I’m breaking in a new barista. She said something quite familiar tonight: “Asher, you have no filter.” Indeed. Another one gets the imprint. 
Lions will be Lions
August 18, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Asher often amuses himself by playing with people the way a kitten plays with a moth or a hamster. Occasionally, when he’s done with one of them, he’ll lay him or her at the feet of one of his friends, and go find another. Other times, also much like a kitten, he’s equally disinterested and would prefer to bask in his own inner thoughts.
Asher’s latest amusement is in agreeing with his critics, which seems to frustrate and bewilder them. If someone says he’s weird, he replies, “Yes, I’m delightfully idiosyncratic.” If they wave away something he’s said with “whatever”, he’ll say, “Well, it might as well be that, then.” To the charge of arrogance he has many replies, but all of them are some sort form of gratitude and agreement. In the end, Asher has said, “it’s more fun to play with things that are slightly stunned and off-balance, especially if you can set them bumping into each other. If not, just as good to eat them.”
Crowded Spaces
August 10, 2008 By Leave a Comment
“Go where people are.” – Mr. Glass, in Unbreakable
Sometimes Asher’s superpowers only work when he’s in a crowd. In the film, Unbreakable, Mr. Glass suggests that sometimes people of extraordinary ability become more of who they are, more of their true selves, in crowded places. At least, enough is pushed out by the pressure, that it can help them discover who they are, even if it’s who they are in a deep well of solitude.
Besides the fact that, if he’s ‘on’, Asher is really good with crowd “management”, he can actually work best in crowds, if history is any gude. He’ll sit down in a vast, open cafe or coffee shop, with people everywhere, and in a fury of creativity and need, he’ll work. He’ll write. For those who might have been wondering, this is still true.
Coffee Shop
August 5, 2008 By Leave a Comment
I found a new coffee shop. Apparently, it’s going to fit reasonably well. I have three, now, and am scouting a fourth. Different hours, different times, different purposes. The least comfortable contrasts are generations and subcultures. All but one appear to be haunts for the young and the young middle class – the conformists. They still think some things are weird, and fear finds their faces easily, fear of being touched by the unknown. So many hippy outfits, but underneath is a kind of fascism. The other is more of a hippie place, with lots of older people, and it’s far more accepting, with a wider latitude for the bizarre. Of course that can be a mixed blessing. But it’s like home-cooked food, or dining at a mom and pop place – you expect unpredictability and inconsistency, and it’s part of why you like it. The rest is the Starbucks impulse.
No Police State
February 21, 2004 By Leave a Comment
Review: No Police State, Film the Madness (Indie, 2002)
When the founding members of No Police State trashed a squad car in Memphis last year, some fans wondered if they’d gone too far. It’s all very well and good to make songs protesting the protesters of depleted uranium shells (“Clean Bombs are Still Bombs, for Fuck’s Sake”) or pissing off the IRS with the unplugged title track from their first album,.released on April 15th, 1999… “Pay Your Taxes Tomorrow”…
“It was all for the video,” says Dee Lishus, lead singer of the band. “We wanted to make a film documentary. What’s the point of doing that if you don’t have some kind visual symbol of your theme? We payed for the squad car with the gambling money our drummer’d won, illegally mind you, from the car’s driver the night before.” Camcorder footage of the band attacking the police vehicle with drumsticks, a microphone stand, and lengths of amplifier cable, with Dee’s voiceover explaining that art somtimes means challenging our sacred cows, fails to be trite when you realize that they’re beating the squad car to the rhythm of their recent song “Black and White, Blue and Everybody Else”.
There’s a lot of the traditional thing that one’d expect in a video about NPS, including concert and festival footage, casual chatter on the tour bus, mosh pits… But what’s really satisfying are the deeply personal interviews, especially the one with bassist Buck Authority. Buck tells of how he watched
his older brothers “go off to kill people in Desert Storm, in Serbia… one is still in Afghanistan. And back here we’re kicking in doors and killing the spirit that we say we’re fighting for.” The video cuts to a familiar scene at one of NPS’s concerts, a door having been brought up on stage, and Buck is
kicking it in during their song “Hands up Tonto”. In this particular clip there are tears in his eyes. It’s very moving.
You won’t find an indie documentary like “No Police State” at your local Barnes and Noble, Borders, or other major retailer. The band encourages people (on the inside liner notes) to bug them about it anyway. “If nothing else, the phrase may stick in their CNN-stunted heads.” The band’s website has been having some problems lately, so this may actually be the best bet for getting the DVD ordered.
Incidentally, inside the liner of each DVD case there’s an extremely realistic (unlaminated) law enforcement ID card. Asked about this in the documentary, Dee Lishus said “If everyone is a cop, ya know. I’m a cop, you’re a cop, he’s a cop… big deal. Then we can all go back to policing ourselves, and we won’t be glorifying as some sort of cultural saint whoever happens to have a shiny badge or a uniform or official identification. Besides, it’s fun.”
The DVD is not really a music DVD. If you buy this one, it’s for the biography, the history of the band, the apolitical commentary, and to assuage curiosity about why police cars are getting “banded” in Memphis. It satisfies all of these interests quite well. I’m going to go watch it again, now. And then go down to Borders and order a copy for a friend.
A Musical Insult
March 16, 2003 By Leave a Comment
When asked to write a term paper in college on the Vietnam Invasion, James borrowed the title from Pat Benetar’s Love is a Battlefield. His theme was a line from the lyrics… “No promises, no demands” as it expresses the lack of clear objectives in the conflict. When asked to explain the relevance of an 80′s power pop song to a 60′s conflict for which a wealth of musical commentary already exists, James sang out his reply: “Believe me, believe me, I can’t tell you why.” When ordered to leave the class, he continued, “You’re making me go, then making me stay. Why do you hurt me so bad? It would help me to know, do I stand in your way, or am I the best thing you’ve had?” At that point security had to be called. James turned the tables by enlisting the guards as background singers with the simple persuasive words, “all together on the chorus!” and the class emptied of frantic students as they went on for several minutes with “love is a battlefield… love is a battlefield… love is a…”
Incidentally, Jamie once showed me the above Benetar photo, which he keeps in his wallet as inspiration for his own musical endeavours. When asked why it was so powerful for him, he merely responded, “Always lead with your nipple.”
Note: this is actually part of a game Asher invented called, rather uninventively, The Musical Insult Game.
Overstate News 3-11-03
March 11, 2003 By Leave a Comment
- Image via Wikipedia
The pageants and parades continue. Almost every film and new broadcast is a glorification of the OverForces, OverIntelligence, or else an attack on They. The perpetual enemy. The enemy whose face changes with each battle. The enemy who might one day be our friend, our ally, or someone so helpless that in other times we’ve sent them rice or beans.
The colors of the Overstate emblazon all our cultural displays now. The red of blood and fire and anger. The blue of bruises and cold death, of strangulation. The white of obliteration, of blinding light – the erasure of opposition, of those who do not glorify the Overstate. Our songs are anthems. There are comedies that mock our next adversaries.
And there is talk now of sedition and anti-Overstatism – of so accusing those who protest our actions.
Now, too, we are asked to report on our neighbors, our families, on those with different skin and religion. We are charged now with public surveillance. And we are told not to discuss or presume to know the reasons or the rights, if any, of those in prison. They have no trial, as we once understood a trial, no representation, no protection under the documents of the old order. They have been accused of high treason, when anyone has bothered to accuse them at all.
Epoch
February 27, 2003 By Leave a Comment
Epoch isn’t too bad, but it’s bad enough. The sci-fi unreality isn’t really a problem. It’s the unreality of all the other stuff – from the diplomacy to the way operations work in the field. That stuff is tongue-in-cheek some of the time, but the rest of the time it is just silly. The premise was certainly interesting, though not much different than, say, The Abyss, except that it’s on land. The are the usual stereotypes – bumbling ambassadors (who are indeed sometimes bumbling, just in different ways – this isn’t social commentary), mindless trigger-happy grunts (ok, that’s not too far off, either), a fundamentalist (hmmm. Guess he was kind of spot on, as well), the peace-loving scientist (one word… Oppenheimer), and the tough but soft in the middle uniformed love interest (’bout had enough of those). Then there’s the bewildered presentation of the Chinese. Clearly written by someone who knows nothing about them. There is too much shadow, gas, and too many sparks inside the “torus” – the mysterious (think ‘monolith’ from 2001) stone funnel that rose from below bedrock and stretched to the sky, hovering just above ground. And there’s the usual destruction of the great machine, complete with the getaway of our two reasonable heroes amid lots of camera shaking and rocks falling. And lo… he’s cured and she’s finally able to conceive. Ick! This is the B-side ot a B movie. It would be a decent comic book, but isn’t worth a DVD.
Iggy Goes Down . . . Well… another film by Camus. [Doesn't deserve it's own post.]
Overstate News 02-19-03
February 19, 2003 By Leave a Comment
Same as when we started bombing the last several nations we attacked, the “educational” programming is now heavily steeped in emotional programming about the last great war and how we all pulled together, did our part, and raised our flag. The implication: (more or less) this enemy is that enemy, this fight is that fight, this cause is that cause. It’s us for the sake of us. But no one asks now whether or not we aren’t worth saving, whether we’ve become so monstrous in our violence that we shouldn’t win, that perhaps even the illusion of self-defense that we use to cover our agression is a defense that shouldn’t be made. Perhaps we’d serve the world and benefit ourselves more by a sound “defeat”, though in reality we are not under attack, not under seige, and the sirens at night, the alerts, the “threat”, is just our posturing, our great lie.
Elderly as Commodity
February 18, 2003 By Leave a Comment
Advertisement for a lawyer: They put their mother in the cheapest nursing home they could find. After she died, they sued the nursing home for not taking good care of her, turning a substantial profit – not for the mother, but for themselves. Says the commercial, “No amount of money can make up for a loved one’s… but (the lawyer) helped us restore dignity to Mom’s death.” Basically, it’s a “how to” on turning a mother into a commodity. A guide to selling a person. I have no words foul enough.
Overstate News 02-18-03
February 18, 2003 By Leave a Comment
- Cover of Animal Farm: Centennial Edition
The MoP is pushing “Homeland Defense” as a cooperative construct. Naturally, this means a constant siege mentality. A constant state of victimhood. Meanwhile, part of that defense is that we keep coming up with new reasons to attack – new crimes of our enemy. It’s like Snowball in Animal Farm. If the crops fail, it is he. And this justifies our building up of troops along our enemy’s border. Soon we’ll attack out of “homeland defense”. We will move into the assault despite being told we are “paralyzed with fear”. We will bomb cities while talking in superior tones about the cowardice of attacking civilians. We’ll talk about international standards for our enemy, and then do what we want if the other powers don’t agree with us. This is the Overstate. In the end, we’ll shrug our shoulders and simply annhilate them, and then march through as “liberators”.
Brutality
February 18, 2003 By Leave a Comment
Ya know, the talking heads are going on (yes, I listened briefly) about the 21 people trampled to death in a Chicago nightclub. Not a soul is asking whether the savages who walked on people’s faces should be punished.
I hope for their sake, they find the people resonsible for the dog mutilation in Oklahoma before someone like me does. I’m afraid there wouldn’t be enough left to pull dental records if I caught up w. them.
Overstate News 2-16-03
February 16, 2003 By Leave a Comment
- Image via Wikipedia
The slightest change in weather is blamed upon our enemy and is considered provocation to make war upon him. We make irrational arguments; they are shown to be irrational; we say “Don’t be fooled by his answers.” and we prepare for war anyway. Our plan is to “devastate his economy” and “remove his ability to make war”. Never mind that he is much weaker than us, and unable to retaliate except as the shadows that plant imaginary explosives in our streets, and the occasional car bomb that we blame upon him with the corresponding show trial. What we mean is that the Overstate plans to kill cities. We plan to annhilate schools, hospitals, and claim that we are hitting military targets, and that the rest are accidental but unavoidable statistics – casualties of a necessary war.
And still the Ministry of Propaganda is spreading the watchword of “fear”. The trigger phrase of “terror”. Tonight, just after a report on our enemy, the phrase rings out “a terrifying situation tonight at an energy plant”. The situation? The terror? One man was injured slightly from inhaling some fumes. The least event is now cause to be afraid. A looming shadow. A child spills his milk and some reporter is on the scene telling us to stay in our homes as he describes how this family feels unsafe and frightened.
