Homeless Hotspots Coming Soon!!!

Have you ever run into a dead zone and are unable to connect to the net? And maybe you're too far away from a Starbucks or other Internet cafe? Or maybe your neighbor has shut you out of their Wi-Fi network?

Never fear. Just sidle up to the nearest homeless person in your neck of the woods. Because there's a chance he might be an actual "Homeless Hotspot". Yes, 21st century America is all about getting EVERYBODY plugged in and empowered. Be the change you seek in others. Yes we can! The world is flat!


At the South by South by SouthWest convention, an ad company BBH, decided to think outside the box.

BBH's experiment, dubbed "Homeless Hotspots," launched during the South by Southwest tech-and-entertainment confab in Austin, drawing complaints from critics who viewed the gimmick as exploitative.

In an interview with The New York Post, BBH chairman Emma Cookson said the company has pulled the plug and will not go forward with plans to continue the project in New York."We have no definite, specific plans yet, in New York City or elsewhere," she said. "This was an initial trial program.""We are now listening carefully to the high level of feedback, trying to learn and respond, and we will then consider what is appropriate to do next," she added.  

At SXSW, more than a dozen homeless people were outfitted with wireless routers and T-shirts declaring: "I'm a 4G hotspot."While the effort, which was not associated with the festival, was crafted to provide a digital connection for SXSW Interactive partipants and a charitable service to the city's homeless, outrage quickly gained momentum on social media and among homeless-rights activists.The four-day trial concluded on Monday afternoon, with the door left ajar to expand the project into various cities. But that's a no-go, for now.Users would ask the homeless hotspot for an access code, and were encouraged to donate $2 to their walking Wi-Fi zone for every 15 minutes spent online.

Emma Cookson: Visionary or Cruella DeVille understudy?

So I guess the latest plan to make money off the homeless cure homelessness won't work. So if a homeless man walks up to you and asks for $2, chances are he's not actually a "Homeless Hotspot" but is just a run of the mill beggar.  You should feel free to do whatever you normally do in situations like that, whether it's to offer the money, refuse, give a long lecture or pretend you didn't see or hear the man.  But on the other hand what makes this offer degrading? People have long hired homeless people to pass out flyers for strip clubs, concerts, political rallies and so on. You name it, someone has tried to save on marketing costs by using homeless people. It's not like Ms. Cookson was the first person to use this logic. I guess she reasoned that as long as people were going to be homeless they might as well make themselves useful. Were the people who were complaining about this going to offer a homeless man a job or place to live? Well some of them, maybe. But generally probably not.

Questions
1) What's your take? Was this degrading?
2) Was this an attempt at innovative marketing or a remarkably stupid idea?
3) If this brought more focus to the problem of homelessness was it a good move?

Book Reviews- Rising Phoenix, The Historian, Best of HP Lovecraft

Rising Phoenix
by Kyle Mills

This is what I call an airport book. It is quick to read; it's not super challenging but not a horrible story either. It's perfect for wasting away a few hours but it's not something you would kick yourself for not reading. The story is not too far fetched although the execution and characterization might need a little work. Then again it WAS the author's first book so who am I to be critical?

Anyway the story opens by describing two government law enforcement officials with quite different ideas about the proper way to interrogate suspects. DEA agent John Hobart doesn't see anything wrong with starting with a beating and moving on from there. FBI agent Mark Beamon isn't above smacking an insolent known mob enforcer but he is disgusted when he discovers his partner Hobart in the process of breaking a junkie's arm, primarily for kicks. Beamon turns Hobart in. But Hobart is a MUCH better political player than Beamon is and manages to avoid serious sanction by resigning while Beamon gets a reputation as an untrustworthy maverick. Fast forward a decade and change. Beamon is still just a few levels above where he started while Hobart is the VERY well paid security chief and troubleshooter for the right-wing televangelist Reverend Blake (think Pat Robertson) who uses the loyal and completely amoral Hobart for all those jobs he'd rather not know about.

Blake preaches against sin -especially drugs- and is devastated when he finds out his own son was smoking marijuana. Out of a sense of bombast and pride he starts to discuss with Hobart the best way to stop usage of illegal drugs. The completely pragmatic Hobart suggests poison. The Reverend doesn't want to know details but gives Hobart the go-ahead after publicly firing him.
Hobart recruits (evidently he had been thinking about this for a while) a group of specialists (and virulent racists) to poison the supply of illegal drugs (cocaine and heroin only). They intend to stop people from using drugs and if they happen to kill a bunch of minorities that's a bonus for them.  Drug use starts to drop but this is not popular with the Colombian Cartels or American Mafia (who are seeing their revenue drop) or the FBI (who are being mocked in the press). The FBI calls in Beamon to lead a task force (and be a sacrificial lamb if need be). Of course as he gets into the case Beamon starts to pick up a sense of familiarity about his unknown opponent's moves. The President is caught between a rock and a hard place as he wants to look competent while at the same time keeping an uneasy eye on the growing political support that the poisoning of the drug supply is getting.

As I mentioned this was not a great novel but I didn't expect it to be. The author is the son of a former FBI agent and has some useful insights into how that bureaucracy works. Unfortunately, except for Hobart most of the characters are pretty flat. I did like reading about the (ahem) ever so slightly different research techniques of the Colombian Cartels and the FBI, the rivalries between different law enforcement agencies and petty but dangerous office politics. The Mafia hoodlums and street hoods are not written that well. But the book moves swiftly and all in all is a fun read. Hobart is not a mustache twirling villain and doesn't do stupid things just to move the plot forward.




The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova

This is a story about an unnamed woman who is the daughter of a widowed history professor. One night while scrounging through her father's library she finds a strange book that is mostly blank but has the picture of a dragon in the middle and has the words "My Dear and unfortunate successor..". She shows this to her father and the not so dynamic duo (she's a teen and her father must be in his early fifties) embark upon an adventure across Eastern Europe and Turkey, in search of the historical (and current??) reality of that most notorious member of the Order of the Dragon, an enthusiastic but doomed defender of Christendom, Vlad Tepes, known better as Dracula.

Sounds like it would be right up my alley yes? Well no. This is NOT a horror novel though it has some minor elements of that. Vampires evidently do exist. This is an extremely well researched literary novel with lots of gothic, travelogue, and romance elements. I wouldn't say I hated this book but it just wasn't what I was looking for. You could almost say for six hundred pages "And then nothing happened". The author is quite talented but like all too many writers these days could have used a stricter editor. Her love of history, reading, and the peoples and cultures of Eastern Europe shines through.

Things change. Perhaps it is no longer important to some people that the city known as Istanbul which today is in the country of Turkey was not in its origin Turkish but Greco-Roman. At one time it was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. It became a center of Christianity and lore and named Constantinople. But it was savagely sacked, first most treacherously by Western Christian crusaders in 1204 and later by Turkish Muslim invaders in 1453. We tend to think of colonialism as something that Europe has done to others. But for centuries the Turks were the brutal colonial power in Eastern Europe. In some aspects there's still bad blood today because of this. Kostova fills in some details. But the characters and pacing simply aren't strong enough to really give this a great rating. It is being made into a movie. I suspect that the movie will be more entertaining than the book was. To be fair, if you are into the idea of conspiracies, secret societies and the like, you will at least be somewhat positively inclined to this book. Again, though, it's NOT a horror story. The obvious comparison is to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

I love hanging around libraries, bookstores and restaurants no one else knows about. I love the thrill of discovering esoteric knowledge or new food dishes. But I don't necessarily want to read 600 pages about doing those things. The one character who DOES come across vibrantly is the beautiful and mysterious Helen Rossi, another historian, and the narrator's mother. Rossi's story and that of the narrator's father unfolds in old letters and diaries which are found. The joy, wonder and yet sorrow that we may feel when we read letters or writings of departed parents or grandparents is captured well here. It is always somewhat amazing and slightly unbelievable to me to look back through time and realize there was a point when you didn't exist and your parents had other interests. And of course, as the narrator discovers, there are some things about your parents that you probably didn't want to know.

The Best of HP Lovecraft

If you read a representative sampling of H.P. Lovecraft stories a few truths about the man become rapidly apparent. (1) He was a racist with an especial hatred for black people. (2) He wasn't big on dialogue. (3) He never wrote a short sentence when he could use a longer one instead or used a modern word when he could use an archaic word.(4) He loved New England. (5)The man was one of the most influential horror writers the world has seen. Stephen King himself wrote that "H.P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the 20th century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale".

Lovecraft came from a old American family that had fallen on hard times. Both of his parents suffered from mental instability and died in mental wards-his father may have had syphilis. His grandparents didn't properly handle the small money his parents left behind. Additionally Lovecraft had a nervous breakdown and dropped out of high school. As a writer he was constantly impoverished throughout his life. The yawning gulf between his real life circumstances and what he thought his race, intelligence and heritage should have entitled him to was a source of constant frustration to him and ironically was likely a source of some of his best (albeit most racist) work. Lovecraft was a somewhat shy scientific atheist who famously pronounced himself rather indifferent to sex. This dislike of intimacy and distrust if not disgust of the feminine pops up in all sorts of interesting places throughout his work and may be worth examining in some future blog post.

Okay. So what stories are contained within? Well the book is titled The Best of HP Lovecraft and it lives up to its title. "The Colour Out of Space" is pure sci-fi and foresees the effects of nuclear radiation when a meteorite hits an isolated Massachusetts farm. "The Shadow over Innsmouth" tells the story of a fishing town fallen on hard times that makes deals with evil beings from the ocean but in fact it's a well disguised description of Lovecraft's id fears about immigration and interracial mingling.  "The Thing on the Doorstep" is the best body snatcher story I've ever read bar none. "The Dreams in the Witch-house" ponders if advanced physics are merely catching up to what evil sorcery had done years ago. "The Dunwich Horror" is almost a parody of Biblical stories, with a half-human "savior" figure trying to bring his father, a God from Outside, back to earth, not so that humanity can be saved but rather that the earth can be "cleared off".

"The Rats in the Walls" shows off Lovecraft's profound debt to Poe, while "The Silver Key" does the same for Dunsany. "The Call of Cthulhu" is probably the best known story contained in this collection. An evil alien God that was ancient before humanity even existed has been trapped at the bottom of the ocean. But every so often the stars are right and he awakes and attempts to free himself from his watery grave. And so on. Lovecraft did write a few traditional ghost stories e.g. "In the Vault". In those he actually used more dialogue than was his normal practice and showed, or he would write shewed, a good skill at capturing the idiosyncrasies of Yankee accents.  Lovecraft was a materialist. Most of his evil Gods were "evil" in the sense that a developer destroying a habitat is "evil" from the animals point of view. The developer couldn't care less-that is if they are even aware of the animals impacted. If you are tired of horror, sci-fi or fantastic stories that are little more than exercises in trying to write the most explicit sexually and physically offensive material possible you might want to go back to the beginning and give this collection a chance. Of course you will have to overlook some occasionally unpleasant political points of view but the man was after all born in 1890. But for creepy atmospheric gothic AND modern horror, no one did it better.

Limbaugh: He Said it First!!

We all know that recently right-wing radio show host Rush Limbaugh said some viciously ugly slurs about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. Fluke spoke before a Congressional panel to advocate for a government forced change in the insurance benefits covered by Georgetown University and Law School.

I disagree with Fluke's policy POV but that's not important here. What is important is that Fluke rejected Rush's apology (in part because she thought it insincere but MUCH more because Rush didn't back off his opposition to her policy prescriptions).

Bill Maher jumped in this mess to say that the apology rejection made liberals look bad and that he didn't like the tactic of going after advertisers to shut people up. I guess he would say that, having had experience of losing his "Politically Incorrect" show due to advertiser abandonment after he made comments about 9-11 that were, well, "politically incorrect". Brent Bozell, who you may have just heard saying the President of the United States looked like a "skinny ghetto crackhead", decided to launch a "I stand with Rush" website, and piously chastised liberals for trying to shut down free speech.

Well.
Hypocrisy all around folks. I don't like hypocrisy. I think it is part of being human. We all have it. But I think we should try to minimize it, not embrace it.
If you're going to get upset when Limbaugh maligns Fluke with ugly hateful language that is meant to insult and demean then you also have to get upset when Maher does the same thing to Palin or Bachmann. It doesn't mean you have to LIKE these people.  You may disagree with their ideas. You may think they are wrong on everything, not very smart and immoral to boot. That is a different thing entirely from calling someone a "dumb t***" or a "dumb c***". You may think that Carrie Prejean is wrong to hold that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. That doesn't mean that it's okay for Perez Hilton to call her a "dumb b****" or that Keith Olbermann and Michael Musto get to question her femininity or make fun of her breasts.

If standards and logic mean anything then they must apply to everyone. That means that Rihanna can't get offended when a Dutch magazine uses racial stereotypes against her and then turn around and use racial stereotypes against another woman. That means black people can't get upset when the clueless Republican racist of the day makes a racialized joke about Obama or Black people and then be quiet when a liberal Obama supporter does the same thing.

If something is wrong then it's wrong. It doesn't matter that someone is more popular so his words are heard by more people or someone else is sponsor free so feels entitled to say things that are raw. Those may be reasons why they are able to avoid certain consequences or their audience expects to hear such things. But it doesn't make it any less wrong.

To be clear I believe that the overwhelming majority of this ugly language does come from the Right. That's a provable fact. I do not think, to put it charitably that Limbaugh is a good person. I think that Bachmann and Palin are often misguided and regularly vile. But that doesn't mean that people should turn a blind eye to ugly language when it comes from their team. Or does it?

h/t Rippa
QUESTIONS
1) Is this a false equivalence between Limbaugh and Maher? 
2) Is it ever okay to call a woman a c*** or t***?
3) Where is the line between comedian and political figure?
4) Can you disagree without insulting people?
5) Do some people just invite or deserve insult?

Let's bomb Iran!!!

You may have noticed that Iran is in the news a lot lately. Israel Someone has been murdering their nuclear research scientists while various politicians in the United States and Israel and elsewhere are pounding the drums for war. The cause? Well they say that Iran is working on a nuclear bomb and will attack Israel. Therefore we (by which they mean the US) must attack Iran immediately otherwise it's just like 1939 all over again and we (by which they mean the US) are appeasing Hitler. The President, mistakenly in my view, spoke before AIPAC on Sunday, where he said that he was willing to use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu will meet with President Obama on Monday to presumably make more of these arguments and attempt to get even firmer commitments of war. After all, before the election is when Netanyahu's influence over President Obama will be at its peak.

There are many problems with this line of logic. Honestly I am too disgusted and too busy with other things today to go off into a long essay about this. I am trying to write shorter pieces anyway. So let's just stick to a few pertinent facts here.

1. According to the US NIE estimates of 2007, 2010 and the most recent, Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Period.
2. The same malicious mendacious miscreants who lied us into war over Iraqi WMD are currently saying the same things about Iran. Of course even a broken clock is right twice a day but given that the costs of war are immense and these malicious mendacious miscreants are known to be liars, one should at the very least check what they say to see if it passes the smell test. And if you lean closer for a good whiff, I think you're going to smell rotten eggs. Again.
3. Iran has not attacked the United States.
4. Israel has nuclear weapons of its own.

Netanyahu, a senior Israeli official actually had the chutzpah to accuse an AMERICAN general of saying something "that served Iran's interests." Now I am hardly the most jingoistic fellow around but in my view if you're taking American money (which Israel is to the tune of over $3 billion in official aid each year) then you need to keep a civil tongue. Where the hell does some foreigner get off talking about an American military leader in such a way?

So to reiterate, a foreign client state (with the help of domestic warmongering neocons, chickenhawks, and neo-colonialists) is trying to bully the United States into greenlighting its attack or preferably making its own attack on Iran. Didn't we JUST go through this? As any dog trainer will tell you when a dog pulls on the leash you must immediately adjust its attitude so that it understands that you, not it, are the one in charge. Otherwise you're gonna get pulled every which way when you go for walks. It is easiest to correct this when the dog is a puppy. Doing so when the dog is full grown and stronger than you is quite painful for you and the dog. But corrected it must be. It's long past time that the US gave Israel a collar pop and stopped moving. The Israeli right wing doesn't seem to understand who's holding the leash in the relationship. Or maybe I don't understand...

Do I think that the mullahs in Iran are nice people? Of course not.
But the world is full of countries run by people that are not so nice. I don't think it's the job of the United States to run around overthrowing governments that it doesn't like.

War with Iran is not in the interest of the United States. We don't need increased gasoline prices. We don't need more body bags coming home.  We don't need to spend billions more on war. We don't need another occupation. And unless I missed something China and Russia are not on board with attacks on Iran. Feeling misled by the US war on Libya, China and Russia vetoed a UN resolution on Syria. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. Will they go along with an attack on Iran?

Something has gone very wrong in the American body politic. Another war of choice should not even be up for discussion at this point. I think that because of the volunteer Armed services, the incredible amounts of firepower that we possess and the good fortune to mostly have avoided battle in this country, most people don't have any understanding of the costs of war. Our idea (non-military) of war is something in which the other side does all of the dying. From a purely pragmatic point that may be a good thing but most of the people who think that probably aren't worried about their children being born deformed from depleted uranium usage, their daughters turning to prostitution to provide for the family, or having to worry about getting clean drinking water.

Am I the only person who remembers this quote???

"War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”


Questions
1) Do you think either the US or Israel should or will attack Iran this year?
2) What impact would a possible war with Iran have on the fall election?
3) Will an attack on/war with Iran prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons program or make it more likely?
4) Why don't we have an off switch for wars anymore?

Music Reviews-Pharoah Sanders, Pirates of Penzance, Dirty Blues

Pharoah Sanders

Do you think that St. Peter ever got tired of answering questions about what it was like to hang out with Jesus? Does Robin become annoyed with fanmail wanting to discuss his days with Batman? Does Thunder ever wish just once it could show up before Lightning?

Well maybe. And maybe Pharoah Sanders should be recognized for the masterful musician he is rather than a man who briefly played with John Coltrane. After all, Sanders was and is so skilled that another saxophonist (Albert Ayler) once stated "Trane is the Father, Pharoah is the Son, I am The Holy Ghost". Sanders really is that good. His music ranges from down and dirty blues to post-bop to afro-centric spiritual  gospelized jazz (my favorite period) to free jazz/avant-garde. This last is something of an acquired taste. It REALLY is. If you don't like free jazz , some of it may initially sound like someone just making random loud noise on the saxophone as fast and as frantically as he can. I LIKE free jazz and a lot of it still sounds like that to me. It's really advanced stuff. The melodies can get very very abstruse. Sanders knows how to use dissonance effectively.

Still, along with Coltrane's widow Alice, Pharoah Sanders provides us a window into what Coltrane might have been doing if he had survived. He also shows us what magic sounds like.
His late sixties/early seventies music is my favorite period but Sanders has ranged far and wide across the musical landscape. If you haven't heard anything by Sanders his work on the Impulse label is the best (really the only) place to start. Sanders combined Eastern modes with blues riffs, West African rhythms with Black American harmonies. There was literally almost nothing he couldn't play and didn't play. Way before "World Music" was a genre and marketing tool, Sanders was creating it. If you wanted to know what Indian ragas would sound like mixed with African-American blues forms, Sanders had already answered that question in the sixties. He dipped back into R&B in the late seventies and eighties. Even jazz icons have to eat.

These are not 3 minute ditties. They are long musical pieces that should be understood and enjoyed the same way you'd listen to a Bach or Beethoven work. There's an awful lot of different things going on in Sanders' works. For a short glorious period in the mid seventies you could hear Sanders on free form FM radio. Those days are long gone of course. Sanders' best vocalist and usually the person heard singing here was Leon Thomas, who was also known for his avant-garde yodeling(!) and other strange vocal tricks. Many jazz musicians and more than a few rock ones (e.g. Santana) owe some of their music to Pharoah Sanders. If you're into meditation or view music with something akin to religious awe, you may find this music of great utility. There are still giants that walk the earth. Pharoah Sanders is one.
Prince of Peace  Japan(with Sonny Sharrock on guitar)
Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah  Thembi(Live with Hiram Bullock and David Sanborn)
Love is Everywhere   Astral Traveling   The Creator has a Master Plan
The Father Son and Holy Ghost (with John Coltrane)
La Allah Dayim Moulenah (with Maleem Mahmoud Ghania)

The Pirates of Penzance

With the leap year I thought it might be fun to give a nod to the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, The Pirates of Penzance(TPoP). For me, many of the best operas are sung in French, German or Italian. The English language TPoP is an exception to that rule. It's my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan work. TPoP shows that singers are just as much musicians as instrumentalists.  It provides beautiful contrast between the lows and highs of the human voice. Truly the voice is the most impressive instrument we have. Have you ever thought how interesting it is that women's and men's voices are almost exactly one octave apart? Clearly Gilbert and Sullivan did because they make great use of this fact throughout their work.

In Victorian times a young pirate named Frederic has just turned 21. This completes his obligation. He is talking with the pirates' maid, Ruth (his former nursemaid). Ruth had thought Frederic's father had wanted him apprenticed to a pirate and not (as he said) a pilot. Frederic doesn't much like being a pirate. But he thinks that the less than attractive Ruth is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Frederic hasn't ever seen any other women.  He wants to take Ruth with him when he leaves. Frederic also wants his pirate buddies to give up their wicked ways. They aren't really that successful as pirates as they always let orphans go. Of course all of their would be victims now claim to be orphans. Frederic feels duty bound to hunt down his friends once he's not a pirate.

A group of sisters (including Mabel) wanders by. Frederic sees Mabel and realizes Ruth wasn't beautiful at all. While Frederic and Mabel are making goo-goo eyes at each other, the pirates return and threaten to marry all of the women. They say it's a first rate opportunity to be married with impunity. The women boast that their father is a Major General. The (cowardly) General lies to the pirates that he too is an orphan so they let everyone go.

When the General gets home he feels bad about lying to the pirates but arranges to send the police after them. The women are excited at this and speak of limbs being severed and brave men dying. "Die and every Cornish daughter with her tears your grave shall water". The police aren't as thrilled since they will be the ones dying. They try to delay their departure, to the general's annoyance.

Meanwhile the pirates have discovered a loophole. Their contract with Frederic required him to work as a pirate until his 21st birthday. But as Frederic was born on Feb 29, a leap year, that means he won't technically have his 21st birthday until he's 84 years old. It's a paradox. Frederic takes contracts very seriously so he rushes off to see if Mabel will wait. He also tells the pirates of the General's lie.
Battle is joined between the pirates and police which the police lose badly. But the Major General commands the pirates to yield in the Queen's name. Apparently the pirates are all renegade (but patriotic) nobles. All's well that ends well and everyone gets married.

This work has an example of a patter song in Modern Major General,(which most people are familiar with) and plenty of other interesting musical techniques (round singing, double choruses, parodies of other works,e.g. Verdi's "Aida", counterpoint), etc. Notice that Americans "lifted" the music from "With cat like tread" for the song "Hail, Hail the gang's all here". Unfortunately some modern interpretations have altered the voices for certain parts. Should you happen to purchase this opera, make sure that whatever version you get has the parts of the Police Sergeant and Major General sung by bass or at least baritone voices, NOT tenors. Otherwise you might as well throw your money away.
When the Foeman bears his steel   I am a pirate king  All is Prepared/Oh Here is Love
Poor Wandering One   Paradox    I am the very model of a modern major general  With Cat Like Tread  First Rate Opportunity

Old School Dirty Blues, Jazz and R&B

Every now and again someone will go on a rant about how today's music is far too explicit, only concerned with sex and just too nasty to listen to. Usually the person venting is directing his venom towards rap and R&B. He often juxtaposes this crappy modern music against the more enlightened music of a past golden age when evidently men and women hadn't yet discovered their parts fit together and certainly never did anything so crass as write songs about it. Hmm. Well maybe. I am not a fan of much modern rap and R&B , mostly because I think the creativity, human element and musicianship is somewhat lacking but also because I'm older. But let's not pretend that all the music of yesteryear was by definition cleaner and more wholesome. Because just between you and me...it wasn't.

All of the below songs were recorded before 1955; most were done before 1940. Unless you just fell off a turnip truck and are a complete idjit, you will "get" most of the barely disguised double entendres. Sometimes the singer dispenses with pretense altogether and just lays it all out there. I  shouldn't have to tell you (but I will) that this language is often raw, offensive, smutty, filthy, sexist, and any other "ist" that people use to indicate something bad. So if this offends, don't listen. And definitely don't listen at work. I am NOT KIDDING about this. The titles provide truth-in-labeling. Some of this is dirty stuff. 

The next time some music snob starts to drone on about how modern popular music is just too raunchy, you can retrieve these tracks and tell that person to take that crap to some other sap. Humans have always mixed the sacred and profane, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. One doesn't necessarily refute the other. I'm not saying the songs below are great missing works of art. They aren't. But it is worth noting that that several well respected jazz and blues giants (Sidney Bechet, Tom Dorsey, Dinah Washington, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith) are represented here or in other such songs. Tom Dorsey, who later wrote "Precious Lord, Take my hand" and "Peace in the Valley" and was known as the father of gospel music can be heard here in a duo with Tampa Red gleefully singing "It's Tight Like That". Duality.

Get off with me   Kitchen Man Blues    My Daddy rocks me with one steady roll
Long John Blues   It's tight like that     Rubbing on the Darn Old Thing
Do your Duty   Preaching Blues    Big Long Sliding Thing
Press my button, ring my bell  I need a little sugar in my bowl  It ain't the meat, it's the motion
Shave em dry   My Pencil won't write no more Winin Boy

Detroit: Heads Spikes Walls!!!

I used to rush to defend Detroit (and by extension all inner cities) against detractors. I would point out that high unemployment, internalized hatred, a ghettotization of the mind, combined with segregation and a paucity of other opportunities explained much of the problematic behavior that we saw. I would also note that crimes or violations which received probation or a wink and nod in other areas were often prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law (and then some) in majority black areas.

I still believe that -at least to an extent but two three recent incidents also made me realize that statistics aside some people are just "evil",  for lack of a better word. It's not because of their race or that their father wasn't around or that they didn't get enough hugs as a child. There are some people who should be in prison permanently. And some people DEFINITELY need to be removed from the planet-thus the Tyrion Lannister quote in this post's title. You put a few heads on spikes and everyone else will get the hint.

I'm tired of defending the indefensible. Unfortunately, some people lack self-control, morality or any sense of future time orientation. The only way to interact with these folks is to impress upon them the certainty of severe, harsh, immediate punishment should they break the law. Currently too many criminals apparently don't fear getting caught or don't fear prison. We can change that if there is the political will to do so but it won't be pretty. Only a small percentage of Detroiters cause problems. Most Detroiters are good decent people who are just trying to get through the day. But it only takes a small number to ruin the lives of a great many. And as the story about the WW2 vet shows, the actions of these few can cause the rest of us to harden our hearts and become uncaring and callous in an attempt to survive.

I want to paraphrase what Stephen King wrote in Salem's Lot:

"And when you get home stay away from Detroit. Things have gone bad in Detroit now".

Detroit Teen Commits Matricide

DETROIT (WJBK)-- There is shattered glass in the front window of a Detroit home on Burns where an act of rage and violence has shattered lives. Family members say 14-year-old Joshua Smith shot and killed his mother, 36-year-old Tamiko Robinson, while she slept on the couch.
"He just shot. Every chance he got a chance to shoot again, he shot again, and there's just buckshot, holes everywhere. He murdered her, and he didn't do it with sorrow or [anything]. He did it like he wanted to do it, like he meant to do it and he[knew] what he was doing," LeShaun Roberts, the victim's brother, told us.

WW2 Veteran Carjacked-Video shows he was ignored as he crawled across gas station lot 

The 86-year-old World War II Air Corps veteran, knocked to the ground during a carjacking on Detroit's west side, crawled across the gas station parking lot as people walked by. No one stopped to help, he says. Aaron Brantley, who worked for 31 years as a welder at a Chrysler plant in Hamtramck, recalled the ordeal Friday, two days after he was robbed outside the BP gas station on West McNichols at Fairfield, just east of the University of Detroit Mercy campus. 

Brantley estimates that at least four customers walked past him as he struggled for help, unable to walk because his leg was broken.  "I never bothered anybody, and I always try to help somebody else when I could," he said Friday from home, his leg in a soft cast to his hip and not a tinge of bitterness in his voice.  Brantley was on his way home from Bible study at Corinthians Baptist Church in Hamtramck, where he's a trustee, when someone hit him from behind and grabbed his keys at 10:40 a.m. Wednesday. The thief drove off in Brantley's 2010 Chrysler 200 -- bought to replace another car recently stolen.

9 month baby murdered because of fight at baby shower

Detroit — A fight over a seat at a baby shower triggered the killing of a 9-month-old boy, according to the victim's grandmother. Delric Miller IV died Monday as he slept on the couch in his home on the 8400 block of Greenview Avenue. Police said someone fired at the house with an AK-47-type assault rifle about 4:30 a.m., leaving behind 37 shells. One of the rounds hit the baby, who was pronounced dead at Sinai-Grace Hospital. 

Delric's grandmother, Cynthia Wilkins, said she believes the shooting was retaliation for a skirmish Sunday at a baby shower at Club Celebrity on Plymouth Rd. in Detroit. "The shower was overbooked, and there was an argument because there weren't enough seats," said Wilkins. Her daughter, Diamond Salter, attended the shower, which was thrown by a friend, Wilkins said."A woman got mad because she couldn't find a seat, so she started knocking tables down, and it escalated from there," Wilkins said

Questions
1) What should be done about inner city violence?
2) Was Rudy Giuliani right? Do we need police that harass people and ignore the Bill of Rights within certain areas?
3) Do we need an expedited and public death penalty? 

Movie Reviews-Killer Elite, Gosford Park, Supernatural Season Three, Dracula AD 1972

Killer Elite

I enjoyed this movie even though it was paint by the numbers. Perhaps I was just in that kind of mood.  It was supposedly based on a true story.


Hero has a moral crisis while doing his (morally repugnant but well paid) job. Hero leaves job to go smell roses, watch rainbows and dance with puppies. Hero is brought out of retirement by Shady Operative because Hero's Mentor/Advisor/Father figure is in danger. Hero puts the band back together to rescue father figure. Hero says that he may be back in the game but it's only temporary and it's not about the money. Shady Operative smirks and disagrees.


While he's kicking butt and taking names Hero runs into his Opposite Number who is just as deadly and dangerous as he is. Occasional professional courtesies are exchanged because game recognizes game although Hero and Opposite AREN'T friendly and try to kill each other multiple times. There is late reveal of multiple setups, traps and a new threat to Hero's naive and beautiful Main Squeeze. (who has no idea how dangerous and morally conflicted hero really is) Question remains as to whether Hero, Mentor and Main Squeeze can survive and if so will Opposite Number help them? And who the hell set them up?? And why is Shady Operative smiling all the time? Doesn't he know that's shady?
If this sort of thing doesn't appeal to you then skip this film. It is a quintessential action flick.  Killer Elite is however intelligent, very well directed and acted for this sort of movie. Though it's long it moves quickly. You don't really get a feel as to how long the film was until it's over.

It's not really worth it to go into the character names because the film fits perfectly into the schema laid out above. Hero (Jason Statham) and Mentor (Robert DeNiro) are free-lance assassins and mercenaries. You want fighting, killing or murdering done they do it. 
This is set in the early 80's. Although Statham is obviously the person the director wants you to identify with the director doesn't sugarcoat things. Hero and Mentor have gone wherever the killing is, mainly Third World countries. And they are usually on the counterrevolutionary or corporate side. They aren't nice people. People who kill for a living rarely are. Opposite Number (Clive Owen) brings a bit of intelligence and swagger to his role as an ex-SAS bada$$ who's trying to stop the scarily efficient Hero any way possible. This all comes about because an exiled Omani Sheik wants revenge for the killings (murders?) of three of his sons by British SAS forces. TRAILER






Gosford Park

Do you like whodunnit mystery movies? I mean the Agatha Christie type where there's a murder and no one can leave the house? Do you like Robert Altman films? Have you ever wondered what it's like to have a country estate complete with woods, lakes and servants? Well if so you might enjoy Gosford Park, which combines an intelligent murder mystery with extremely sardonic British humor. This was nominated for just about every award imaginable, including Oscars, and won quite a few. Gosford Park was both critically acclaimed and financially successful.


This 2001 film had a massive ensemble cast of cinema luminaries and younger actors/actresses who were on their way to future stardom. The cast includes Charles Dance (aka Tywin Lannister), Alan Bates, Helen Mirren, Kelly MacDonald (Margaret Schroeder in Boardwalk Empire), Clive Owen, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emily Watson, Ryan Phillippe, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi and several others. I won't explain much of the plot other than to say that in 1930's Great Britain a group of greater and lesser British aristocrats,a few Americans and a platoon of servants meet for a weekend of hunting, food and sport at the Gosford Park estate of Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon). McCordle is, pardon the term, an a$$hole. He's a greedy bully who uses his wealth and social status to humiliate and intimidate his lessers, who as far as he's concerned, are just about everyone else. People put up with it because of his wealth and social status, something which confirms Sir William's low opinion of them. 

While hunting, a low shot from someone almost kills Sir William. Of course it is an accident, right? After evening cigars and drinks, Sir William is found dead in the library. He's been stabbed. It looks like that's not the only thing which killed him either. Some genially incompetent police arrive and start to question all the servants and big shots. Zany drollness ensues.

This film works well as a straight murder mystery. But given that it soon becomes apparent that just about everyone and their mama had a motive to bump off Sir William, this walks very close to comedy. The humor is really dry though. Nothing slapstick. The real focus of the movie is not necessarily the murder but the dysfunctional social (especially class and sexual) relations between the aristocrats and their servants, what it costs each group and how limited and hypocritical their bonds are with each other. These relations are detailed exquisitely. Via simple self-preservation the servants see things more clearly. Just as the aristocrats attempt to one up each other based on heritage and wealth so do the servants though their social ranking is based on who they serve. In fact the servants are not even known by their own names, but by that of their employer. So my valet would be "Mr. Grady" for the weekend. This film is a visual treat as well. Don't miss this one. It's an oldie but goodie.   TRAILER

Supernatural Season 3

This season brought new challenges to the heroes but you never want to bet against the Winchester Brothers. For the Season Two finale, big brother Dean Winchester (Ackles) personally and permanently settled the score with the yellowed eyed demon, Azazel, who had murdered his parents. But there was a cost. Younger brother Sam (Padalecki) was killed. Supernatural's recurring theme is that there is nothing the Winchesters won't do to save each other. Dean makes his own deal with the infernal powers to bring Sam back from the dead. Dean has just one year to live before Hell claims his soul. In the process of killing Azazel, the Winchesters unwittingly released several more demons into the world. And maybe just maybe, Hell put a little something extra into Sam when it resurrected him. So the Winchesters have a full plate this year-find and kill the demons they released, work their normal case load, deal with the fact that Dean isn't long for this world and as usual... get laid. Dean is particularly insistent upon the last as you might be too if you knew you were going to spend eternity in Hell.

It's surprisingly good acting here by Ackles and Padalecki. They were both able to stretch their chops. Initially Dean tries to hide the truth from Sam because as oldest brother he's trying to bear total responsibility. That's what their Dad would have done. I can relate to that. Sam is no dummy though. The whole thing is written similarly to what you might expect the experience of learning you have a terminal condition to be like. Sam embarks on his own desperate mission to save Dean's life and soul. Sam becomes more ruthless over time. He also discovers some new abilities, which are quite worrisome to his big brother. And unless your name is Dean Winchester, DON"T call Sam Winchester "Sammy". He doesn't like it. Taunting a 6'5" man with anger issues is not very smart.

Dean and Bela on business

New women characters were added to take the show into some different directions. These included Bela (Lauren Cohan) a self assured and extremely selfish treasure hunter who crosses paths with the Winchesters, and Ruby (Katie Cassidy) a beautiful demon who claims not to be like her brethren and wants to help Sam. The most dangerous demon released was Lilith , who is played by an intensely creepy little girl. She reminds me of those kids from Kubrick's The Shining. Jim Beaver returns as family friend and new paternal figure Bobby Singer while Charles Malik Whitfield channels Denzel Washington as FBI Agent Victor Henriksen, who is hunting the Winchesters for several "crimes" they've committed. Some twists didn't work for me but maybe some fans enjoyed seeing seeing the congenitally unflappable and smugly chauvinist Dean taken down a notch, which is what Bela lives to do.

Ruby gets personal with Sam

This is a great show to watch on a weeknight when you just need to crash or better yet on a Saturday afternoon. Growing up, Saturday afternoon local TV featured various monster movies. Supernatural would have fit right in.
Like any good series you get more from watching things from the beginning but each season is self-contained. With introductory recaps, flashbacks and a few short expositions here or there you can watch each season in its entirety without becoming hopelessly lost. The sadness and fatalism lingers over this season from start to end.  TRAILER







Dracula A.D. 1972

No single studio crafted better mid century horror movies than Hammer Films, a British film production company. Hammer was known for lavish gothic sets and costumes,vivid technicolor, talented actors, beautiful exotic women, period stories, and for the times shocking violence. I will write more on Hammer later.
By the 1970's however, Hammer was on a downwards spiral. Distribution issues and changing tastes threatened to sink Hammer Films. Modernization was needed. A result was Dracula A.D.1972. Evidently the studio execs looked at declining revenues and brainstormed what the kids wanted to see.
Their answer was akin to watching your grandmother dougie. The film has badly dated music and jokes, drug references, Rolling Stones or A Clockwork Orange wannabes, and of course lots of cleavage. This last was a signature feature of Hammer and probably a big reason some former teen boys (myself included) may have fond memories of Hammer films.  Circa 1872, as usual, vampire hunter Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) and Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) are fighting. Somehow the fact that it's BROAD DAYLIGHT doesn't kill Count Dracula. Right. The stagecoach on which they're duking it out crashes. Old Drac gets a bad case of wheel impalement. The dying Van Helsing grimly leans on the spoke to finish off Dracula. Dracula is dust. A young man rides up, puts the dust in a vial, takes Dracula's ring and rides off. He later buries the dust (or at least some of it) near Van Helsing's grave. 
Fast forward 100 years. Some London mods, including Mick Jagger mistress Marsha Hunt, have crashed a blueblood party and won't leave. The police evict them. The pack leader, Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame), promises them something REALLY FAR OUT. No, he really does talk like that. Alucard (and did you notice the so dumb you missed it backwards name spelling) is the descendant of the young man who gathered Dracula's ashes.

Alucard wants to perform a Satanic Mass. His associates aren't crazy about this, especially Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham) who along with Caroline Munro proves the impressive tensile strength of 1970's era blouses and gowns. But Johnny convinces them. Shortly afterwards Count Dracula is dead and walking again.  Professor Van Helsing (Cushing again), Jessica's grandfather, figures out what's going on and battle between Dracula and a Van Helsing resumes. Dracula doesn't intend to fall for the old "wheel spoke through the heart" trick again either.

Yes. I am a polygamist.

This movie's funniest scene may not be intentionally so. One vampire death scene is almost Three Stooges like in hilarity. I'm chuckling now just thinking about it. Cushing made this movie right after his wife had died and was incredibly gaunt with grief. It was a tribute to his work ethic that he persevered through this. Cushing brought gravitas. Christopher Lee hated the script and only agreed to do it after his salary was greatly increased. He struggled along gamely. 
Rod Stewart and The Faces were set to be in the film but negotiations failed. This was the weakest of a 4-pack DVD re-release. Hammer was better off sticking to gothic horror, which the film Twins of Evil, released a few months earlier, did much more successfully. Interestingly enough Dracula A.D. 1972's ending was pure gothic and was much better than the nonsense which preceded it. Stephanie Beacham would find future success in Dynasty and The Colbys. TRAILER