Bitch

I am such a dumbshit. I got suckered into doing an indeterminate bit of housesitting. The Pollack is off to Sioux Falls and had Sussy to cover for him. Then last night Suss left a voice mail saying something about his dad so he wouldn't be able to dogsit. Then the phone rings this morning and, against my better judgement, I answer it. It's The Pollack and he sweet talks me...yadda yadda...and I am going over there tonight. He'll get a hold of me tomorrow morning to gimme the skinny on the rest of the week. (He's gone til Friday.) Fuck me - why do I bother to answer the phone? It only brings bad tidings.

About a Boy

At the behest of a friend, I took "the most scientifically grounded and customized personality assessment on the Internet." Ah, the power of the Internet. My results:

Who You Are
You're smart, insightful, and have an insatiable curiosity about life. (Well, they got this bit right.) In fact, you're always studying problems and finding ways to fix them. You have a talent for rising above the details of life and seeing the big picture. You have a vision for how to live the "good life" so you refuse to settle long-term for a boring job or doing something just because it's expected of you. You have good friends, but you're also a pretty independent guy. You're not someone who "wears his heart on his sleeve" so those close to you don't always know how you feel. (Fuck that. Almost every girlfriend I've ever had could read me like a book.) Still, they're drawn to you by your fun and easygoing style.

What's Dating All About to You?
You believe dating and life in general is about learning and growing as a person. You're a great listener, so women tend to enjoy going out with you. However, it's hard for you to have a real intellectual connection with an attractive woman. Hopefully, you've found a way to "go with the flow" in dating as you already do in other parts of your life.

You face 2 major challenges in finding the love of your life. First, because you're shy, you feel like you have to be someone else or "wear a mask" to go out and meet new people. (Sheesh! Haven't these people ever read any Erving Goffman?) You're left feeling like a distant observer, and women find it hard to truly understand you. (Hell, I don't even understand me.) Second, although having a vision of what you want can be helpful, the risk is that your high standards can get in the way of loving a real-life imperfect woman.

Quirks Women Notice
You have a pretty even-tempered personality and may not have any especially annoying or quirky habits. (Oh, that's just rich...) Of course, seeming to be "perfect" could be seen as a flaw by some, in which case you may just want to pretend to have a bad habit!

Who I'm Looking For:
She'll Be an Enigma
You're looking for a woman who's smart, insightful, and has an insatiable curiosity about life. The two of you could share a very interesting and exciting intellectual connection. Getting closer emotionally takes time, since she's an independent and sometimes shy person by nature. But she's worth the effort to get to know! Your best strategy is to see her "in action" when you go out with friends but still find quiet time with her to talk. You'll discover she's a good conversationalist, especially if you get her talking about books, current events, or any of her many interests and hobbies.

My Ideal:
You don't expect your partner to be in a good mood all the time. You understand that sometimes your partner will be down, get pessimistic or worry too much. These days are balanced by the many good days the two of you will share. In fact, you share a number of positive qualities, including:

1) No strong similarities were detected, which suggests that you may be more attracted to certain "opposite qualities." Please read the next sections to see if you may be seeking someone with different or opposite qualities to balance your own habits and style.

Of the women who have taken this test:
Exactly my type - 9%
Mostly my type: - 16%
Somewhat my type - 16%

Mostly NOT my type - 54%
Definitely NOT my type - 5%.

Yay for me.

Tiresias Was Right

Courtesy of Reuters via Yahoo:

LONDON (Reuters) - Wanted: women to test new orgasm machine.

No, really. An American surgeon who has patented a device that triggers an orgasm has begun a clinical trial approved by the Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) in the United States and is looking for female volunteers.

"I thought people would be beating my door down to become part of the trial," pain specialist Dr Stuart Meloy told New Scientist magazine on Wednesday.

But so far only one woman has completed the first stage of the trial, with apparently breathtaking results, and a second has agreed to take part.

Meloy, of Piedmont Anesthesia and Pain Consultants in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is hoping to find eight more volunteers willing to have electrodes inserted in their spine and be connected to a pacemaker-size machine implanted under the skin to heighten their sexual pleasure.

The married woman who tested the machine, dubbed an orgasmatron, had not had an orgasm for four years. But during the nine days she used it, she had several.

"She even told me she had the first multiple orgasm of her life using the device," said Meloy.

He stumbled on the unexpected side-effect while using a spinal cord stimulator a few years ago to treat a patient suffering with severe back pain. The woman had already had back surgery for degenerative disk disease and fusion surgery.

When Meloy placed the electrodes into a specific spot on her spine to find nerve bundles carrying pain signals to the brain, she moaned with delight.

"You're going to have to teach my husband how to do that," he quoted her as saying.

The tiny impulses of electricity applied to the electrodes seemed to have turned on the patient's orgasm button.

Although the device has been compared to the orgasmatron featured in the 1973 Woody Allen film "Sleeper," Meloy envisions patients using it temporarily to retrain their sexual response.

The women in the trial described it as "really excellent foreplay."

Although some medical experts are skeptical about the procedure and say a vibrator can produce the same results, Meloy believes it could help to improve sexual response in women who cannot have orgasms and might even help men as well.

A full implant of the device would cost about 13,000 pounds ($22,000).

"I don't see it any differently from procedures such as breast implants," Meloy told the magazine.

Good News!

The "Honorable" Herr Scalia has recused himself from the Supreme Court's hearing of a case seeking to ban the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.

Click here for more.

New Johnny Cash!!

The Johnny Cash box set, Unearthed, has been released! Here's a review. Now run out to your locally-owned music retailer and grab a copy for me. For anyone here in Madison, might I recommend MadCity Music.

Tech Industry News

For all you tech geeks: Dell has begun re-routing some corporate tech support calls back to call centers here in the US. I also found this site giving an in-depth look at the debacle of I.P. (intellectual property) lawsuits over that Unix core involving that unholy trio of IBM, Red Hat, and Caldera.

More Local Hijinks

Pesky college kids.

An Amazing Journey Ends

Trey Gunn has left King Crimson. Will Tony Levin return or will another Fripp disciple take his place? Only the Shadow knows...

 

Put the Star Wars Kid in Episode 3!!

Click Here

My First Ever CD Release Party!

Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 14:42:10 -0600 (GMT-06:00)
From: "christine costanzo" {chcostanzo@earthlink.net}
To: ********@yahoo.com
Subject: Christine Costanzo--CD release party

Hi ****,

I just wanted to invite you to my Cd release party this Sunday at Cafe Montmarte (7pm). John Hasbrouck will open up. I'll put you on the guest list.

And thanks again for the reviews--they were my first official ones so I really appreciated them.

Christine

Powwow To Celebrate the Crandon Mine Victory

The Forest County Potawatomi Community and the Sokaogon Chippewa Community Mole Lake Band invite you to A Powwow to Celebrate the Crandon Mine Victory.

Powwow to Celebrate the Crandon Mine Victory
Saturday, December 6, 2003
1:00 PM
at the Brown County Arena 1901 S. Oneida Avenue Green Bay
Grand entries 1:00 PM & 7:00 PM Celebration Feast at 5:00 PM

MC - Artley Skenandore Head Male - FCPC Male - Gordon Waube Head Female - Sokaogon Youth - Tashena Van Zile The event will feature 11 invited drums (one from each Wisconsin tribe). Other drums are welcome. Honorariums.

In order to help plan this memorable feast, kindly RSVP to 1-800-241-7053.

The Naomi Wolf Myth

Last month, feminist author Naomi Wolf wrote an essay entitled "The Porn Myth" in which she argues that the prevalence of pornography via the Internet has magically transformed men into automatons disinterested in and incapable of enjoying the company of real women. Sex bloggers everywhere went ballistic and returned Wolf’s anecdotal evidence in kind.

After having read Wolf’s essay, I felt the need to laugh. I found her assertions to be hilarious. I’ve never read any of her books and wondered if all of her work is equally facile. Perhaps my expectations were unfair. Seeing as how she is a notable figure on the feminist scene and, perhaps, on the intellectual landscape of the U.S., I thought that she would be able to do something other than spew aphorisms. It’s not that I consider her idea to be beyond the bounds of reason, but rather because I would expect someone with her credentials to present her conclusion as a possibility rather than a truth given the evidence she provides. Had she written, “I’ve noticed on college campuses that some young women are feeling like they cannot compete against pornography for men’s attention. This is disturbing and I wonder if it is indicative of a larger trend...” my inquisitive mind would have jumped into overdrive. What would account for these feelings? How can we find out if it is more widespread? But she didn’t. “The evidence is in: Greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity." Where’s the evidence? What she did was to use an unrepresentative sample of college women and extrapolate from it the workings of all men. If pornography does have such an effect, is it only upon young men? What about, say, a 40 year-old guy? How about non-college educated men? White vs. black vs. Latino? Wolf notes: “In my gym, the 40-year-old women have adult pubic hair; the twentysomethings have all been trimmed and styled.” Is she inferring that 40 year-old men do not view porn? Or that they do but the effect on them is different? Why would this be? This is intellectual treachery and Wolf ought be roundly castigated by everyone regardless on which side of the he or she sits. By ignoring so much she deals a blow to an otherwise much-needed endeavor, feminism. Well, equality feminism.

Women are due equal pay for equal pay, rape is horrendous and must be stomped out, women have the right to pursue a career and not be bound to the home if they so choose, etc. There can be no doubt that feminism generally has achieved some great things and changed our society for the better. But to say something like, “’Beauty’ is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West it is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.” is retarded. It kowtows to the notion that human beings are tabla rasas and denies the ever-increasing evidence of a human nature which is forever engaged in a pas de deux with nurture. Reading Wolf’s tract and some choice quotes, I get the impression that she views all the wrongs in the world as an instant drink – like Tang. Just take men and add pornography.

Such a view has led to some unfortunate consequences which only acts as barriers towards gender equality. For instance, sex has become disassociated from rape. Steven Pinker: “But the fact that rape has something to do with violence does not mean it has nothing to do with sex, any more than the fact that armed robbery has something to do with violence means it has nothing to do with greed.” Related to this are sexual harassment laws and the politically correct notion that looking at a woman is potential harassment. This dehumanizes interaction between men and women and transmogrifies them into a series of sterile Lockean contracts.

The porn myth is really that pornography can do much more than make a guy horny. Wolf’s words are degrading to men because they indicate a belief that men are inherently stupid, unable as we are to distinguish between a picture of a woman and the women we encounter everyday in real life. At best, Wolf implies that men are slaves to, often times, destructive urges and have no self-control. Thusly we are primal and lack the civilizing palliatives of intellect and restraint. That shit didn’t work for describing black people and it doesn’t work for describing men.

Since Wolf provides nothing more than anecdotal evidence to bolster her argument, let’s try a mental exercise. Can we think of any other factor which could be the cause of Wolf’s observations? I find it disturbing that she never actually defines by women not being able to “compete” with porn. She doesn’t even have the courtesy to give us an anecdote. What does this mean? Are young women unable to get dates? Do men deny them physical contact? Do men come out and tell them, “No thanks, you don’t look like Jenna Jameson.”? What competition are these women losing exactly?

So let’s put on our thinking caps and try to imagine other causes for her (debatable) effect. E.g. - could it be the case that abstinence among women in college is up? Think about it, men are constantly in musth at that age and at the most sexually competitive point in their lives. So, if young women are less inclined to have sex, could young men be turning to porn and masturbation as an alternative to never hitting a home run or getting a bad case of blue balls? Again, I present this as merely a hypothesis with no data to bolster it but it stands on the same ground as Wolf’s claims. Similarly, are messages of abstinence and fear of AIDS promoting “safe sex” (ie – masturbation) among men?

Are the women who are doing the complaining speaking of relationships they deem as “serious” or of an inability to get a one-night-stand? Are young college women making demands in their serious relationships that were not made by similar women of Wolf’s generation? Could society-at-large (outside of pornography) being promulgating messages that would discourage sex outside of marriage? Let us here again take into account AIDS and the promotion of “traditional” family values.

Personally, I do not feel that Wolf’s claims are evidence of a larger trend. Even if they were, to paint a simplistic cause and effect relationship as she has done is ludicrous. Like basically everything else in life, a drastic change in a large population would be the result of the interaction of a number of factors working in concert.

Ms. Wolf’s essay is an act of stupidity by someone of obvious intelligence. That she makes conclusions based solely on ill-explained anecdotes is intellectual nonfeasance. It is an atrocity in the fight for gender equality. Such tripe does little to encourage others to take seriously any other ideas she may have which could very well have great merit. Instead of debunking a “porn myth” she merely creates her own.

I Am a Godless Heathen

As I watch footage of the damage wreaked upon Istanbul by the various bombs that exploded there today and of the burning shells of HUMVs in Iraq, I can honestly say I just wish it would end. The whole mess. I want the Iraqis to have their country back, our soldiers out of there, and peaceful bartering for oil to begin. Why do so many people hate Americans? What caused all of this to happen? While I concede that the problem is complex and the causes many, I still can’t help but feel that religion has a primary role in this mess.

The more I think about it, the more I am inclined to agree with Gore Vidal:

”The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal--God is the Omnipotent Father--hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is not just in place for one tribe, but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good.”

I am not a militant atheist and have no desire to go around chiding religious folk. Rather, I’m inclined to let people believe in their deity of choice. However silly and degrading to human dignity I find it that a person would actually believe that there’s an old, bearded man in the sky directing the universe, the mere belief is rather benign. It’s when, as Richard Dawkins has pointed out many a time, when religion is a tag foisted by one group upon another that things get messy. It encourages and justifies repugnant actions.

One of my favorite authors, the late Douglas Adams, waxed philosophical on an absurdity in our society:
”…[religion] has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not?--because you're not!’ If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday,' you say, "I respect that."”

So what’s an atheist to do? I still have to live with my neighbors and my life would be hell if I went around lambasting their beliefs. On the other hand, giving religion free-reign to label and kill as it pleases is no good either. I suppose I’ll continue to do what I’ve always done – defend myself as the need arises. Unlike some Xtians, we atheists don’t go around to people’s home uninvited prodding them on eschatological issues. So you won’t find me at your door asking if you’ve come to terms with immanent explosion of the Sun in 4 billion years or not. However, if an Xtian comes to my door unannounced and starts asking me whether I’ve accepted Jesus, they can expect holy hell.

The last time this happened, I was coming home from the store. As I was parking, I saw the proselytizers approaching the front door. I took my sweet time in getting out of the car and grabbing my things so I wouldn’t have to deal with them. In my stead, Pete got to speak with them. Upon answering the door, Pete was asked whether or not he’d taken some time that day to think about what’s going to happen to him when the world ends. It having been a weekday evening, he replied that he had not as his mind was busy with more mundane things such as work, bills, and generally dealing with the everyday trials and tribulations of day-to-day living. I would have told them that I won’t be alive in 4 billion years so, no, I haven’t really given thought to the end of our world. And then I would have taken it from there...

Saruman 86'd

I'm dismayed. I have just read that all footage of Christopher Lee as Saruman in Return of the King has been exorcised. What a bummer. Lee is awesome and his presence in any film in striking. What a shame. He had some great lines in the first two films such as "You will taste man flesh!" Here's the dope from the Beeb:

Lee, 81, who plays the wizard Saruman in the trilogy, said he had expected to appear in seven minutes' worth of climactic scenes.

"Of course I am very shocked, that's all I can say," he told ITV1's This Morning on Wednesday.

Lee fans have now started an online petition to restore the scenes.

"As far as I'm concerned, I'm only telling you this because it has been revealed on the internet, someone has talked and it certainly wasn't me," he told the UK TV show.

"If you want to know why you would have to ask the company New Line or director Peter Jackson and his associates because I still don't really know why.

"I can't say any more because I signed a confidentiality agreement and I honoured my word."

Asked if he would attend the première, he said: "No, what's the point? What's the point of going? None at all."

Lee, who also appears as Count Dooku in the Star Wars films, said appearing in the first two Lord of the Rings movies had been "a dream come true".

Tempests in Teacups and Breaking Butterflies on Wheels

"But the lover of intelligence must be patient with those who cannot readily share his passion. Some pangs the mind will inflict upon the heart. It is a mistake to think that men are united by elemental affections. Our affections divide us. We strike roots in immediate time and space, and fall in love with our locality, the customs and the language in which we were brought up. Intelligence unites us with mankind, by leading us in sympathy to other times, other places, other customs; but first the prejudiced roots of affection must be pulled up."
---John Erskine, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent

I spent some time a few nights ago engaging in my daily routine of checking email and surfing over to various web sites to keep updated on the activities of my favorite rock bands. I had read last week that Phil Collins was to make a revelation on Monday so I first I went to Genesis' web page to get the straight dope. (He was announcing a farewell tour, of sorts.) After giving the forum there a once over, I headed to Jethro Tull's home on the web. At the top of the page was a link to something Ian Anderson had written about some previous comments of his regarding the American flag. Funny. I hadn't heard anything about any such comments. Hastily, I clicked on the link and read. I was shocked.

Shocked that he felt the need to issue a public apology. So I went out onto the Net and found the full article which has caused the commotion. The part which seems to have stirred the ire of many of my fellow Americans was:

"I hate to see the American flag hanging out of every bloody station wagon, out of every SUV, every little Midwestern house in some residential area. It's easy to confuse patriotism with nationalism."

After having read the article, I felt clueless as to why there was all the hub-ub, Bub. I'm an American and I also happen to live in the Midwest. It seems that I would be a prime candidate for taking offense at the comments. But I took no offense whatsoever. What I did offense at, however, was the knee-jerk reactions of some of my fellow country(wo)men.

The apology echoed sentiments expressed in the interview itself, namely, that he has great respect for Americans and at the end of the statement, Anderson asked fans to share their ideas about what can be done to improve the image of Americans in the eyes of non-Americans. To do so, one could email him directly or go to the message board at Tull's site. Reading the messages, I got the impression that most of the poster were engaged in a concerted effort to avoid any attempt at amelioration. I was hard-pressed to find anything that wasn't rebuttal by epithet.

I would urge my readers to read the article in its entirety and it can be found below. Anyone with even a modicum of intelligence will read the article and understand that his remarks were not anti-American, American bashing, or whatever jingoistic piece of bullshit you want to call it. He clearly states that he has the "highest regard" for the American people in contrast to much of the world. His line of reasoning begins with two problems: 1) A great portion of the world's population hates Americans and 2) that there is a war going on in Iraq which he sees as being unjust. For Anderson, these two problems are intertwined. In addressing the first issue, nowhere does Anderson indicate he has any animosity towards Americans generally. The bit about the flags here people, relates to the perceptions of others, specifically Europeans. He addresses the issue of displaying the flag and contrasts when/where Europeans do so with American displays. Europeans have a slightly different history when compared to us Americans and thusly the exhibition of the flag takes on different meanings for them. Ergo, when every SUV and house in America has a flag waving from it, some people associate this behavior with less than savory elements of humanity's past.

Nowhere does Anderson make any blanket statement about Americans being a bunch of maroons or any such thing. What he does say is that, in order to help their own cause, Americans might think about how the display of the Old Glory is perceived by foreigners. For the long run, what's the best way to get people to not want to fly planes into your buildings? Is it by killing them or putting them into perpetual fear of being killed? Or perhaps by building bridges and understanding one another to reach, at the least, détente?

In the aftermath of 9/11, the company I worked at gave out pins with the American flag on them. It became increasingly rare to find a lapel that was not adorned with such a pin. Outside of the workplace, the flag popped up everywhere, as Anderson noted. Were these people being patriotic? To be sure. Was there also an attendant attitude, on the part of some of these people, that this gave the U.S. carte blanche to, as Ann "Thrax" Coulter said, "...invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"? Most definitely. For many, even most, I dare say, of my co-workers, shrouding oneself in the flag was like their fulfillment of any perceived sense of civic duty. Trying to understand why terrorists would want to fly planes into the WTC was unnecessary. Looking into the long, tense history of the relationship between Islam and Christianity was unthinkable. For these people, donning the Stars & Stripes was enough. But Anderson is right, it's not enough.

As I read the posts at the Tull message forum, I was saddened. A certain Ryan White finds it necessary to yell "God Bless America" at the end of his posts as well as to label anyone who disagrees with him a "liberal". He goes on in one post to generalize about all of these so-called "liberals" by saying that they love to commit "ad hominum" (sic) attacks only to finish his comments by labeling another poster a "moron". Aside from Mr. White's blatant lack of intelligence, two things disturbed me greatly. The first was the prevalent attitude that, once Osama bin Laden is brought to justice or killed, the terrorist problem is effectively solved. This is curing a symptom but not the cause. Terrorists are not born, they're made. Al-Queda is not the lone repository of people willing to kill Americans. This is what Anderson was alluding to in his comments. No one person is the cause of anti-American sentiment in the world thusly it's gonna take a long time and the efforts of millions, including we Americans, to change the situation. For better or for worse, the United States is the most powerful country on this planet. By saying, "These are powerful forces that folks are playing with. To have that power is something you can't take lightly. You have to realize there are people out there whose lives you may affect by what you do.", Anderson is imploring the American government to take on the role of a steward and not that of a bully. His opinion on the matter hasn't changed since 1978 when he said: "That's one thing money buys: the right to acquire responsibility for things or people or animals or whatever."

To answer his question about what can be done, I would say that the most important thing is for Americans to be intelligent.

1) Approach those who are different than you as a chance to learn something, to experience something new.
2) If you go abroad, don't rush to the nearest McDonalds, for Christ's sake. Be open-minded and engage the local culture.
3) Think critically for a change and don't believe everything you hear. Just because CNN or Faux News says something doesn't mean it's so. Did you really lose your job to a foreigner or are you taking Rush Limbaugh's word for it?
4) Understand that what we Americans do collectively has an impact around the world. Pollution does not discriminate upon whom it has effects.
5) Realize that a government and its people are distinct in many ways.
6) Stop calling people with whom you disagree names as a first resort.
7) Stop thinking that 9/11 was the worst fate to befall a nation ever. It wasn't. So quit bitching about any perceived lack of sympathy from the rest of the world. We Americans have no problem drowning ourselves in schadenfreude when it comes to our own. Witness Martha Stewart, Michael Jackson, et al It was a tragedy whose causes go beyond OBL and we have to comprehend this to make sure it never happens again.

The Genesis of the Controversy

The following is an interview with Ian Anderson, leader of the band Jethro Tull printed in the Asbury Park Press. Some of the more ascerbic sentiments expressed herein brought the opprobrium of many flag-waving Americans down upon him. Anderson has since written a clarification and apology which can be found at Tull's web page.

The Interactive Ian Anderson
By Mark Voger, Staff Writer

"Americans are in a dreadful pickle at the moment, being they're the villains of the planet as far as roughly half the population of the world is concerned. Half the world pretty much hates Americans."

Ian Anderson -- the Scottish-born, English-bred singer-songwriter who usually leads Jethro Tull, but is now in the midst of a thought-provoking solo tour -- insists he isn't America bashing. He's just telling it like it is.

Anderson will admit, though, to being less than a fan of President Bush -- or British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for that matter.

"Bush and Blair haven't got the faintest clue what a real war is," Anderson says. "As a couple of guys who have at their disposal considerable forces in the way of weapons of mass destruction, it seems somewhat cynical to be engaging in an act of invasion on foreign soil without the sanction of the international community and with guns blazing. Frankly, I hope both of them have an early demise."

Why is the flute-twirling rocker behind the '70s FM classics "Aqualung," "Locomotive Breath" and "Bungle in the Jungle" suddenly waxing political? Actually, it isn't so sudden. Anderson has always been that most rare of rockers -- an articulate one -- as evidenced by his lyrics, interviews and song introductions. His "Rubbing Elbows With Ian Anderson" tour, coming to Red Bank on Friday, is the musician's chance to finally let it rip verbally.

In each city, Anderson will invite a local radio or TV personality and several audience members to join him onstage for an evening of conversation and music. There'll be Q&As, acoustic performances of Tull songs and, most interestingly, a local musician performing an original song backed by Anderson's band.

The format sounds either novel or nutty. Anderson says it can be a little of both. "It is very much an improvised situation," he says. "It works around a format, but we don't know what the content is going to be. We try and find a local singer-songwriter who can get up on stage and is looking for a good backing group for the evening. We try to fulfill that need."

How did Anderson come to create the format?
Says the musician: "As a direct result of 35 years of doing radio station visits and the occasional TV thing, you do build up a catalog of experiences. I thought it would be interesting to take that visit as a guest in somebody else's domain, turn it around and bring the radio guys into my world. And to give the audience -- rather than the radio listener or TV viewer -- the opportunity to participate to some little extent in the show."

Anderson meets with the local radio or TV personalities on show days to go over the format. "It's important that they're relaxed," he says. "The first two or three minutes of the show are rough, because they're a little anxious walking out in front of a live audience. Even though many of them have done this before, it's usually limited to, 'Hey, Cleveland, let's hear it for Jethro Tull!' You know, the rabble-rousing DJ moment that you get before a lot of rock concerts. "But beyond that, to actually have to think and provide intelligent commentary and take questions from the audience is something they may not be used to."

A Missed Rehearsal
The musical guests present a different set of challenges. "So far, it's all worked out apart from one person," Anderson recalls. "He was supposed to be there for 5 o'clock rehearsal to run through his song, which we'd carefully written out and learned. At the last minute, we were informed, 'You know, I can't get off work 'til 7 p.m.' "At 7 p.m., the doors open and the audience walks in the theater! It's a little bit late. So that poor, unfortunate guest couldn't make it. Luckily, we had a stagehand, a girl who just happened to be a singer-songwriter. With about five minutes of quick rehearsal, she was shoehorned into the show. She was great.

"It's really rewarding to see these folks' faces light up when they finish their song. I mean, it's a mixture of relief, abject terror and sort of orgasmic release. "It's been always a great little part of every show, giving our musical guest the opportunity to feel good for four minutes. And then," Anderson adds with a laugh, "back to their wretched, miserable, struggling-musician lives."

Anderson's co-host in Red Bank will be Terrie Carr, program director at WDHA in Cedar Knolls. "It sounds like it's going to have almost like a 'Storytellers' vibe," Carr says (referring to the VH1 program of that title). "Ian's such an intelligent, witty guy. I'm looking forward to the spontaneity of it."

The musical talent will be Jeff Gaynor, Dumont, who gigs in the Bergen County area. "Over the moon doesn't begin to describe it," Gaynor says of his response to this opportunity. "Ian Anderson is one of my greatest musical heroes. Just to meet him would have been incredible, but to actually perform with him is beyond description."

The question of which topics emerge during the "Rubbing Elbows" chat segments is what sets Anderson off on a diatribe about the ongoing American-led war in Iraq. "I like to sound the audience out a little bit," Anderson says. "I usually bring your president into the conversation at some point, and perhaps Tony Blair. I like to hear the audience divided, as they always are, over the pros and cons of Bush policy and the Iraq so-called war."

Anderson scoffs. "I mean, you know, to call it a war is to attempt to dignify a spurious invasion as something that sounds rather grand. As a career-molding war for you-know-who. I mean, to call it a war is just a disgrace. "But that's not an area that I go into in any depth (during the shows). For a lot of people, that's dangerous talk, because they are keen supporters of flag-waving nationalism and, dare I say, retribution and revenge, which is what they see this as being. I find that utterly deplorable.

"I hate to see the American flag hanging out of every bloody station wagon, out of every SUV, every little Midwestern house in some residential area. It's easy to confuse patriotism with nationalism."

Overseas View
This, Anderson warns, is one reason America has become unpopular overseas. "Unfortunately, the way the world sees it," Anderson says, "we don't look kindly on the flag-waving stuff anymore. In Europe, the only time you see flag-waving is at soccer games when people beat the (excrement)out of each other. A lot of flag-waving goes on there. "But most of the time, we keep the flag-waving out of normal society these days, because we know that it just engenders old animosities -- we old Europeans who are a little sadder and wiser as a result of having the (excrement) beaten out of us a number of times, and our cities and national monuments destroyed. We're probably a little more sanguine about this than the very sensitive American psyche, which has not experienced or had to endure these offenses on its home turf."

Some Americans may disagree in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, though 56-year-old Anderson is referring to the bombing of England and other European countries during World War II.

'Good Ambassadors'
"I sympathize with the American people," he says, "who I have the highest regard for as being warm, invitational and mostly pretty good ambassadors around the world. The fact that they, we, count them as being the bad guys -- flag-waving ain't gonna do it.

"We have to work over the next two or three generations, not the next two or three months or two or three years. We're talking about a multi-generational, skillfully worked job of re-education, of stepping out into the world gently and showing a kinder and a more human face. We have to correct the misunderstandings. We have to correct the prejudices. And we won't correct them by sending in the tanks and the guns and the bombs and the missiles. We are all going to have to learn that sad lesson -- that what was done in Iraq is the wrong thing. We had Saddam Hussein pretty much under control. The lesser of evils at the time was to play the game; send the weapons inspectors back in; do the stuff via the United Nations. To do what was done by Blair and Bush is, I think, a great sin for which I suspect both of them will pay in terms of career and reputation in the way that it is written up in history.

But some folks, just like Sigfried and Roy, will do anything for the show-biz buzz. And the show-biz buzz of being out there doing the big, spectacular Las Vegas show with a bunch of poor animals -- you know, so Bush and Blair will do the same thing for the different buzz that comes with the power of political leadership.

"These are powerful forces that folks are playing with. To have that power is something you can't take lightly. You have to realize there are people out there whose lives you may affect by what you do."

Porn Shui

Porn Shui: noun, refers to the art of positioning oneself in one's office or cubicle so that one can surf porn undetected. Usage: "I have great porn shui- I face the hallway and the desk behind me is vacant."

Rush to Judgment

This quote is attributed to Rush Limbaugh: "There's nothing good about drug use. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."

This being the case, Rush should voluntarily submit to being sent up. If he had a single shred of integrity, he'd walk into his local courthouse with hands extended pleading to be put in jail for the good of society. I haven't listened to his show but there can be little doubt that money and whiteness can squash any estoppel.

I Am Not P.J. Crook

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I'm really getting into the work of P.J. Crook. Her work is definitely surreal. (I love how "Expresso" tips a hat to Magritte.) Don't get me wrong, it also concedes to naturalism, but only just. There is perspective but it's rigid and angular. And I love how faces are more impressionistic than realistic. Times like these really make me wish I had even one artistic bone in my body.

The Ties That Bind

Put some Onkel Fish on and realized that continuing to write might be fun.

Did anyone catch that Jessica Lynch made-for-TV movie last night? I didn't see it all but my roommate had it on and I didn't feel like moving. As the credits rolled, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Joel Ransom was the cinematographer. For those of you asking who Joel Ransom is, he shot many an episode of The X-Files. So it would at least look pretty. Well, after the scene where Ms. Lynch is captured I left the room having lost interest in the story. But I will say the battle scene was shot and edited really well. It had that Black Hawk Down look which, in turn, had that Saving Private Ryan look. You know - very crisp with a little motion blur. It seems like all shoot 'em up scenes are shot this way nowadays. If I remember correctly, Kaminski modified the shutters on his cameras to 45° in order to achieve the effect. Like I said below, he's a genius.

I also watched a documentary on HBO about that hostage-taking incident in that Moscow theater last year. While not as interesting as something by Errol Morris stylistically, it was pretty interesting nonetheless. I was fascinated by the thoughts of the hostages and their conversations with the Chechen women who had bombs strapped around their waists. It seemed that these women didn't want to die anymore than the hostages despite their leaders' rhetoric. And those 2 goofballs who wandered into the theater. Some guy and a young woman - both were shot. I wish the program had said more about them - who they were, why they would have done such a thing, etc. but, alas, it did not.

A few days ago, I caught another good documentary on Black Starz. It was entitled Last of the Mississippi Jukes. The movie first gave a brief history of the juke joint and then gives a brief profile of Morgan Freeman's Ground Zero in Clarksdale, MS, a modern juke joint. The rest of the film was dedicated to the Subway Lounge, a joint stuck in the basement of a dilapidated hotel in Jackson.

The owner, musicians, and patrons were interviewed and gave their stories of the importance of the Subway in the community. The lounge is in the old Summers Hotel which was the first black-owned hotel in the city. Many black musicians and members of the Civil Rights movement stayed there so the building has great historical significance.

As a profile of the place and of a bit of Southern culture, it was interesting. That the place served an important function in its community was beyond doubt. But why was it important? Why is the preservation of a hotel where the first Freedom Riders stayed important? What is significant about a hole-in-the-wall bar that larger, corporate venues lack? There were so many "larger" issues that I wanted to know more about. Why do human beings preserve their pasts? How does the community of the Subway Lounge compare to the community of the various casinos in the area that also offer live music? To what part of the human psyche does a place like the Subway speak?

I accept that such questions were out of the purview of the film. Still, the questions remain. So, when it was finished, I went onto the Internet and watched another documentary about the Wooten family called Sweet Is the Day. The Wooten family have been shape note singing for generations and the film demonstrated the role of singing in the family - how it serves as a unifying force. Now, maybe I'm being a dork here, but I'm still curious as to how music can serve that function whether it be in a family or in a community. What's really going on in these situations? Are families/communities without such ties worse than those who do?

Films'n'Such

I'm giving serious thought to heading down to ChiTown one day this week to catch a flick or 3. Not only is the director's cut of Alien playing, but the new Matrix flick is showing on an IMAX screen out in Lincolnshire. And there's Bubba Ho-Tep too. You know what else is playing? La jatee, the short that 12 Monkeys was based upon. And then we have a Polish film festival going on down at the Copernicus Center. Fuck me! And the Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival on top of it. I may a breeder but film festivals of any ilk are just cool. Mayhaps I can convince a friend to head down there with me.

Looking ahead, I see that there are some flicks with potential hitting the big screens. Ollie Stone's Alexander opens on 11/5/2004. Rodrigo Prieto is shooting. (He was the DP on Frida and 8 Mile, among other films.) I wonder what happened between Ollie and Bob Richardson...Speaking of Bob, he's shooting Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a biopic of Howard Hughes starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Hmmm...What else? Tim Burton returns in a few months with Big Fish. Another PKD short story is hitting the big screen - Paycheck. John Woo is directing and Uma Thurman stars. Personally, I think Woo's American films have been shite but, like a moth to the flame, I'll always go see a flick based on a PKD story. And I do have that infatuation with Uma. The next installment of the Harry Potter series comes out next summer. Gary Oldman is playing Sirius Black so that should be cool. I sure hope they leave what little conflict there is between him and Severus Snape in the book intact because Oldman vs. Rickman should be classic. On the documentary side of things, Errol Morris returns in February with Fog of War. Everyone's favorite Canadian goofball, David Cronenberg, has Painkillers on tap for us. Janusz Kaminski is shooting Spielberg's next opus, The Terminal. I don't care how bad Lost Souls is, Kaminski is probably the best DP working in the biz right now. Speaking of which, Vittorio Storaro shot the new Exorcist flick. No doubt it will be a waste of his talent (and Stellan Skarsågrd's) but I gotta see it. Darius Khondji photographed Wimbeldon. The story of a tennis player doesn't interest me but I'll prolly see it anyway. Khondji's work on Se7en was so awesome and then he goes and does all these crappy flicks like The Beach. Going back to fave directors, Terry Gilliam's work on The Brothers Grimm continues unabated while Robert Altman gives us The Company starring Neve Campbell. Curiously enough, she is given a writing credit.

Well, that oughta keep me busy in the sinny next year.

I've been listening to Porcupine Tree this morning and it ain't doing good things to my head. Let's see here...ah yes, let's hear some Pavement. There was a thread about the lyrics to PT's In Absentia up at the G forum in which some guy asked about the lyrics. Steve Wilson doesn't like to say what individual songs are about but someone posted an interview excerpt in which he related his fascination with "...people on the fringes, on the edges of humanity and society. I have an interest in serial killers, child molesters and wife beaters - not in what they did but in the psychology of why, what caused them to become unhinged and twisted? Why are they unable to empathize? It's [In Absentia] sort of a metaphor - there's something missing, a black hole, a cancer in their soul. It's an absence in the soul." So the guy who made the post replies that he cannot listen to the songs relating to this theme for reasons of "personal ethics". What the fuck? I asked him what he meant and he reiterated the spiel about personal ethics and that a sibling of his was raped at a young age. OK, so why does this preclude him from listening to songs that ponder why the person who raped his sibling would do such a thing? Like the woodcutter said, I just don't understand. Harrumph.