"What did I do to deserve this, Mr. Obama?"

"[Obama is] making something worse than a mistake. It is a continuation of a war crime against the suffering people of my country."
--Malalai Joya

The Man

Two-fer Tuesday

Goin' Up (for F.H.)

The sole common denominator among Coltrane's Ascension, Coleman's Free Jazz, and Dolphy's Out to Lunch, Freddie came ready to deal in any context, even if the New Thing ultimately wasn't his thing. His creative, hard-boppin' trumpet work can best be appreciated on many classic Blue Note sessions, e.g., Art Blakey's Free For All, Tina Brooks' True Blue.

Here is a recent article on Hubcap by Howard Mandel.

A New Day (Is Here At Last) [UPDATE: not]

Today's election of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States was something I could have not foreseen four years ago today when I wrote in my inaugural blog post, "We must organize and fight. We should not be optimistic, but there are reasons to be hopeful."

Well, we've organized, we've fought, and now...



The damage done to this nation and to this world by the Bush Administration will take a long time to undo -- and they're not about to give up on their destructive agenda in their final weeks in power. The most significant damage -- again, ongoing -- can never be undone.

Let us indeed hope that...


UPDATE: So much for hope.
"Bush's Third Term? You're Living It"

What Ends

Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2006 09:24:53
From: "malachi" malachi@savagesound.com
To: "Jason Guthartz" jason@restructures.net

***

man i hope the bird-flu kills off all the stupid people -

starting with their god, rush limbaugh

Today we remember a man who gave his life.
Tomorrow we celebrate another man who gives us hope.
The following day, we must remember that man's promise:



Tomorrow, I'm headed back to Indiana one last time, leaving Chicago at four a.m., hopefully returning in time for the big party in Grant Park (yes, I lucked out and got a ticket!). It will be a moment of well-deserved celebration and self-congratulation.

But while we celebrate this new hope, we must remember the continuing crimes and horrors abroad for which we are responsible -- crimes and horrors not involving stock indexes and 401(k) balances, but flesh and blood.

Peace & Sanity (for S.T.)

"I hope for peace and sanity—it's the same thing."
—Studs Terkel (May 16, 1912 — Oct 31, 2008)





"Obama can't be a moderate! He's got to remember where he comes from! Obama, he has got to be pushed!"
—Studs, 2008

"Take it easy, but take it."

Chicago Tribune, founded 1847

"This endorsement makes some history for the Chicago Tribune. This is the first time the newspaper has endorsed the Democratic Party's nominee for president."

Lips Are Important

Fool Me Once...

An excerpt from Taibbi's latest:

Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin' Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

One place where Taibbi may be proved wrong is where he says:

Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules. Which is why Palin has only seemed to grow in popularity as more and more of these revelations have come out.

We'll see.

In the meantime, I'm gonna have some fun tonight.

ps - Too funny.

The War on Coherence

Sarah Palin: Maverick Reformer of Language & Logic

COURIC: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials?

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our next door neighbors are foreign countries. they're in the state that i am the executive of. And there in Russia --

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We do -- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia -- as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go?

It's Alaska, It's right over the border. It is from Alaska, that we send those out to make sure an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.

"It's like H.L. Mencken wrote a Christopher Guest movie starring Tina Fey"

Please make it stop!

DO ANYTHING YOU CAN - BUT DO IT!!!

UPDATE - Hertzberg:

This seems to be a case of incoherence of thought leading to incoherence of syntax. Pronouns wander in search of antecedents like Arctic explorers in a blinding snowstorm.
***
The whole thing reads like something rendered from the Finnish by Google Translate.

McCain's "Friends"

This is just sad: McBush is so desperate to make friends, he has to resort to this:

apparently, the Republicans couldn't find very many African American supporters to show on the Big Screen Of Triumph, when introducing McCain... so they simply put up stock photos of black people.

Maybe he can take a tip from Colbert:

It's Later Than You Think

With Labor Day behind us and pumpkin-flavored drinks already returning to your favorite coffee shop, it's not too early to start thinking about holiday gifts for those special someones. The friendly experiencers in your life would surely appreciate a copy of Anthony Braxton's 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 (Firehouse 12 Records).

I was never really happy with the audio/video quality of the YouTube trailer, so I've now made a higher-quality version available here:



And if you need to catch up on the hoopla:

• Getting the word out, part 1
• Getting the word out, part 1.5
• Getting the word out, part 2
• Getting the word out, part 3
• Getting the word out, part 4
• Getting the word out, part 5
• Getting the word out, part 6
• Getting the word out, part 7
• Getting the word out, part 7.5
• Damn You, Jeff Lorber!!!
• Getting the word out, part 8
• Getting the word out, part 9
• Getting the word out, part 9.3

Re Tensions

One of the great recordings of the 1970s, or any time for that matter, Roscoe Mitchell's Nonaah (pronounced No Nay Ah) (1976-77) has just been reissued as an expanded & meticulously remastered 2-CD set by Nessa Records. I vividly recall being completely eviscerated upon first hearing the solo version of the title track (perhaps on WNUR -- perhaps even during my own show -- can't remember exactly). This piece was performed for an audience that had come to hear Anthony Braxton, who cancelled at the last minute. Mitchell says in the liner notes:

The music couldn't move till [the audience] respected me, until they realized that I wasn't going anywhere, and if someone was going it would have had to be them.

This only hints at the intense tension-made-audible on this track. The entire album is as fresh and relevant as ever.

This reissue, along with the recent publication of George Lewis's AACM book, and the imminent release of Mosaic's box set of Braxton's Complete Arista Recordings, will surely lead to a reevaluation of a large chunk of creative music history.

link on how to order Nonaah

Mission Satisfied (for I.H.)

food for our soul:

and for other things:

The Hard Sell

During a 1945 Duke Ellington radio broadcast included on The Treasury Shows, Vol. 3, the announcer provides this astonishingly aggressive sales pitch:

And now, ladies and gentlemen, let's talk about waste for a moment or two. The Duke's music is much too good to waste. You know that. Anything good is too precious to be wasted. And important things like courage and lives certainly must not be wasted. Still, you in your safe homes can be guilty of wasting American lives.
Ask yourself: Isn't it true that if a man loses his life or a limb because he didn't have that extra bullet that would have killed the Jap who got him, it's somebody's fault that that bullet wasn't there?
[pause]
You've got to admit that.
Now, who can we pin that on? On you perhaps?
Because every piece of equipment in this war starts on its way to the fighting fronts from the United States Treasury. If the Treasury doesn't have the money, someone doesn't get that extra bullet. If the Treasury doesn't have the money, perhaps someone didn't buy that extra war bond. Perhaps that someone is you.

I Am Not Bruce Conner (for B.C.)

1934-2008

Manohla Dargis:

For better and sometimes worse, scores of other filmmakers in both the avant-garde and the commercial mainstream have been influenced by Mr. Conner’s shocking juxtapositions and propulsive, rhythmically sophisticated montage. MTV should have paid him royalties.

Bruce Jenkins, from 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story, Part II:

It would be Conner's singular contribution [to cinema] to remove the viewer from the Brakhagean paradigm -- from a close encounter, that is, with the personal vision of the filmmaker -- and from Hollywood's third-person, omniscient fictions as well. The result would be a completely novel viewing experience that might best be termed "second-person film," continually addressing itself to the experience of "you," the film viewer, through an active reworking of the already coded and manipulated cultural material of the movies. Highly constructed and meticulously crafted from cheap cast-offs, peripheral forms, and eccentric images of his own devising, Conner's work would challenge the very legibility of the medium in any of its contemporary manifestations. Through a break with realism and a defiant insistence on liberating the materiality of film, he would deliver cinema from the protocols of both conventional and experimental practice. No mere formalist, however, Conner deployed his uniquely radical practice, like the Cubists before him, in the service of understanding the cultural and social significance of his materials -- specifically, by unmasking the ways in which meanings are constructed and conveyed in the culture. It was, indeed, an explosion in a film factory.

Happy Days Are Here Again

Earlier this year, in a letter boosting John McCain's conservative bona fides, Bob Dole pointed out "that McCain’s voting record — as measured by support for the president — mirrored that of the ultra-conservative former [now dead!] U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.)." Since McCain seems to be having trouble finding the right people to run his campaign, I nominate Bob Dole.

Back to the happy occasion: I propose the July 4th holiday be changed from one celebrating the Declaration of Independence to one celebrating Helms's death.
We don't have enough holidays celebrating the deaths of major assholes.

Remember this:

On Aug. 3 [1993] Senator Moseley-Braun was in a Senate elevator with two other senators. Senator Helms entered the elevator, saw Senator Moseley-Braun and began to sing, "I wish I was in the land of cotton." Senator Helms then turned to Senator Orrin Hatch, one of the other senators present, and said: "I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries."

Now, I know it may be un-ladylike, but wouldn't you love to see Carol Moseley-Braun squat over Helms's casket and take a big ol' dump while singing "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing"?

Good riddance, motherfucker.

Lift ev'ry voice and sing,

'Til earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on 'til victory is won.

UPDATE: Perhaps Helms fell dead after someone showed him this:

Barack Obama's promise to make a play for North Carolina -- a state that has consistently voted Republican since 1980 -- might just have some potential to really pay off, a new poll from Rasmussen suggests.

The numbers: McCain 45%, Obama 43%, within the ±4% margin of error. This is consistent with other recent polls that have shown McCain with only a small lead here.

Praying to Joe Pesci (for G.C.)

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.

153

= the number of days until November 4, 2008, a.k.a. Election Day.

Though the map looks favorable right now, 153 days is an eternity in electoral politics.

And while McCain was considered too "centrist" by many radically regressive Republicans and neo-cons, it must be emphasized that, per Matt Taibbi:

McCain may be even more crazy than the Republican mainstream on the issue that matters most of all: the war in Iraq and war in general. My guess is that Republican voters are not going to mind that McCain's candidacy might drive a stake through the heart of the weenie fascism of Rush and Hannity, once they figure out that the candidate is a solid bet to deliver them World War III. And that should scare the shit out of us all.

Yes, we should be scared. And no, we can never underestimate American bloodlust. But I may be naive enough to think that McCain can't win on Iraq (or Iran), and he knows it. His strategy will emphasize his experience (quantity-over-quality, of course) and his "straight-talking maverick" persona to convince "his friends" that, policy details aside, he's the type of all-white all-right guy you can trust.

However:

This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

It will take time, money and hard work, but McCain must be defeated.

Let's go to work, people. The clock is ticking.

In The Gap (for R.R.)

1925-2008

My art is about paying attention – about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.

I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.

John Cage:

Having made the empty canvases (R.R.: A canvas is never empty), Rauschenberg became the giver of gifts. Gifts, unexpected and unnecessary, are ways of saying Yes to how it is, a holiday.

To Whom It May Concern:
The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later.