it's things like this that may help extinguish my irrational distaste for Germans.

Graphic Waste of Time

As I'm sure both of you are looking for interesting diversions during your time of academic rigoridute, here's a list of what i look for when i'm not analyzing brains. Comics on the web, in various forms and purposes. I generally like non-fiction comics

SixGun - chainsaw-toting Abraham Lincoln
E-merl - a hypercomic is neither hyper, nor really comic, but interesting nonetheless.
The Formalist - pretend philosophy
Ellen Linder - check out the Houellebecq comic.
Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoon Index - like reading an NPR coloring book. Updated daily, to your infinite demise.
Electric Sheep - Home of Apokamon!, a retelling of the Book of Revelation with...
Scott McCloud - He who must be linked.
Larry Gonick - King of Non-fiction Comics. Number of sample pages on hit site, everyone of the books is worth your lunch money.

Don't blame me.

...............................

MMmmm.....BRAAAIINS!!!

On Being An Asshole

I was driving to work today and I noticed a sticker on the back of a beat-up green pickup. The sticker said "ASSHOLE", superimposed on something like the Underground symbol. There wasn't a line through it or anything; the dude in the pickup, wearing a white baseballcap and toting a decent amount of yard equipment in his truckbed. He was simple declaring his affection for his affectation: declaring himself a proud asshole. Or maybe just the vicitim of some grassroots sticker-defamation campaign.

There are, it seems, two broad classes of people who call themselves assholes. People who consciously say, "I'm an asshole." I believe the larger group is composed of those who see it as a character flaw, a troubled mood amongst a relatively well-adjusted persona. "I know, I know, I'm an asshole" after they miss their sister's birthday, or even after waking up after a raucus night of drinking, "Man, I was such an asshole last night." This version isn't far from verbal abuse, the only difference is that instead of your girlfriend telling you, "Mitch, don't be such an asshole, Paint My House!" the agent instead decides to self-apply the title. Now that, friends, is a name no one would self-apply where I come from.

Unless of course you belong to the second group. People who call themselves assholes, believe themselves to be assholes, and who don't really have a problem with that. As always, there's a historical precedent. I could trot out whatever Shakespearean character, maybe Iago, who is aware of not only his foul intentions but his foul nature as well, and given the course of events in Othello, he's fine with that. But I know shit about Shakespeare and I'm not about to start talking about it in a blog. The more modern progenitor of calling yourself a proud asshole is Denis Leary, the recently roasted Irish comic. He sings in "I'm an Asshole":

Sometimes I park in the handicapped spaces
While handicapped people
Make handicapped faces

The song is ostesibly about "some guy" who's an asshole and pees on toilet seats, but really the whole smoking-cynical-eat-my-shorts attitude is sort of his whole act, and we can see he enjoys identifying with the mindset and "is an asshole and proud of it." So we can see Denis as the first guy to make calling yourself an asshole, if not acceptable, at least part of the vernacular. And just in case you thought Denis was just talking about smoking in a restaurant or not helping old ladies, he puts his asshole-perspective within a historical context:

I'm gonna get "The Duke"
And John Cassavetes
And Lee Marvin
And Sam Peckinpah
And a case of whiskey
And drive down to Texas
And-
(Hey, Hey! You know you really are an asshole)
Why don't you just shut-up and sing the song, pal?

The mid-song rant is really a call-to-arms. Everyone he's talking about is either buried or frozen, but their personas were the strongest "asshole" personalities we had before it was OK to say "asshole" in a movie (or even in conversation). The slack-jawed Lee Marvin was usually a great example of brash action without consequence, such as in his late-noir film The Big Heat, as the hood who scars his girlfriend's face with hot coffee because she talks too much. Or Cassavettes as the racecar driver in The Killers (or as the director who put trashy-fabulous women on the screen), who goes against his woman and his friend as soon as his career goes sour, and only comes around to the dame when she offers him a big pay-off. She betrays him, and so with nothing left, no money no woman no friends, he resigns himself to his own murder.

Hollywood has always loved assholes: ruthless characters with few manners and a disregard for the fellow man. The difference now is that they survive till the end of the picture. Take Mel Gibson in Payback, Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs or Tom Cruise in Collateral. Why stick to action flicks? Royal Tenenbaum, Ed Crane (The Man Who Wasn't There), or Johnny Knoxville in The Ringer are all terrific asshole characters, and get celebrated in the movies they star in. And not that men have to be the only celebrated assholes; Basic Instinct, Sunset Blvd, or Sex and the City, anyone?

So how does this showbiz acceptance of being (or being called) an asshole filter down to the common man? In little stickers, aparently, though i guarantee anyone of you know someone (besides me) that's willing to profess their less-than-conciliatory nature. Movies and TV have helped, at the least, make the nom-de-guerre of asshole acceptable as self-applied moniker. I'd say that it still has the punch and force the derrogatory statement it used to be before Denis Leary, but it now seems in a middle ground between insult and nickname.

sweet.

My Brain Doing WHAT?

The brain does some wonderful things. It lets you see colors, it processes time and space, it organizes your motions, and it often remembers your name. All important and necessary functions in the world of today, and all with their own unique characteristics that help make our experience as humans so vivid. Science and psychology has sought to ask many questions about how the brain does these things, and in the process has answered many important questions and bettered many lives. Take Parkinson’s Disease, a complex brain disorder ameliorated by the use of L-DOPA, or surgical cures for epilepsy, over 75% effective in alleviating debilitating seizures. Or even new Alzheimer’s drugs which may stem the ebb of memory loss occurring in that affliction. One of the major tools for investigating brain diseases and brain functions is the functional magnetic resonance image scanner (fMRI for short). An fMRI scanner is a large, loud magnetic device that allows researchers to peer inside the living brain and look at what lights up inside during complex and vital functions.

Or, sometimes, not-so complex or vital functions. Since the scanner requires a subject to lay flat and relatively motionless during the scan, there are some definite physical constraints on what sorts of real-life behaviors you can look at. Outside of that, you can look at the brain doing any number of oddball activities. Since scanners usually have headphones and a TV screen (or a projection of one) inside the scanner, scientists can show you anything from Monet to pictures of butternut squash, and provide a soundtrack, no less. A number of recent studies have taken to the weirder possibilities of brain science. Steven Quartz and his team at CalTech sought to look for the “neural correlates of cool” by showing subjects inside the scanner pictures of 140 different products and celebrities; Quartz then classified subjects into High Cool (trendsetters), High Uncool (critics), and Low Cool (losers), based upon their biological responses to those pictures—not their actual vocal responses. Evidently, there’s no hiding behind your secret Lawrence Welk obsession; the scanner sees all.

If that’s not weird enough for you, then how about a study of male ejaculation? Researchers in the Netherlands interested in the brain’s response during orgasm placed 11 grown men inside the scanner and prepared them for what can only be described as a unique scientific experience. Manual stimulation was performed by female partners, under controlled conditions—relaxed, perhaps even kinky, but controlled—while the men underwent the scan. Three of their eleven volunteers “did not succeed,” demonstrating with a bit less than 30% certainty that a troupe of lab-coated observers and a highly magnetic force-field do not make for the most romantic of environments.

And, for those less inclined to participate in a sex act within large supermagnetic scientific devices, there are more passive tasks. Like watching a movie. Scientists at Tel Aviv University had subjects watch 30 minutes of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly while their brains were being looked at through an fMRI machine. This technique of allowing a subject to “free view” a stimulus was an effort to get away from the controlled designs of most studies and attempt a more “real-world” experience. While the experience of watching monochrome words flashing on a screen is common to psychology studies and rather uncommon to daily life, plenty of us have relaxed to watch a film in a dark room. The study, however, was not without its carefully analyzed results: the data showed that different brains showed the same response to the same scenes in the movie. When Tuco assembled his new gun and carefully used his fingers to test the revolver’s cylinder, everyone in the study showed the same activity in brain regions responsible for hand movements; a comforting notion that perhaps we are more alike than we know.

Interesting results from a scientific premise that might have seemed more like a Blockbuster night than a report worthy of the journal Science. Which brings to mind an interesting point: what do these studies mean? How do we interpret them? Scientists argue that knowing the individual variations in response to pictures and movies, helps to aid in the proper diagnosis and treatment of certain visual brain disorders, and even how well those diagnoses can be generalized. The Dutch study mentioned above even claims important implications for the growing (apologies) industry of male sexual function. However the most common—and perhaps most valid—justification for these studies may be the same thing these scientists tell their grant committees; that this information can be helpful to understanding the brain as a whole and that any task, no matter how weird, may give us a better picture of what’s happening inside.

Woods at Night

I don't really have a hobby. Well, i'm a label snob, and i collect honeybuns from the vending machine downstairs like i was diabetic. But my favorite activity, besides writing, is walking in the woods at night. I've been living in cities for a few years now, so the experiences have been limited to parks--big urban parks, like Hyde Park in London or Frick Park in Pittsburgh. And often i have to climb a gate to get in or out of it; that's never really been a barrier to me, and the notion that i might get trapped in sometimes helps the aesthetic of the experience.

But that's what i like to do. Park at the edge of the forest, and start walking into the mix until i start getting that eerie feeling in my shorts. Its not exactly that i'm looking to scare myself; being scared usually only lasts a few minutes, even if you're watching a movie. Part of it is the lack of city-sounds, partly the solitude of it, but i think what attracts me most about my "hobby" is how much it forces myself to listen to my own thoughts. Not in any faggy self-reflective way, but in a real-time examination of how sporatic thought actually is. When you're in the woods at night, you forget about the memory of the things you love and hate, the things you're supposed to remember to worry about. The things that--for better or worse--have consistentcy in your own 10-year personal narrative.

I do think there's a soundtrack for this sort of thing, like any running narrative. Plenty of songs are evocative of the nocturnal hikes, whether its Rachel's Egon Schiele alubm, "Hutterite Mile" by 16 Horsepower, or most anything off Calla's Scavengers. Often what is most affecting about these songs is their spareness, as if they were trying to reflect the experience of walking in the woods at night. There can be the even sound of your footsteps, and , but its only the rustling armadillo that catches your attention.

The recent preponderance of albums written in barns and sheds demonstrates the desire to capture this musical emptiness. Admittedly, the acoustics provided by big hollow barns filled with hay are optimum for certain acoustic sounds, but the best examples of barn-music, Andrew Bird's Weather Systems, M. Ward's The Transfiguration of Vincent, Great Lake Swimmer's self titled album, and Mum's Summer Make Good (ok, it was recorded in a lighthouse, but its still creaky) all try to incorporate the rust and squeak of their natural setting as elements of the album.

Which means that if you're already in the woods (or a barn) the experience of listening to these albums places you in the context in which they're created, which makes the music itself more present, and sometimes off-putting. Kind of like when there's a police siren sample in some crunk rap and you look in your rearview mirror with no uncertain amount of fear. But beyond that, in the woods, there is a certain synchrony of mood and feeling that happens when and all you've got is the sound of a slide guitar, brushed drums, and an errant raccoon.

King Leer

At the risk of being labeled/teased as a breast fetishist (and gaining a massive upsurge in webtraffic). The links are obviously NSFW.


I have almost never laughed at a porn film. The enforced roles, the expectance romance, the predictable climaxes; it's all so pathetic, and isn't even pathetic enough for pity-based humor. And i haven't really been combing the galaxy for funny porn; i've seen my fairy-tale remakes and held my porn parties (which do NOT go over well in the UK), but i've by no means seen all 4 versions of Debbie Does Dallas. Only the original and the 1993 sequel. Both of which were laughable, but not really funny. I've heard the Broadway play is crap.

The one exception to this trend is the work of one late California movieman, Russ Meyer. Russ Meyer died a year ago last week, and its safe to say that his legacy will be preserved among the cult following of sexploitation fans and breast-idolaters he was quite successful at creating. Wikipedia actually classifies Russ's work not as pornography so much as ribaldry; its aims are centered around humor and satire. The archetypal example of the form is The Miller's Tale, or any of the more sordid bits of The Cantebury Tales, while Barbarella or Bettie Balhaus might be better modern examples. In perhaps his greatest example of the form, Meyer was able to parody both a mainstream Hollywood flic (Valley of the Dolls) with his own creation (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) and then parody that film in Beyond the Valley of the UltraVixens, his funniest (and last) film, in which cock-punching, big black mechanics, and ravenous homosexual dentists are all running themes.

The most provocative of Russ's films came in 1976, with the release of Up! In some sense, this is where he started losing it. The film opens with Hitler getting gang raped by a gigalo in a Pilgrim outfit and his cadre of geishas and gimps. He is then eaten alive by a "piranafish" (actually a black angelfish) while reading his German newspaper in a Bavarian castle somewhere in small-town central California. The rest of the film focusses on a buxom L.A. cop Margo Winchester (Raven De La Croix) who, well, investigates the case in spandex tops and her best Mae West coo. People start saying stuff like, "I'd really like to strap you on," and "Oooh, you're red. You been screwing an Indian?"

I won't ruin it for you, but they're a lot of humping and the Nazi's get their dishes. But it's a romp, the whole way through. Russ wasn't a fan of intercourse on film (Up! is the only one of his films to show extended representations of coitus), so most of the action is simulated (ridiculously) or implied. The sex acts and rhythms are parodies of themselves. There are homage shots to Bergman and Houston, historical references to Dresden and Austwitz, and a greek chorus consisting of one Kitten Navidad jaunting around the woods naked and excited, reciting plot points in Shakespearen pentameter and undulating more fiercely as the story draws closer to its climactic...oh you get the idea.

With such a ridiculous premise/plot/dialogue/delivery, Up! (like most of Russ' films) is never really played for eroticsm. Sure, Mondo Topless is the 2hr jiggle concept film, Motorpsycho is an excuse to put huge boobs on a Harley, and Wild Gals of the Naked West consists almost exclusively of a cowboy's dream of a bordertown run by oversexed women. But for every Europe in the Raw there is a Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, for every Blacksnake! there is a Cherry, Harry and Raquel! There's also probably an exclamation point for every buxom starlet.

While the first half of his oevre ran the sexploitation gamut, Russ in the later half of his career was clearly after more than just putting tits on screen in new and interesting ways. He wanted fun, and the only way he could rationalize fun with his obssesion for busty women was to place them in increasingly ridiculous situations of power or oddity. He is no feminist--to be sure, there's a decent string of good-ole-boy misogyny running through a fair number of the pictures--but he had respect enough for the women he filmed to give them unique roles. Who else can boast a Japanese Hilter-killing gimp?

(To actually see this raucus LoonyBoobs spectacle, your only options are either a fiercly independent video rental store, or purchasing online. US region 1 dvds go for over $40, but if you can manage multi-region dvds (try VLC!), almost ALL of Russ' films have been released in the UK, for relatively cheap ~£10. Roger Ebert remembers Russ in the Guardian on the event of their release.)

Nuts on Toast

For some reason, most all of my friends are beginner to pro bike fiends. This has occured in absentia of my own interest in bicycles, and frankly i've always considered the trend a little spooky. But, now AH-HA! the upper hand!

Not that i care about reproducing, but i suspect they do.

Sweetest Contribution to Science Ever

This is totally sweet!

Two Japanese scientists just caught the first footage of a giant squid on camera. Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori captured over 500 photographs of the animal by baiting a hook at 2000 ft in the deep sea off the Ogasawara Islands. The animal, approxiametely 25 ft long, lost a tentacle on the hook, which is unfortunate for him but sweet for science. The researchers even report that the tentacle repeatedly gripped the deck and crew after it was hauled aboard. Sweet!

National Geographic has some of the advance photos, and a more thorough output will be published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B(iology). All of you are academics anyway, you can pull the article off of PubMed.

(update) Or you can read it here.

Gypsy Music for Everyone

The new favorite band of the week is Devotchka, a four-piece outfit from Denver. They are not Ukrainian. They are, however, good friends with Gogol Bordello, who are. The sound of the band is dramatic in the Kensington Gore sense of the word: sometimes they sound like a more dramatic Calexico, sometimes a more dramatic version of Wilco, sometimes a...well...less dramatic Morrissey.

Confession: came upon this band by searching for the song at the end of the Everything is Illuminated trailer. I will resolutely avoid actually seeing the film, given its apparent European sentimentalism and my enduring aversion to Jonathan Safran Foer, the latter of which is another post entirely.

That being said, the (unsigned) band is an excellent fusion of eastern European, Western, and cabaret styles. They're fond of guitars, pianos, marimbas, strings, trumpets, sousaphones, and the occaisional bazouiki. Live they're fantastic, apparently, already having completed a tour in which Marylin Manson honey Dita Von Teese was a backup burlesque dancer. They're currently touring with the Dresden Dolls. See them.

Pre-review: Kayne West

Late Registration, by Kayne West, is an album that I will, inevitably buy or rip from one of my black friends. I thoroughly enjoyed his last effort, The College Dropout, as it provided a great fuel-for-the-fire moment when I got rejected from Cambridge University and decided that academia is a load of bollocks. I also enjoyed it in ways that most everyone else did: the beats were catchy, the lyrics were sly, and the overreaching concept was holistic. Dope.

So it's with some trepidation that I approach the sophomore effort. In the two years since, my appreciation of pop-rap has waned a bit in favor of the London gutterpunks and American Indie acts. Such is the fate of a subscriber to emusic. Not that i don't follow a trend every once in a while, but i typically wait for the buzz to get killed. And before the buzz dies down--and before I actually hear the album--I'd like to review what's been said so far, and how this might play into my future experience.

Where to start? Well, I usually start with whatever Pitchfork tells me. Their review of Late Registration is typical of the scene, and begins by discussing what almost every review I've read (and even a meta-review like this one) leads off with: The Ego. "Contrary to public opinion, hubris does have a righteous appeal." Judging from the 9.5 score on the meter, it doesn't sound as if PF has problem with arrogance. As many reviewers pointed out, bragging is an important element of the rap game. Rolling Stone has similar praises for the egoism: "If anything, Kanye is too modest." Some reviews are a bit broader with their praise; the LA Times focusses on the album itself, and goes through a laundry list of the highlights, from the 1st single, "Diamonds of Sierra Leone" to the more personal "Hey Mama." Some reviews suggest that perhaps the ego effect is a little more subtle, as Jon Pareles in the NYT writes that Kanye "tries not to gloat, but he can't resist. He's no longer the underdog."

So how do i interpret these reviews into something that i'm ready for. My only personal experience with this album, besides the reviewing and the writing about reviewing, was in a subway station. The last week i was in London, before my trip back to the states, i decided to buy a week-long Tube pass. I don't normally ride the tube, mostly because it's too expensive, but also because i don't like the idea of being underground for extended periods of time. This had obvious advantages.

Anyway, on my last day in London I rode home to the Kensington tube station, which exists out right in front of Harrod's, the department store of the gods. I don't need to tell about how living near there helped me develop a rich and caustic anger at the overly affluent, suffice it to say that I'm a communist now. After exiting the tube carriage, and walking up the escalator, I see a poster for Kanye's new album: cudly bear in a dinner jacket, huge eyes looking out, against a black background. I didn't see this poster anywhere else, though i'm sure it was plastered in every Shoreditch fence and phonepost. But for me, seeing the poster at the entrance to the center of affluent comerce in a city driven by the idea of money, well it sort of lets me know that this is a Production, musically, commercially, and aethetically. The Product is the New Rap. All the glamour, five times the beats, and no cheese.

Then again, i haven't even heard it.

All Smith's are Finks

Why am i so reluctant to celebrate Zadie Smith? Here is a woman of the world, versed in my two favorite cultures, releasing novels, short stories, and essays. Who am i to snark? , yet she poses for half-page spreads in a dashiki and the latest from Harvey Nichols. She writes articles for the Guardian about Greta Garbo and gives talks and readings in academic theatres. She explains the cultural devide. She's pretty! So why am I so reluctant to grant her my fandom, which i typically relish on any modern author under 40 worth his snuff?

Zadie needs no lessons in public humility. She has consistently derided her first book as expansive, overambitious drivel, her second as seriously flawed. How better to shun criticism than to welcome it honestly and dispose of its target? Yet seems to me that within her self-criticism lies a very strong conviction that, regardless of what reviewers may have to say for her immature novels, she will be getting better. But she just can't get to it now because that pesky literary establishment keeps making her a celebrity, and pouring on adulation about her ridiculous little novels. A recent article in Slate asks the Man Booker committee to take Zadie at her word and pass her by for the prize. On Beauty is by most reviews an admirable work, yet not a work deserving of the prize because of the approach she has taken upon her own work; she "has mistaken her admirable pooh-poohing of a lot of foolish publicity for a free pass to get by as an overcelebrated mediocrity."

Admittedly, Julian Barnes is the favorite, but for reasons of stature more than merit. His recent "Arthur & George" has been reviewed as , in line but not exeplary of other exhumings of the literary dick. Zadie's book has it's own roots in the Canon, being a very forthright reinterpretation of the story and circumstances in E.M. Forester's Howard's End. When the Slate article gets around to picking apart the book, Joon finds fault with Zadie's somewhat typified description of American liberal professors. Admittedly this is in line with an article who's stated purpose is to explain why Zadie isn't right for the prize, but still the criticism comes out seeming a little small. Was that the point?

Further evidence of the humble hubris that Zadie seems to calmly exhude is an interview she did with Ian McEwan in the August edition of The Believer. The exchange is admittedly aware of it's double punch: while Jim Roll interviews Bjork, Zadie Smith is 'in conversation with' Ian McEwan. In one particularly revealing exchange, Zadie asks Ian about canabalization of personal life for representation in literature:

i wondered how you felt about [your progression as a writer] yourself...I mean, you're working life has been a writing one. And this is a subject which honestly concerns me, not a little, because it's my life and it's likely to be my life for a really long time.

Never mind the willingness to make us aware that this is an interview between two writers. Zadie is placing herself no higher than something of an intelligent apprentice, albeit one that will be able to write for the rest of her natural life. Not that i doubt that prospect; given the size of her advances, and the quality of her short and long fiction, Zadie makes a fair assement of her possible future as an author in the world. It is nevertheless presumptive.

Perhaps the most interesting for me is what Zadie seems to have learned from her experience in America. As i attempt to integrate myself within British culture, one of the most distinct elements underlying where you go and what you do with your life is your assumed (or delivered) social status among the unseen stratum that dictates vocation, address, and recreation.

Patti Smith is a Fink

Patti Smith (punk rocker) is a fink. I tell you this because i thought she was just a punk, but last night i found out she is also a fink. Patti Smith decides to hold a tribute to William S. Burroughs at the Royal Festival Hall on the Thames. She starts it off with an anecdote about her and Burroughs, how she would hail cabs for him outside the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Then she goes nuts on a bassoon, and then up comes the supporting cast. Iain Sinclair (London personality) and Alan Moore (comic book writer) read their little homages to Burroughs, which are part biographies and part pastiche, with background noise supplied by a few instrumentalists, Marc Ribot (Tom Waits collaborator), Matthew Shipp (nu-jazz pianist), and Jason Spaceman (from Spiritualized).

There is, of course, no real 'form' to the thing, they just read or play at the whims of The Great Magnet. Sinclair, who represents the proper English side of things, gives anecdotes about Burroughs living on Duke St. (about 20 min walk from my place), waxes about the battle of poetry and politics. Meanwhile Alan Moore (wrote From Hell, League of Extrordinary Gentleman), who looks like Rob Zombie's older brother, flexes his skull rings around a book by Burroughs and reads in a grovelly Northhampton voice about mugwumps and junk.

Patti reappears later, playing the bassoon, but this time in the middle of the audience, slinking around. I'm filled with the desire to hug her, mostly because she's fuckin Patti Smith, punk god, but it doesn't really matter because she's in a trance and slinks off anyway, up to the stage and back into the spotlight. She then goes into another anecdote, about an ageing Burroughs leading her down some steep staircase to hail her a cab, and that was the last time she saw him. Seeing her shed tears at the memory is no small performance, i suppose, but Patti Smith and everything she's been doing for decades has been performance anyway. And then i realize that Patti Smith has had a boner for Burroughs and that's why i'm sitting in this theatre. Patti Smith is a fink.

Concert Review: Fun House

Iggy and the Stooges :
Funhouse

Man, fuck this review. It's just bragging really. I went to the greatest show on earth. A performance. From minute one, i was jumping flailing, reaching for what was a temporary god. Iggy Pop and the Stooges played the Hammersmith Apollo last Wednesday, and my life is different for having been there. And there's no way to describe the concert in a fucking blog without sounding like a teenage fanboy.

Like mad, Iggy rushed out on stage. Instantly we were moving. No moshing, no real thrashing, but a collective heave-ho came out of everyone within 30 ft of the stage. He never stopped. Humping the speakers, stage-diving mid song, and running around like an ostrich. During "I Wanna Be Your Dog" Iggy motioned to the audience and screamed, "Any of you fuckers with the balls to get on this stage, come on!" Anyone that knows me is well aware of my inability to resist a dare, least of all from one Iggy Pop. After a karate-flip over the security area and onto the stage, i was coke-dancing around like Iggy on the cover of The Idiot, out of my head like a zombie plugged into an electrical socket. As i meandered around the stage, pulsing incoherently and hugging large rock chicks, i moved towards Iggy, crouched down at center stage. I reached around his back and gave his Iggy-tits a good shake, then fell backwards in a swoon, content to have grabbed "the greatest body in rock & roll." The rest of the concert was a sustained, yet primal, denoument to that moment.

See that blood on his chest? That's from my fingernails digging into the King of Punk.

The concert is part of the Don't Look Back series, which brings a successful band and a successful album back to a live audience for a complete run-through of every track. Dinosaur Jr. played "x", and Belle & Sebastian are coming in October to play through "If You're Feeling Sinister".

Setlist:
Down On Street
Loose
TV Eye
Dirt
1970
FunHouse
LA Blues

Skullring
---------
1969
Dog
Real Cool Time
No Fun
---------
Little Doll
Not Right
Dead Rockstar

Reviews of the concert:
The Guardian
The Independent
The Times
Gigwise

Timewaster, Inc.

For those of you that 'don't believe in television', but love to profess their affection for Jon Stewart the site onegoodmove provides extended clips of US commentary shows like Bill Maher and The Daily Show. As one living abroad, it has been useful.

The Rock Music is Tonight

The Ravonettes are playing a 'secret gig' tonight at Lock 17 in Camden, free of charge.

Info here. You owe me.

Track review: Tim McGraw (part 2 of 3)

After a while I settled into the theme of the summer, the daily wake and the schedule of breaks, the afternoon naps after a day on the jackhammer, the evening boozer on the beach. These things became my routine. One day wasn't much discernable from the other, barring of course the workman's appreciation for the weekend. Woo-hoo! And as things got normalized, coming into work early in the morning became a communal sentence. I mean, everyone is groggy at 6 in the morning, until someone decides to take upon themselves something physically strenuous. Then everyone else refuses to be out done, and the workday starts itself.

Every our of this day, the heigh-ho, is helped along by radio. Sometimes, if most of the guys on the site are black, someone would put on a soul station, or the foreman would cycle to his oldies station. But usually it was country. Ninety percent of the time. Contemporary country. 2004 was the summer of Gretchen Wilson, Big & Rich, and "Live Like You Were Dying". The latter song, written by the Goatee in Black Tim McGraw, is a great example of the kind of fatalistic melodrama that takes over half the country market. The other half, of course, belongs to ruckus tunes; good old boy music (or more recently bad little girl music, aka GW) about how good we do it down here. Friends in low places sort of thing.

All of that is well and good, and actually makes the workday go by faster than the grave tunes. Even if you don't agree with the ridiculous or rawcous lyrics, you can at least resign your brain to the standardized beat. Hammer bang bang. Drum machine bang bang. And who's to say you need to like the lyrics anyway. Singing along with a song with words like "save a horse, ride a cowboy" is actually kind of fun, despite the innanity of the sentiment. Who can be worried about banging a hammer when you can do it to the chorus from "Redneck Woman". The innanity works for most. But I can't really sing along to that kind of stuff. I'm a crooner. Perhaps it was hearing Randy Travis' "For Ever and Ever" at too young an age, I just like the slow and dramatic melody.

"Drugs or Jesus", by the same Tim McGraw, lays the drama pretty thick. The song begins with some pretty foreboding piano progression, the sort of thing that used to lead off a rock ballad in the 80s, and then a few taps of the high hat, just to let you know that things are going to get serious. A few poiniant vibrato notes on the guitar, and then you're ready. "In my hometown" McGraw begins, you're either lost or you're found." So begins the stark realities that reflect most everyone's experience with "coming home." You return and find the failed and the found haunting the same places you saw since you were 7 (the successful ones probably aren't around). One of the best songs about the subject, "Left and Leaving" by The Weakerthans, provides a similar sentiment:

i'm back with scars to show,
back with the streets i know,
will never take me anywhere but here.

McGraw is young enough to get away with a song about coming back home. He's been around a little, seen the big city and had his showbiz moment, and has returned to his hometown of Rayville, Louisiana to see two camps of people. Those that look for Jesus, and those that are looking for the next fix.

we follow the roads that lead us
...[dramatic pause]... to drugs or Jesus.

Of course, he's not going to get anywhere without any conflict. McGraw knows his audience. (in fact, you could say he knows Nelly's audience, too, given their recent collaboration) And he knows his audience would love to hear a story about spritual movement. And since a story about the Glory of God goes on the gospel channel, its important that McGraw sings about a time when he wasn't so holy, when he had to struggle through his faith. And then he has to tell us about it (it's just part of the salvation).

The music, however, doesn't endure the same kind of progression. The lyrical arrangement is a pretty standard chorus-verse affair, including even the recent rap trick of having the chorus fill in the last words of a verse (think Common's "Go" or Usher's "Burn"). The pianos and guitars crescendo when you expect them to, a solo sneaks in behind the crucial born-again moment, and after McGraw comes down on the side of God the outro uses perhaps the oldest trick in the Book ("Hallelujah, hallelujah, ...").

Love is Always Sacred

For anyone that hasn't already crashed at my fabulously located flat in London (in other words the 2 people that visit this blog), I live within a stone's throw of Harrod's, the world's finest and most opulent department store, in the world's highest per capita earning district. Not that the residents of Knightsbridge actually work, mind you. Really they just buy expensive things from Harrod's and try to run you over.

Apologies. I'll eat the rich later. What is perhaps more repulsive, at least outside the class war, is a recent scuplture commissioned for the basement (re: lower ground floor) memorial to Dodi al Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales. Visitors to the store will be familiar with the fountain and engagement ring encased in polyeurethane, a loving tribute to the heir to the world's most glorified mall and his royal girlfriend. Now we get to fawn our affections on this:

That being a life-sized bronze of Dodi, Diana, and a seagull. That fire you see in the background isn't so much a foundry as an English Mount Doom. And i believe we're all familiar how that story ends. The statue will be grafted into the already borderline kitch in the Egyptian Room of the store, the section where you can buy makeup that costs a few hundred quid and is made from the ground bones of Somali children.

See more pictures of the sculpture here.

...And in this corner a barking lunatic

George Galloway is going to debate Christopher Hitchens in NYC, and God Bless Us all if the world doesn't implode on that September day. The event is happening as part of Galloway's US speaking tour, though it might more accurately start another round in a proper shit-tip, if their past interactions are any indication.

Witness the end of political discourse as we know it. Tickets to this event are worth their weight in GOLD.