Let me preface this by saying… I am not a tv guy. If you’ve followed this blog any, you know that. I can, and routinely do, go months without watching TV. I in fact do not own a tv. But I do own laptops and quite an extensive DVD collection. I keep abreast of what people are saying is hot or good in TV land, and eventually get around to trying the DVDs. And usually all these hyped shows… I’m unimpressed. LOST, 24, PRISON BREAK, HEROES all shows I’ve heard rapturous praise, and finally seen… they’re uneven at best, with some great episodes, but mostly a lot of filler, sub-par episodes. THE WIRE is another show that I heard so much praise for, and finally watched it cannot hold a candle to its predecessor HOMICIDE. Typically it’s the British Television shows that I think are currently knocking it out the park. Shows like HUSTLE and ULTRAVIOLET and JEKYLL and TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH. Because their seasons are tight, they avoid the filler and weak episodes so common to American Television seasons. There are exceptions, a few American shows, that are televison at its finest. DAY BREAK is one of those shows. To say it’s 24 meets Groundhog Day, gives you a crude and unwieldy signpost, and ultimately a lacking one. It is those two things, those two vague and well worn themes, but done right and brilliantly and strong for the whole season. I have things to do, and places to go, and I cannot stop watching the bloody DVDs. It’s BRILLIANT! So of course it was canceled in one season. I mean multi-ethnic cast, strong Black lead character… Oh please cancel me now, and let’s leave on crap like SMALLVILLE, or another CSI or LAW AND ORDER. But while it may have only been one season, at least is was a GREAT FRIGGING SEASON! Try it for yourself. And don’t forget to listen to all the commentaries, pretty great stuff.

“We love only heroes. Glorious death in battle. Scaling walls, burning bridges behind us, destroying all ways back. All retreat. As if some things were fixed. As if the moon would come to us each night (& we could watch from the battlements). As if there were anything certain or lovely in our lives.” — excerpt from “THE DEATH OF NICK CHARLES” by Amiri Baraka (available in the great anthology BLACK VOICES) ************* I have been listening all day to an old time radio program called CRIME CLASSICS. From the 1950s it is absolutely riveting half hour based shows, that dramatize infamous places in history. It dramatizes our crimes. From Lizzie Borden to Billy the Kid to others who I have never heard of. It tells of places deep and dark and devious, that can only accurately be called the human heart. It is brilliantly directed/produced by Elliot Lewis, written by Morton Fine and David Freemen, and captivatingly introduced by Lou Merrill portraying Thomas Hyland and performed by some of the best radio actors of the day, from Paul Frees to William Conrad to Bill Johnstone. I don’t know how to sell someone on audio dramas, anymore than I know how to sell someone on reading. To me it’s analogous to having to sell someone on breathing or sex. It is something people should be, of their own volition, racing toward… racing to do, racing to consume. Audio dramas, the best of them, are such a pure medium. Such an interactive one, while still being a completely solid vision/narrative. And Old Time Radio is a very reflective medium, it can teach, by that distance of time, of old oaths that we have turned our back on, and old follies that we have embraced. I highly recommend this show. And you can find it here. I recommend getting it quickly as the shows have a tendency to disappear as greedy corporations and venal lawyers and their lobbying… erodes the concept of Public Domain… erodes the concept of The Public. It is a great show. Enjoy. **************** “His name is… Will it ever come to me? There is a grand lapse of memory that may be the only thing to save us from ultimate horror. Perhaps they know the truth who preach the passing of one life into another, vowing that between a certain death and a certain birth there is an interval in which an old name is forgotten before a new one is learned. And to remember the name of a former life is to begin the backward slide into that great blackness in which all names have their source, becoming incarnate in a succession of bodies like numberless verses of an infinite scripture. To find that you have had so many names is to lose the claim to any one of them. To gain the memory of so many lives is to lose them all.” —From Thomas Ligotti’s GRIMSCRIBE short story collection I find Ligotti an acquired taste. I’ve read several of the stories in GRIMSCRIBE in his more comprehensive collection, THE SHADOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD, and I wasn’t particularly taken by them there. I thought the GRIMSCRIBE selections were the weakest part of THE SHADOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD (an uneven, but worth having anthology, because the stories that do work, four come to mind, are worth the price of admission). But I found the above excerpt from Ligotti’s introduction to GRIMSCRIBE quite compelling. ******************** “Formal business has certainly decayed in the city centre, with empty shops, boarded-up office blocks. Maybe a Black guy will buy a shop and start selling pap, the local food, but there’s been no boom of Black businesses- prices are still high, and because of the Group Areas Act it’s mainly Asians who own the shops and warehouses. There are plenty of traders and hawkers in the streets now, ladies doing other ladies’ hair for money and services like that. There are big working-class taxi ranks because the public transport is so bad. But the general economic trend is very clear: the rich have got richer and the poor poorer. Under the ANC, South Africa has now surpassed Brazil as the most unequal country in the world. According to Statistics South Africa, the average African household has got 19 percent poorer in the past five years, and the average White household 15 percent richer.” —Trevor Ngwane discussing the current conditions of South Africa, from Tom Mertes’ A MOVEMENT OF MOVEMENTS.

I have very little to say about the Fort Hood, Texas massacre. Not because I have become numbed to massacres by dint of long sojourn in America, that bastion of massacres, though surely some of that is in my reaction and the reaction at large. I feel for the loss of life and loved ones in this atrocity, as I do every atrocity. Those we endure ourselves and those atrocities we impose on others. I feel them all. No I have very little to say, because it was largely said by better men than me, before me. “I don’t know who I’m going to shoot, you put a rifle in my hand” and “This is chickens coming home to roost” America for a while now, has worn herself thin declaring war on every darker, non-christian country from Haiti to Liberia. Waging what amounts to the bloodiest religious crusades in the history of the world, while being tactful enough to keep the idea of crusades and ethnic cleansings out of the television reasoning for such expenditure of lives and dollars. At a time when America would be best served by shoring up her own crumbling economic, moral, educational and cultural landscape we instead invest our time in destroying these things for other countries. And the oddest thing is, we get other disenfranchised people to go out and disenfranchise other people. It’s a cycle we’ve been engaged in since the Revolutionary war. Making of victims, our victimizers. The Irish became the American police force, because Ireland had become a fucking killing ground. And disenfranchised soldiers flocked here to find something… better. The Buffalo Soldiers, escapees of enslavement, won renown by being efficient cleaners of the plains, killers of Native Americans. Latin Americans escaping in some cases decades of bloody totalitarian regimes, often supported by US Dollars, augment today’s dwindling American armed forces. And the cycle continues. Our victims today, America will turn around and make (when they have no other jobs to accept) her victimizers tomorrow. That type of duplicity and juggling act is no easy feat to keep going. In fact it’s damn difficult and dangerous. And the concept of diminishing returns being a reality, it is costing America. America has by hook or by crook, pushed, grabbed, cajoled, threatened anyone it can…. to garner the manpower to continue its endless war. In many cases that has meant the armed forces being more than happy to augment its forces with the less than stable. From well documented cases of soldiers with Autism, to convicts, to out and out psychopaths. America doesn’t care who they put on the front lines, as long as you will kill for them. It doesn’t care what you have to lose to go someplace and kill people you have no beef with, as long as you do it. As long as you will be their gun. The problem with that is, every so often, people get shot with their own guns. Particularly irresponsible people. And America is an irresponsible nation. It is an irrational nation, that breeds this in their subjects, demands it even. Demands that you accept the most irrational reasoning, the most irrational justifications… for that which can not be justified. You ask of people to kill for your lies, to weigh the life of the other… cheap. For no other reason than you say so. To surrender personal moralities, religions, codes, ethics, humanities… to the ever shifting dictates of the state. And at some point teaching people to weigh other lives cheap means the ability to weigh all lives cheap. Do you understand? You can not spit horror into the wind, and not ultimately end up swallowing it yourself. I do not know this Officer Hasan, beyond the sound-bites that his life has been reduced to. But as a psychiatrist, he was obviously an intelligent man, more intelligent arguably than those who now debate him, and as a psychiatrist understanding of the strange landscape of the human condition. So to try and right this off as a dirty muslim, killing good Americans would be inept. No do not put that lie upon your soul. Officer Hasan perhaps was never more American, than in his massacre of other Americans. It is after all, the American past time. Ask any number of Post offices, or Shopping Malls, or Schools, or McDonalds. No my dear beloved child, you lay that butchery at Fort Hood, where it belongs… with you. And with me. Hasan was the bomb, but we as America… were the lit and burning fuse. Officer Hasan was by occupation aware of Abraham Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs, and Berger and Luckmann’s Social Construction of Reality so he understood better than most the foilbles and fallacies of the human condition, its pitfalls, and yet he himself fell into them. Looked too long into the abyss, and found it sweet. What hope have the rest of us? If a man whose occupation it is, to deal with pressure, himself crumbled under the pressure of America, how much more these 18 and 19 and 20 year olds that we send into the killing fields? How shall they come back to us? Us… we who gleefully do send them out to kill, in unjust wars to unjust ends, if not changed and ready to show us… what lessons they have learned at liberty’s great lap. Oh yes, what they have sown abroad, we will surely in the fullness of time, reap the harvest of at home. You and me and all of us. Unless we stop this train wreck direction America is on, this rule by sociopaths… then our Fort Hoods are waiting for us. All of us. This is what is to be learned from all that pain and anguish and calamity of Fort Hood. That it is America… unplugged. Chickens coming home to roost.

I’m really… happy that some of my old posts continue to find an audience and continue to be looked at favorably. And for those of you who took, and take, the time to comment… Thank You. This will be a very brief post, I’ll just leave you with a recent discovery or rediscovery depending on your point of view: I mentioned Bob Dylan a couple posts back, and how I’ve been a fan of his mostly from his singles, catching his music on the radio or in film soundtracks (such as his brilliant score for PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID) but having not really listened to any of his albums all the way through. So this past week with the assistance of my local library I’ve been rectifying that. I started with his BLONDE ON BLONDE, an album whose title alone makes my pornographic brain smile, but that aside I was (given the raves this album gets)… underwhelmed. On first listen (with the exception of VISIONS OF JOHANNA which is an absolute masterpiece) I was pretty unmoved by most of the songs. And I realize you have to put what he was doing in the perspective of the times, I understand how revolutionary his blend of folk and rock was in a younger 1966 America, but importance is no substitute for timelessness and staying power, and I feel a lot of these songs lack staying power. So I can understand the criticism to this album, because I had them, and to an extent still have them (particularly when it comes to the 2nd CD). But i would say to the detractors put the album on rotate on your CD-player and just live with it for a week. Because that’s what I did. I gave the album several more listens, I understand some albums have to grow on you, and I did grow to quite enjoy the first half of the 2CD album. Especially the zany fun of LEOPARD SKIN PILL BOX HAT and just the addictive beauty of JUST LIKE A WOMAN, and of course as mentioned the highlight of the album… VISIONS OF JOHANNA. You could spend a lifetime decoding the beauty and imagery and meaning of that song, and find new beauty and imagery and meaning everytime. But for the winners the album had, there were still quite a few more that even with repeated listens I just didn’t like or engage with. So final verdict: an album definitely worth a listen for the ones that work, JOHANNA worth the price of the cd by itself. Just go in understanding it’s not a masterpiece (at least not an out the box one) and it will need to grow on you, and I think you’ll appreciate it. B/B-.

Some odds and ends I need to get on the blog, so I can make room for other items.

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I just saw the short film GOD AND SHAKESPEARE courtesy of NZSHORTFILM.COM. Being a fan of hyperbole and florid language, I quite liked it. Irreverent, and humorous, while having some heart to it. Good stuff. Plus the woman who makes an appearance as Venus…. HUBBA HUBBA HUBBA. (Yes I am quite mature).

There’s another one called FLAT at GUERILLAFILMMAKERS.COM. While the site appears to be out of date, the short film is still available for download. A well done cautionary tale. Ladies you should watch this one.

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Site of the day: The Earchives. You gotta love that name, and the fact that it’s Microsoft free.

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The diverse downloading options for video are drying up as sites increasingly accept itunes and youtube as defacto distribution standards.

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I just saw the preview for THE WOLFMAN and it looks… FANTASTIC. But I admit to being a werewolf fan, but that said it still looks astounding. Though the director issues do not fill me with confidence. The preview may be the best thing about the film, but we’ll see.

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Archive.org offers two great silent version of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. Both versions come highly recommended.

http://www.stephenkingshortmovies.com/ is a site, that true to its name is filled with trailers and links to Stephen King related films, interviews, etc.

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Sidestepping into music for a second:

NO ESCAPE FROM THE BLUES:THE ELECTRIC LADY SESSIONS by James Blood Ulmer
I wanted to like this album more than I did. The strongest ones for me were tracks 3 (WHO’S BEEN TALKING), 4(GHETTO CHILD), 5(ARE YOU GLAD TO BE IN AMERICA), and #10 (SATISFY). But even these tracks were not a slam dunk for me, took a few listens on a couple tracks for me to give the thumbs up. The remaining tracks were even more problematic, the British have a saying,”taking a piss”.

Ulmer is an educated man, so there’s a sense of artifice, for me at least in his slurring words and making vocals unclear. It kind of takes me out of the moment. Though to be fair, Ulmer doing it is no different from generations of white musicians, from Elvis to Wolfman Jack to Eminem, making their careers adopting the sound of darker men, who paid dearly to forge such a sound.

So I don’t begrudge Ulmer the artifice, artifice perhaps being the wrong word, as Ulmer unlike others is of the same turmoil and tempermant that forged those who birthed the blues… however for me the songs failed for the most part to connect with me.

For me the strongest ones are the ones I mentioned, which he (with one exception) wrote. Which tells me there is some validity to my complaint. People write Blues songs for Ulmer, songs they want him to be someone else, Ulmer writes Ulmer songs. And it’s about his search for himself. And the difference is staggering.

When he sings his own songs, I believe them.

So all in all, It’s worth a listen, I mean it is sonically a well mastered CD, and the instrumentals are fantastic. Ulmer has some fantastic guitar work going on here. Ulmer’s skill is not open to question. But for me, after several listens, my reservations with the majority of the album remains. B-/C+.

I’ve recently ordered Ulmer’s debut album TALES OF CAPTAIN BLACK and really looking forward to it. I’ll provide a review just as soon as I can listen to it a few times.

When not… raging against the dying of the light, I enjoy the simple pleasures… like any other son of Africa. One of those pleasures of late… is music, specifically instrumental soundtracks with a heavy funk/jazz vibe… and even more specifically, the early soundtracks of Quincy Jones. I mentioned the IN COLD BLOOD album a few posts back. Well since then I have managed to get my hands on that 1967 record (My criticisms of Ebay aside, it can at times come in handy for buyers. Particularly for items like IN COLD BLOOD which are not available on CD) and the kindest and most succinct way to summarize my reaction to that 40 year old album is… it blew my mind. I mean the sample of the IN COLD BLOOD title track, that I had heard on a music podcast (that started this whole soundtrack obsession. Thank you Ratso for making me broke! Proof positive that letting people share music actually HELPS sales!) had prepped me for the album to be good, but I didn’t dare to hope the whole thing would be great. And it is. The IN COLD BLOOD soundtrack is a remarkable achievement that sounds devastating, inventive, original and ahead of its time today, so I can’t quite put in perspective what it must have been like hearing this score for the first time in 1967. I can’t imagine it, back then, not winning Quincy Jones a nomination (which it did), and more deservedly the Academy award. It is a brief album, I forgot the tight and effective pacing of LPs in the days before CDs. The score comes in at well under 36 minutes total. But what a half hour. All I can say is… once the album was done, I immediately had to listen to it again, and again. That is the sign of a masterfully constructed album. Now those praises heaped on this album, there are some downsides. While I have a very pristine album copy and the sound is great, this soundtrack is too important and too good not to get remastered and made available on CD; because while I respect and admire Mr. Jones’ staggering accomplishments and body of work to date, for me… these early instrumental soundtracks are (excuse my slide into 70s speak) where it’s at. I mean I will not be surprised if my greatest audio discovery of 2009 turns out to be a 40+ year old record called IN COLD BLOOD. It is that brilliant. However that raises other problems. Jazzed by the BLOOD score, I went looking for other early Quincy Jones scores. Let me tell you right now… a cheap past-time that is not. And so far what I’m finding is the other scores while good, and in places brilliant can not hold a candle to IN COLD BLOOD. Now I say that having only tried DOLLARS and THE LOST MAN. A lot of people praise those two scores, but I was underwhelmed, particularly by DOLLARS. Your mileage may vary. But as I said, I’m still waiting to receive THE PAWNBROKER, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, THE SPLIT, and THEY CALL ME MR. TIBBS soundtracks (CD when available, LP when not). I’ve sampled online some of his THE SPLIT soundtrack and that one I think may be up there with IN COLD BLOOD, also i’m hearing good things about the THEY CALL ME MR. TIBBS score. So I’ll offer my take on those scores when they come in. In addition researching Quincy Jones’ early soundtrack work has also put on my radar some of his early jazz albums as well as soundtrack albums by other composers. What can I say… I’m a compulsive dude, I can latch onto a few passions to the exclusion of pretty much all else. I can go years without watching tv or reading comics, and then something will launch itself on my radar and suddenly I’m consuming years worth of DVDs and Comics in weeks. Currently I’m in my music phase, with a side compulsion in books. And boy is my wallet not happy with me. Anyhow to help you also get in on this soundtrack kick (hey why should I be the only one going broke) I’m going to direct you to a few nifty links: So who is this Quincy Jones cat? Well for those of you asking that question, or for those just seeking more info, SOUL WALKING has put together a pretty darn comprehensive page, on the living legend that is Quincy Jones. Check it out here! Now that you know who the man is, I guess you want to hear a little bit of what he brings to the table. Well it just so happens that DJ Spinnas has put together a pretty awesome tribute/mashup to the work of Quincy Jones. You can check it out here! It’s exceptionally well put together, though if I had to fault it for anything it is a little too heavy into Quincy’s later vocal collaborations, which is really not my cup of tea. Just stick to the crazy instrumentals and I’m there. But my personal bias aside, it is brilliantly done… and definitely recommended! Moving on, here are two places that review soundtracks and records, I generally think their reviews are whacked (I’m joking– not!), but both are expansive sites and quite informative, so check it out for yourself: BLAXPLOITATION WARR Have I ever mentioned I hate Amazon.com? Well there you go. Anyhow as an alternative I’m always looking for other people to give my business to. If you can’t find the CD/record you are looking for through the usual suspects, you may want to give the following sites a look. I have not done business with them yet, so can’t speak on that, but what I can say is the below sites are a joy to browse though and offer detailed info on the products, and include sound clips. They had me at hello. The sites are: MOVIE GROOVES and BUY SOUNDTRAX and DUSTY GROOVE (doesn’t offer sound-clips unfortunately, but their excellent reviews help make up for it) Well that’s it folks, you’ve been turned onto IN COLD BLOOD and been given places to learn, hear, and ultimately purchase more. So without further ado kiddies go out there and… listen. Till next time… be safe, be free. And if you can’t be both, choose the latter. .

LAST MINUTE EDIT: Wanted to give some love to another Soundtrack Review site, perhaps “THE” Soundtrack Review Site, SCORE BABY! Just a stellar site from bottom to top, and if it doesn’t spur you to purchase copious amounts of soundtracks, than you have more willpower than I do. Swing by here to take a look!.

And tell them HT sent you!

Profound things I’ve recently read or reread: “If we live all our life with lies, it becomes hard to see anything if it has nothing to do with those lies.” - Amiri Baraka (writing as Leroi Jones at the time) I met him today. Went to hear him speak. It is rare when the fact of a man, lives up to the myth. Mr. Baraka is such a rarity. He spoke on many things, in his 70s, he spoke on many things, with wit and grace and humor, and something very few people fractions of his age have… with passion. He was very much still, that young man who sought to, and to great degrees did… change worlds. Still that Angry Young Man. And I use that phrase in its finest meaning. Not Anger that destroys, but Anger that motivates, that asks of the world to rise from burning beds. Conviction is perhaps the more accurate term, he had the conviction of that younger age of Panthers and Prophets. Of men who did, rather than discussed. He had more energy in that 70+ year frame than in a whole city of young, confused , direction-less Black men, being herded, and in many cases running headlong, to the prisons and the graves. The whole wheel of our society is designed around what DuBois called THE MIS-EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO, our schools, and entertainment and churches and urban centers and laws and fractured homes, geared to produce ignorant masses. Why? Control. Control has always been the fuel and the feast of the tyrannical. A ruling class, maintains rule by concepts of supremacy and inferiority. A bigoted system doesn’t just prefer, but needs the stereotype of the thug, the menace to society, because that villain… is inferior and is easily dealt with, easily used, easily enslaved, and easily turned against his own and turned to the needs of the state. But a Baraka, a Shabazz, this nation has fought internal wars of terrorism against the growth of such men. Because such men, resist stereotypes. And not only do they give the lie to the concept of White Supremacy, not just by proving themselves the equals of their detractors, but they make a very compelling argument for being their betters. The 1960s is when America, and the world was on the verge of a real… evolution. When we had in our sights the chance for growth, not of our technology, but our humanity, our conscience, our unity, our art, our peace. And it all hinged on this idea of self determination, from China to Cuba to America to Senegal… the whole world was fighting to grow out of their fathers’ lives. And perhaps into their own. From the Black Panthers to the Zapatistas, it was all the same fight. A fight against entrenched colonial evils, entrenched slavery. But more than that, it was a fight for evolution. Instead of evolution however, powers and principalities won the day in the 60s, and crushed globally, but most notably in America that burgeoning social consciousness. And from that point to now, when the rule of law was put on hold, and assassination of the enemies of empire green lit, going on 50 years, we have not evolved. Our technology yes, but not our humanity, not our art, not our dreams, not our conscience. We largely are stuck mired in the same entrenched hates, and economic folly, and capitalistic wars, of the 60s. In fact it’s worse, because our technology increasingly allows our hates and our ignorance a greater ability… to harm. So in the 60s when we put down those Angry Young Men who spoke, before anyone else, of community based health care, and community schools, and self-love, and true community/tribal policing, and pan-national unity, when we stopped them because of their dreams and plans of Camelot… what did we stop them for? Is the average American, whether white or black, any better than his father? I would say we are worse, sure we have toys, but we also have an America on the verge of economic, cultural and societal collapse. We are Germany, poised before the rise of Hitler. We are poised again for Fascism. Again for Rome. We have gone backwards since we turned our back on those young men, who pointed us to the future. We murdered them and caged them for life, and allowed the greed of the few, to condemn the many to failure. Failure for the dream of America. Failure for the dream of something better for our children. Your racism is a class construct used to make you a tool, make your children tools, and preserve a decaying power structure of Disney and Time Warner and Sony and Shell, to preserve a decaying, fabricated system of lords and serfs, that should have been demolished and strewn to the four winds, five decades ago. Your racism keeps you… a slave. A nigger. That’s the war we fight. Not of name calling, or ethnicity, but of reason and ignorance. It is a fight to see the whole chess board, not just the piece you sit on. And ultimately it is a fight to evolve, and that cannot happen in a world run by multinational corporations and robber barons, in a world of unchecked capitalism/fascism. “If we live all our life with lies, it becomes hard to see anything if it has nothing to do with those lies” That’s why I go out and listen, and hopefully learn from these women and men who still speak the truth. I have some hopes, that the word, in an age of orbital nuclear weapons and designer diseases… I have hope… that all of it, all of it, all the lies, all the powers, all the principalities, can begin falling like dominoes. Knocked down by men and women… who will never cease speaking… a few true words. [p.s. Many of Mr. Baraka's books and plays have long been out of print. He's making them available for purchase through his recently setup website. I of course highly recommend supporting him, and owning his books. You can view his site here.]

They are killing people with robots, and no one has a problem with this. They… our military. They… our government. I’ve long thought saturation bombing was a… crushing evil. But at the very least you knew there was still some human hand, some awareness, some accountability, some weight held if only by one pilot’s soul, regarding the snuffing out of unseen hundreds and thousands. But now, technology, we have not even that. Drone planes. We kill people with drone planes. Not even a human eye, to capture the horror of their end. We kill them like cockroaches. Our enemies. Because— technology— we can. I wrote a while ago, about machine men with machine minds killing in… these machine times. It’s wrong. Bombing people. Always has been, always will be. From Germany’s carpet bombing of England, to Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor to our ultimate bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to all the fucking bombings since. Bombing has been called the terrorism of the rich. Rich nations. Rich interests. I agree. And I know the excuses. Dropping bombs saves lives that would have been lost in an ugly ground war. That is some bullshit. If our governments were really that concerned about saving lives, how about trying to solve your border disputes without starting wars that young men have to fight for you. So don’t give me it saves lives. The fuckers who send young men to die are not concerned with their fucking lives. No it’s about conquest, by barbarians. It’s about old men playing games of life and death, with the newest and shiniest toys they can find. It’s about control. And the only thing of more importance than the death of our enemies’ young men in times of overpopulation, is the control and death of large numbers of our own. War is that ultimate ground, where tyrants perpetuate themselves. And bombing… their flavor of choice. It is the act of cowards, to drop fire from the sky, and burn to death flora and fauna, men, women, and children, people.. to burn to death people you do not know, nor now never can. To end good lives and bad, righteous and wrong, from afar, without ever looking at those lives. It’s wrong. And these drone planes make it easier to be wrong. Makes it a video game, makes it… unreal. Just targets in a distant land. There’s always the hope that with a pilot, the mission can be scrapped based on changing situations in the field. Just more discussion involved with briefing men for a bombing mission, more people in the loop, more chance that the need of the mission may be weighed… well. But in our new automatic, pushbutton, drone plane America, there’s less level of oversight between thought and bloody action. Technology, drone planes, makes killing something it should never, ever be. It makes it… routine. It makes it easy. It makes it… forgettable. Forgettable. But nothing is forgotten. Not the blood rich men spill with impunity. Not the lies and crimes the press (owned by the same conglomerates that are getting rich selling bombs to the military)… conceal. Not even the people who devoid of graves do die. All must be answered for. I’m not a religious man, but I believe that. Every hair you have harmed in darkness, in your final hour will challenge you in the light. I do believe that. That there will come, to every Rome and every good Roman… their Fall. [p.s. As an aside: Ray Bradbury decades ago in fiction, wrote of a future America where the streets were policed with zero tolerance, by forbidding and merciless drone helioplanes. It's nice to know Big Brother is committed to making fictions fact. It has been announced that various US cities are seeking to deploy these Israeli made Drone planes to police their suspect areas. Isn't it enough we have Israeli cameras blanketing every inner city. I get it Israel, you want to help America setup her own Palestine. Thanks but no thanks. You see, the atrocities we don't speak out against in distant lands or to under-represented people today, becomes our cross to bear tomorrow.]

My father was a freeman, as was his father before him.

That perhaps means little… in an age where everyone is rushing to be slaves.

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I listen to a lot of podcasts.

From all over the world. The benefit of the internet, of instant communication, and perhaps the curse.

There’s something slightly troubling in the fact that buzz words such as Youtube and Ebay and Wikipedia should be used as American standards and British standards and Australian standards and South African standards. No less troubling than the concept of AMERICAN IDOL and SURVIVOR type shows flooding the airwaves of Mexico and Uganda.

While a common frame of reference, a common language is good, it is not good if its prevalence comes at the expense of a sense of local identity, culture, language.

And that is what is happening.

These corporate oligarchies, these MONOPOLIES spreading their branding across the mindscape of the world, like mad dogs marking their territory.

And I think the price we pay for the culture of the corporate imposed without restraint across local cultures is high and heavy. I think diversity is essential to strength, and in the absence of diverse thought, language, perspectives, foods, gods, even concepts of beauty… something strong is made weak, and something vibrant and fantastic and yes a little frightening, the breadth of humanity, is made bland, and trivial, and just a little… soulless.

This New World Order has been the death of much that should thrive in men, and has been the persistence of much that should perish in men.

That’s why I am always a contrarian, so if the world is broad and loud about Harry Potter, or MIchael Vick or American Idol or Google or Seth Rogen, I’m always pointed to where the attention is not. My mind pointed to the corners of the world where we keep our Invisible men, and what remains of… real life.

Well being not exactly a tv person, I’m finally getting around to watching season 1 of the television series 24. I did catch one episode, the premier, nine years ago. And while I thought it was okay, I just wasn’t interested enough to try following the series. Which is just as well, watching live I would have given up on the series well before the end. The DVD is the way to view this series. That said onto my evaluation of the 6 DVD set of season # 1. The season starts strong, the beginning half is pretty damn addictive, brilliant viewing. The only weakness is the plodding storyline about the presidential candidate’s family problems. Whenever the focus shifts to that storyline, all the life and interest goes out of the show. While the actor who plays Senator Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) is a good actor, he spends pretty much the whole season whining, and vacillating over his idiotic son. But Haysbert himself dominates the role, and it is fantastic casting. Having been in the business for years (he’s done everything from BUCK ROGERS to DALLAS to MAGNUM PI to CRIME STORY to RETURN TO LONESOME DOVE to STANDOFF to THE MINUS MAN to THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR to “Now and Again” (1999) to THE UNIT) , it’s good to finally see him in more leading roles. And as Senator Palmer he’s an impressive and imposing aspect, towering as he does over everyone else. He manages to really straddle that troublesome line of Presidential bearing, inspite of the fact that often his character is poorly written, crossing the line too often into melodrama. Speaking of which a large portion of why the Senator Palmer subplot doesn’t work is the poor casting of his son. Beyond not looking remotely like he’s related to the other actors, the young actor in the role comes across as just an annoying, unsympathetic screen presence. Not everyone has a face for every part, and this young man with his mugging, and whining, and temper tantrums was the wrong take for this critical role. He came off as very unsympathetic, which just makes the audience not remotely interested in the character’s welfare. So it’s also a hit against the writing team, for scripting a character, and dialog, that makes you want to hit the fast forward button. And beyond that poor casting, the senator plot, basically just goes in circles, repeating the same old argument about telling/not telling for the whole series. It’s just bad writing. Luckily the other plots are interesting enough to make up for the poorly written Senator Palmer storyline. That said at the half way mark or so, when The main subplot of Jack Bauer finding his wife and daughter is resolved, the whole series just shifts tonally, and becomes, like the Palmer plot, very repetitive and plodding and uninteresting. Every character begins to behave wildly irrationally, and the show just goes off the rails. Particularly Leslie Hope’s character (Terri Bower) suffers from being poorly and irrationally written. Amnesia?? Really? She went from being okay written, to being an atrocious, annoying mess. Other odd writing choices include: (SPOILERS): A character stabbing someone on camera? Bauer, basically trying to set up an episode of CHEATERS with a known assassin rather than just taking him into custody. And then we have a special forces trained Assassin getting taken out by a scorned campaign aide.(END OF SPOILERS) Just idiotic subplot building on idiotic subplot. As if the writers are just killing time to get to the season end. Well that’s my verdict through Disk #5. One more to go. I’ll update this review when that last disk is done. But my opinion right now is that 24 is a series let down by its 2nd half, and lazy writing. UPDATE: (Possible SPOILERS) Okay I just saw the final four episodes of Season #1, and “24″ does still suffer from being very irrational, and annoying. Though there are some surprises. The Senator Subplot actually becomes at times interesting, with the Lady Macbeth machinations of the wife of Senator Palmer. But for that plus, the Bauer subplot loses just about all steam and credibility, with them falling back on kidnapping his daughter again. There’s just a lot of inconsistencies, and stupidity on the bad guy’s side that stretches suspension of disbelief too far. Also the casting of Dennis Hopper, didn’t work well. He’s generally a fine actor, but saddling him with a ridiculous accent really distracts, he just isn’t very believable throughout these episodes. (END OF SPOILERS) So there’s a lot of cliched writing throughout these final four episodes, but there’s a couple of really original plot twists that really save the season. One particular plot twist blew my mind, and really just created an emotional storm that carried you through any writing plotholes. All in all I thought it was an audacious ending that worked on enough levels to get me to give the first season a passing grade, but just barely. **12 out of **** ******** And here’s a quick overview of some of the under the radar actors that I thought delivered really strong and essential performances for 24 season #1: -Michael Massee as Ira Gaines owned the first half of “24″. His understated, but menace filled performance was the kind of presence that Dennis Hopper couldn’t bring to the 2nd half of season #1. And it is really surprising he hasn’t gotten more work since his stint on “24″. -Richard Burgi is always a fantastic actor, and here, as Alan York, is no exception. The guy is a solid actor and always brings his A game, even in less than stellar productions. This reliability is probably due to his soap opera background, which I’ve noticed tends to allow actors to outshine others, who don’t have that demanding training ground of daytime tv to hone their skills. This range, and “in the moment” truth of his acting is more than likely why Burgi has remained a consistently busy and in-demand actor. For other work by him try “ONE WEST WAKIKI”(1994), “THE SENTINEL” (96-99), STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 (2004- A subversive, straight to DVD, claustrophobic film, that I thought was far better than the big budget blockbuster original), CELLULAR (2004), “POINT PLEASANT” (2005), James Woods “SHARK” (2006-2008), “REAPER” (2007), “HARPER’S ISLAND” (2009), “DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES” (2004-2009). -Zeljko Ivanek as Andre Draven I thought was astonishing. Possibly the most effective actor of the whole series, I thought he completely owned and made true every scene he was in. Having first seen him on “HOMICIDE” where he was good, here he gets the chance to be great. And I didn’t realize he’s Yogoslavian when he acted on “HOMICIDE”, as his English is accent free. Here in “24″ he channels the land of his birth to I thought always riveting effect. He’s another actor who has stayed consistently busy, and like Richard Burgi he started in soap operas. Proof positive that people who do years on a Soap, really learn how to bring it when they graduate to Primetime and Movies. Some of the highlights of Ivanek’s filmography being: THE SOLDIER (1982), THE SENDER(1982), “The Sun Also Rises” (1984), “Echoes in the Darkness” (1987), “Aftermath: A Test of Love” (1991), White Squall (1996), Courage Under Fire (1996), Infinity (1996), “The Rat Pack” (1998), “Homicide: Life on the Street” (37 episodes, 1993-1999), Snow Falling on Cedars (1999), Dancer in the Dark (2000), Denis Leary’s “The Job” (2001), Unfaithful (2002), “Oz” (27 episodes, 1997-2003), “Touching Evil” (2004), “The Jury” (2004), “Bones” (2005), “Shark” (2006), Ascension Day (2007), Live Free or Die Hard (2007), In Bruges (2008), “The Mentalist” (2008), “Damages” (2007), - Megalyn Echikunwoke in a poorly written role as Senator Palmer’s daughter still manages to draw your eye when she’s on screen. You can catch her also on: “CSI: Miami”, Who Do You Love (2008) , Fix (2008/I), “The 4400″ (2006), “Supernatural” (2005), “Veronica Mars” (2004) - And last but definitely not least Sarah Clarke as Nina Myers is fantastic! The season largely hangs together on her performance and credibility. And when a lot of actors waver, I think she never gives a false note, a really fine performance. Inexplicably, she had very little follow-up to “24″. If I was a director or producer she’s the type of talented actress I would be on the lookout for. However it appears the lull in work has turned around for her as she has a slate of movies and television projects for 2009 and 2010. Some standouts from her filmography include: Psychic Driving (2005-short film), Alibi (2007), The Colony (2007/II- short film), “Life” (2007), “The Cleaner” (2008), Twilight (2008/I), Women in Trouble (2009), Level Seven (2009).