This Is a Public Service Announcement

PSA that evidently has been running on television in Scotland.





I dare say this falls into the category of "Things the Scottish are doing right."

RIP AMY

Posted in Michael Stipe's tumblog:

BOB WHITTAKER AND AMY WINEHOUSE OUTSIDE MY DRESSING ROOM
PHOTO BY DAVID BELISLE
POWER BUMMER

So, there you have it.

Down by the River

Specifically, at the plaza outside the Winter Garden just behind the World Trade Center site, one of the venues of the River to River festival.

They had a great day of movement theater a couple weekends ago. The first of three acts was a singular dance ensemble from Australia called "Strange Fruit." While that name conjures dreadful acts from the American South as hauntingly related by Billie Holiday, this was, well, not that.


This was a troupe of three dancers who climbed atop 15-foot posts in colorful corsets, dramatic headdresses, pantaloons and stockings.

Then they hoisted up giant hoop skirts that Scarlet O'Hara could only have dreamed of.

The dancers struck poses and fixed the audience with expressions alternating among coy, coquettish and seductive.

And then, it got weird.

They dipped and swayed and swerved and defied both gravity and reason, at a pace somewhere between outer space and flying trapeze. Very dreamlike, very surreal.

I got some video that gives a sense of the act in motion, but technical difficulties prevent me from posting it (for now, anyway... Anybody know how to synch a Samsung Galaxy S loaded with Froyo to a Mac? I can't believe that that language makes sense to me. And it's annoying that knowing what it means doesn't help me solve the problem. Another chapter in the seemingly endless saga of upgrade frustration. But I digress.)

The rest of the performance was fab too - Michael Moschen up close and juggling-historical, and the Streb company performing Human Fountain, their interpretation of dancing waters brought to life with bodies, scaffold and some big ass mats. The River to River people encouraged us to grab footage (and if I had a better memory I'd know what hashtag to use when Tweeting about it), and I'll share what I got when I'm able to load the video.

OH! And while I'm still in the neighborhood of the subject of dramatic clothing: go see the Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Met before it closes. The crowd is insane, but it's totally, completely, 100% worth it.

More Songs about History

And while we're on the subject of videos, did you chance to catch this gem last night? Or on the interwebs. Very much worth a look and listen.

Gotta love the Roots. It's the law.

Oh, and you'll want to go see the Tribe Called Quest documentary, Beats, Rhymes and Life. I mean, unless you're opposed to music. And fun.

Paris through a Window

Or a lens.

My friend over at Bionic Grin just had a little spell of Parisophilia, and by coincidence I came across a few viddies we took there last fall. Here are a couple from our first day there.

The first one shows the end of the demo we encountered upon our arrival:

And this shorter one was from close to the end of the evening on our walk home.

Nothing particularly special about either of them other than the memories. It's worth mentioning that in both cases the music you hear is live ambient sound, not something added afterward. Hope they feed the artiste within...

Ai Weiwei

You've been following the Ai Weiwei story, right? Artist and dissident in China, detained under conditions somewhere between house arrest and imprisonment this spring, recently released (well, sort of; he's still under surveillance and under indictment and can't leave the country without permission) but under a gag order.

The news today is that Ai has accepted a lecturing post in Berlin. He'll go there if he can, but it depends on the Chinese officials permitting him to, unless he goes the full-on refugee/expat route and defects under cover of darkness or something. Which would be pretty out of character, I think.

Meanwhile here are some shots of Ai's beautiful sculpture series of the Chinese Zodiac figures that is by the fountain at the Plaza.

Here's to bold artists everywhere.

The Big Cry of the Heart

I didn't realize that Clarence Clemons had died until I opened up my laptop yesterday morning and saw the news.

It was a gut punch like I haven't felt for a long time.

Even though the stroke that ultimately did him in came the Sunday before, so we had almost a week to hold our breath and send him all the mojo we could muster, Clarence's death was not, could not be something we were prepared for in any way. He'd been hurting, but he was still so vital, still harnessed vast forces of music and energy and all-but-universal good will. This wasn't right. This was altogether untenable. The Big Man does not succumb. A stroke does not bring down a forever young maker of saxophone magic. "His loss," as Bruce wrote in his beautiful tribute statement, "is immeasurable..."



There have already been some really nice pieces written, and hopefully the tributes will continue for a good long time. Cory and I had to run off to appointments yesterday - meals and meetings and rehearsals; and it was Father's Day, which rightly required phone calls free from mourning. But now I need to mourn, loud and long. Keening to the sky, a cri de coeur that can only aspire to match the wailing moans of loss, of longing, of desire, of joy, of triumph, of wordless uncategorizable feelings that poured from his horn so freely every time he raised it to his lips.



I love these shots, the top one by Peter Klaunzer with its straight ahead muscularity, and this one by Jeff Kravitz, with a halo around his black beret and the light piercing through. But I hope the Big Man won't mind if I close this with some un-rock-and-roll imagery. Already miss you so much.

Go the F*#k to Sleep

Perhaps you've heard of Go the F#*k to Sleep, the new Not-Really-a-Children's-Book by Adam Mansbach & Ricardo Cortes. It's been getting more than a little media attention these days, and its press run has already crept up toward the half-million copies mark. Why? Because it's f*^king brilliant is why:

Mansbach, according to the official version of the story, was frustrated for the umpteenth time by the time and effort involved in getting his 2-year-old to go to sleep for the night, and posted on Fbook a joke to the effect of: "Be on the lookout for my forthcoming children's book, GO THE F%&K TO SLEEP." The reaction from his friends and fans (he was already an award-winning grown-up fiction writer) was so fiercely positive that he decided to write the book for real. He got himself an illustrator and, well, here we are: smash hit children's book that is utterly inappropriate for children, but all kinds of fantastic for adults.

And now, plug in your headphones and take a look at this little slice of amazingness - Werner Herzog (yes, the Werner Herzog) reading along with America's new favorite book.



After the bizarre media events of the last couple weeks (will there come a time when people look back and ask if we really spent all that time talking about a congressman's kinks when there was a war on? Sorry - three wars?) this just about made me weep tears of joy.

Advancements in Journalism

Oh, there are so many things wrong with this, from an Oregon Daily Emerald review of Sasquatch!

Bob Mould, a forty-something with thinning hair and no other musical accompaniment, hit the stage first. He tore off a brisk 45-minute set, warming up the crowd with his electric, Ted Leo-esque sound. Although he wasn’t well-known, Mould has collaborated with Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Foo Fighters. The surging crowds, fresh off a full day in the sun, met him with equal intensity.

That someone who would write this would choose to (or be allowed to) go into rock journalism might be the wrongest thing of all. But really (really): minimal research (even a quick trip to the internets) would have at the very least allowed this guy to minimize the damage. It's just a student paper, but still...

Sigh...

While we're on the subject of music festivals, let me take this opportunity to raise a glass to Sherin, JP and Annie, and the other 78,997 people on their way to Bonnaroo this week!

And another glass, to continued journalistic excellence. And continued academic success.

Kitchen Therapy

We can safely agree that whatever this is (and it isn't much) it is not a home-improvement blog. But I have been doing some work on Bohome, and so I thought I'd share some of that.

The most major and most recent project has been to re-do my kitchen floor. Now, lest you think that I'm handier than I am, let me hasten to add that by "re-do" what I mean is "put carpet tiles on." So we're talking about real work, but not the kind of thing you need to go to trade school to learn how do to.

Here's a shot of the bare floor once I got all the furniture off of it and gave it a good cleaning.

Doesn't look that bad in this shot, but if you've been to my place you know that these particular planks of hardwood bite back.

These photos come from my phone, so they're not up to snuff, but that little gouge in the wood gives you the beginning of an idea of how splinterrific that floor can be. After years of doing a very sad dance with my landlord(s), I finally accepted that this situation would not be handled by them, and would not take care of itself. So, with a lot of help and encouragement from Cory, I picked a place that sells good product and did some research and ordered samples and we went to the FLOR showroom in Soho and picked out colors. The tiles were delivered on Friday, and I got down to business.

Step one was to put down base lines. The instructions gave very detailed info on how to do this in a regular rectangular room with four even walls and corners. Guess what, folks: that ain't my kitchen.

I used the stone base of my (certifiably antiquated but lovely and very functional) oven as a guide for the base lines.

Then it's a question of taking stock and coming up with some design notions and color pattern ideas.

What's wonderful about these FLOR tiles is that you don't need to staple anything down, or even use adhesive on the actual floor; you just put some little sticky circles face up on your base line, and on strategic corners. I played around with form and function, weighting the areas where I do the most work with food (and therefore do the most spilling) with darker colors.

And here we go! New kitchen floor for the Bohome...

My main beef at this point is that there's an area in the entryway where the bottom of the door goes too close to the ground for even this thin carpeting to fit (a combination of an ancient, uneven floor, and door that could probably be stand a re-hanging.) After the fire a couple years ago, they put up metal doors on all our apartments, so I can't plane off the bottom edge; I just need to leave a little space uncovered. And I may cut some carpet to fill some of the nooks and crannies around the edges that are still bare for the time being. But all in all, I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

Come on by for some barefootin' in the 'boken!

Long Weekend

Beautiful day in New York today: hot, sunny, mimosa-worthy; kind of perfect for what is treated as the unmeteorological-yet-quite-official First Weekend of Summer.

Relaxing morning followed by a nice walk to brunch followed by a lingering and even nicer walk to run some errands and now we're back in Chelsea listening to Django Reinhardt and about to get ready for a Sweet 17 birthday party for one of Cory's clan.

Very sad to read about Gil Scott-Heron last night. He had a hard life in a lot of ways, but did some very good, very important work. Very happy to have shared some time on this earth with him.

For him and for the day, here are a couple shots of a sculpture in a park in San Francisco - called Ecstasy in its current incarnation, it's a repurposed and reclaimed piece that Karen Cusolito and Dan Das Mann originally did for a huge Burning Man project. Fortunate to have crossed paths with this beautiful work while it was out in public.

SF MoMA

Happy Birthday Bob!

And not just that, but happy 70th birthday to the singing cowboy who wrote the number that gives this blog its name. Very exciting, and there are some good events to honor the occasion.




First, and most immediately I suppose, is that WBAI is devoting the whole day to archival interviews, studio sessions, and Dylan-related audio artifacts. You can listen to 99.5 FM or stream by clicking the link above. It's their semi-annual beg-a-thon too, so be warned about that. Small price to pay. (Hey, a station's gotta make a living. Especially a station full of dissenters, most of whom volunteer their time.)

Film Forum is showing a couple flicks documenting the early days. Don't Look Back, the D.A. Pennebaker doc that's been around since '67, and Murray Lerner's The Other Side of the Mirror, which covers the performances at the Newport Folk Festival from '63-'65, but was just released in '007. They're playing through June 2, so don't delay too much if you want to catch them.

And, of course, there is no shortage of ways to celebrate online. Articles, editorials, shoutouts, discussions, suggestions, photo essays, tributes, and of course blog entries...

Have at it!

R.E.M. Sleep

First of all, a shoutout to Carrie for getting through finals; and a special shoutout to Sherin who is somewhere in the final stages of her Master's (so thoroughly embedded in research and writing that I don't even know exactly what's left for her, but I know she's nearing the finish line, if not yet across it).

And so here's a testament to one of the presumed, if elusive, rewards of getting through grad school, which is also a nod to the screening/talk with Michael Stipe (about the very cool short 'films' curated by Stipe to accompany the songs on Collapse Into Now) Cory and I went to a couple weeks ago.

Long Pause

SO - this is the most out of it I've been since I started this thing. I think.

I was out for a variety of reasons, including travel, work, ennui and inertia. Then I started and restarted responses to the responses to Bin Laden's death, but didn't want to go with any of them. Suffice to say that I am not among those who feel that the event was a good excuse for a Frat Party/Girls Gone Wild moment, nor a mediathon around that reaction.

With that, here's a quotation from MLK, a few photos from his memorial in San Fran, and then we'll get back to it.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. … Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Check out the Freedom Riders documentary on American Experience tonight, if you have a moment. We caught a preview screening and talk a while back - it's very worthwhile.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Variation on the Magic

Tried an experiment with iTunes today - turned out to be worth mentioning. Sort of a key word variation on the ol' Magic 8pod.

I was reading some article that referred to the R.E.M. cover of the Wire song "Strange" which made me want to listen to it, which sent me to the computer (and of course that's a whole other box of wine), which gave me an idea: what would come up if I searched for the word "strange" on the music library that happens to be loaded on the hard drive on this particular day?

Funny you should ask.

Fugazi - Strangelight
Duke Ellington - Strange Feeling
Duke Ellington & His Famous Orchestra - Isn't Love The Strangest Thing?
Johnny Cash - Come In, Stranger
David Byrne - Strange Ritual
R.E.M. - Strange (this of course being the song that led me down the rabbit hole)
The Smithereens - Strangers When We Meet
Leonard Cohen - The Stranger Song
Beck - Strange Apparition
Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice (Jesus Christ Superstar cast album) - What's The Buzz/Strange Thing Mystifying
Jeff Buckley - I Woke Up In A Strange Place
U2 - Stranger in a Strange Land
Prince - beautiful strange
Prince - Strange But True
Prince - Strange Relationship [it bears mentioning that this list is sorted by album, not artist, and yet three Prince songs from three different albums end up adjacent.)
Yo La Tengo - Mr. Ameche Plays The Stranger
The Everly Brothers - Love Is Strange
The Magnetic Fields - Strange Eyes




There's some potential in this, wouldn't you say? Get in a mood, and see where your tunes take you. Put in a word and see what pops up.

Strange days, indeed...

Saturday in the Park with George

Ok, first things first: today is Cory's birthday. That is momentous, and I think you should take a moment to acknowledge the awesomeness of the occasion. Perhaps light a candle and sing a song. Or something. Something juicy.

Cory came up with the title for this post. You see, as part of her birthday celebration, she got a girls' day and night with our friends from last year's birthday day out. They took a trip to the outlet malls, and while that sort of sounds like punishment to me, they actually planned the whole thing out and were looking forward to it and everything.

One thing Kristin did ask of me was to look after her dog George for the day. "Ummm... ok!"

I mean!

So they came to Chelsea and dropped off George, then took off to Woodbury Common. And George and I got a day together. I'd send them little phone photos with text updates: "George at brunch" (I took him to brunch. No, I didn't feed him from the table.) "George finds the chair." "George finds the couch." "George finds my lap."

It was a ridiculous amount of fun.

And after brunch, and walking through the Village, and listening to part of an opera, and watching a movie together, we decided to go to the dog park in Madison Square.

See, this is life. One day: no fun. Another day: So much fun!

I could go on, but for now, here's a little photo essay of George's interaction with a Weimaraner puppy at the dog run. It's a little scary at first, but it gets better...

See? You think he's in trouble, don't you?

Total stand off.

But many things can be resolved with a little bit of sniffing.

Followed by a little more sniffing.

Those kids are going to get along just fine.

And that's how a bill becomes a law!

There's more to share, but I have to get ready for the Big Birthday Dinner!!!!

Happy Opening Day!

It's not feeling too springy, but it's the first day of the baseball season! Woo hoo!

Gotta tell you though, this kind of thing just feels weird and wrong.

Season of Tennessee

Maybe you realize that Saturday was Tennessee Williams' 100 Birthday. Maybe you don't. The fact that it's an open question is something of a problem, in my view. This is one of those things that should be cause for a year-long celebration of National Pride, festivals on the White House lawn, parades in Memphis and New Orleans and New York, marathon readings and TV specials and Oscar-worthy biopics devoted to the life of this man, the Great American Dramatic Poet.

What we do have is a few more productions of Tennessee's shows. So that's, well, something.

Scott Brown wrote an article for New York Magazine a few weeks ago discussing Williams and the neglect his centenary is suffering. He does a pretty good job of opening up some of the issues that may have stood in the way of the celebration Tenn deserves, most especially this maddening sense that he stopped being good somewhere around 1961 and that the last 20 years of his life were just wasted, which pushes me around the bend a little bit. What do you people want? Even if it were true (which it is not) that everything after Night of the Iguana sucks, what would you have preferred? That Tenn had died in a James Dean-esque car crash so we could cast him in the Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die role? That perversion aside, I think that 'bad' Tennessee Williams is a little like the 'bad' Shakespeare plays and the 'bad' Dylan records - you may have to dig a little deeper and open up a little more, but I still don't want to live in a world without Titus Andronicus, or Saved. And in terms of history, the night is pretty young for Signore Williams. Just as people have come around on The Tempest (and, it's worth mentioning, have turned away from the Henry VI plays to a certain extent) I wouldn't be surprised if people learn how to see and hear Small Craft Warnings over time .

By the way, I didn't catch Vieux Carré (quelle domage! For reals. I'm borderline despondent to have missed that, but the tix were elusive.) but I did see the Michael Wilson-directed The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore at the Roundabout, and I may see it again. And so should you. 'Twas most worthy.

I have to include this last one, from the 1959 film of Suddenly Last Summer, for Elizabeth Taylor. We'll miss you, Liz.

Supermoon

Lincoln Memorial, meet astronomical phenomenon.

Photo: Bill Ingalls. Nicely done, Bill.