PERSPECTIVE

As the "funding for the war" bill gets tossed around and reworked, it might be nice to check out just what that funding means. My friend Tom on his Coolbirth blog had a link to a site that makes it clear. Check it out.

FAVORITE MUSIC (INTERLUDE)

I read somewhere that according to at least one study, most people’s favorite music is what they liked in their late teens and early twenties.

I don’t know if that’s true or not. For me, it’s only true in the sense that most of my favorites are lps—long playing record “albums”—a format that came into popularity when I was in my late teens and early twenties, and remained so well into my forties, when CDs began to replace them.

I suppose young people today, who mostly download music one song at a time, will have individual tunes as their favorites, much the way the WWII generation got their music on individual 78 recordings, and when I was in my early teens, like most kids in the 1950s I bought my favorite songs on 45s.

Anyway, I was making the little trinity lists I tend to walk around concocting in my head, and remembered having read about that study and realized my three favorite jazz albums all came from that time. And that got me started.

Here are 3 categories that occurred to me, and my 3 favorites in them.

Jazz lps:

1. Miles Davis’ KINDA BLUE (often voted the best jazz album ever made, so I’m not unique in that choice, it’s certainly one of the most well recorded, let alone played)

2. Bill Evan’s WALTZ FOR DEBBIE (in my musical pantheon, this one’s a tie with the above as greatest jazz album ever recorded, just for the perfectly captured live sound it has—and in a club performance—every note is beautifully clear! I can play this anywhere anytime and am transported to a place of complete satisfaction, it makes me so happy I could fly, despite the blues tone of some of the tunes on it and the fact that the great bassist, Scott LaFaro died not long after this was recorded)

3. Eric Dolphy’s LAST DATE (recorded in Europe before he passed, a perfect mix of virtuoso performances demonstrating Dolphy’s unique musical gifts)

Soundtracks (after jazz, my favorite musical “genre”) from movies that aren’t musicals:

1. Leonard Bernstein’s music for ON THE WATERFRONT

2. Pete Seeger’s for INDIAN SUMMER (none of that rinky tink stuff of his, mostly pure instrumental music that sounds more raw and spontaneous than anything else he ever did)

3. Mason Daring’s for THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH

Movie musicals soundtracks:

1. Antonio Carlos Jobim’s music for BLACK ORPHEUS

2. Richard Peaslee’s for THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHERENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE

3. The Beatles’ for A HARD DAYS NIGHT.

ELAINE EQUI

No longer overlooked or underrated (the New York Times reviewed her latest book—RIPPLE EFFECT New and Selected Poems from Coffee House Press—and some of the poems appeared and will appear in The New Yorker) and mentioned in this blog before, nonetheless, the publication of her selected poems is cause for celebration.

I’ve dug her work since she started publishing it, and back then thought of her as the punk Emily Dickenson.

But now I realize she is so much more than that.

Another way of describing her unique approach to the poem might be a cross between Elizabeth Bishop and Ellen DeGeneres.

I don’t mean to imply that she is “gay” (she’s not) or that her work can only be compared to other females (it can’t, and hasn’t been, either by me or other critics,) I only thought of them because they are the best at what they do, as Elaine is at what she does, which is like a mix of Bishop’s sophisticated and often enigmatic poetic craftswomanship, with DeGeneres’s wry, understated comic observations that make the mundane seem suddenly and surreally absurd, as well as transcendentally transparent.

But hell, check her poetry out for yourself and you can come up with your own Hollywood pitch (in my screenwriting days out there, the agents would always advise me to “pitch” an idea for a movie I wanted to be paid to write by combining two previous and recent hit movies so that the studio heads could instantly get what it was about and how they could make money on it, like “WILD HOGS in DISTURBIA” etc., which sounds like it could almost be an Elaine Equi poem).

HMMMM....(cont'd)

Check this article out.

And please don't let the term "fascist" put you off. It's thrown around way too much on the left, but the point she is making, or points, are totally compelling and counter any typically devil's advocate stance I would usually take, even with people who share my perspective but not my tolerance.

BILL MOYERS

For years I was grateful for Bill Moyers and his shows on PBS.

And now he’s back, and one of the best things on TV again.

I don’t know if it can be downloaded, (and if you more advanced web users out there can find a link to it, please post it in a comment below) (never mind, thanks to Maureen Barry here is the link to the show on how the media dropped the ball in the build up to the invasion of Iraq (at least the major papers and TV news shows). On the latest, he interviews Jon Stewart, who demonstrates why he is the most perceptive and articulate critic of the Bush regime out there.

ANOTHER WHY DOES THIS NOT SUPRIZE ME QUOTE

"In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.
"The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success—in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections—were no longer working properly."
—James Glanz in a New York Times front page story, Sunday, April 29, 2007

ANOTHER (MINUTE, HOUR, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR, LIFETIME, ETC.) IN “CORPORATE (THIS TIME COMCAST) AMERICA”

People tell me if you don’t post on your blog for a few days, people stop reading.

So this may be to nobody.

I didn’t watch the debate the other night between the declared Democratic candidates for President, because my cable went out. And in the land of the “supposed free market” the supposed conservatives who believe in the “free market” have been running for the past many years, I only get one choice of cable providers, and if I don’t like it, tough.

In my case it’s Comcast. I moved into a new apartment last September. The man they sent to install my internet connection and cable TV arrived in a beat up old pick up that had no indication he worked for Comcast on it. Of course he was a “subcontractor.”

I’ve got nothing against beat up old pick ups, I’ve driven many, nor subcontractors, my grown son has been one and so have I, and many in my family and clan, and some of my best friends are subcontractors.

But unfortunately this guy was so inept, that he suggested he could connect me up to the modem left by the previous tenant when I suggested he should connect it through the modem I was instructed to bring with me for that purpose.

When that became too problematic and he called the Comcast person who could help him, that person, after trying to explain to the “technician” what needed to be done, asked the man to put me on the line, and then she explained to me what needed to be done and I did it.

She also explained that because of the mistakes he had already made, my service would probably only last 24 hours and then I’d have to call again and she or someone else would walk me through what I needed to do. Which is what happened.

As for the TV service, I have had to call Comcast several times in the several months I’ve been here. Once, another Comcast “technician” had installed a neighboring apartment’s cable TV and when they did so they disconnected mine!

On top of the incompetence, my service continues to go out at regular intervals, and the only solution they have is to send out another “technician” usually several days later at best.

For instance I called last Wednesday when the connection was lost and I could get no TV channels at all, and they said they’d get a “technician” out as soon as possible, which turned out to be Monday (after I got to a supervisor, twenty minutes after talking to a regular Comcast “Customer Service” person who seemed very frustrated and angry with me because my service keeps going out and I pointed out that that wasn’t very good business practice).

And, they informed me, Comcast is now charging for that service (which naturally makes me wonder if the problems with the service aren’t intentional—to raise profits etc.) and when I tried to point out that it seemed unfair to charge me for their failure to provide the service I am paying for, they actually had the nerve to point out that other corporations have been doing just that for years and Comcast was merely catching up!

God bless (corporate) America.