Blast(s) from the past.
Normally I’m not a proponent of multitasking, but it’s hard for me to argue against Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s case. Check out this clip for evidence; be sure to note not only the remarkable circular breathing technique, but also the badass piano work of McCoy Tyner and a very smooth introduction by a young Quincy Jones.
In one of those odd geographical coincidences, Kirk was from Columbus (where I live) and died in Bloomington, Indiana (where I used to live)– he’s buried here. Less congruous but still interesting is the path of another free jazz titan, Albert Ayler, who was born in Cleveland (where my parents are from) and died in NYC (where I also used to live… though that’s not that unique, of course)– he’s buried here.
All that stuff is just trivial coincidence of course. More important is the music. If you haven’t heard Kirk, Ayler, and/or any of the other fantastic practitioners of Free Jazz, take the time to give them a listen (email me– I’ll send you some mp3s).
I had mixed feelings when Herbie Hancock (a great, great musician) won the Grammy for Album of the Year, because even though it was a contemporary jazz album, it had to be a collection of goddamn Joni Mitchell songs to get noticed. Ken Burns’ recent documentary put a high shine on the more tuneful parts of jazz history (aided and abetted by Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch), but hurried past the the fiery power of Free, consigning it to a dusty corner of “the 60s.” But I think those of us who today appreciate noise rock, feedback loops, ambient music, sound collage, etc. enjoy the living legacy of Free– those musicians increased the sonic range of music exponentially, creating a myriad of new artistic options for themselves and their followers.
They fucking tore it up, too.
Regarding thirty-seven.
37 is…
- A prime number
- (in fact, it’s the first irregular prime),
- As are its numerals (3 and 7),
- As is the difference between 7 and 3 (2).
37 is also…
- The normal human body temperature in degrees Celsius,
- The atomic number of Rubidium,
- The Number of the Beast divided by the sum of its digits [37=666/(6+6+6)],
- Paul Newman’s prison number in Cool Hand Luke,
- And the former international dialing code of the DDR (+37).
Not a bad number, especially if you feel like you’re in your irregular prime…
The New Bizarre.
I finally saw David Lynch’s most recent film, Inland Empire, and it left me with as many thoughts as one would expect from a three-hour descent into Lynch’s subconscious. Here are a few:
- It’s an incredibly scary film, in all the good ways. As in most Lynch films, his use of startling jump cuts and sound collage does most of the damage. Thought there is some graphic violence, it’s tame by comparison to the implied violence.
- The film seeps darkness, and I don’t just mean the metaphorical kind. I regret not seeing this one in the theater, because a darkened viewing room is a must for detecting the visual nuance of the many dim/dark scenes. When watching the DVD, use the included screen adjustment tests for best results (wish those were included with every movie).
- Those who know me will be shocked to hear me admit it, but the dance scene is pretty hip.
- I’m not exactly sure how Laura Dern survived this one, but man, she went through the wringer for this role. More than any other Lynch character I can remember (and that’s saying a lot), hers is built from a deft juggling of several personalities. A wonderful performance, for certain.
- Don’t be intimidated by the running time– I won’t say it flies by, but nothing felt extraneous, and if you let go a bit & let your brain drift along, the film soaks in easily.
- Like all Lynch films, it contains a frightening and brutal man of mystery. And this one is terrifying.
- I heard Lynch on the radio when this film was originally released, and he spoke glowingly about the new freedom that digital film/editing technology gave him. Inland Empire bears this out– the sheer number of shots is amazing, as are the variety of POVs and length of the shots. Lynch definitively stated that the new, lighter camera equipment makes it cheaper and easier for directors to get exactly what they want. Most importantly, it looks great. Last year I saw Climates, a Turkish film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, also shot entirely in digital; I did see that one in the theater, and it looked absolutely beautiful. So I’m becoming a big believer in the new tech.
- It was very gratifying to see David Lynch still firing on all cylinders, especially these days, when it’s getting harder and harder to get films with truly independent spirit made, produced, and distributed. Especially if they contain a mysterious family of people with rabbit heads– hard to pitch that to a studio exec, I’m sure.
300 lessons.
Last weekend, on a (sort of) dare, I watched the film version of 300. I had originally vowed never to watch it, because I’d read the original comic when it was first published, and concluded that it exhibited the key attributes of standard “late” Frank Miller: pretty cool art, but terrible writing (especially the dialogue). But a promise is a promise, so…
Like Robert Rodriguez’s adaptation of Miller’s Sin City, Zach Snyder’s 300 was unfortunately very faithful to its source material. Both films feature some truly inventive visual constructions and remarkable uses of digital technology, all hamstrung by Miller’s laughable hack work.
But since 300 differs from other Miller projects in its claim to be based on historic events, I thought I’d summarize the film with things one can learn about the history of Greece/Sparta/Persia/et.al. from watching it:
1. The Persians, a very swarthy legion of marauding darkies, attacked the very pale Spartans and their Greek “allies,” demanding that their free city-states submit and KNEEL. (Nothing pissed off a Spartan more than being told to kneel– it evidently made them yell. A lot.)
2. “Allies” because the Spartans were the only ones man enough to get off their ass to go defend the empire, unlike the Athenians, who were a bunch of old, swishy boy-fuckers.
3. These Spartans were real badasses. They were a freedom-loving race of real man’s men, whose dedication to freedom meant pressing their male offspring into crushing military training at age five. Kids who couldn’t hack it obviously didn’t love freedom enough, and were thrown off a cliff or fed to wolves.
4. 300 particularly hardcore Spartans knew that fighting the enemy abroad was better than having to fight them at home, so they broke the law and started a noble preemptive war of their own.
5. They did so against the advice of their religious leaders, who were a bunch of old, drooling date-rapers. These leaders relied on oracle babes whose power radiated from their amazing red-headed topless hotness.
6. This premptive war went off like gangbusters, even though the pierced, painted Persian darkies threw everything they had at the super-buff Spartans: foot soldiers, giant idiot men-children, grenades, war rhinos, this fucked-up dude with no eyes and these sort of lobster claw things for hands, and like, a million arrows.
7. The Persians also had ninjas. Lots of ninjas.
8. But the Spartans were master strategists, with a leader named Leonidas whose battlefield acumen was better than Sun Tzu’s. For example, he knew that after a big battle, resting your men would be the obvious thing to do– what the enemy would never expect is that you would instead have your troops stay limber by piling up the bodies of enemy dead into a big, super-scary mountain of corpses.
9. Unfortunately, the Spartans were betrayed by one of their own– an ugly cripple. His weak will was no match for the harem of Xerxes (the super-pierced glam homo Persian ruler), which was well-stocked with dwarves and amazing topless writhing lesbians (hmmm… maybe Howard Stern has Persian roots).
10. The betrayal meant the end of the Spartans and the death of their noble leader. But before he fell, Leonidas used one last spear shot to defeat Xerxes, in a way that to truly destroys a preening queen: he fucked up the fag’s face.
11. The 300 died, but their sacrifice inspired Greece to form a very willing coalition of forces to go thump the Persians once and for all. This ultimately preserved the pristine freedom of Sparta, and her amber waves of grain and purple mountains’ majesty.
Who said history can’t be made more exciting for the kids? Egad, what a mess. As a diehard comic book fanboy, I am more than a little anxious to see how Zach Snyder will handle Watchmen, the greatest of graphic novels, as he adapts that for the screen. But actually, a world in which Nixon is still President in 1988, the United States’ biggest weapon is a blue nuclear man who walks around naked, and a super-hero seeks to save the world by scaring it with a fake alien attack seems like less of a fantasy than Frank Miller’s soft porn version of the Battle of Thermopylae.
Do the math.
Everyone’s town has that street (or those streets) or that empty lot behind the A&P, or that overlook beyond the deadend… places where no matter how civil your ‘burg is, people dump trash. Refrigerators, tires, grocery carts, mattresses, clothes, kitchen waste, etc, etc., etc. I pass one on the bike ride down to my studio. But I’m betting that no matter how nasty your town’s illegal dump zone is, you probably don’t see this when you pass by:
Unless you live in Baghdad’s Ghazaliya neighborhood, that is. (The photo is by Christoph Bangert from a New York Times blog entry by Marc Santora)
After 1825 days, the (very) conservative estimated count of civilian dead stands at 82,240. That’s the equivalent of 90 Jonestown massacres, or 489 Oklahoma City bombings, or 5,874 Columbine shootings, or just over one Nagasaki. But that’s just me with a calculator– experts provide a fuller picture.
I wish I could say that I were above taking cheap shots like “heckuva job, Bushie and Dickie.” But I’m not. Fornicate them & the faux cowboy-speak they drove us to war with.
Spring and $3.50/gal means…
…watch those blind spots:
Kudos to my urban-cyclist sister-in-law for the link. Coincidentally, I’m tuning up my zero-emissions vehicle this week, getting ready for commuting again now that blizzard season is over (knock on wood).
Gone Green.
St. Patrick’s Day finds me wearing my Green Lantern t-shirt, as usual (the Hal Jordan version, of course– when it comes to defending the universe, Kyle Rayner is a hack). And appreciating the cultural contributions of my people to the great global tapestry of humanity.
(Sure, I could have picked Yeats or Joyce, but think how much more typing that would have involved…)
Credentials for “my people”: “Taggart” is self-explanatory, and my grandmother’s maiden name was “O’Brien.” Of course, the other side of the family features “Kopczewski” and “Mitalski,” making my origins exactly as multicultural as “Scotch-Romanian.”
The Fascinating Genius of the Knuckleball.
Now I ain’t no Sawks fan, but one of the more amazing things I saw on sports TV (the only TV I watch) during the past year was Tim Wakefield screwing hitters into the ground with his knuckleball. Seriously… I could watch him do it inning after inning and still be amazed every time. Maybe it’s because of the physics of the throw– halfway to the plate, it looks like someone in the stands shoots it out of the air with a pellet gun, and the ball appears to drop and deflate (an odd trick for a solid) at the same time. Maybe it’s because men who are paid to regularly nail 98-mph heaters, men who keep laptops full of information on every pitch the starters throw, men who know for a fact that the pitch is coming will still end up looking like t-ballers when it drifts past their socks… a half second after they swing.
Part of the NYT’s Spring Training reporting this year was a fascinating story about the Mariners’ R.A. Dickey and his new knuckleball (he was featured on NPR, too). Reading it made me consider how fantastic that it was one of the few times in professional sports when age and wisdom give you a whole new competitive edge over your competition. Dickey reports (and some of Wakefield’s 2007 outings confirm) that relying on this technique can make for some ugly games, the kind that apply performance pressure younger pitchers cannot handle; it takes patience and deliberate strategy to pitch through the passed balls and base-loading that frequently dog a knuckleballer. On top of that, you need a particularly flexible and adaptable catcher that can handle the pitch (I would guess it’s a similarly rare, athletic temperament that distinguishes a good long snapper).
In other words, it’s a bend-don’t-break way to handle the most psychologically confrontational situation in sports (IMHO): the clash of pitcher and batter, both before, during, and after the pitch. How fantastic it is to hurl pure force at another force, one that’s racing forward in anticipation of furious collision… and then the first force simply dissolves, leaving the other to implode, bewildered.
Or, more simply put, it’s a beautiful thing to pull the string. Even the Dalai Lama would admire the technique.
The easiest side dish you’ll ever make…
… especially in terms of return on invested effort.
1 cup Lundberg Black Japonica rice
2 cups water
0.5 cup black currants
Salt to taste
Boil the water, then add the rice & return to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 25 minutes. Add currants, stir & re-cover. Simmer for another 25 minutes. Remove from heat, let stand 5 minutes, then stir & serve. Goes very well with damn near anything, but I like it with fish. Also excellent cold, as lunchtime leftovers.
X-rated.
In the spring of 1988, I went to a big all-day outdoor concert for PETA on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Exene Cervenka and John Doe performed of the early-in-the-day sets, and I distinctly recall thinking, “who the heck are these hippies?” Later that year I saw The Decline of Western Civilization, Part 1, and figured it out. A couple months ago I stumbled across this on YouTube, lest we forget:
To channel my inner 70-year-old: “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore.” (it’s odd to think that clip is that old) As a secondary point, it should be noted that “Billy Zoom” is an even better rockabilly moniker than “Johnny Ryall.”