MMM

This is pretty late notice, but if you are looking for something to do tonight at, oh around 2 in the morning, come to the annual Bang on a Can Marathon at the World Finance Center, where Alarm Will Sound will be playing my arrangement of Revolution 9 by The Beatles. The Marathon is always an awesome time, go check it out!

Here is the main schedule.

I could channel my considerable angst and excitement for tonights season finale of Lost into some ornate display of my fanaticism, such as a live-blog of the two hour episode. I could get all Doc Jensen on your asses and lay out all of my theories and predictions for you to peruse prior to your own Lost ritual.

But instead I'll just say this:

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG LOST FINALE!!!! OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG LOST FINALE!!!!!!!!! OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG LOST FINALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Of COURSE it is!

This is my favorite Mogwai song, and I have yet to see the video until today! What do you think? Kinda beautiful, yes? Kinda disturbing, yes?

Scheherazade's Dance - Andrew Belling (from Fairy Tales OST)

The Bondage Suite # 2 - Alessandro Alessandroni and Nora Orlandi (from Music For Strange Situations)

Brain Button - Gleaming Spires (The Devil in Miss Jones 3: A New Beginning OST)


These were found at two of my favorite soundtrack blogs: Sleazy Listening and the mind-blowing Vinnie Rattole's Records. Sleazy Listening is a virtual education in 60s-70s Italian exploitation cinema (and much more). You could spend an entire day on Vinnie Rattole's site. It's got more corny 80s soundtracks than you could ever ask for, plus a ridiculous amount of different styles and genres, as well as non-soundtrack albums.

Ooh! If you are a Google Reader user, as your good friend Mafoo is, click the title of one of your items. Nice, huh! Gone are the days of forgoing comments because of the massive amount of time and energy it would take to visit the external link.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California." - Hillary Clinton

Really???

Someone has uploaded one of my favorite movies onto YouTube, Takashi Miike's brilliant and shocking Visitor Q. The movie is something to experience. I guarantee you will be shocked, disgusted, confused, and then left oddly touched at the end. Here is the link to the YouTube account that has uploaded it, watch it before it gets taken down!

If you'd like to know a tiny bit more about what you will be getting yourself into, check out the enigmatic trailer:

The Illinois Department of Transportation has apparently been reading some J.G. Ballard:



That's the sexiest car safety ad I've seen since this:

Spin my lovely! Spin on your pepperoni axis!

via Synthtopia

The more he can do to equate McCain and Bush, the better. I think we'll start seeing Obama's political chops now that we are (effectively) past the primary stage. Now that he can debate someone with whom he has significant policy differences, I think we'll get more in terms of specifics. Hopefully Hillary will have toughened him up a bit as well.

The war puts McCain in a very sticky position, rightfully, because he has wholeheartedly supported it during every step of the way. He can use Rumsfeld as a safe and convenient punching bag all he wants, it won't change the fact that he has not admitted that it was a mistake, or a deception. And he won't. Bush has one of the lowest approval ratings in history, McCain needs to distinguish himself from Bush, not equate. Although, I can't say that I mind the hole he is digging for himself.

For what it is worth, I will say that this general election is going to be between two people for whom I have some respect. This is definitely a first in my lifetime. As much as I disagree with McCain in terms of policy, I can't say that these measures would be unwelcome:

"My administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability. I will hold weekly press conferences. When we make errors, I will confess them readily and explain what we intend to do to correct them."

Turning to a prime ministerial ordeal greatly admired by the US political class, Senator McCain said: "I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons."

But aside from the many policy differences I have with McCain, I don't think I could find it in my heart to vote for someone who supported the war, hence my comparable disdain for Hillary Clinton.

And while I'm at it, I should mention that there are plenty of things that annoy me about Obama. As Andrew Sullivan points out, his support for Civil Unions rather than Gay Marriage is cowardice, plain and simple. You cannot hold that position without believing that Civil Unions is a second-class citizen institution. I also believe his Iraq withdrawal proposal is reactionary. Ironically, I find myself more in line with McCain's 100 year position, not because I want the U.S. to be there for 100 years, but because we committed to this dumbass war, and we should have to pay whatever exorbitant financial and human cost necessary to clean up our mess. Overall Obama is also a bit too much of a paternalist for my taste. He wants to help us, guide us, pull us out of our sad little lives into a bright new future. Yeah, that sounds... ok, but many of us don't think that the government should get too deep into the morality game, whether it is Christian or altruist.

But I'll vote for him, for one reason: he seems to be both intelligent and not evil. That's sure as hell a first for a presidential candidate, at least in my lifetime.

When God Dips His Love in My Heart:

Walking down Dahill Ave in Brooklyn yesterday I came across a Garage Sale (or yard/tag/stoop sale, depending on your locale). Now most garage sales, especially in my neighborhood, aren't really much to cheer about - my best Kensington find is a framed Coffy poster, which is hanging in my room right now. Every once in a while though you come across a goldmine, the kind where just a glance has you sprinting towards the nearest ATM.

A little background:

I come from a family of hunters, hagglers, and hoarders. My brother is the best/worst. He has a sixth sense for finding amazing deals and rare finds. So much so that he often owns more stuff than he has space for. Take one look at my bedroom and you'll see what I have in common with my bro. I'm learning to read the subtle signs of the garage sale/thrift store/antique store that I pass by: to know in a glance whether it is worth a peak inside, a walk-through, or an afternoon; to know from the proprietor's demeanor whether they would inch down a price or hold firm; to know if the seller of the items is the original owner or a third party - a hint: a third party is best, a lack of emotional connection to the goods and often ignorance to their worth. Still, I'm a novice compared to my brother but I'm getting better. Every time I'm home we go out and he delivers a few nuggets of wisdom.

Well, back to the Brooklyn garage sale. Walking down the street I noticed the sale and saw a good sign from afar: three uniform boxes underneath a table. This means a few things: either books, VHSs, records, tapes, or CDs are in those boxes (it's never DVDs) and whomever owns them cares enough to keep them in similar boxes and out of the sunlight. Lucky for me they were chock-full of VHSs!

"What? Who cares about VHS? It's a digital world now!"

That's enough Voices In My Head! VHS rocks. Here's why:

1. Some movies are still scarce on DVD (I'm looking at you The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and, until very recently, Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom). Old movies in particular can be hard to find, it beats waiting years for the eventual Criterion release.

2. You can view movies pre their obligatory 90s digital remastering. You get to see them as people saw them when they came out. Yes, I know Barry Lyndon looks like liquid Jesus on DVD, but Kubrick didn't make it to look like that. You can also find the un-fucked-with versions of movies such as Star Wars and E.T., where Jabba is not made of corny late-90s CGI and that FBI dude is still holding the gun.

3. Holy fuck they are cheap.

Case in point:

As I hunched over the boxes at the sale the man who was running it (who was not the owner, score) brought out three more boxes of tapes. Now, this was one of those collections... I could have bought 40 movies I really liked, but I kept it lean.

I left with:

Alien

Chinatown

Seven

Rocky

Taxi Driver

Teen Wolf

A Fistful of Dollars

Airplane

Dirty Harry

The Deer Hunter

The Exorcist

Weird Science

Creepshow

Dances with Wolves


and an original Hey Mickey 12 inch single in English AND Spanish

for 13 bucks.

He quoted me a buck each, but he and I both knew he would throw in a couple extra if I bought a bunch. I could have bought more but, as I said before, I'm not exactly luxuriating on space here.

I am somewhat embarrassed to say, but I have never seen Dirty Harry, A Fistful of Dollars, The Exorcist, and (until last night) Alien.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm sure there are a few of you out there who just gasped "The Exorcist??".

I know, I'm terrible. But I'm on the right track! Viva la VHS!

Great news for anyone who places any value on personal freedom. Prouda my home-state.

K, a few miscellany from the last few days.

- saw Iron Man: a little over-hyped, but still pretty badass for a superhero movie.

- saw Speed Racer: a little under-hyped, but still some annoying sap amidst the glorious visuals

- saw a bum crap in the subway: a New York first for me; I was more saddened than disgusted, interesting.

- found an online petition to clean up my block, literally.

- tried out a Novation Remote SL (salivate....)

- discovered GMailThis!, and thought, "Where the fuck have you been all my life??"

Ah, the zany thrill ride that is my life...

A teacher in (where else?) Brooklyn teaches his kids to make and modify their own guitars and other electronics such as oscillators and amps. God I wish I had a class like this when I was a kid!

Try not to mind the odd noise-gate on the voice.

From Feministing (ps I can't believe I'm linking to F'isting, Melly's gonna have a field day):

Moore was held in a basement a few blocks away where she was raped and tortured for four days before her captors beat her to death. The police, who Moore's mother begged for help, did nothing to find her.

Sean Gardiner at The Village Voice has a huge piece not only on the police's mishandling of Moore's disappearance - but also how it has sparked a historic racial bias case against the city.

Moore's mother Elle Carmichael is bringing forward a a civil-rights lawsuit claiming that the NYPD has a "practice of not making a prompt investigation of missing-persons claims of African-Americans, while making a prompt investigation for white individuals."

I don't think you need to be a conspiracy theorist to see that there is a definite bias. I also believe that this is not only a concrete example of the effects of Missing White Girl Syndrome, but a display of the ineptitude of the NYPD. More than anywhere else I have been (and I'm from L.A.!) the police force here has such a disconnect with the citizens, whether it is the harassment of subway riders breaking minor rules, the blatant ignoring of traffic laws, the disrespect to citizens, or the general air of superiority. All of these are heightened by degrees depending on the race and neighborhoods in which they take place.

Now I will fully admit that I have my own personal bias against police. I don't believe that any human should have inherent power over another, so a separate class of people that are above the law will receive nothing but spite from me. But I feel that my bias has a lot of justification.

Last week I was in a doctor's office and a massive brawl broke out in the waiting room. I was in SOHO (!) and an argument between a large middle aged man and a young woman quickly escalated into the man beating the girl viciously, which enveloped the crowd around them. It was pretty horrific. The chaos reigned for a couple minutes during which several other friends and family members from both sides were involved. The raging man was forced out of the building but kept making his way back in, to wail on anyone in his vicinity. It is always difficult to tell during a fight, but I believe the whole thing lasted somewhere between 5-10 minutes, during which, after numerous calls to 911, the police were nowhere to be found. Eventually the man left and the people inside slowly returned to normal, while the involved cleaned up and nursed their wounds.
I didn't see any cops but assumed they had eventually come since the "security" at the building called the young woman and her friends outside. About 30 minutes after the incident I went outside to get some air and saw the cops interrogating the woman and her friends, who I felt were clearly the victims in the situation. I mentioned to one of the security guards that I had witnessed the entire thing, who then offered me as a witness to the police officer:

P.O.: Oh, you saw the whole thing, did you? Well where were you 30 minutes ago when we could have used you??

Me: Wh-what? No cops even entered the scene of the fight. In fact police didn't even make any contact with the people who saw the whole thing. This is the first time I've seen you guys.

P.O.: Whatever man, it's too late.


Sigh. Against my anarchist ideals I offered to help the authority figures and they dismissed my help. Why do I think they didn't care? Well all of the people involved were black or latino. I don't really have any faith that the man will be caught. In fact, they cared about as much about this case as they do about giving people tickets. And they know that if it was some young pretty white socialite getting wailed on they could end up in hot water for not giving a fuck.

There is however an objective reason for this bias. Most of the crime happens in lower income areas, which tend to be black and latino. So they are called into more crime scenes involving minorities than whites, thus it becomes more routine. But I don't think that is an excuse. I think that the massive reduction in the NYC crime-rate has resulted in a flabby and lazy police force, both motivationally and physically. Thus, where they once focused on violent crime, they now focus on petty drug crimes and minor infractions such as putting your feet on subway seats, and in these areas you can clearly see the bias. Most marijuana users are white, but the vast majority of marijuana arrestees are black. And I was once on a train where a cop pulled a young black guy off the train for having his feet up, while a white guy and I did as well (it was late at night!); we all pretty much pulled our feet off the seats at the same time but he was the only one picked off the train.

Bringing it back the the title case of this blog, the media bias is just as bad if not worse than the police bias. It was interesting a few years ago when every month or two a new missing pretty white girl was plastered all over the news, in spite of the abduction rate going down. This of course led citizens to believe that there was an epidemic in kidnapping, particularly of the photogenic and white. The reality of course that the vast majority of kidnappings happened in the family and that there were just as many less photogenic girls, and boys, being kidnapped. Studies have shown though that the general public as a whole has been conditioned to associate sympathy with attractive and white, which of course leads to better ratings for the news organizations who exploit such sentiments.

Now, I'm pretty libertarian when it comes to the media - I despise much of the bias, but I still feel they are free to report as they wish - but when the bias is shared by the people who we are paying to "protect" us, it matters much more to me.

I don't really have the answer, but I do have a suggestion. We need a serious overhaul of the NYPD. They've enjoyed some goodwill by tacking themselves onto the 9/11, even though the NYFD really bore the brunt of that tragedy. But now it is waning, and shit like the Sean Bell incident only makes it more apparent that the overhaul is needed. We need less enforcement of petty drug laws, eradication of the quota-based ticket and/or arrest system, intense review of response times, subject them to the same laws we do (read: no running red lights with a momentary flash of the siren), more non-lethal force (and no I don't mean tasers), and better physical fitness.

Whuh? Yeah, I'm sorry but the NYPD are some out-of-shape fucks. If physical fitness is such a demand of the military, then why isn't it of the police force, who actually have a more physically demanding job in a lot of ways? I think that if you are obese and in the police force, you should have a desk job. Sorry. And I don't mean this out of spite. An officer who has the physical capabilities to chase and take down a perp is much less likely to use his taser or his gun, or even his nightstick. There is an obese cop who walks his beat on my street, waddling back and forth on the block waiting for someone to ride a bike on a sidewalk or carry an open container. Citizens don't respect or even fear him. What is he going to do, chase you? No way. He is more of an annoyance than an object of comfort.

And this is my point. If we are going to have a force of people that preside over us, shouldn't they predominantly be giving us comfort rather than annoyance?

This is bad.

But holy crap this is so much fucking worse.

Cultural relativity my ass. That place is straight out. Sure the religious crazies in our part of the world are screwed-up. But these guys make our doomsday cults and snake-handlers seem like Unitarians.

Preach on Brother! I highly recommend that you take the time to watch this. Author Michael Pollan decries the delusions of what he deems "nutritionism", clearing through the myths of healthy eating that have plagued the study and practice of nutrition.
Yeah, ok maybe it doesn't sound like all that much fun but seriously, give it a chance. Very entertaining and informative.

Ok, after pulling what I consider to be borderline voter-fraud, now what is he up to??

Or so says foxnews.com, who places this story ahead of this one on their main page.

Light blogging this week, after last week's flurry of activity. So rather than snark up a bunch of stories I've read, I figured I'd just list a bunch of recent interesting items. More efficient time-wasting for you, you see? Guh. Brain still moving slow after like a week of little sleep. Thus, the caveman-style writing. So let's proceed to the caveman-style linkdump.

There are three categories: Sweet, Weak, and WTF?

We-fucking-eeeeeeak.

Sweet.

Sweet.

Weak.

WTF?

Sweet.

WTMF???

Sweet!

Weak.

Swee-diddly-eet!

WTF?

Sweet.

Weak.

Weak.

W. T. F?????????????