Looking for unconfirmed gossip (sexual liaisons and other bits) on your favorite A-Listers ? Here Tis. And its is alphabetical order!

All That I Want Is A Shady Lane


Kim's face says it all.

You Can't Jimmy Love


The Visitors of Night
-- by Frank Stanford

This bed I thought was my past
Is really a monk in a garden

He's dressed in white
Holding a gourd of water
Because I have forgotten Tangle Eye
And Dylan Thomas
The swarthy goose
And the moon in the pennyroyal
With its gut full of shiners
And the skeleton keys to my room
And the snapshots of my land

It seems like dusk
The voice and curls
left in the strange clothes
Roaming the forty acres of my closet

In the bow wood mountains some boats
Stray as dogs go down in the fields
Shadows yet in the land of the living

When the shade clean leaves you
To your rewards
Bad luck and trouble
Come breaking the laws and trysts
Of love and gravity

So have respect for the dead my dear
And watch your heart like a juke box

Death coming low with its cold set of tools
But you can't jimmy love

Boys Are Dying on the Streets

* The credibility of the Bush administration is approaching meltdown.

* Bush Orders Flags at half-mast to honor Bob Hope. First he signs his name on a flag. Then, as American soldiers continue to die in the war he started using false intelligence, Bush orders the flag to half-mast for an entertainer? I won't take anything away from Bob Hope, but if the flag is going to be at half-mast shouldn't it be for the dead military personnel?

Oh, and John Poindexter should be fired. Most convicted felons can't get a job at 7-11, but he spends his days (and many taxpayer dollars) thinking of and implementing embarrassing ideas like the terrorism futures market.

follow up:
Poindexter reportedly will resign within a few weeks.

we can all go mad together that's what friends are for


Kudos to Allen Michaan, owner of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland.

It Ain't No Famous Name on a Golden Plaque /...It's my Baby's Kiss that Keeps Me Coming Back

The Edward P. Jones story "A Rich Man," published this week in The New Yorker, is a tale of sex, drugs, rock & roll (well, old 78s), adultry, as well as lies and betrayal. The story is set in a retirement home in the Logan Circle area of Washington, DC and takes place in the late 70s and 80s. It doesn't seem entirely realistic, though, that the city would have commissioned a retirement center in that part of town back then as the area has only been gentrified in the past 8 years. That small quibble aside, its a worthwhile read.

From the Department of Things You Didn't Think Would Happen

The first 1,000 fans at at the August 21 game between the Lowell Spinners and Williamsport Crosscutters of the Class A New York-Penn League will receive a bobblehead doll of Jack Kerouac. The eight-inch doll features Kerouac holding a pen and notebook and standing on a copy of "On The Road," his best-known work.

I Can't Get That Sound You Made Out of My Head

"Flip Flop...flip flop...flip flop"

On the walk to the office this am, followed a women who was wearing what can be described only as the SUV of flip flops.

It Ain't Box Elder, MO

Its Fucking, Austria [via maud newton]

Wine Ease. Electronic Japanese Sleeze. Bourgeoisie Dirty Knees

Four poems by Paul Beatty.

What a Pity, What a Shame

went to hear marion williams
sing the gospel yesterday

she was singin so hard

I almost slipped up
and let jesus into my heart


Mickey Mouse Build A House

don't you ever feel
like in the game of life

you was the last motherfucker to say

NOT IT!


Dib Dab

smooth as....

a baby nicholas brother
tap dancin in a porcelain tub
mr bubble suds
aye que lindo palms filled
with coca butter lotion

smooth as...

michael jordan
in the middle of his fifth
ariborne freeze frame pump fake
a funky millionaire marionette
pissin on physics
his glossy fresh out of the pacific
sea lion brown skin limbs
draped in 8th century heian kimono silk

smooth as...

sarah vaughn
holdin a note dipped in bronze
spit shined with a lonely bootblacks jukebox drool
buffed with chamois cloth and heart ache

smooth as...

tap beer after midnight mass

smooth as...

wilma rudolph haulin ass through rome
long tennessee tigerbelle strides
walkin down gossamer winged myths
busted shakles in her wake
1960 runaway

smooth as...

an eric dolphy jazz workshopped
alto free swinging lead
that lets mingus know
where he can shove that bow
if he dont ease up pluckin pizzicato
over his solo

smooth as...

billy dee williams: nevermind

smooth as...

lady kung fu
flyin roof to roof
dealing five finger drunken monkey style tiger fisted death
to the imperialist aggressors
spinning heel roundhouse
hong kong blacklot snap kick sound effects
a buttlength ponytail
trailing the action with a mind of its own

smooth as...

the first latin black korean
national hockey league offensive superstar
center ice crossovers
one hand on the stick
blue line breakaway
blastin a drive high and tight
stick side
red light and siren

smooth as...

granddads 30 year old
one sunday a month
white patent leather shoes
ones he wears with his lucky powder blue slacks
when he takes you to the track
santa anita belmont yonkers
gives you two disability dollars a race
and tells you to bet trifecta
on the horses with names you like

smooth as...

a cab calloway blip blap big band stikkly tat riff
rolling over his process
from front to back
sliding on its knees
down to the greased part
of a geechee ghetto trickster in full regalia

smooth as fuck


This Side Up

on the corner
138th and st. nick
i caught america with her panties down
peeped under her dress
and saw a cardboard one person shantytown

do you see a darkness

Famously Brainless: Fred Durst

Limp Bizkit booed offstage in Chicago:

"...So it's no surprise that even a memorable meltdown by openers Limp Bizkit failed to derail the band's triumphant return to the local stage.

"Tens of thousands of fans paid $75 apiece to attend Saturday's daylong event at the defunct Hawthorne horse track in Stickney, and Metallica responded with a performance worth every penny. The quartet's set featured a raft of churning hits, stellar showmanship and masterful use of the super-sized stage, replete with showy lighting, four huge video screens and well-placed pyrotechnics.

"The metaphorical fireworks started much earlier, however, when heckling fans induced a profane tantrum from Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst and the band quit playing after just 20 minutes.

"It was easy to predict a rough reception for the rap-rock has-beens when a significant segment of the crowd booed a mention of the band by previous openers Linkin Park. When Limp Bizkit actually appeared around 7 o'clock, the boos intensified, and some fans pelted the stage with garbage.

"The famously brainless Durst only fanned the flames, first encouraging the catcalls and flying trash, then swerving into a bizarre tirade against the crowd and city. Ranting that he'd fight anyone in earshot and spluttering explicit sexual putdowns, uncreative curses and ludicrous homophobic slurs, Durst simply self-destructed. Had the villain in 'The Wizard of Oz' been a vile little boob like Durst rather than a snarly old lady in greenface, the movie's 'I'm melting!' scene might have looked like this.

"The crowd, perhaps stunned, calmed down, and Limp Bizkit played a few more songs (including a sarcastic, gay-bashing cover of George Michael's "Faith" with potty-mouth lyrics that would embarrass a fourth-grader). But then the band left the stage and Durst resumed his vulgar invective from the wings until, mercifully, he was relieved of the microphone.

"The aborted set left fans to wait more than 90 minutes for Metallica, but the mood never turned ugly--maybe because a lengthy delay was better than suffering through any more Limp Bizkit."

Walker Percy on Bourbon.

Excerpt:

"But, as between these evils and the aesthetic of Bourbon drinking, that is, the use of Bourbon to warm the heart, to reduce the anomie of the late twentieth century, to cut the cold phlegm of Wednesday afternoons, I choose the aesthetic. What, after all, is the use of not having cancer, cirrhosis, and such, if a man comes home from work every day at five-thirty to the exurbs of Montclair or Memphis and there is the grass growing and the little family looking not quite at him but just past the side of his head, and there's Cronkite on the tube and the smell of pot roast in the living room, and inside the house and outside in the pretty exurb has settled the noxious particles and the sadness of the old dying Western world, and him thinking: 'Jesus, is this it? Listening to Cronkite and the grass growing?'

"If I should appear to be suggesting that such a man proceed as quickly as possible to anesthetize his cerebral cortex by ingesting ethyl alcohol, the point is being missed. Or part of the point. The joy of Bourbon drinking is not the pharmacological effect of C(2)H(5)OH on the cortex but rather the instant of the whiskey being knocked back and the little explosion of Kentucky U.S.A. sunshine in the cavity of the nasopharynx and the hot bosky bite of Tennessee summertime--aesthetic considerations to which the effect of the alcohol is, if not dispensable, at least secondary."

The World Loves Us And Is Our Bitch

* Art by former Replacement Chris Mars.

* Excellent array of photographs of women of the 20th Century. Photos and other information on women such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Althea Gibson and more. Exhibit is en route to Mobile, Alabama, where it will be until October.

* Charles Mingus on toilet training a cat.

Dream Song 14
--- by John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

Fight These Generations



Four generations of Bush, explored. By Charles Shaw.

An excerpt:

"I am going to open with a story that is guaranteed to blow your hair back. This is a story that has been impossible to confirm in the mainstream press. Of course, this is part of the whole story, and why curiously the story keeps surfacing and disappearing all over the Internet. At the very least, this story is referred to enough to qualify as a modern legend. This is the extraordinary story of a dinner date that was scheduled to happen on March 31st 1981, the day of the strange assassination attempt on the life of former President Ronald Reagan. What should have been the biggest story of the 1980's seems to have been wiped clean from history, systematically prevented from ever again being mentioned by corporate media.

"Held at the home of Neil Bush, the son of George Herbert Walker Bush, who himself was the very ambitious former CIA director and current Vice President, the guest of honor at the dinner party (which was quickly cancelled after news of the failed attempt on the life of the President), was Scott Hinckley, the brother of John Hinckley, the man who just that afternoon shot President Ronald Reagan, coming one half-inch from killing him.

"A half-inch from putting George H.W. Bush, into the White House.

"The Bush team's response to this chilling revelation on the planned dinner date was to barricade themselves behind a wall of the biggest PR Firms in the nation and issue the following statement 'This horrible coincidence has been devastating to the Bush Family. Our condolences go out to all involved. And we hope to get the matter behind us as soon as possible.' (sic)

"As the story goes, the Bush Team decided to pawn it off as, of all things, "bad coincidence." In the days that followed, Washington whitewashed the story, backroom deals were struck, the spin doctors went into action, and an army of PR agents descended onto the to wipe clean from history this awful blemish, which might be "misinterpreted" should it ever get out.

"Misinterpreted? Yes, because since 1970 both George Bush Sr. and John Hinckley Sr. were friends and fellow oil industrialists in Texas and Colorado, and Hinckley had given substantial sums of money to the failed 1980 Bush Presidential campaign. In 1978 Neil Bush lived in Lubbock, Texas while managing his brother George Jr's (our President) failed campaign for Congress. John Hinckley Jr. lived in Lubbock that year as well.

"Coincidence? Apparently so. We are also supposed to believe that John Hinckley, Jr. was mentally disturbed, and, as the Bush story went, shot Reagan to please actress Jodie Foster, and his Uncle George had absolutely nothing to do with the entire incident, even indirectly and unwittingly.

"Allegedly, the only mention of it to appear on national television was a brief comment by NBC's John Chancellor who was absolutely floored by the revelation and mentioned it during his newscast against the demands of NBC management. NBC quickly jumped in and censored it. The revelation was never mentioned again in any mainstream media outlet.

"Having no chance to make it into the history books, the story resurfaced with the advent of the Internet. But something is happening here as well. The story is continually being expunged from the net, even as you read this. In 1999 one could find nearly a thousand independent articles pertaining to this story, then all of the sudden (strangely coinciding with the launch of the Bush 2000 Presidential campaign), one by one the pages and sites relating to the story started to disappear. Today there are but paltry few who are keeping the story alive. Since I first looked into this two years ago, three sources with virtually identical claims have vanished.

"Is there a chill running down your spine yet? If there isn't, there should be. In a normally functioning society with a true free press, this many coincidences would sound a nuclear alert. Apparently, Congressman Larry MacDonald spoke out against it, but his plane crashed. But it wasn't just any plane it was the infamous Korean Air Lines 007, the flight that was shot down by Soviet fighters as it unexplainably veered into Soviet airspace. Many suspect it was an insider deal. Unless the Soviet MIG pilots were blind, it would have been awful hard to mistake a commercial jumbo jet airliner with a twenty-foot long corporate logo, broadcasting on a commercial frequency, for an American spy plane on a covert mission in broad daylight. Allegedly, this deal was for certain unfettered Soviet meddling in places like Afghanistan in the following years. Again, no way to prove it, but we should ask ourselves why political plane crashes have come to be known, euphemistically, as the 'Wellstone Special'? If one were to count the number of fatal plane crashes that befell people connected to our four most recent Presidents, you start to toy with another unfathomable coincidence."

Hunter S. Thompson, last week, on the Bush Administration:

"They somehow managed to blow it all, like a gang of kids on a looting spree.

"It is genuinely incredible. The U.S. Treasury is empty, we are losing that stupid, fraudulent chickencrap war in Iraq, and every country in the world except a handful of corrupt Brits despises us. We are losers, and that is the one unforgivable sin in America.

"Big darkness, soon come. Take my word for it."

London, Swinging

Next Week In London: July 30 is "National Foreplay Day," which according to the linked article, "climaxes on the 31st as we move into National Orgasm Day!"

There Is Precious Little You Can Gain From a Pinball Machine

Pinball, 1973, an early, long out of print, Brautiganesque novel by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami is available in its entirety here. Below is a short excerpt:

------------

An uneasy feeling ...

This uneasiness comes over me from time to time, and I feel as if I’ve somehow been pieced together from two different puzzles. Whatever it is, at times like these I toss down a whiskey and hit the sack. And when I get up in the morning, things are even worse. More of the same, one more time around.

One time when I woke up, I found myself flanked by twin girls. Now things like this had happened to me many times before, but I had to admit a twin to each side was a first. The both of them sleeping away, noses nestled snugly into my shoulders. It was a bright, clear Sunday morning.

Finally, they both woke up–almost simultaneously–and proceeded to worm into the shirts and jeans they’d tossed under the bed. Without so much as a word, they went into the kitchen, made toast and coffee, got butter from the fridge, and laid it all out on the table. They knew what they were doing. Outside the window, birds, which I couldn’t identify either, perched on the chainlink fence of the golf course and chattered away rapid fire.

“Your names?” I asked them. I had a nasty hangover.

“They’re not much as names,” said the one seated on the right.

“Really, nothing special as names go,” said the one on the left. “You know how it is.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

So we sat facing each other across the table, munching toast and drinking coffee. The coffee was good.

“Does it bother you, us not having names?” one of them asked.

“Hmm ... what d’you think?”

The two of them gave it some thought.

“Well, if you simply must have names for us, choose something that seems to fit,” proposed the other.

“Call us whatever you like.”

The girls always took turns speaking. It was like an FM stereo check, and made my head even worse.

“For instance?” I asked.

“Left and Right,” said one.

“Vertical and Horizontal,” said the other.

“Up and Down.”

“Front and Back.”

“East and West.”

“Entrance and Exit,” I managed to get in, not to be outdone. The two of them looked at each other and laughed contentedly.
------------

I Spent So Much Time Dreaming About Eleanor Bron

* 1999 Interview of author AM Homes (around the time 'music for torching' was published)

* Some consumers upset by Nike's purchase of Converse

* Lester Bangs on Brian Eno

* Overview of the career of director Robert Bresson

"I think in the whole world things are going very badly. People are becoming more materialist and cruel . . . Cruel by laziness, by indifference, egotism, becuase they only think about themselves and not at all about what is happening around them, so they let everything grow ugly and stupid. They are all interested in money only. Money is becoming their God. God doesn't exist for many. Money is becoming something you must live for. You know, even your astronauts, the first one who put his foot on the moon, said that when he first saw our earth, he said it was something so miraculous, so marvelous, don't spoil it, don't touch it. More deeply I feel the rotten way they are spoiling the earth. All the countries. Silence doesn't exist anymore; you can't find it. That, for me, would make it impossible to live." (Robert Bresson)

Enjoy An Old Favorite

Stairway to Gilligan's Island.

"The song was published in the late 70s as a 45rpm single by the band 'Little Roger and the Goosebumps'. Backing tracks are similar to LED ZEP's 'Stairway to heaven' but lyrics and vocal melody are from the theme song for the 60s television comedy.

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen asks: Is George Bush the Iraq war's "useful idiot"?

And goes on to say:

"The evidence is nowhere to be found. No weapons of mass destruction have turned up. An advanced Iraqi nuclear program seems to be, well, not so advanced. The evidence for it is either bogus or so tenuous as to be far from convincing. Ties to al Qaeda --'bulletproof evidence,' in the words of Don Rumsfeld -- have not been proved and never made much sense anyway. Al Qaeda is not well disposed toward secular leaders.

"What evidence exists suggests, in fact, that the United States was hankering for a war no matter what. Intelligence -- no matter how fragmentary or inconclusive -- was shaped, molded and goosed until it could be used to prove that Hussein had to be taken out swiftly. The bogus uranium from Niger is a mere detail in this regard -- a smoking gun, yes, but one in the hands of White House aides for whom truth meant less than impact."

and

"The war could have waited. But Bush could not. My guess is that his tendency to see things in black and white and an un-Clintonian determination to eschew micromanaging led him astray. The president 'is not a fact-checker,' an administration aide told the media last week in explaining why Bush used weak evidence in his State of the Union message.

"But neither is Colin Powell. Yet he went over the evidence carefully, discarding some of it before he made his own presentation to the United Nations. Powell might have suspected what Bush apparently did not -- that some administration officials were so intent on war they were cooking the books."

...

"Now Bush stands abandoned by events. No weapons of mass destruction. No nuclear program. No links to al Qaeda. His judgment and his competence are being questioned -- his honesty as well. But the president is no liar. More likely, he is merely an uncritical man who believed what he was told. Lenin knew the type."

Plugging Something I've Never Heard


Mirrors playing a for-radio gig in Cleveland in September 1975.

Just received in the mail, a copy of "Hands in My Pockets," a compilation of songs by the 1970s Cleveland band, mirrors, which was formed after leader Jamie Klimek saw the Velvet Underground perform:

“We saw the Velvets at LaCave. I saw God … and realizing that I needed only 2/3 of my vast musical knowledge to play ‘Heroin’, we were off … I studied the V.U. Sub-Moronic Easy Guitar Book… From the start, we rehearsed originals along with Velvets covers… aside from loving them, we did the Velvets because they were easy.”

All Music Guide says of the record:

"Compared to the provocative rawness of the Eels, the Mirrors appear much more subtle, competent, and interesting overall. The studio tracks (over three-quarters of the album) show the band looking for a new sound, somewhere between the psychedelic rock of West Coast groups like Jefferson Airplane, the less bucolic garage rock of the late '60s, and an avant-gardist form of punk rock that would later become Pere Ubu's signature sound. The influence of the Velvet Underground, Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, and early Who resurface everywhere, usually well channeled toward the aforementioned goal. A few live tracks and home recordings can be hard to listen to, but they represent only a small portion of the CD and complement the more professional output, especially since the group packed quite a bit more decibels on-stage. Fans of garage rock and proto-punk will appreciate this chunk of history, and anyone interested in '70s Cleveland punk will find it essential — and a lot cheaper than a used Mirrors 7."

Sounds interesting and I'm excited to get home and listen.

THE DIET THAT AMAZED EUROPE
By David Berman

The waiter removed my plate of broiled duplex lambchops
and brought out the equipment for a dessert wine
as the sunset’s dominate embers cooled over the water
and I consoled myself with the thought
that at least I had not stabbed a man in Orlando,
sold phony deeds for acreage on the moon,
or had intercourse against a rotting
balustrade with Johnny Paycheck’s ex-wife
like some of the fellows I knew at the bar.

My mind built a brick wall in the air
as my dinner companion continued to list
the merits of the hometown that had banished him,
and two men in turtlenecks, who appeared
as if they’d misplaced their spacecraft,
leaned over the terrace and watched the seawater below
sizzle to a perfect stop.

* * *

When the federal investigation
into my commercial diet gained steam
I quickly took on the name Charlie,
put a fake beard over my real one
and with a little help from the book
How to Hide Your Assets and Disappear,
disembarked at this seaside town,
governed by the single caution light
that hangs over the beach road like a sleepy eye.

All kinds of fugitives have settled here,
taking advantage of the social instability
to be found near and around state lines.
One of my neighbors made a fortune
building executive moats before
the accompanying bacterial diseases
felled several sets of vain grandchildren.
Another was driven from civilization
simply for producing seahorse pornography.
From my table I could wave to any number
of tax cheats, inside traders, plagiarists,
racketeers and embezzlers,
each mauled by his or her own daydreams,
and, if lucky, deposited here with a good sum of money
and loose plans to follow summer all around the world.

What was my crime? Noticing that hot bodies
had become the new coins of the realm?
I had been anxious to help my countrymen
fit into phone booths. I named my plan
“The Diet that Amazed Europe” and sales
were unstoppable until the very newspapers
that had celebrated my ascendance
began calling me an “Rxual Predator.”

The prosecution put plenty of fat, sobbing
witnesses on the stand, apparently Instructed
to not shutup until my life was destroyed.

So maybe I said some words that were not
right on the dime, and maybe my customers’
biomass had not melted off as fast
as it had on the Abe Lincoln Diet
or with Jogging in a Jug.

but had I sold expired milk to the projects
or masterminded a wave of doghouse arson?
Had I crippled other men with powerful and arbitrary high-fives
or publicly noted that Third World butchers
make First World part animals?

I had done none of those things and yet
there I sat, trapped in some overweight plaintiff’s
version of Faraway, looking like a man,
who having walked out of a Father’s Day circular
cannot shake the terrible feeling
that he is being chased down the road
by a huge electronic buffalo.

* * *

Stars glittered in the sky like midnight publicity
and my dinner companion leaned into his explanation
of how tennis courts are graphs of Atheism.
The people at the bar were feling hilarious
and as I took my Scotch and made my way through
the long-haired men and short-haired women
I reminded myself that I had enough money
to live on for seven years. I would find a way.

Hadn’t I always?
I took the marble beach stairs and walked across the sand,
straight into the ocean, like a man in a teleplay,
coaxed by circumstance, to the very edge of the world.

I stood waistdeep in the cold seawater
breathing in the smell of jet exhaust and coconuts
wondering if I might have underestimated eternity
until a huge wave came out of nowhere
and knocked the drink out of my hand.

[via brillopadlamp]; This poem was originally published in the July issue of the believer. buy a copy and support what helps support the artists, writers, poets etc. you enjoy.

I follow the Road, Though I Don't Know Where it Ends


Neil Young's 'On the Beach,' originally released July 4, 1974, is finally set for rerelease on August 19, 2003. (Three other neil young albums not yet available on cd will also be rereleased that day.)

Short piece on "Blevis," DC's "Black Elvis," who for a dollar will sing you whatever Elvis song you request.

"The gritty sidewalks of Washington, DC are no place for a celebrity, yet Blelvis, the 34 year-old Elvis expert, calls them both home and stage. If you haven’t heard of him then you’ve never been to DC. Without the advantages and trappings of a backing band or publicity machine, Blelvis’ uncanny ability to sing all 732 of Elvis Presley’s songs perfectly has made him a local legend, one dollar at a time.

"It was a sentimental Blelvis I sat down with recently. Another night in the pen after a misunderstanding with the DC police had left him dazed and ragged, but ready to reminisce. 'One night I was working 18th St., and this girl says, ‘Oh Blelvis, sing something sweet to me.’ So I start doing ‘Tender Feeling,’ and the guy she’s with is, like, turning red. So I finish and she grabs me and says, ‘Blelvis, you’re coming home with me tonight.’ I look down, though, and the guy’s, like, shakin’ his hand, holding a twenty behind his back. I’m thinking, ‘Hmmm…do I want this twenty or a night of unbridled sex?’"

A life of choosing between money and sex didn’t come easy for the ebony king. He’s come a long way from the eleven year-old kid who first heard Presley’s music on the day of his death. 'We all listened to black music, black stations – Kool and the Gang. That was, like, the sound. But Elvis was on every station that day and I just got all caught up in it. That was the day I became an Elvisologist. And the other kids at school would freak out, man. ‘Why you listening to that shit?’ It was rough.'"

"After a decade of collecting records and educating himself in all things King-like, Blelvis took his smooth baritone voice and backing group, the Sun Blisters, onstage for the first time. 'They played awhile and then I jumped up out of nowhere and started singing. It was just like an Elvis movie. Then this girl throws a bra onstage, and it lands right on the Heineken I’m holding in my hand. Big-ass bra. I’m like, ‘Holy shit… OK. I like show business.’"

"In 1989, Blelvis’ blossoming career took a breather when he decided to leave the spotlight to study theology at a university in Denver. He thrived at school, impressing the priests with his ambitious concept of a Presleyterian faith that would combine his two passions, Jesus Christ and Elvis, into one celestial order. Two weeks before he was to earn his degree, Blelvis fell in love with a prostitute named Donna. She convinced him that a pimp’s life in Montana could be heavenly, too, so off they went. Donna ended up in jail, while Blelvis returned to DC to reclaim the glory he left behind."

"This time, Blelvis went solo and took his act to the streets. He’s been building on it ever since. For a dollar, he’ll challenge you to stump him with the most obscure Elvis request you can conjure up. In all these years, he’s proud to say he’s never been shown up in his work. Not even by his own children, Elvison and Elvisa. 'A lot of people see me as a street person, a bum. If you travel these streets, you’ll see guys shaking cups, begging for change. Now, I’ve never done that and I never will. As an Elvisologist, I’m out there performing a service. There’s a thin line between what I do and what they do but I’ve never crossed it.'

"Like all entertainers and street people, Blelvis has his share of rough nights. He’s a creature of faith, though, and a new wave of ambition he’s feeling will hopefully put those rough nights behind him soon enough. 'My last show was late 98 but none of the band showed up except my scarf man. ‘Cept instead of scarves he passed me bottles of Steel Reserve 211. I had ’em rolling, though. Now I’m working to get the act off the street and back onstage again.' We’re ready Black Elvis."

WORDS
by Anne Sexton, 1928-1974

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous ones we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be good as fingers.
They can be trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.

Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.

Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren’t good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.

But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.

GBV at last weekend's Live On Penn concert

Happy Birthday Hunter


From 'Welcome to the Tunnel' by Hunter S. Thompson, written August 11, 1986

'We are in a tunnel. It's been rather dark, and will stay that way for quite a while.' Hugh Hefner, Playboy

"Well....the president took his drug test the other day, or at least that's what they tell us, and although the final results are still hazy because of complications arising from his urological medication, its safe to assume that he passed. If not, he will get another chance.

"Don't worry about it. There are a lot of strong drugs being used in the White House these days, as always, but they are not the ones The Gipper was being tested for. Traces of lithium or powerful antibiotics might turn up, but there will be no mention of crack, ecstasy or black Lebanese hashish.

"The president uses only legal drugs, the products of a multibillion-dollar industry that at one time or another has peddled almost everything from pure cocaine hydrochloride to thalidomide. There is a human growth hormone on the market today -- by prescription only -- that could pump Nancy Reagan up to the size of John Madden in about three months, if that's what she really wants."

....

"Its also worth noting that a new F-111 attack bomber costs $30 million, or about twice the price of the recently proposed 'electric security fence' around the U.S. Capitol in Washington, to make it safe against Libyan 'death squads' and fanatics from the Islamic Jihad."

....

"There is also the War on Drugs, the War on Sex, and the continuing War on Democrats -- all conducted with considerable style and vigor from the action-packed War Rooms in the White House, where Pat Buchanan is definitely earning his salary as communications director.

"There is not much doubt about who has seized the high ground these days. These people have been doing their homework on just about every issue in sight except for the genuinely disastrous national debt, which is mounting into the trillions. But The Gipper is not concerned about that one: he will be long gone from the Big House by the time it hits, and solutions will be presumably left in the hands of lesser, queasier men -- like George Bush, Bob Dole or even the Rev. Pat Robertson.

"Jack Kemp might even take a whack at it. Ho, ho. That should be interesting. The whole Potomac River will boil like the Lake of Fire when that silly little hooter tries to bring his Trickle-down, Supply-side snake oil to the reality of the Pentagon spending a half-million dollars a minute on national defense for the next year."

.....

"... The hardrockers will be running the GOP long after Dutch has gone off to the great rancho in the sky and looking far down the road -- toward another decade of leaky-fisted Republican dominance..."

.....

"We are in for some fast weeks in the passing lane. Hugh Hefner is right about the tunnel, and Ed Meese is still with us. In a generation of swine, the one-eyed pig is king."

Skimble wonders:

"As a person ultimately responsible for publicizing dubious reports, why is Howell Raines held to a higher standard than George W. Bush?"

What was Bush doing the morning of September 11? Why did he change clothes? What is going on?

This very interesting site -- the veracity of which I cannot vouch for, but am passing on so others may read and conclude for themselves whether the content is to be believed or not -- shows, through pictures released by the White House, possible contradictions of the accepted story of what Bush was doing on the morning of September 11.

Comments are, as always, welcomed.

Follow That Band

After a sucessful New York gig last week, The Caribbean will be showing off their sweet pop songs in Philadelphia this weekend.

Friday night, the trio will be at Doc Watson's, as part of a big birthday bash for....well, head on down and find out for yourself. Check them out before they get too big for the small clubs.

"All Roads Still Lead Back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue"

"CIA Director George Tenet told members of Congress a White House official insisted that President Bush's State of the Union address include an assertion about Saddam Hussein's nuclear intentions that had not been verified, a Senate Intelligence Committee member said Thursday.

"Sen. Dick Durbin, who was present for a 4 1/2-hour appearance by Tenet behind closed doors with Intelligence Committee members Wednesday, said Tenet named the official. But the Illinois Democrat said that person's identity could not be revealed because of the confidentiality of the proceedings."
...

"'The more important question is who is it in the White House who was hellbent on misleading the American people and why are they still there?,' Durbin said Thursday.

"'Being a member of the Intelligence Committee I can't disclose that but I trust that it will come out,' he said. 'But it should come out from the president. The president should be outraged that he was misled and that he then misled the American people.'

"Durbin and other Democrats in the Senate had said earlier the question is not why Tenet failed to remove the Africa information from the speech, but who insisted on leaving it in. 'All roads still lead back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,' Durbin said. "

click for more of this story

The Aerovons, the Band that Wanted to be the Beatles

They looked like the Beatles, sang like the Beatles - and should have been as big as the Beatles. So what went wrong for the Aerovons?

an excerpt:

"'Did you see The Matrix?' asks Tom Hartman. 'There's a scene where time stops, and everybody stands frozen on the street. That's how I feel. It's like someone just released a pause button pressed in 1969.'

"Back then, Hartman was 17, and his band, the Aerovons, were tipped to be the next Beatles. They had already travelled from their home in St Louis to London, been signed to EMI (home to the Beatles) and recorded their debut album, Resurrection, in the Abbey Road studio. "

"Hartman, a child prodigy who played piano and guitar, formed the Aerovons with two brothers, bassist Billy and drummer Mike Lombardo. All three shared an obsession with the Fab Four. They had the same equipment as the Beatles, and were persecuted by greaser gangs for liking the Liverpudlians - almost an alternative act in pre-Vietnam America. They'd say, 'Hey Mary, come here, we'll give you a haircut,' Hartman recalls.

"It was through sheer naive bravado that the band ended up on the same label as their heroes. Initially they were offered a deal by the California-based company Capitol USA, but Hartman turned it down, declaring: 'I don't want to be like all those Beach Boys groups.'"

"But then everything fell apart: the band split up and the album was shelved. Now, 34 years later, that title (a reference to the then disappearing sounds of psychedelia) seems weirdly prophetic. Resurrection is finally being released - and hailed as a lost classic."

true
--- by charles bukowski

one of Lorca's best lines
is,
"agony, always
agony ..."

think of this when you
kill a
cockroach or
pick up a razor to
shave

or awaken in the morning
to
face the
sun.


trashcan lives
--- by charles bukowski

the wind blows hard tonight
and it's a cold wind
and I think about
the boys on the row.

I hope some of them have a bottle of
red.
it's when you're on the row
that you notice that
everything
is owned
and that there are locks on
everything.

this is the way a democracy
works:
you get what you can,
try to keep that
and add to it
if possible.

this is the way a dictatorship
works too
only they either enslave or
destroy their
derelicts.

we just forgot ours.
in either case
it's a hard
cold
wind.

J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," was published on this day in 1951.

Without Further Adieu
-- by Chris Stroffolino

Trudging through what you never once thought
Was possibly what didn't matter
Suddenly it hits you:

You don't have to be deaf to dance.

If I think about all the books
I've never finished,
All the dinners it no longer matters
Whether I declined or vomited back
& accept exile from the peaks as
At least necessary (if not natural),
I can keep the lid on the steam
That probably wouldn't make a beeline vertical
for the sprinkler system afterall.....

Because your art has told me something
About you that you don't know,
Because every man who's touched you
Has left a tattoo.

Defense Labels Flashing Charge Physically Impossible

"In the case of Robert M. Peters Sr., size does matter.

"The 47-year-old locksmith from Bangor is accused of exposing himself to a client on June 12, 2002, while making a house call in Bethlehem. Peters' trial began Monday.

"The victim testified that she and Peters were sipping tea after he finished installing a deadbolt lock when she saw Peters' semi-erect penis sticking three inches past the bottom of his shorts.

"That's impossible, according to defense attorney Gary Asteak.

'"She's mistaken,' Asteak said. 'He's not that big.'

"According to Asteak, physician Eric Schoeppner examined Peters and found his penis is only 1 inches long when flaccid and four inches erect.

"Just to make sure the measurement wasn't a mistake, the doctor administered Viagra to Peters and measured again. The penis was still four inches long, Asteak said.

"Asteak said he will show the jury photographs to prove his point. Before the trial, he told Northampton County Judge Edward G. Smith he plans to ask Peters to drop his pants and pose for the jury wearing jockey shorts.

"'Was she exaggerating?' Asteak asked. 'She said it was pretty big. I'll show you photographs of something pretty small.'"

Click here for the remainder of the article.

All About the Photo-Op


This photo from the official White House website is captioned: "Working at his desk in the Oval Office, President Bush reviews the State of the Union address line-by-line and word-by-word."

More from Book of Changes, by Kristine McKenna:

What's the Most Significant Historical Event You've Witnessed in your Life?

William Burroughs (1990): "Hiroshima, of course. That was a dreadful turning in the course of human history. And how many people made the decision to drop that bomb? America calls itself a democracy, but the American people didn't even know the bomb existed until it had been dropped. That was probably the most important decision this or any country ever made, and how many people made that decision? Maybe five. You might say well, most people agreed we had to do it, but most people are so stupid they aren't worth talking about."

Does music have the capacity to bring about social change? And if it does, do musicians then have an obligation to address the political issues of their time?

Ray Charles (1983): "I don't think a musician has an obligation, but he does have the same rights as a plumber or a doctor. I think a person should contribute to whatever cause he believes in however he can. Personally, I think the most valid way to deal with these things is to try and get people's minds movin' in a positive direction."

What's the Biggest Obstacle you've overcome in your Life?

Brian Eno (1980): "Feeling that I ought to be doing something Very Important all the time. To feel that way is a source of energy, but the difficulty it presents is that it leads you to undervalue the time when you are apparently doing nothing. That kind of time is equally important in that it's a kind of dream time that allows things to get sorted out and reshuffled."

Only on Craigslist, and Only in NYC

In case any male New York City hipsters are reading and would like their house or apartment cleaned for free, for three months, Sundays at 3pm, in exchange for getting a 19 year old hispanic women pregnant: click here -- everyone else click for amusement.

Oh, 3 or 4

Neil Bush, brother of the president, already well-known because of his role in the savings and loan scandal, has admitted he had sexual relations with "perhaps three or four - I don't remember the exact number - women at different times," during his recently-ended marriage.

Bush said the affairs took place while on business trips to the Far East. "In Thailand once, I have pretty clear recollection that there was one time in Thailand and Hong Kong," he said. hmmm

His children must be proud.

Established writers discuss the beginnings of their careers with first-time novelist David Amsden.

From the Rough We Get Par

Here is a fun Monday morning site. It works like this: You think of a sitcom character (or a dictator) answer the questions asked, and after either 3 or 50 questions you answer, the program will tell you who you are thinking about. Can you stump it?

Another Reason why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House
--- Billy Collins

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

21st Century Aspirin

Another study shows that Heavy Marijuana Use Doesn't Damage Brain:

"Long-term and even daily marijuana use doesn't appear to cause permanent brain damage, adding to evidence that it can be a safe and effective treatment for a wide range of diseases, say researchers. "

Lester Grinspoon, MD, a retired Harvard Medical School psychiatrist who has studied medicinal marijuana use since the 1960s and has written two books on the topic said:

"Marijuana is a remarkably safe and non-toxic drug that can effectively treat about 30 different conditions. I predict it will become the aspirin of the 21st century, as more people recognize this."

Photos from The Indie Rock Photo Gallery [via largehearted boy

"Like, I can’t be on none of those television shows, ’cause I’d have to tell Johnny Carson, ‘you’re a sad motherfucker.’ That’s the only way I could put it.” --Miles Davis

One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real.
-- Klaus Kinski

Show Me Where You Keep All Your Secrets Upstairs

from Book of Changes, a book of interviews by Kristine McKenna:

Robert Frank -- "After we made Pull My Daisy, Jack Kerouac and I were being interviewed by this pompous guy on the radio. This guy kept asking pretentious questions and I could see Kerouac rolling his eyes. Finally, he just interrupted the interviewer and asked, "Did you clean your asshole today." Another thing I remember about Kerouac was his phenomenal memory. The guy could be absolutely drunk, lying on the floor at a party and a week later he'd show up having written something that included things people at the party were saying word for word. He was like a sponge. He sucked it all up and the ability to do that wasn't something he developed - he just had that. Jack was a good guy but he was difficult and his life was tragic. He was undone by fame, Catholicism and his mother - he just wasn't equipped to deal with those things."
...
"My central memory of Cocksucker Blues with the Rolling Stones is that they were little English boys who didn't know anything about America, especially the South. Traveling through the South they needed their black bodyguard to get them into this place where all the blacks were, and they fumbled it when they tried to score hard dope."

the club is open

This just in: GBV will begin playing around 7pm Saturday evening as part of the Live on Penn concert series. GBV is slated to play for about an hour, according to gbv.com sources.

What Your CD Collection Says About You [via TMFTML]

Buddhist Barbie
-- by Denise Duhamel

In the 5th century B.C.
an Indian philosopher
Gautama teaches "All is emptiness"
and "There is no self."
In the 20th century A.D.
Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man
with such a belly could pose,
smiling, and without a shirt.

In 1937, James Agee submitted a document titled "Plans for Work: October 1937," with his application for a Guggenheim Fellowship. Among the approximately 50 things Agee was "working on, or am interested to try, or expect to return to" are:

* An Alabama Record. This project eventually became the highly praised, yet difficult to read, volume he wrote with the photographer Walker Evans, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. At the time, Agee said of the project: "... Any given body of experience is sufficiently complex and ramified to require (or at least be able to use) more than one mode of reproduction: it is likely that this one will require many, including some that will extend writing and observing methods. It will likely make use of various traditional forms but it is anti-artistic, anti-scientific, and anti-journalistic. Though every effort will be made to give experience, emotion and thought as directly as possible, and as nearly as may be toward their full detail and complexity, the job is perhaps chiefly a skeptical study of the nature of reality and the false nature of recreation and communication."

* Conjectures on how to get "art" back on a plane of organic human necessity. "I can write nothing about this, short of writing a great deal. But this again is intensely anti-"artistic," as of art in any of its contemporary meanings. Every use of the moving picture, the radio, the stage, the imagination, and the techniques of the psychoanalyst, the lecturer, the showman and entertainer, the preacher, the teacher, the agitator and the prophet, used directly upon the audience itself, not just set before them: and used on, and against, matters essential to their existence."

* A new kind of "music." "There is as wide a field of pure sound as of pure image, and sound can be photographed. The range, between straight document and the farthest reaches of distortion, juxtaposition, metaphor, associatives, the specific made abstract, is quite unlimited. Unlimited rhythmic and emotional possibilities. Many possibilities of combination with image, instrumental music, the spoken and printed work. For phonograph records, radio, television, movies, reading machines. Thus: a new field of 'music' in relation to music about as photography is in relation to painting. Japanese music suggests its possibilities."

Also included on Agee's list is a story "about homosexuality and football." He wrote, "Not central to the story but an inevitable part of it would be a degree of cleansing of the air on the subject of homosexuality."

Quite the industrious guy, Agee was. No?

Sell the Coins that You Jayed last Thursday

Reminder: If in DC, please come to POTLUCK, tonight, at 9pm at Cosmo (1736 Columbia Road, above Chief Ike's), for some pool, drinks and a good time.

And for the New Yorkers: Be advised that Washington, DC's number one Miracle Legion fans, the band The Caribbean, will be playing their electronica-tinged, dreamy pop songs at Mercury Lounge on Sunday July 13. A perfect band for Sunday evenings. Check them out.

take this quiz to help you determine which candidate to support in the upcoming presidential election

Short interview / Q & A with the hilarious Sarah Silverman:

an excerpt:

"SportsHollywood: What event would you like to see included in the Olympics?

"SILVERMAN: Impressions.

"SportsHollywood: When you play basketball with John Cusack and Bill Fishman, how often do they suggest a game of shirts vs, skins with you, where they wear the shirts?

"SILVERMAN: I've never played b-ball with John Cusak, I"ve only played at the court he has in his office. But, yes, that HI-LARIOUS shirts/skins joke is made by some comic genius just about every time I play, and each time I fall to the ground laughing while I piss and shit myself in comic awe.

"SportsHollywood: Which do you enjoy more: Getting a basket in front of a crowd or getting a laugh in front of a crowd?

"SILVERMAN: They're both great. You can't compare them. What do you like better: cumming on a porn star's back, or watching your first child be born into the world? --See, they're both wonderful."

The Guardian is coming, the Guardian is coming

The launch of a U.S. edition of the unabashedly liberal Guardian may be just what the Bush-whacked U.S. press needs.

"... It struck me first that—even given the Guardian’s campus chic-ness—the U.S. has never been less receptive to the European point of view than it is now. By any measure, to be successful in the U.S. news business is to be staunch, patriotic, defensive. It’s Fox or bust. And it struck me even more forcefully that beyond the difficulties of liberalness, the prospects for literate media—the Guardian being a writer’s paper—were, as everybody knew, nil.

"Then, during the next break in the conference, Rusbridger took me across the street to his office and showed me the prototype for the new American Guardian. Its tentative form is as a weekly magazine, quite unlike any other weekly magazine that has been started in the U.S. in the past generation. Not only is it about politics (Rusbridger is looking to launch in the winter to cover the presidential-primary season), but the magazine—meant to be 60 percent derived from the Guardian itself, with the rest to come from American contributors—has a great deal of text unbroken by design elements. This is almost an extreme notion. Quite the antithesis of what virtually every publishing professional would tell you is the key to popular and profitable publishing—having less to read, not more. Even with the Guardian’s signature sans-serif face, it looks like an old-fashioned magazine. Polemical. Written. Excessive. Contentious. Even long-winded."
...
"But meanwhile, the Fox-led conservative fatwa—or merely its clever marketing ploy—against liberal media has largely purged the slightest liberal inclination from the media, meaning there’s a yawning market hole. Between the New York Times and liberal trade magazines like The New Republic and The Nation, there’s nothing. It’s an open field. The very down-and-out-ness of left-leaning media, together with the great antipathy to smarties in America, means a blissful business condition of absolutely no competition at all. What’s more, the left wing in America has always had terrible packaging skills.

"These are, of course, dark days for liberals (out-Foxed, Bush-whacked) and for magazine people (more celebrities, more “elements,” fewer words), so it is natural to latch onto any potential sign of a Renaissance."
...
"And now there’s the prospect of a genuine, old-fashioned, hire-some-good-writers-and-give-them-space-to-write, rough-up-the-president-and-the-nabobs magazine."

Three Wishes
-by Eileen Myles

The tree shadow
is longer across
the lawn.
Longer than
when? The
last time
I sat
here. It
was earlier
in the summer
now it's
August
we go deeper
into the
year like
a knife
into an
apple
or a day
that
hurts so
much &
its beauty
is almost
gone.

On the Death of Robert Lowell
-- by Eileen Myles

O, I don't give a shit.
He was an old white haired man
Insensate beyond belief and
Filled with much anxiety about his imagined
Pain. Not that I'd know
I hate fucking wasps.
The guy was a loon.
Signed up for Spring Semester at Macleans
A really lush retreat among pines and
Hippy attendants. Ray Charles also
once rested there.
So did James Taylor...
The famous, as we know, are nuts.
Take Robert Lowell.
The old white haired coot.
Fucking dead.

The July issue of The Believer is pretty strong, containing both an excellent new David Berman poem titled "the diet that amazed europe," and a piece by Tom Bissell about the ULA. Also inside are a odd, but interesting interview of Martin Short and a piece by ben marcus. No liz phair this time, pick up a copy today.

GI Joe had nothing, but the hulk has something. [via chromewaves]

Photos of Mark E. Smith, looking like he just got off from managing a Gap store, with The Fall, in Cleveland July 1, 2003. [via timothompson]

DC Rock Schedule this week:

Wednesday: Potluck, at Cosmo.

Thursday: Rich Labrie dj's at St. Ex early, then The Fall at the Black Cat

Friday: danielle howle at the deej

Saturday: GBV at Live on Penn, on Pennsylvania Avenue, by the National Gallery of Art

anselem berrigan's 12 poem chapbook they beat me over the head with a sack contains two poems using lyrics from pavement songs as titles: "heaven is a truck" and "traced out but dreaming." here is the books title poem:

They Beat Me Over the Head with a Sack

To make a short story collapse
I may not have to flatter my intentions
So acidic that I would face
This ghastly pressure draped upon my neck
That I could not imagine growing up without
A bloated discussion of fractures
Crafted in the likeness of a light flared
From my window to the roof of your apartment building
Which you climb onto
Causing your immediate eviction
& and some measureable level of suffering, thus
You ring by bell, I buzz you in
You need some rest/make yourself at home
I'm feeling noncommittal tonight myself
So very far off course
From where I could never crawl
Out of your arms
Into an old fashioned romantic delay

"I stayed home on the fourth of july/ I pulled the shades so I didn't have to see the sky"
-- Galaxie 500

Swing Shift Blues
-- by Alan Dugan

What is better than leaving a bar
in the middle of the afternoon
besides staying in it or not
having gone into it in the first place
because you had a decent woman to be with?
The air smells particularly fresh
after the stale beer and piss smells.
You can stare up at the whole sky:
it's blue and white and does not
stare back at you like the bar mirror,
and there's Whats-'is-name coming out
right behind you saying, "I don't
believe it, I don't believe it: there
he is, staring up at the fucking sky
with his mouth open. Don't
you realize, you stupid son of a bitch,
that it is a quarter to four
and we have to clock in in
fifteen minutes to go to work?"
So we go to work and do no work
and can even breathe in the Bull's face
because he's been into the other bar
that we don't go to when he's there.

Join us for the first installment of POTLUCK at Cosmo Lounge, Washington, DC, July 9, 2003. We've got the booze and the tunes -- even a pool table, you only need to bring your friends.

Deeper into Movies

The wonderful Delmore Schwartz short story (written when Schwartz was just 21), "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," can be read here. The story begins:

"I think it is the year 1909. I feel as if I were in a motion picture theatre, the long arm of light crossing the darkness and spinning, my eyes fixed on the screen. This is a silent picture as if an old Biograph one, in which the actors are dressed in ridiculously old-fashioned clothes, and one flash succeeds another with sudden jumps. The actors too seem to jump about and walk too fast. The shots themselves are full of dots and rays, as if it were raining when the picture was photographed. The light is bad.

"It is Sunday afternoon, June 12th, 1909, and my father is walking down the quiet streets of Brooklyn on his way to visit my mother. His clothes are newly pressed and his tie is too tight in his high collar. He jingles the coins in his pockets, thinking of the witty things he will say. I feel as if I had by now relaxed entirely in the soft darkness of the theatre; the organist peals out the obvious and approximate emotions on which the audience rocks unknowingly. I am anonymous, and I have forgotten myself. It is always so when one goes to the movies, it is, as they say, a drug."

read on!

theres trouble in the trouble thats troubling the air

some links:

* Editors on the state of the Book Review

* Is Bush's International War on abortion causing deaths?

* King Kong turns 70, RetroCrush takes a look back.

breaking up is hard to do? not on craigslist, which here is used for such reason. on craigslist you not only can breakup, you can also share with the world all the sexual issues that caused said split.

"A little bit sad about the place you are leaving, and a little bit glad about the place you are going, its a time of quiet wonder. "

RIP Robert McCloskey, author of wonderful children's books such as: "A Time of Wonder," "Blueberries for Sal," and of course, "Make Way for Ducklings."