Battle Of Evermore

i'm happy living where i live. i could do a better job selling scripts if i lived in cali, but, well, thems the breaks. then i read this

Across The Universe (2007)

A film that lacked the courage of its convictions but still worth watching. Full review coming soon.

Live Blogging The Debate (or, When You Were Mine)

8:19: it's no longer raining. the smell of reality is drowning out the smell of sawdust. like everything else these days, the smell trawls up memories that should remain at the bottom of the river. my memories are my own. they are not yours.
even if you were there at the time.

8:25: i love the sound of the cello.

8:43: i found the video. it seems we spent half of '03 looking for it. someone else had it. someone else always does. i still haven't found out whatever happened to seth. he was always such a good kid. and he owned the camera. it was so hard to find someone with a camera back then, now all you need is a phone.
i still don't have a phone.



8:59: can you really believe that chinese democracy is really gonna come out this year? i can't quite tell if i'm excited, disappointed, or both. part of me wishes they all od'd in 1989 when they were supposed to. legends are born that way.
not this way.

9:10: horse.

I Can't Get Next To You (Another Shot Of Whiskey)

i feel that this day is far too clouded by death. in a dream last night, my family and i haunted the dirt roads of small villages Russia. Solzhenitsyn was the ghost that haunted our encounters with vampires and Baba Yaga's vengeful hut. the mother to my both son and husband found love and escape in death's romantic grasp.
this entry was supposed to be my review of the new documentary "The Gits." a film far more defined by the death of mia zapata than the band it attempted to honor; a band i discovered and embraced right at the cusp of shuffling from "straight-edge" to "alcoholism." i remember first hearing the band at Jackie's house when i was young lad of 16. her hair was the deepest blue and i have never been in love with anyone as i was in love with her. she died in 2002 of a heroin overdose. all i remember from that day was how beautiful she was and that i never wanted a drink as much as i did listening to "Another Shot Of Whiskey." it wasn't until five years later that i finally consummated my love of Jackie and the ideal of drunkenness. i was wearing a shelter shirt (to make the ironic even more ironic; almost to the level of foreshadowing; more likely it was just nemesis making itself known-another little hint another little taste of foreshadowing.) that was the last time i saw her until i was one of six people at her funeral. i can't not remember that funeral every time i listen to The Gits. nemesis.
They finally caught Mia Zapata's killer.

"Another Shot Of Whiskey" w/ Joan Jett filling in for Mia Zapata:



this brings me around to the second half of this failed obituary. making the past contemporaneous of the present and the future. Jackie played me The Gits and i played for her The Temptations. i remember the song. jeebus, i was so passive aggressive. it hurts my feelings to think back on those days. i played for her late sixties Temptations; especially "I Can't Get Next To You." the line that killed me, the line that meant so much to me, the line that she was supposed to understand: "I can live forever/if i so desire/but all these things i can do/but i can't get next to you."
Norman Whitfield died today.
i've got friends who know me as "the metal guy." i 've got friends who know me as "the hardcore guy." i've got friends here and i've got friends there. very few know me for what i am and what i will always be: i love motown. after the beatles, motown is the end all be all of popular music (see the new raphael saadiq album.)
Norman Whitfield.
the story behind "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" is the reason why music nerds exist.
"Cloud Nine"
"I Can't Get Next To You"
"Psychedelic Shack"
"War"
"Ball Of Confusion"
"Smiling Faces Sometimes"
"Love Can Be Anything (Can't Nothing Be Love But Love)"
"Papa Was A Rolling Stone"

baba yaga seems always just a few steps behind me so let's get everything right when we get the chance:

Norman Whitfield (1940 - 2008)
Mia Zapata (1965 - 1993)
Jacqueline McQueen (1973 - 2002)

changes

another day, another week; another month, another year. a convention is winding down as another is winding up. frustrated that bill the cat was not nominated once again. is it too late for us to get this guy 'cause, dammit, that's how you give a speech:

i could really us a beer right about now

as always, i wear boredom on my sleeve like a badge or a patch, like some civilian variation on rank. "i've earned these stripes! i've earned these stripes!" anyway, the dry recitation of facts does not "a something interesting to say" make so let me list as list does....

Alison Poole (aka Lisa Druck [aka Rielle Hunter]) does not really exist!

her father doesn't exist as well.

"Totalitarian regimes – the Nazis, the Soviets in 1980, and now the Chinese – desire to host the Olympics as a way to signal to the world their superiority. China believes that it has found its own model to develop and modernise, and its rulers regard the games in the same way as the Nazis and Leonid Brezhnev did, as a means of "selling" their model to a global audience."

so how do you do this? you hire Albert Speer Jr.

i'm even more bored now than when i started.
i'm gonna go eat a taco.

"I Am What I Am but Not All That I Can Be"

i've been on vacation from the written word. please bear with me as i drink my drink, read my read, watch my watch and fuck my fuck. i got plans and i got dreams. "i could've been a contender!" fool's gold, fool's gold.

the word is the word: everyone should read The Good Fairies of New York.
everyone should be watching Mad Men.

a long time i ago, maybe not in this blog but, perhaps, in another, i urged you all to get Aceyalone and RJD2's album Magnificent City.
the shit's the bomb.
so let's let the connection commence:



as far as i'm concerned, that's the last great hip-hop tune. but play closer attention to those beats. if you owned the album you know where i'm going with this:



now buy the fucking album.