from say Cecil B. Demille`s The Ten Commandments or Mel Gibson`s Apocalypto, arbitrarily glued together into a tripping, fanciful collage of a B movie. I did not see Ice Age but it has been suggested that some of this was chunked in the mix as well. My own spot of gray matter senses some lifts from Jungle Book; they can be seen through the shop window, if you look hard enough.

I will be brief on the acting and music. Steven Strait, Camille Belle, and Cliff Curtis are manikins, crash test dummies for this empty caveman genre spectacle. They might as well have just twiddled their thumbs on the sets, but not that they didn`t do just that. The acting is easy to describe: it`s a polar bear in a snow storm, white on rice, lifeless bodies that phone it in. The music score by Harald Kloser contains misplaced notes, out of sync fanfares, obnoxious and intrusive; the football is greasy and squirts out of his hands, yea, he fumbles on the twenty yard line and the audience grabs for their earplugs but can not find them in the nick of time. Even Red Skelton himself is a better composer than that Kloser dude!

“Did I miss something?”, I asked myself as I exited the theater. I scratched my head in befuddlement as I pondered the convoluted theology that was generated by the flickering footage. When I got home I thumbed through the Bhagavad Gita for clues to fathom Emmerich`s vision. The Bhagavad Gita was created in 10,000 B.C. so it must contain keys to the universal understanding of say, the shaman-medicine-woman (Ma-Ma) draped in bone-beads who saw it all. I knew that D`Leh (Steven Strait) was a prophet and savior for the indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes seeking freedom from the bondage of the priest cult now ruling over the ‘new pyramid culture’. I fancied D`Leh as a Lord Krishna dictating a new philosophy to his troubled people. The blessed Lord Krishna said: “Fire, light, day, the moon`s brightness, the six months of the north-turning sun: dying then, men who are free go to absolute freedom.” Eureka, I was starting to see it now!

Surely there is something in 2001 A Space Odyssey that explains the events that unfold randomly on the screen? There is a beginning, middle, and end to both films so maybe that is the connection. Then I rehashed the tenets of eHarmony, a club that I have just joined, to divine an intersection; maybe D`Leh and the blue-eyed Evolet (Camille Belle) with the spiffy dreadlocks had met on eHarmony? Twenty-seven levels of compatibility would explain the harmonics between the two, wouldn`t it? Banality and boredom set in, then ultimately despair. I thumbed through the images again. Desperately, I turned the leafs of the Old Testament for harbingers. Icelandic legend anyone? A petrified scrap from the blind poet Homer? Come On! Reveal your secrets unto me, oh Karnack The Magnificent?

Why yet another dry review of an obvious cut-out-bin toss off, that will never see the light of day for even another nanosecond, much less a handful of millenniums? For one thing I have the flu currently and am trying to amuse myself until I recover (I will return to a more serious project in short order). Another reason is that readers love to witness shark-jawed critics rip the fatty flesh away from bone on such a paltry piece of pseudo-prehistoric fluff. B.C. is a plump partridge (probably in a pear tree) of caveman days` hocus-pocus; i.e. ripe meat for the carrion crow (film critics). The reader himself likes to join in on the act, yea, this is much appreciated audience participation; then they too can tear off a slab of chi kabob and devour it ritually, then guffaw defiantly at its .09 rating on the Rotten Tomatoes` Tomatometer. This may account for my perusal of all coverage of said film and the actual vacating of my condo to visit my local cinema for a viewing of 10,000 B.C., in person. The irony here is that this film is wracking up big receipts and the critics are receiving more reads, as dumb-down amateurs jawbone `bout the water cooler. Bravo! Everyone comes out a winner! That is cool, my fair weathered friends! B.C. is an oddity preserved in a bottle, a relic of P.T. Barnum that folk can Wow! over; it is a Hindenburg, a Tiny Tim, a Jumbo the Elephant that brushes us with a feather unmercifully. Have you seen Aretha Franklin lately? She fits in (but it is a tight fit) somewhere here, don`t you think?

10,000 B.C. The Legend. The Battle. The First Hero. Huh? This is the cornball slogan that is printed on the arcade poster that you stare at dumbly (that word is coming up a lot) as you enter your favorite local suburban multiplex, in every city known to man, in our great big country. Oh yea, Lost In Time. Duh! 108 minutes of Cheese Whiz and Ritz Crackers? Let`s try to snuff out the light here before a CGI herd of mastodons gets back up and starts charging us! Please bring closure to this thing, Mister John! Before you know it I`ll be pushing up old goat daisies! What we have here really, is a hefty bale of plastic, Pleistocene cotton candy, that gives you a whopper of a stomach ach as you wander through the Neanderthal ‘mall of life’. 10,000 B.C. is the new 2001 A Space Odyssey, April Fools, you gullible buffoon!

COMIN` UP DAISIES-hey, i`m a ginsberg or ferlinghetti too...!!!

2008-03-21T07:26:00.003-05:00

Horizontal shot & freight train in frame he sleeps in all day movies…what a dreadful day I want to see blood pond & treeline screech of train rewind rotten wood grinding political posters weapon da nang in the jungle failure of commonwealth peace mission histoire de art newsreel tunes camera eye on audience rewind to start janus films Gerard beytoud ominous tones gainst red characters anna karina superstar of French new wave velasquez captures shimmering colors ethereal waves imperceptible dust still together in celluloid painter of evening open spaces torrid sunshine ciggies bathtub art book blue floral wallpaper pink skirt director of standard oil scandale girdle ad its invisible age of ass sounds of life babysitter Balzac 5th of Beethoven infrared soap washes fresh aerosol uncommon elegance live through past in past Samuel fuller in paris flowers of evil what is cinema infragreen lamore violence hate emotions hairdo stays light & soft golden silk infrable lingerie loses its lure ciggies in frame necklace earings party jazz toss the cake home sleepy girl you`re alone? Bland days wondering about yourself thunder and lightning four years since we met to want something you have to be alive are you still American car lights garrison massacred by Vietcong loves women his wife his mistress what makes me so sad…in car still and neon red Marianne whistle kissing you all over you`re beautiful my pet see Renoir anna karina good voice cabaret singer barrelhouse piano …so happy in same bed blue eyeliner blank white screen yoko & john imagine love & mirth in film bonnie & clyde again hurral judy garland sad but wistful rosy girls in Renoir red lamp Hitchcock again Bernard herman riffs remember janet leigh fleeing same pathos here Ferdinand & Marianne escape their daily lives for greener pasturesblue bathrobe & bacj Picasso on wall citylife match mag on wall green bottles guns & corpses ditty then edith pioff of golden screen new wave spontaneous words of love rose…bric a brac we could live together ordinary lives…romping tectures bit by bit never let go simple flat bob Dylan with a typewriter allen ginsberg karoac types undulous words groovtflick pounds character art homicide in Toulouse golden armchairs flats & office buildings pathos in white mao se tung gainst manichens gun-running sail away Simbanese liberation army free long time ago paris eifel tower seine sixties brown hair flip red auto ambience total gas…laurel & hardy abbot castello lewis martin mcmanon Carson giant total tender is the night starry night an off w/ear Angola congo revolution in Africa have you ever killed a man strobes of cherry red paranoid park but time ago bring it back look at yourself kisses and pathos rendezvous entering central france student born in 1936 viviane blassel andy Warhol video portraits blue gainst white anna jean-paul liberty equality perfume…film extra fall of Constantinople William of orange study crusades for foibles of west 30,000 saracens gone what bout Algiers again blue brick & door lovers long for warm evening air cartoon arcades pensive piano Copeland & billy the kid were dead ya ever see lost weekend? Sympathy for devil saw at unionhall in 70s revolution anarchy depicted 1965 early radical themes flames in field telephone wires a season of hell narrative of characters in river…themes again wistful tones bucolic greens in wood spring on rack w/ strings stones corn stalks grinding riffs gainst yellow wildflowers van gough café in arles maybe? Natural aire an sounds buses cars wind military fatigues sedan Chinese hat noise gainst fins oil change repair ford gas pumps melancholy mania blue skies anna jumps in jumpsuit carnival toons arcade themes coney island lampoon horns naked together in bed ciggie silhouettes flashback cabarets chatter chaos give us a ton a doe rewind…in one take to park afternoon delight sunglow look at the fool! Car in ocean love must be reinvented…begin to cry ocean blue & sky Riviera back to yesterday waves shells sounds want to start over fetal position beaming rays & stingrays kill in florida…moon is only inhabitant stuff his head full of Lenin ¾ moon birdseye shot fuck me seagulls sand bright sunlight mingle in sand parrots & sanddunes flats stucco white cupids arrow diary an tractors singing in sunshine surreal language poetry wildflowers colors addlib mister godard but shoot naturally no script no story but maybe content cactus shoots and parrot squabbles bread & brooms cham cham cham labo close up shadows wander in water sing & chant parrot & poetry wash out `til footage fades….

10,000 B.C.

2008-03-16T16:02:00.004-05:00

10,000 BC is one of the corniest prehistoric epic flicks that I have ever seen, but I`ve seen quite a few other bloopers as well, in my time. Caveman with Ringo Starr comes to mind along with One Million BC with the rockin` Flintstones` bikini of Raquel Welch. 10,000 BC is racking up the customer count at the box office too, & this says something about peoples preferences for viewing. My guess would be a need for hollow entertainment with pretty good dinosaurs and Geico cavemen that get too much in the way of the action. The reading of 9 % on the tomatometer was shocking, I don`t believe I have ever seen such a low score! This boomeranged for me & caused me to go see it since I was curious about the disconnect between the large quantity of people who want to see it and the universal axing it`s got from the critics! What doesn`t kill you makes you stronger! Oddly, For some unknown reason (none of these could have been strong enough) I actually got in my truck & drove over to Southlake Meadows, `cuz I still had one more flick to burn off on a gift certicate. I should get the congressional medal of honor for braving this mirage of cottoncandy on the eye sockets! The special effects could not have been the draw since they were abysmal compared to say Ray Harryhausen who`s the all-time genius for dinosaur action figures come to life. The plot was one of the dumbest I have ever seen and the acting was double bogey tanker-takes that couldn`t even substitute for blooper-takes. The mamasita-shaman-medicine-woman draped in bone-beads was kind of a nice touch and the dread-lock-rastafarian-hunter-gatherers were out-a-time weirdoes with too much cake-make-up & crusty scabs & lice. Tony the saber-tooth tiger was too wimpy & didn`t devour hardly any cave-boy types. The hordes of woolie mammoths run about recklessly, but are dumb beyond belief & just fill the screen with hair and feet & tusks `til you think ya will upchuck your popcorn. Did anyone get the bit about the daddy splitting to found a new colony? I was having trouble putting that together too,…a with the Egyptian-like slave culture who were building those funky new pyramids, what did that have to do with diddlysquat? Half of the action takes place in white cold regions and half happens in hot tropical rainforest terain, & this is a good move in terms of contrast & composition. & what about that kinky ant-eater looking leader with the long claws of the New Civilization Cult? It was hard to tell what he was up to or where he came from. Was he maybe the hero`s dad? & that was weird the way the princess comes back to life after the shaman mama blows out that icy breath? I missed something…but will be able to review the chapters once the DVD comes out. It wasn`t really that violent, but I don`t know that it would be improved with more gratuitous killing…but maybe it would? It could have benefited from some meaner dinosaurs, like T-Rex, but I suppose they were extinct by 10,000BC. But why try to be accurate about the prehistoric timeline with this clunker? It doesn`t make sense but it don`t matter anyhows! Almost thirty-six million take home so far, this is the most important thing to remember at this point. I did love the costumes & make-up, the wild hairdos and grease paint galore and sandy thick cake makeup on their pusses. I will study the look again for next year`s Halloween costume. For the plot i`m wondering if they were looking at Homer or maybe retelling a story from the Old Testament, but it looks like the writers were covering their tracks pretty good. I know there was some Egyptian stuff in there, but the hieroglyphs were beyond my ken! One good thing is I`m considering putting the aforementioned titles with Ringo & Raquel to the top of my Netflix queue. I have to reconsider why this caveman thing is so appealing. Once I do that I can figure out the charms of 10,000 BC. Now that`s a stupid goal that will chew up lots of time! Oh well…I`m just that stupid I suppose. I do have a working theory as to why the caveman genre films are so popular. People want to think back to the way things were eons & thousands of years ago, & they like to channel how they would survive in the thick of things-wooly mammoths, four-legged crusaders, & dinosaurs of course. The dumber the producer makes the flick, the better the box-draw will be! That`s the formula & that Roland Emmerich knows that. In fact, if he made it series it would flop. A series loop would be 2001 A Space Odyssey, the beginning part. But this is not a pure caveman genre product, so it does not count. People want it to be corny so they can praise there own empty lives! Now you see it, don`t you? The worst the reviews, the better the draw too. This has an inverse function-formula on it that can make someone millions in receipts by recognizing the secret pattern. The pecking flamingoes are really obnoxious & this helps the movie too. The slave rebellion was cool & was kind of a Spartacus thing. The hero dude is a savior for the repressed cave-people on this bummer mission of building the city of gold or whatever it is? The theology here is illusive but one can vaguely comprehend multiple spirits at work here, but the mama mia-supremo gets it & reads the tea leaves with precision. I think everyone lives happily ever after in the end, but it`s a little hard to tell. Is that the impression that you got? Another epiphany I just had is this is Drive-In fodder, & that can translate into big bucks, but that type of outlet does not exist anymore! IE the Cinemarks of the world can absorb that business!

AND GOD CREATED WOMAN...THE SEQUEL

2008-03-15T11:55:00.012-05:00

*( CHECK ME OUT ON ROTTEN TOMATOES-I`M GROOVYFLICK OVER THERE)
Bonnie & Clyde...Bonnie & Clyde...And God Created Woman started something Dionysian for the stiff Americano. Brigitte loosens us up and Cold War paranoiac behaviors vanish into the atmosphere. The paparazzi came into being with pics of Brigitte. Maybe it initiated the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Brigitte Bardot was free and natural and visually stunning. The 1950s in the U.S. were stiff and inhibited with Doris Day epitomizing lady stardom with corny parts and bellowing songs. And God…came out in 1956 and suddenly things have changed. The superstar looked stunning to Americans, in part because she was French, and the French Riviera, and sunny, free St. Tropez was an exotic place of Americano dreams…escape from the states to romantic interludes where you play on the beach all day and cha, cha, cha in the cafes by night.
The brilliant blue Mediterranean was gorgeous beyond belief and the French language poetry to stodgy local farm boys. Bridgette silhouetted against a jukebox with lounge guitar, rolling sandy locks and green panels, cut…Roger Vadim knew what he was doing…see the connection with Jane Fonda…see Barbarella for Bardot look-alike. Big Machito jazz band sounds against Brigette strutting up the stairs, in bed, tucked into white cotton sheets and giggling. Camera through panels coastline blue waves cascading boats on the mooring. She falls on the sand cut to docks with boats and she shoots it up for kicks, laughs and fires the pistol out the window…The Phocaeans colonized Provincia 4th century BC wanders the bedroom blue pajamas jealous lover in doorway…Juliette sleeps away cut to boats again…regular at the Cannes Film Festival, rocketed to stardom…Brigitte Bardot the ultimate bikini siren, (read this discreet bikini essay) gingham becomes the rage…languorously on the beach then romance scene buttons back up the back to bed. St. Tropez king of bikini…why am I dwelling on these silly matters…watching And God Created Woman for the first time ever, behind the curves but in the shot and biography of animal rights…Will see Contempt this weekend…they`re still raving about it…shots of coastline…wonders down winding roads goin` nowhere Havas Exprinter concrete walls motorcars and cafes Coco Chanel and the bathtub revolution…Bar de Amis…Les Amis gone the Bardot of my youth? Play the café wild dance scene again with Latin afro-jazz maracas, bongos cowbell jazz and Brigitte begins to move claps twist and albums on wall Juliette pulls her hair up twirls like a wild dervish the jass swings changes syncopation pulls up skirt wilder and wilder grinds the dance floor gone further and further husband jealous takes the stage legs grind wilder and wilder sweats hair flowing bongo furry she is gone caught in passion faster and faster shot fired and the moment is gone and so am I….created more jealousy then anyone thru time…
These picture galleries of Brigitte Bardot should keep you busy for a while… Couple that with some Serge Gainsbourg ala “Bonnie and Clyde” and you will be in a cloud…Uh la la…Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) is the best artist for the Cote d`Azur for food, palm trees, hotels, ocean, & sky…the natural light floods his canvas with joy and innocence. Study something of The French Riviera too before you watch this movie…it will enrich your experience. Shot of hills and seas laundry on the lines…away on bike flowers and shops Les Batounos cage liquore will build the casino by the road…bus and blue dress Antoine!! Fun in Toulon smiles and giggles…suitcase goodbye! Boats and green hills eici de tous tems s`ccampe you`re doing the mambo…cha cha cha troubadours from a lowly lot of jugglers ..kiss me cool jass café tabacs journaux frescoes cocktails bamboo accordion frescoes…vibes and dancing the Duke of Aquitaine & Frederic Mistral verse provencal verse romance and spices cool nightclub knights at the crusades lonely ladies …you`re a nasty drunk darts industrialist makes a play for Juliette hotrod kisses are you taking the first bus…Japanese fan take you back to st. Mary`s orphanage flowing golden hair plate of fruit and red curtains rabbits galore and greens go by Socrates the rabbit flees…yachts or Mister Hale shameless impolite & lazy daily news is stale a proper young lady? Le provencal give me a big kiss boats & birds blue azure motion & business easter Sunday graveyards and chapels play games ciggies marry juliette floral wreaths leave tomarrow sad postcard racks blinds and bikes stroll away Steve Reich`s 18 Musicians in the background…got to get to Flatstock poster show…free Michel I want you married to Juliette wedding day white wedding gown bells they chime…shadows & roman arches lawful wedded husband veil of tears matrimony you`re still in love? Husbands wearing horns punch and fight Hotel kick kick poupette old castles wine & chandeliers handsome you know passion and simple sets with bouchets cakes & fruits & bread stripped robe panorama syrupy music Saint Tropez is dazzling deep blue shutters afro-jass blast cha cha cha go in the car and twist Bridgitte is bored silhouettes and seas palms and cars scotch Venetian blinds architects plans golden balustrades skinny dipping at Hippie Hollow huh?? Sprigs of green wild nights spritely days of haze and smilesteal my heart and away sweet jukebox again stagey scenes are fashion shots Bardot`s got um quick as a fax & away she`s the queen of the parking lot…gear up for tango guitar charley christianson hollow body dream riff tell me something sweet revolution is starting bundle of fire playboy foldouts started here…chauvinism spinning and trouble female trouble bubbles under later with Gloria Steinem pound spoons slap then cuddle and croon exotica born too lotta staircases smooth horns cotton sheets are cool white as lamb idle cards no brainer Juliette is made for you..poster before movie international sex star the first of her kind go on to chores but more Bardot first blue and sand stucco I`m scared to the ground romance in the cote d `azur (here`s a nice, simple map) it`s 1956 and I`m three shoots and laughs target practice on bottles squabbles Stone Age hairclips orange stucco into room diary dear god…black & white marriage snaps riffs loop over seduction buffoonery boats jeeps chatter Marseilles to do books phone ahlo ahlo…vibes piping hot bowties orange lamps casino royale princess of Monaco grace Kelly drives off a cliff…why sleeping beauty with the flowing golden hair age of innocence …camarat lighthouses blue waters calm sailboat mister dufy smoky explosion & fire woman overboard floating & swimming shoreline longshot calm breezes salt water taffy palms beige open dress saving grace foam and swirl beach pose biting kissing broken trees you`re feverish miserable stop drinking drag a ciggy `gainst white stucco walls I don`t love him maybe I wanted a friend…drunk in the kitchen blue blinds snap to super vixen in the sack again want to talk she`s fine…putting on blue/green skirt pots & pans spices arrayed songs project piano cascading down the scales hills & fortress country life is gone walks medieval corridors winding to forbidden fruit…struts the pole & into café again bar reads the paper downs a drink bar de amis again icebox in here a double oh it`s awful…moans to a girlfriend a bar where the whores go?...yesterday she was screaming in my arms?...gun fires…penny arcades of oldtimes yankee doodles where the theater was pinball machines for real unreal been a long time one million bc & rachel welch swinging jass up over swoonin muted horns alto sax dances again and finale catharsis this time sways gyrates cha cha amazons miads wild wood woman hair is swingin rhythms jam & twirl twirl twirl crescendo coils to a boil swings & sweats free love is born!

AND GOD CREATED WOMAN

2008-03-14T07:07:00.001-05:00

And God Created Woman started something Dionysian in the American consciousness. Maybe it initiated the sexual revolution of the 1960s.; it certainly was a trigger for new ideas. Brigitte Bardot was free and natural and visually stunning. The 1950s in the U.S. were stiff and inhibited with Doris Day epitomizing lady stardom with corny parts and bellowing songs. And God…came out in 1956 and suddenly things have changed. The superstar looked stunning to Americans, in part because she was French, and the French Riviera, and sunny, free St. Tropez was an exotic place of Americano dreams…escape from the states to romantic interludes where you play on the beach all day and cha, cha, cha in the cafes by night. The brilliant blue Mediterranean was gorgeous beyond belief and the French language poetry to stodgy local farm boys. Bridgette silhouetted against a jukebox with louge guitar, rolling sandy locks and green panels, cut…Roger Vadim knew what he was doing…see the connection with Jane Fonda…see Barbarella for Bardot look-alike. Big Machito jazz band sounds against Brigette strutting up the stairs, in bed, tucked into white cotton sheets and giggling. Camera through panels coastline blue waves cascading boats on the mooring.She falls on the sand cut to docks with boats and she shoots it up for kicks, laughs and fires the pistol out the window…The Phocaeans colonized Provincia 4th century BC wanders the bedroom blue pajamas jealous lover in doorway…Juliette sleeps away cut to boats again…regular at the Cannes Film Festival, rocketed to stardom…Brigette Bardot the ultimate bikini siren, gingham becomes the rage…langorously on the beach then romance scene buttons back up the back to bed..St. Tropez king of bikini…why am I dwelling on these silly matters…watching And God Created Woman for the first time ever, behind the curves but in the shot and biography of animal rights…Will see Contempt this weekend…they`re still raving about it…shots of coastline…wonders down winding roads goin` nowhere Havas Exprinter concrete walls motorcars and cafes Coco Chanel and the bathtub revolution…Bar de Amis…Les Amis gone the Bardot of my youth? Play the café wild dance scene again with latin afro-jazz maracas, bongos cowbell jazz and Brigitte begins to move claps twist and albums on wall Juliette pulls her hair up twirls like a wild dervish the jass swings changes syncopation pulls up skirt wilder and wilder grinds the dance floor gone further and further husband jealous takes the stage legs grind wilder and wilder sweats hair flowing bongo furry she is gone caught in passion faster and faster shot fired and the moment is gone and so am I….created more jealousy then anyone thru time…

DIARY OF THE DEAD

2008-03-09T17:37:00.003-05:00

The Diary of the Dead did not disappoint me, `twas narcissistic, a movie within a movie, & the media conduits by way of camcorders, act as mirrors to this spicy zombie gobbling fest. The documentary The Death of Death, done by one of the student filmmakers from Penn State, who are the anti-heroes in this drama-feast herein, sort of crash-test-dummies for George Romero`s outragious brainstorms, are downloaded to his blog, then seen instantly by 72,000 people through out the world. I sure wish I could get that many hits! The local nobody-guy is the only one who can provide reliable information about the cataclysmic events unfolding. Network News is mere propaganda that ruthlessly ensnares a witless public. A…this is not unlike what say, Fox News is doing now…is it? This whole project is self-conscious smoking mirrors and carnival poking fun at society, which is what George Romero does best. This one is his Interactive Dead, and stays focused on our watching ourselves watching (if it is possible to stay focused)…with lots of surveillance cameras, a panic room in one scene, and then the paranoia of phony broadcast news, where stuff is faked by opportunistic telly journalists, who get good & gobbled up like jiffyquick. There is a little scene where some African American coterie of survivors take the Penn students in for a bit, and they have high jacked all the surrounding swag into a Wall-Mart of purloined treats; now they are in power for a change. They end up being the human rights perpetrators of the story. I was seeing them as quasi-metaphors for the Black Panthers of old, but I do believe that`s a `lude in my coffee rather. The gunshots to the torsos and heads of the zombies are at point blank. For an unknown reason this is not real violence but rather ultra-violence or performance art violence…everything here is an interactive snuff film, but it is merely comic. The students are just two-dimensional, and when one of them dies you don`t give a hoot really; there are not any actual good people in the plot or anything. They`re not bad either but they`re just there. The camera jitters around a lot so I was reminded of Cloverfield quite a few times, but there is always a put down or another gag to keep your interest. The sequence with the deaf-mute Amish hay boy is something of a hoot. His demise is shocking too. Two good old boys play target practice with some zombies & blow off the head of one poor zombie lady. The Amish farm boy throws homemade grenades that detonate several of the freaks into sawdust. Just about no one gets out alive, so I was reminded of the Friday the Thirteenth franchise. It`s not that scary here though, and when someone gets it it is almost organic. This one wasn`t quite as high camp as The Land of the Dead, which was rich in social satire, but this one is more a study of where the media and the internet are going. My Space, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and the live streaming pseudo-information wars are the fodder for this cinematic clip. You are at a freak show here with trick mirrors sending you deceptive messages, where death is life, fact is fiction, and society is turned upside down! In other words it is just like our current reality. Oh…the National Guard are crooks here and the clan of brothers are heroes, because they control the swag (food & gasoline). Bravo Mister Romero! Mother & father are zombies and must be eliminated…scenes are shown first in real time, then shown again as footage on blogs and other cameras…it occurred to me that this is how we see our lives go by in reality. The same clips again & again! I do encourage you to see it and compare it to the other editions. None will ever beat the first though.

POP ART: ROY LICHTENSTEIN IS NOW!

2008-03-02T10:32:00.009-06:00

POP ART: ROY LICHTENSTEIN IS NOW! By John G. Kays First Edition

*(Note: I keep saying to myself that I will rewrite this piece & make it better. I never seem to get around to doing that, so i`ll just give it to you in its lumpy state.)

'The insistent dramas of love and war interest Lichtenstein less than ‘the formal problem…Once I`ve established what the subject matter is going to be, I`m not interested in that…I think of it as abstract painting when I do it .Half the time they`re upside-down anyway when I work’. Most Pop Art is essentially emblematic in its conjunction of word and image. Lichtenstein shares with ‘post-painterly abstraction’ his enlarged scale, broad flat forms on colour fields, carefully depersonalized line, reductive composition, and expanded forms that seem to exist beyond the framing edge.' Pop Art-page 125-Lucy R. Lippard

I like to walk around the Austin Museum of Art fairly quickly and glance at all of the prints in order to get a pristine impression. I love the Lightning Bolt Banner Felt from 1966 and the Explosion from the portfolio lithograph from 1967.Lichtenstein was daring, innovative and defiant. He is seemingly anti-intellectual, cartoon-like, but at second glance reshaping images from the past to ‘something new!’ How can a catalog image be so unusual…Seven Apple woodcut Series simple and fresh. Apple and Lemon looks real as if you could eat it. Pyramids from 1969 an Egyptian lithograph clear and direct. Cathedral and Haystack Series laughs in the face of Monet…Seuratesque and yet not. Modern Head series from 1970 gets more and more abstract….

The American Experience through Roy Lichtenstein is an intensively narcissistic voyage ; he takes you on a winding boat ride past the collective ephemera of Americana; it is shimmering like a lit-up, neon-glowing Times Square on New Years Eve! Roy invented Pop Art, perhaps subconsciously, in concert with several other likely heroes, traditional listings include: Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and Claes Oldenburg. He attempted something novel and fresh and invented new techniques of expression by combining alternative printing media; he defied the ISMs but was studied in the printing craft and practiced the wisdom of ‘know thy enemy.’ The processes of printing confidently defines the content; I can only intuit this not prove it, although here is some reinforcement. ‘Everyone had to agree with Greenberg when he declared that “Picasso, Braque, Mondrian, Miro, Kandinsky, Brancusi, even Klee, Matisse and Cezanne, derive their chief inspiration from the medium they work in. The excitement of their art seems to lie most of all in its pure preoccupation with the invention and arrangement of spaces, surfaces, shapes, colors, etc., to the exclusion of whatever is not necessarily implicated in these factors”.- Pop Art by KlausHonnef-page 14. An element of mechanization existed in this new form and the idealism of Abstract Expressionism was abandoned. Content, per se, was secondary for Pop Art, but in the context of the 1960s the popular masses freely contrived meaning and/or symbolism within its frames. Ironically, these artists picked the most prosaic of materials, brillo boxes come to mind, then the audience sublimated these items as icons worthy of worship; this indulgence was unbeknoweth to Roy and Andy and Tom. The masses longed to glorify secular images, suc h as Chairman Mao, Elvis, or Liz Taylor for no particular reason other than their sheer elusive star magnetism or lack of it. This carried over in Pop Music where people would see extraordinary meaning in lyrics-you may remember the controversy surrounding the Kingsmen`s smash hit Louis Louis. The popularity of Pop Art is hard to explain, but perhaps people needed a sensational relief from monotony of daily life.

Still colliding downward from the happening of Pop Art…churnin` & yearnin`, yawnin` & dawnin`, rippin` & trippin`, thinking` & blinkin` Lincoln…where did you go Peter Blake?. Feel the energy rushing to my toes! Bought the lumber, picked up the art catalog, photographed the Roy prints, had visions of its outcome, went to Walgreens and created 25 pristine prints, trimmed and mounted them on maple, used about half a tube of 16 ounce Elmer`s, stirred two tubs of acrylic latex paint, one deep blue, the other off yellow, then used a stick and dripped oodles of pain-paint, undulating randomly, on the wood plate, glued two Andy Warhol refrigerator magnets on the surface, glued three randomly self-made Roy snaps on afterwards, including my favorite of Chairman Mao (an evil tyrant), tossed it right in the center…Will touch it up with acrylic paint dabbles and will call it a day. Purchased a two-inch stencil at the Hobby Lobby and plastered the logo to the top of the wood. Pop Art is now, wow, cow, unplanned, nerve-taxing, spiritual, a dichotomy of plagiarism and spontaneity, reaching for the stars but not getting there, pretty paper with poetry & pomp or circumstance, pusillanimous pussyfooters puffy and percolating… no-wheres-ville that is sparkling and catchy, will make you famous, will make you rich, will titillate the crowds, shown in the street galleries, forever young and alive! Good lovin`, goodness gracious great balls of fire, great Caesar`s ghost, and the Virgin of the Guadalupe, all in one bundle, visits us daily! Need to meltdown from pungent AGED SUMATRA Lingtong Peaberry Blue Batak bean soon! Let go, uptight out of sight, chitty chitty bang bang, coffee beans roll across your taste buds and paint pours on cloth in random patterns of crystal clear inspiration…huh!! What! Who says! Will beaucoup layer-cake `til the end of time! Blue Meanies yank you away to concentration camps for the incorrigible IF kids…which is just about anyone who likes to be free…see what I mean, I am paranoid `cuz the ‘American Dream’ is in peril, and I don`t want to be swept away in a maelstrom ….I like the world of the early sixties and try to remain there. Read this and be free. Free you, free me…censorship is not to be! Okay…I got a little carried away, this is not journalism. Maybe I will be more analytical tomorrow…but who really is going to care? Final product Luv Pop Art and rocks your world my pretty?

Moonscape (from 11 Pop Artists, Vol I), 1965 is an early screenprint that is dreamy and very blue and suggests a romantic, untamed world where the universe is in fluctuation, with undulating plasmas and gases in motion. Things are a bit balmy like a London fog o`er the Thames or a perfect storm brewing in the Florida Keyes. Van Gogh`s Starry Night surfaces, but this is more of an earth science thing that includes bubbling lava and some cacophonous skies of an angry Zeus spitting out torrent- pellet moisture in an isolated speck of the shoreline…in no particular point on the globe. I walked by it several times and returned with glee, but was shrouded with blues and raw energy, primordial feelings of forlornness and misgiving. This work led to Lichenstein`s tendency to publish whole portfolios of prints that would be one continuous series, that show the stages of the process. His model here is the Impressionist master Claude Monet, who liked to capture on canvas different measures of daylight reflecting on, say a cathedral or a haystack. Roy too alters common images through synthetic stages that mutate a popular icon a million-fold until it becomes a rather transformed creature. Like the Warhol Marilyns, it becomes its own object of worship. For me, this is the way that matter decomposes and changes in a possibly scientific and/or historical fashion, sometimes organic and often man-made. I do not need to know every nuance of Roy`s method to see what he is up to. Roy disguises plagiarism through crafty mutations that alter popular cartoon graphics and catalog snaps into new being; he does it with humor and panache extraordinary! He is the most original plagiarist ever, an oxymoron that works for him!

‘One two three four five six seven, all good children go to heaven. One two three four five six seven, all good children go to heaven. Pop anthems come from Pop art too. Batman lunch kits and cape crusaders costumes adorn my collection. Pop art entertains, it cajoles, it caresses, it flirts with the icons of posterity, it teases and pleases…sends us skyward, we`re Superman flying through outer space on his way to nowhere? Borrows from want ads, purloins sneakily from magazines, mocks the Abstract Expressions who mock the Impressionists…Pop! Bam! Zapp! Whish! You are in the Now, the in-crowd of the cow! Lucy Lippard is evangelical art critic for Pop art…her 1966 book Pop Art a dictionary of definition for me. The eyes are assaulted with absurdity. Rhythms are broken, calculus comes in play, an` extra texture is all around. Andy loves cows, Roy loves cows. Anti-war message in the blast of bombs! Brushstrokes are the DNA of an artist. ’

Paintings Series: Two Paintings: Beach Ball, 1984 catches the eye then tosses it to some giggling zephyrs blowing confusion boats pall mall to distant lands. The top image is an anti-cubist girl, the remnants of an earlier cartoon girl, possibly the one Girl With Ball, 1961, that launched Roy Lichtenstein to fame. I have been fond of this one for years, and use the postcard as a bookmarker. In Pop Art by Lucy Lippard, a very helpful primer on this subject, you can see the clipping from the resort section of the Sunday New York Times, 1963, where Roy got his idea for Girl With Ball. In the 1984 version she is abstract and resembles a Picasso, but the beach ball is recognizable and the frame is prominent bordered by diagonal lines that are reflected within the frame as well. The frame is part of the total work; it is as if we are staring at two painting in an arbitrary gallery, and our imperfect eyes can only see two portions of the respective pieces; the subjectivity of viewing art is suggested as a twist of larkish lime.

‘In Lichtenstein the prosaic becomes the profound; that is. there is no message, just a visual image to latch on to. There is no message in a bottle, no metaphor, no symbol, just a fun little construction project. Is there some subliminal voice beaming from the canvas?…no! The images are not real…the Rouen Cathedral has been done before…the Haystack Series has been done before…the bulls get more and more abstract…the Pyramids are not from the Old Kingdom…no real human being lives in the Interior Series… the couches are unreal, the lamps are mirages from an Industrial catalog…the painting fakes…the reflections in the mirror illusions of the mind…why does Roy make these prints? Because THAT IS WHY HE IS ON THIS EARTH!’

Reflections Series: Reflections on Conversation, 1990 uses a number of printing modes, including lithograph, screenprint, woodcut, and metalized PVC collage with embossing. The signature Benday dot pattern is employed as well. Just how Roy combined these media remains a mystery for mr presently. The observer is peeping into a room where a couple is talking, possibly through Venetian blinds, so there is an element of scandal or compromise. That is, we feel particularly guilty, because we are intruders to the singular intimacy that prevails. I immediately thought of the movie The Conversation with Gene Hackman, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, that expresses the paranoia of electronic surveillance via the Watergate scandal of that time. We feel guilty because we are doing something that we should not be doing; we are Peeping Toms to a piece of art, now isn`t that funny? The Reflections Series has been portrayed as a narcissistic indulgence where Roy and the viewer are misremembering his early cartoon pieces. In this light, we are looking into the past, and maybe experiencing a dialogue about art and hence where one may travail in the bigger picture of things. One interpretation is that we are looking into a window of the past and witnessing the actual finalized plans for Art and its history! It is an inside joke for those that are on a pedestal, such as the New York school.

Cubist Cello, 1997 is just a screenprint and this is print 41 of an edition of 75; sure wish I owned one! This would come in the same year that Roy died, and so evokes a stack of experience and expression, a crescendo to a fruitful career in print production. It take the shape of a collage with profiles of a woman, a musician, a bird, and a cow, all staring in disparate directions, all unaware of each other, yet they miraculously impersonate an oddball ensemble…a platoon of hummingbird harmony. There is an abundance of balance here, the lines define simple objects in space, the dots and stripes are measured out in equal quantities, and the colors are simple yet faded, but the lines are sharp and suggest separate planes in space. The question arises: why are animals and musicians together here? The answer is for NO real reason at all. The cello instrument presides right in the center, and a portion of a flute player occupies the lower left-hand corner. The cellist with the marine-blue cap strikes the strings with bow while the merry flutist blows melody into the pipes. It is anti-cubist, anti-Picasso…but pays tribute with irony and gusto to that school of art. Its narcissism to the history of art is pungent, yet it`s delicate and catchy, defiant and funny, teeming with tones and geometric fragments…melodies and pastels sing out against colliding mathematical design, shades of earthen brown and grays, the lightest of yellows. Benday dots, bars and stripes…contours of mental memories; the band plays on. The Andantino of Symphony No. 3 by Aaron Copland is piping in my ears as I drink the cello print and remember its placement on the wall at the Austin Museum of Art. The composition is sound and classic, centered and serene; its methods are both in check with the ISMs of art school and in defiance towards them, a rejection of the past yet a winking to its inkings!

There`s a black hole in my soul but Roy makes it better. I`m supposed to report to Mr. Bellamy, I wonder what he`s like. Pop art is just intended to titillate, nectar for the eye…please enjoy my Luv Pop Art, I can do it too. Just innocence, a narcotic effect. Buy American People!

A gutterbucket of words.....

2008-02-29T06:30:00.001-06:00

I do not really know what words I will put down on the page now. I am something of a sesquipedalian myself. The death of William F. Buckley Jr. on Wednesday struck a nerve. I have always leaned more to the left, but Buckley`s beliefs in unbridled enterprise harnessed sympathy with me. I grew up in a very conservative environment in Dallas Texas in the 1960s. The spirit of free enterprise was ever an object of affection. This was at the height of the cold war, and the threat of international communism was perpetually on the horizon. William F. Buckley Jr. was the consummate Cold Warrior who helped to propel the career of Barry Goldwater, who believe it or not, was to the right of Richard Nixon. Yea, for me this is astonishing! I`m reminded of the Johnson TV spot from the 1964 presidential election. 5,4,3,2,1…then a nuclear explosion. Yes, we probably would not be here now if Goldwater had been elected. His words often echo through my head and chills appear: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Indeed, this means for me that the end justifies the means. I think not. The same argument is being made now in Iraq, that if we can lay a beachhead of freedom and democracy, then the loss of a few citizens that were getting in the way anyway, is of no consequence. En contrar, my fare weathered friend! “It keeps eating,… New York like any metropolis is an organism that changes, mutates, building sprout-like chromosomes on the DNA of the streets.” Erica Bain-The Brave One. These words echo the pariah of communism throughout the world. Castro was a thorn in the side of the US and Che Guevara spread revolution pandemically throughout Latin America. Claims have been made that Buckley forged the conservative foundations that led to the emergence of Reagan and Bush, and therefore helped to end the Cold War. I don`t buy this, but it`s a good theory. The Soviet economy imploded basically…but this was due to the Afghanistan war. The Iran to Contra scandal once again showed that the Reagan administration was willing to let the end justify the means in order to squelch the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. This is at best contemptible, and Oliver North is no hero. After all this was funded by the sale of arms to Iran and the sale of drugs too to provide the funding. Come on…this is worse than Watergate, and now Daniel Ortega is back in power anyway. But Buckley did offer a level of eloquence and sophistication that is non-existent today. Fred Barnes and Bill Crystal and the folks at Fox are mere shadows to Buckley, who was very persuasive to people on the left, like Norman Mailer. Bill O`Riley is a wildcard for the right and does nothing but help us liberals with his quasi-patriotism and altruistic Bush trumping shallowisms. Boycott Fox my fare weathered friends! The sooner people turn it off, the better the country will be. No, conservatism rolled over dead once it lost William B. Finally, Bush will leave us too, another mutant byproduct of the ‘conservative coalition’ that has helped to cripple our economy, put us in debt, bog us down in a quagmire of Afghanistan and Iraq, make the rich richer and the poor poorer…Buckley too was against the War in Iraq! What does that tell ya? I greatly respect the man and will peruse some of the volume of his words. The current outcome of events was not of his design.

OSCARS NUMERO 80

2008-02-22T07:04:00.001-06:00

OSCARS NUMERO 80

These are my preferred choices, not the ones that I believe the Academy will pick. I know I will be dumbfounded on Oscar night when the choices are the midget in the casket from “Death at a Funeral”.

Tommy Lee Jones from “In The Valley of Elah” for Actor in a Leading Role. There weren`t any fantastically black & white, a...obvious choices this year. Daniel Day put me on a bummer in There Will… The reason for this is that the camera was always in his face, and did not concentrate on the other roles in the film. This got beaucoup boring after a while. Too, the mood of greed was rather two-dimentional, if you get my drift!

Javier Bardem will easily take away Best Supporting Actor category. Right On Chigurh with the cattle equalizer!

Ellen Page otta take Best Actress (but may not)…my second choice is Laura Linney in “Savages”. That was a good one too! I preferred Savages over Away From Her for the alzheimer`s projects.

For Supporting Actress I will say Amy Ryan in “Gone Baby Gone”. I just saw that on DVD yesterday, and it is an unappreciated flick this year. I like Saoirse Ronan too in “Atonement”. I`m okay with either of those gals (a..I mean LADIES.)!

Animated Feature Film-Persepolis (I need to see it, by the way, if I can sneak in and not be accused of being al-Quada?!)

For Art Direction, Cinematography, and Costume Design: Atonement sweeps those categories! Please read my piece again on NewsBlaze (for the millioneth time)!

Directing goes to “No Country…” The Coen Brothers produced a timeless masterpiece-their best yet!

Documentary-“No End In Sight”-by itself it`s strength of argument can help to Stop the War!

Editing: "No Country", Music: "Juno".

Original Screenplay should easily be awarded to Diablo Cody for "Juno" duhhhh!

Best Picture: Atonement-that is simply because of Ian McEwan`s perfect novel-excellent story and that is coming from a non-fiction dude. Got to run to prepare for Rote Day Job-see ya!

SELF-PROMOTION & JUNO

2008-02-09T10:37:00.000-06:00

I am proud of the fact that my 'My Ten Favorite Movies for 2007' was read 1,376 times on News Blaze for January. Please be sure to read it on News Blaze! I have never had that many people look at anything I`ve done before. I need to thank Judyth Piazza, the editor over there, for giving me a great opportunity for my pieces to be read a little. My new one for Atonement just was released on News Blaze on February 5th, my dearly departed friend`s birthday, John Franzen. It has 310 reads so far in just four days. Hey, just trying to get my numbers up a little! Some day I would like to have a number one review, just like I wanted a number one vinyl single...smash hit when I was a kid! Still just a dreamer at 55, if the truth be told. Please send the piece over to a friend or two, if you do not mind. They have that feature at the top. Oh...please spread my blog around a little too. A few comments would be appreciated, even if they are somewhat ragged...any promotion is better than nothing. CLAUDE BOVEE ENDORSES HILLARY CLINTON! IT IS OFFICIAL!
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The best soundtrack for 2007 is Juno! Please get it! Juno is anchored with such delicious classic rock ditties as: All the Young Dudes, Well Respected Man (this was in my repertoire when I was young), Superstar (written by Bonnie Raitt & Leon Russell...um didn`t know that), Sea Of Love, & I`m Sticking With You, but has some scrappy folk/punk by Kimya Dawson and I am glad I discovered The Moldy Peaches! Add it to your sides, chicks & dudes!

ATONEMENT

2008-02-03T16:54:00.000-06:00

ATONEMENT SHOULD GET THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR THE CATEGORY OF ‘BEST PICTURE’ THIS YEAR!
by John G. Kays

‘Within the half hour Briony would commit her crime. Conscious that she was sharing the night expanse with a maniac, she kept close to the shadowed walls of the house at first, and ducked low beneath the sills whenever she passed in front of a lighted window…She thought how she might describe it, the way they bobbed on the illuminated water`s gentle swell, and how their hair spread like tendrils and their clothed bodies softly collided and drifted apart. The dry night air slipped between the fabric of her dress and her skin, and she felt smooth and agile in the dark. There was nothing she could not describe: the gentle pad of a maniac`s tread moving sinuously along the drive, keeping to the verge to muffle his approach. But her brother was with Cecilia, and that was a burden lifted. She could describe this delicious air too, the grasses giving off their cattle smell, the hard-fired earth which still held the embers of the day`s heat and exhaled the mineral odor of clay, and the faint breeze carrying from the lake a flavor of green and silver.’-Chapter Thirteen-Atonement-by Ian McEwan

The occasion for this review is the discovery of a movie ticket stub on the walkway as I took my morning sabbatical only a few fleeting days ago. I postulated that an anonymous senior citizen had seen Atonement on January 18th at the Arbor Theater in North Austin by the looks of the evidence; why then had he or she dropped this movie stub at this particular place and time on the sidewalk by the Convention Center will verily remain an ‘unsolved mystery’ `til we part ways on Doomsday? Yesterday I paid a visit to the public library since I was scouting out some titles on Pop Art, but as I renewed my library card, I remarked to the jocund lady-staff personage that all of the copies of Atonement by Ian McEwan had been purloined sagaciously, and I interrogated her as to whether she had already read it? She replied that yes she had, and retorted with perky enthusiasm that: “it is truly a most blessed novel”! As a result of this I lumbered expeditiously over to BookPeople and voraciously snagged up the last living paperback that rested precariously on that barren shelf.

Atonement begins in the summer of 1935, and takes place in a wealthy bucolic English manor; it is the story of Briony Tallis, an imaginative playwright at the tender age of thirteen, who is an eyewitness to three events that she gravely misinterprets. These are the critical events, the vehicle for the story be told. In the first incident she sees a casting off of clothing by her sister Cecilia, before the eyes of Robbie Turner, a colleague from the lower orders, then Cecilia takes a whimsical dive into a Bernini-type fountain. From Briony`s point of view this is a ‘ritual of erotica’, a brazen breach of morality. Little did she know that Cecilia was actually retrieving a broken vase by way of a treasured family heirloom. The second event is the delivering of an outlandish letter from Robbie to Cecilia which Briony takes a peep at, then she walks in on a romantic interlude between the brand new lovers in the library. Briony misreads this as an intrusion by Robbie, and she shades it with a dearth of consent by her capricious sister, Cecilia. The third and most profound occurrence is the witnessing by Briony of the rape of Lola, her cousin as I recall, down by a nearby lake, after the twin cousins had suddenly vanished. Briony accuses Robbie Turner of the dastardly crime and this lays carpet for the remnant of the plot.

The second phase of the movie takes place in France and is six years later; these were the dark days of the Allied evacuation at Dunkirk, May of 1940. Robbie Turner is lost and runs cautiously about the countryside of France. The exchange of heart-felt letters between Robbie and Cecilia is projected creatively on the screen in fantasy syncopation. Cecilia and Briony are nurses for the army and their hardships are put under a microscope. Especially Briony`s flaming pangs of conscience are exposed with her perpetual scrubbing of filth; one is reminded of Lady Macbeth: “Out damned spot!” Visits back in time to the Tally estate drift in and out, details are laid in nicely, however the storyline morphs between truisms and wishful thinking, yet you are not cognizant of this until the final frame. Events heat up around the Battle of Dunkirk, but much is left untold. The third phase with the elderly Briony played by Vanessa Redgrave, ties up many of the loose ends but punches you in the gullet with a bodacious blow!

I do believe that Atonement (be sure to shuffle through these 43 pics) should be awarded the Best Picture for 2007 at the Academy Awards on February 24th. I had not seen it when I wrote my ‘Best Of’ about a month ago, but it generates positive ions/vibes that I had not detected in alternative offerings for our year just gone by. The costumes are dreamy, and if you just see it to experience Keira Knightley in the exquisite green gown then that would be a fitting excuse for jubilation. Jacqueline Durran did the costume design (she did so for Pride and Prejudice [this is Jane Austen`s novel] as well) and she is up for another Academy Award, and I hope she gets it. The music is moody, stylish, and evokes chameleon-like alacrity; the composer, Dario Marianelli is up for an Oscar and jolly well may walk the victory carpet. The scenes at the manor in the English countryside reek of picturesque abandonment and whimsy; I was reminded of Lewis Carrol`s Through the Looking Glass; `tis a rare fanfare of Victorian ambience, I should think. By contrast the scenes of Dunkirk smacked of the starkness of modern war; this was a logical demarcation in the film`s evolving landscape.

The acting was carefully orchestrated with Ian McEwan`s novel and Keira Knightley was a palatable fit as Cecilia Tallis, with a proper British accent and gazelle-like forbearing, very taut and angular and emotive, but in a substantive acting role with gravity. James McAvoy is certainly competent as Robbie Turner, the educated son of a servant of the Tallis family. Even with that said the consummate achievement in acting goes to Saoirse Ronan as the youthful and mischievous Briony Tallis; she is up for an Academy Award for best supporting actress, and I hope she grabs up the golden statue. Saoisre flits about as naturally as the fairy Puck in A Midsummer Night`s Dream, and her blonde bangs are bouncing freely and stylishly as she romps through the English countryside. Romola Garai as the middling Briony in the role of a nurse, tending the wounded after the Dunkirk rout, is mostly gripping; then at last the capstone role of Vanessa Redgrave as the elder Briony, an accomplished author by that time, reflectively inserts the last pieces into the sorrowful puzzle. The editing was tricky, with the necessity of mirroring the subtle time sequencing of the novel, the many flashbacks involved, that is, but I was riveted by the scissor to celluloid. As I read the novel I recollect (I only saw the movie one week ago) the loyalty of the editing to the story in words. I am lost on my journey with regard to Joe Wright, the director, but Pride and Prejudice should be plopped in my paltry mailbox this very day.

I will briefly conjure up the issue of symbolism in the movie; this comes by way of the novel which I observe as ubiquitous within the lines. It may be discreet to disclose that I am only one-third of the way through the pages. Here is a nice review of the novel Atonement, for your perusal. The most obvious symbol observed is the illusive vase, which for me represents tradition or the heritage of the Tallis family. When it is shattered, into triangular shards, yet another symbol of the Holy Trinity, one intuits that tradition has been violated. To view this in class terms, or to give it a Marxist spin, Robbie is from the lower order and Cecilia is from the upper order. By romancing her Robbie is jumping or crossing classes. This is a societal no no of the highest caliber; this is so because it is both erotic and revolutionary. Briony sees it in just this way too, and it throws up a red flag for her, and yet it (class crossing) allows her to persecute Robbie freely based on the dynamics of class alone. The angle of class dynamics is an important one for me, how about you? The fountain overture is a mating motif; Cecilia strips down and transforms into a Venus figure, with a visible eros zone. Moreover, her dip in the fountain is a baptismal reference, but the truth be spoken, this is a sensual baptismal thing, if you can divine my meaning? At that instance Robbie and Cecilia`s love for one another becomes real, and is consummated, idealistically speaking! This is magical in nature and is right out of Ovid! Another symbol is Dunkirk, and it simply represents Robbie`s maturation into an ‘Age of Experience’(this is a moniker of my own invention). By way of contrast the experiences of ‘new love’ at the Tallis Estate in 1935 would call forth a notion that I will call the ‘Age of Innocence’; this would be a soft reference to William Blakes` beautiful poems from the 19th century that helped to inaugurate the Romantic Period in English literature. Okay, another! The hospital comes to mind also, and is a kind of sanctuary of purity for both Cecilia and Briony. They almost seem to have joined a nunnery, at least in spirit. Briony uses the hospital to purge herself of the grave misdeed that she committed, but in spite of her relentless scrubbing of hospital beds, the regret and guilt will not fly away. Finally, the wildflowers in the vase represent the bacchanalian abandon experienced by Cecilia and Robbie when stricken by Cupid`s arrow. This is not a planned or calculated feeling, but rather spontaneous, just as wildflowers spring naturally from the womb of the earth! For the author this is a no brainer, but may not seem obvious to the ‘moral majority’!

I overdosed on PPs this weekend, but am fond of this form. Last night I had an odd epiphany that Gone With the Wind was the very first PP…um, I wonder? Some have labeled the current film under review as a ‘Period Piece’, and as such this category might include such titles as Pride and Prejudice, Howard`s End, and the Age of Innocence, an unusual one for Martin Scorsese. I have not studied any formal definition of this genre, nor do I care to, but I suspect that most avid filmgoers have a clear grip on what this creature is. I should think that Jane Austen is the complimentary, canonized patron saint, and residing grandmother for the ‘Period Piece’? This is a truism that need not be further elaborated. As such, in my mind`s eye I am viewing our present film as a mere half-period-piece. Ian McEwan has been labeled as the Jane Austen of the modern English novel, but I believe he often utilizes motifs that are too modern to properly put him in this aforementioned camp exclusively! I am seeing bits of Faulkner and James Joyce, okay, and even the residue of Ernest Hemingway in his turn of phrase. Obviously, these writers were capable of writing PPs, but chose to deal with starker topics that surfaced in the early twentieth century. Enough said on that…for now, but power to the PP People!.

Simultaneously, Atonement has a panoramic, aromatic atmosphere as if you`re inside a harlequin pulp-romance book cover, a tear-jerker you see, and in addition, the sinewy true-grit of a Hemingway short story, oozing the existential inconsequence of cruel, mangling warfare. No further inquiry is required. Themes raise their tremulous visage herein; the primer is the catastrophic infraction of Briony, that haunts all her days and nights and will not vaporize, such as a bad dream! Much of this story is her attempt to purge this classic Christian sin from her soul, but such arduous efforts remain futile for her, save for the machinations of the ripe Vanessa. Another ‘platonic idea’ that comes in streams of idle reverie is the transparent cleavage betwixt reality and fantasy; Briony can exorcise demons by painting a rosy picture, wrought with confessions and tidied up lives-nay, but things could proffer for Cecilia, Robbie, and Briony herself, on another sunny day perchance? I will leave it at that as far as particulars go. The fundamental theme is the title itself: Atonement, which is a synonym for a…say contrition, or more clearly, righting a wrong, or…eureka Mister John …writing a wrong! We almost make it to the closing credits basking in bright yellow sunbeams, but unexpected cumulous clouds come rolling in, blurring the screen before we can de-wedge ourselves from our sticky velvet cushions and depart the movie house with peace of mind and spirit, for a change, or for goodness sakes! Oh,…I sure am glad that I stumbled on that stray ticket stub.

TEN GRAND FOR POP ART

2008-01-27T11:35:00.000-06:00

OKAY POP ART IS CHANGING AND GETTING THICKER AND MORE PAINTERLY! YOU SHOULD SEE IT IN PERSON, IT HAS OODLES OF ACRYLIC AND LATEX SLUNG ON WOOD. I WANT TEN GRAND FOR POP ART AND THAT IS CHEAP BECAUSE IT WILL BE VERY FAMOUS SOON! YOU CAN`T EVEN SEEIT, YOU OUGHT TO SEE HOW IT COMES ON WHEN IT`S GLISTENING IN SUNLIGHT! IT`S ELECTRIC!THIS AINT SOTHEBY BUT IT WILL DO AS AN AUCTION HOUSE. GOING ONCE, GOING TWICE, SOLD TO THE GENTLEMAN WITH THE HANDLEBAR MOUSTACHE!

POP ART

2008-01-21T06:18:00.000-06:00

Here is my new piece: POP ART! It`s photographs on wood and drippy interior flat wall paint, mounted on a Wall Street Journal ! I did NOT crop it because the newspaper is part of the piece; a...Roy did this alot, so there! I do not believe that this has been done before. Those are Roy Lichtenstein photos that I took of his prints. That is ironic, a print of a print. Roy tried to do something new, now Claude Bovee attempts a FIRST too! I know you are not very impressed now, but many years later you will look back on this as a break-through art work! I will go to Cloverfield today, because this is a piece of POP ART film making; just what I desire to experience in its home-grown aura of DESTRUCTO AMERICANO, no-holding-back doom and gloom 9/11 metaphor, box office busting monster throbbing...cornball schmaltz...perfect for a day off holiday. Once there was a way to get back homeward, once there was a way to get back home, sleep pretty darling do not cry...Sir Paul... BOY, YOU`RE GONNA CARRY THAT WEIGHT, CARRY THAT WEIGHT A LONG TIME.

THE CAMDEN 28

2008-01-13T10:32:00.000-06:00

On August 11, 1971 28 courageous individuals, roughly termed as members of the Catholic left, broke into the Federal Building in Camden New Jersey that contained the draft board office, and destroyed the draft records for Americans slated to be sent to Vietnam to serve in the War. This weekend I have been graciously viewing the documentary called The Camden 28, after experiencing some difficulty getting the title from Netflix. These are moral people, and some of them are even priests, but they were united against the War enough that they chose to intervene to stop it. One confederate, a Judas to the cause, turned on them, and they were arrested the night of the break in. "When the killing is started, then you want to stop it." (Michael Doyle) Further: "The money spent on bombs could be spent on buildings in Camden." The initial image on the screen is of a soldier putting a lighter to a grass hut in a village in Vietnam. This is the startling metaphor for the atrocities perpetrated by Americans there. Slides of burned out villages against slides of burned down structures of Camden. The Camden 28`s role models were the Berrigan Brothers and their public burning of draft cards as the Catonsville Nine. I believe that you should see this little known production, because you learn much about how these people were able to make a contribution to stopping this horrible War, especially by way of targeting the draft board, a blatant symbol of the War effort. I have studied the Vietnam War myself as a little hobby, and have learned much here; the Camden 28 were acquitted and by that time many Americans were glad that they had broke into the draft board. Also, the FBI was exposed in the press and the way that they had entrapped these activists. IntelPro was discussed in the extras, and this was the systematic undermining of war protesters by the government. The American people were not aware of the extent of government surveillance, and the trials of the Camden 28 helped to bring this to light. A great thing just happened to me this week! I have been invited to the COME BACK TO GARRISON! program put on by the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin on February 1st. Apparently, Garrison has been renovated, so I will be looking forward to seeing the changes. The hall was kinda dingy in my day, back in the early Seventies. One workshop that I will attend is "Rewriting the Vietnam War: New Evidence from the Johnson Library", presented by Mark Lawrence. That will be interesting. So don`t hesitate to give this DVD a look at, if you can get your hands on a copy!

MAO, 1971

2008-01-11T06:58:00.000-06:00

This is perhaps the most striking image from the show, Mao, 1971. Roy actually did the image before Warhol. At that time, they didn`t know of the atrocities of Mao, so he was popular because of the Cultural Revolution. Yea, all that was buried and remember how people worshiped him with little communist hat. "If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain`t gonna make it with anyone anyhow." Lennon`s line comes back to haunt us, and seems apropos. This is a consummate expression of Pop art! Oh drabid, got to get ready for the Factory! Will keep Mao`s image all day in my head as therapy. Go & figure...!

SUBURBAN BLISS!

2008-01-10T06:48:00.000-06:00

Pop, as Lichenstein saw it, was an "anti" movement, opposing "all of those brilliant ideas" of the past. This is from G. R. Swenson who wrote some articles about Pop art in the early 1960s.

Interiors Series: Blue Floor, 1990

This one by Roy Lichtenstein uses the printing media of lithograph, woodcut, and screenprint. This is huge and comes in at 51 1/4 inches by 77 1/2 inches. Thus, it`s hard to get the complete effect from this rendering. Oh, yesterday`s article was in Newsweek, not Time. It`s 'Special Report the Story of Pop'. You must read it, because it was written in 1966, and has the spontaneity and authenticity of that time. It hasn`t been retread through constant redefining of Pop art, I mean. Blue floor was taken from an industrial catalog and then processed into a redefined piece of Pop. This is the perfect suburban life of the 1960s!

ROY LICHTENSTEIN PRINTS 1956-97

2008-01-09T06:27:00.000-06:00

Six Still Lifes Series: Still Life with Portrait, 1974

I went to Roy Lichtenstein Prints 1956-97 on Sunday ay the Austin Museum of Art, and am still reeling. I purchased the catalog book for the show and am studying the essays and looking at the images again. The key here is to understand the printmaking that Roy employed to produce these works. This is not just crystal clear to me now, but I am giving it a shake. These are secrets of his trade, so his methods can not all be known. This one is a lithograph and a screenprint with debossing. Whatever, right...? The lithography printing entry for Wiki is helpful, but it does not shed light on how Roy combines it with other printmaking techniques such as screenprinting. I will have to study this further. This composition is simple and effective for me. It is not cluttered, but it is serious too...not just cartoonish. The play of diagonals is brilliant; the eye is drawn to the portrait of the girl, really just anyone in the good old USA! Things are overly generic and this is what makes it Pop art. You will have to read the piece on Pop Art from Time Magazine in 1966. It`s under articles on RL official page. This is clearing things up for me alot. You are thinking Norman Rockwell, but there is more humour and irony here. Also, this is more abstract...anti-cubist, anti-post-modern...just a real cute little image that you I would love to be hanging on my barren walls.I wish life was this clean. If we will just take our soma (1984) and go to the factory it will be!